Olivia Cherry interview recording, 1995 August 10
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| Blair Murphy | Okay, you can start. | 0:00 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Okay. My name is Olivia James Cherry. I was born October 18th, 1926 in Hampton, Virginia. At the age of eight, my mother remarried, and for a couple of years we lived between the house where my mother and my stepfather with his four boys lived and at my grandmother's house, because there wasn't enough room for us. And my stepfather felt that he needed to get a house for all of us. So then he heard about the houses that were being developed in a place called Aberdeen Gardens that Franklin Roosevelt initiated for the low income people. My stepfather was not rich by any means, he already had four boys of his own and my mother had my brother and me, who's two years older than me, we were born on the same day. | 0:05 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Anyway, we moved out to Aberdeen Gardens, which is in Hampton near Newport News. It was 150 houses, beautiful development where everyone had two to three bedrooms and a garage, you could use it for anything you wanted to, everyone had a half a acre of land. Needless to say, White people were complaining because this was a beautiful neighborhood. It's what they call a neighborhood where you have green spots. In other words, we had a island, a medium in the middle of the road for each street we had, and there was a lot of grass and everyone had a half an acre that you could raise your chickens and ducks and what have you, and have a garden, make your own foods and do your own sewing and everything. And this was 1937, I was 11 years old, I remember it well. And our family was the seventh family to move into Aberdeen Gardens, November the 7th, 1937. My father was a butcher and the manager of the grocery store there, my mother was a homemaker. Anyway, we felt really secure there. | 1:12 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Prior to moving out of there we experienced a lot of segregation because we lived more or less in town and going to the grocery stores and what have you, not being able to go to the movies or go to just a little dinky Black movie house. Anyway, out in Aberdeen, as I say, we felt secure. And we had a school built in and our activity that we had since then, have been at the school. Anyway, we couldn't attend the school because there were 150 houses, needless to say there weren't enough children. Excuse me. We had to go to school in town. And I went to Union Street School where I had originally began my early education. Ironically, living at my grandmother's, we were exactly in front of the school, that was an advantage. But living in Aberdeen, we had to take a school bus, but this was my first real deep experience of segregation. We could not take the bus until the bus had taken the White children to school, then it came back for us. | 2:22 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Therefore, we were late in class and the teachers didn't understand it, or they understood it but they didn't appreciate it, and they took it out on us. "All right, hurry up and take your seat, you are already late." So we couldn't have that. So we experienced segregation in school among our people as well as the Whites. So in about six months they were able to open a new school in Aberdeen, and what they did, they would bus children from other neighborhoods and we were able to open our school. But in the meantime, walking home from school, the school buses would pass by us, and can you believe, the White kids would spit out the window at us and call us "nigger" and everything. | 3:27 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Anyway, we overcame that because we knew the schedule they would come by and we were out of their way. Getting the public bus going to Newport News was what we were the closest to or going to Hampton. The buses ran like every hour. And the last bus was 11 o'clock. And we knew buses ran in other neighborhoods longer than that. So that was a form of segregation. Going to the stores to be waited on, we were always waited on last. When I grew up and went away, in the summers, I would go to Richmond and visit some of my stepfather's people and they would let me take the bus there and they would come later in the day and pick me up. Taking the bus, we had to sit on the back of the bus. Riding the bus around the city, we always had to sit on the back. | 4:07 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So taking the bus and stopping at some little station, maybe you had to go to the bathroom, you had to go to some real dinky, nasty, dirty bathroom in the back. Or even you just didn't go. You try to hold your water and that could be hard even for a child. When I went to high school, I wanted a part-time job so that I could supplement— | 4:53 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Well so I could have an allowance, not a supplement, because my stepfather had passed. He died when I was 16 years old. 15 years old, I'm sorry. So our income was really low then. We were not poor, but we were making ends meet. But I wanted my own money. And I just went here and there and I could not get a job because I was Black, because I am Black. So the Colored druggist around the corner did give me a job there. I had a very good job and that worked out fine. | 5:15 |
| Olivia James Cherry | But basically I did domestic work because that's all I could get. And my name is Olivia, which I feel is a very pretty name. My mother felt that way, that's why she gave it to me. And I had trouble with my name. One lady told me, one White lady said, "Oh, I said I was going to name my daughter," but her daughter's name was Mary. How do you jump from Olivia to Mary? And I'd be upstairs, cleaning the bathroom and she said, "Susie," they loved to call me Susie. "Susie." And so I didn't answer and I was a spunky kid then. I was 13 or 14 and I didn't answer. And finally she come to the steps and said, "Olivia, you hear me calling you?" I said, "Now I hear you now you. Now you said Olivia. That's my name." She asked me, "Why did your mother name you Olivia?" I said, "Because she looked at me and said I'm a very pretty baby and I'm going to give her a pretty name." That was not true, but that was my smart answer to her. | 5:47 |
| Olivia James Cherry | I could have told her the truth. My mother's name is Lucille, and there's so many people said, "Why didn't you name her Lucille? Name her after you." Because I look so much like her. And she said, "No, that's too common a name. I want her to have a odd name but a nice name." So she gave me Olivia. So then prior to that, when we were living in Aberdeen, there were farms around us, potato farm, and we'd go, they would dig up the potatoes and we children in the summer, we had to put them in baskets and to go to market. And we also worked on a raspberry farm picking raspberries, which I really didn't like because it was like backbreaking. | 6:45 |
| Olivia James Cherry | But going back to the potato farm. I had two girlfriends, close girlfriends and another one, about seven or eight of us looking for work. And this man said, "Oh yes, I'll dig the potatoes up and you can put them in a basket." And so I said, "How much?" I was always the spokesman, always a leader. I said, "How much?" He said, "10 cents a basket." Which that was 1939 or '40, like that. So that was good money then. So we said, "Okay." So we did this and we had to go at five o'clock in the morning because it was hot like it's been a few days ago for 25 days. And it was very hot and we would be out in the field picking up those potatoes. I'm talking fast because I don't know how much time you want to have and I have so much to say. | 7:17 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So we went out, we picked the potatoes and he'd pay us and we'd come home, we'd be so happy. And one day we went and we picked the potatoes, worked diligently, and the man gave us five cents a basket. I said, "Wait a minute, you told us 10 cents a basket." He said, "Yeah, I know what I told you." There was so many of us, I guess, and we worked so fast. So he said, "I'm just going to give you five cents." I said, "Okay." And the girls were fussing. Well I said, "Okay, that's fine." I said, "We'll see you tomorrow morning." And he looked at me. So when we left his farm, they said, "Olivia, what are you talking about?" I said, "Don't worry, we going back tomorrow and we going get even." "So what we're going do?" I said, "We're going to put the straw and stuff in the basket, fill it up with that and put potatoes on top, so you can't see it, and we get our money and leave." So they said, "Oh." Some said, "I'm scared." "Don't be scared, just be with me." | 8:02 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So we went on and that's what we did. And he paid us and we come out of his farm and we down the road just laughing and joking and we wouldn't even walk that way for a long time because we feel he'd be looking for us. | 8:52 |
| Blair Murphy | Was he White or Black? | 9:05 |
| Olivia James Cherry | White farmer. And then it was this White man and his girlfriend that had a raspberry farm and they wanted us to pick the raspberry. We went around looking for work. So here we are picking the raspberries and here goes my name again. This man said, "Hey Susie. Susie, you missed something on your row." Well I knew he was talking to me because this is my row, but I just kept on working. | 9:06 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And he said, "Susie, don't you hear me talking to you?" I said, "I told you before, my name is Olivia. Olivia, can you say that?" He said, "Don't be 'D' smart." And I went back and picked what he said I missed. It wasn't that I was working badly, I just overlooked it. Well, another day he did the same thing. "Susie, I want you to work down this end. I don't want you to work with them." I just kept on working. He said, "You hear me telling you?" I said, "Do you know my name? Can you learn my name?" He said, "All right, whatever it is, I want you working down there." So one day we went through this name again and he said, "Get the 'H' off of my property. I don't want you working for me at all." I said, "Fine. Because I don't want to work for you, but you have to pay me for the work I had done." | 9:28 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And I had already computed the amount and he told his girlfriend, "Pay her, let's get rid of her." And I don't remember the figures now, but it wasn't the correct amount. I said, "No, this is not right. You owe me so-and-so cents." "Pay her, give her anything so we can get rid of her." So she paid me and I stepped out on the highway and that highway, you may not know it, not being around here, is Mercury Boulevard in Hampton now. That's where it was. Anyway, I stepped out down the highway and I said, "Come on y'all. You don't want to work for him. He doesn't know how to treat you." And they standing there working and scared. And he said, "Get away from here. Get away from my property." I said, "Wait a minute." I said, "I'm on a highway. My mother and father paid taxes for this highway. This is not your highway, so you leave me alone." | 10:11 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And I went home and told my mother, she said, "Oh Lord, they're going to kill my daughter. I knew they're going to kill my daughter." I went on the bus. I was doing domestic work in that same area and the lady I worked for wanted you to come to the back door. And my mother did domestic work. She didn't graduate. She didn't complete high school and she did domestic work. And I thank God she did and she knew how to do it and could do it because I would not be here today had my mother, not because my father did not. He left town, did not send child support and do anything for us. And then after a while I told you my stepfather passed. So there wasn't any support. We did get social security. We all got social security for a while. | 10:57 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Anyway, I wouldn't go to the back door. And the lady said, "You must come to the back door." And I said, "No, I'm not going to the back door." And my reason was my mother had to go to the back door to keep her job, and not that I was better than my mother, but I was avenging my mother. And I said, "I'm not going to the back door." So two other girls and I would get off the bus and we had a long walk, and stops were very far out there in between. And see only Black folks was getting the bus, sort of like it is today around here because the White folks had their cars. | 11:38 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Anyway, on this particular day it was raining and three of us, and so we had an umbrella and they walked. They got to my house where I worked first and they said, "Come on Olivia." And I said, "No. I go to the front door." And they led me to the front door and then they went on down the street and went to the back door. They wouldn't go to the front. And I worked for a lady one time in town that refused to let me in the front door. And I go to the back and call her and come back to the front door. I refused to go to the back door and the lady next door said, "Why don't you knock on the back door?" And I knock on the door and go back to the front door. | 12:11 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And one day I had cramps one Saturday and mother said, "You going to work?" And I said, "Yes." Because I didn't have a phone. I couldn't call her and tell her I wasn't coming. She was depending on me. So I said, "Yes, I'm going to work." And I had to walk then, it was quite a long walk, but it helped me. And I knocked and rang or whatever the case was and called her, and she never did come because she was determined we would come to the back. I went home, went to bed. And that was end of that job. And I saw her in the grocery store a week or so after that, and her little boy come calling me 'hi'. And she snatched him away and act like I didn't know her. | 12:48 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So one day I caught the bus going to one of these ladies where I had to go to the front door, wouldn't come to the back. And the bus driver, a woman, during the war '42, the bus driver—Prior to '42, was about '41. She passed the stop. She passed the stop and the stop were blocks and blocks away. And I said, "Didn't you hear me ring the bell back there." She said, "What?" And I always looked younger than what I am, so she thought a little, snotty-nose kid. She said, "What are you talking about? What's wrong with you, gal?" I said, "I rang the bell back there, gave it plenty time, and the stops are too far between anyway." She said, "You better get the 'H' off my bus." | 13:22 |
| Olivia James Cherry | My mother was on the bus. "Get the 'H' off my bus." And the bus driver said, "Who is she? What's her name?" I bet if my mother hadn't been on there, some Black people would've told her anyway. No one told her. She said, "I'm going to take all of you to your stop. And then I'm going on into the," because it's called car barn then, that's where the buses parked. Said, "Because I have a cold, I'm sick. And then that little Black gal just irritated me worse." I wouldn't take the bus anymore because I was afraid I was going to run into her. I would walk all that way to work. But people walked then and thought nothing of it. | 14:01 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Then years later after high school going to Washington to business school, I would come back home on the bus and you get on the bus in Washington, you had to sit on the back and it was nasty and dirty there. Anyway, they would stop in Richmond and you go to the little stand around the back where you're supposed to get your food and it was just nasty. It was slow waiting on you. It was our people waiting on us there. You could not come right to the front. You had to go to the back. And I stood there one day, a couple times, and I said, "Oh the heck with it, I'll wait till I get home." Wasn't that far. But just those were the things you had to put up with. | 14:37 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Then later I moved on to New York and I integrated the accounts department in Macy's Department Store. The oldest store in the world, largest store. And I never expected to get that job because first of all, this was 1950 and I went to New York to get a better job. Because I was secretary, bookkeeper and all that. You couldn't do that here in the South Virginia and all. So I went there and I went to different companies and I was turned down for various reasons. One lady told me, one lady said—Excuse me. She said, "How old are you?" I think I was 24. She said, "How old are you?" I said, "24." She said, "Well you look like you're about 13 or 14." And I said, "Oh yeah?" She said, "Don't get mad. You should be glad that someone thinks that you look younger than what you are." I said, "Not if it's going to keep me from getting a job." "Oh," she said. | 15:18 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So I went to a Dodge company to get a job in the office and they said, "No, we don't have any jobs for you." I said, "Why?" They said, "We just don't have any." So I went to the phone booth and called and asked. I said, "We're making a survey," didn't even question who we were. "Making a survey. I'd like to know how many Black people you have employed? Colored peoples. Colored then. Negroes of color. And they said, "Oh, we have quite a few in the janitorial department." I said, "How many do you have in the office?" "Oh no, we don't have any in the office." But I didn't do anything with that information. I should have gone to the Urban League. But P.S. I went to the Urban League for a job later and they sent me to companies that would not hire me. Maybe that was what they were supposed to do so they could have a case. But when I told them they didn't hire me, then they just sent me somewhere else. So they weren't that concerned either. | 16:12 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So I ended up going to one place where the man said, "No, so we don't have any jobs in the office for you." See there, they don't tell you. They said, "Well we don't want Negroes in here or Negroes or Colors or Black." Whereas here they say it. And I said, "Why?" He said, "We don't have anything in the office. I have something in the factory." I said, "My mother didn't send me to school to work in a factory." He said, "What? What did you say?" I said, "My mother didn't send me to school to work in a factory." He said, "Well, I don't have any work for you, so you better get out of here."" And I did. | 17:03 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So a friend of my in-law, future in-law, said to me, "Go to Macy's. I work in Macy's." She was a stock girl. Said, "Come to Macy's, you can get a job there." I said, "You think they will hire me? Everyone else has turned me down." "Macy's the largest store in the world? They're not going to hire a Black girl. And so she kept telling me. So one day I was out near there and I said, "Well, I'm going to Macy's, see what's going on." And I went to the employment office and a girl said, "May I help you?" And I said, "Yes." I was very indignant because I knew I wasn't going to get the job. I said, "I'm looking for a job." She said, "Oh yes, for what?" I said, "Office work. I'm a secretary, I'm a bookkeeper." She said, "Can you type? Can you type pretty good?" I said, "I can type very well." "Oh, you can? Well let me see what you can do." And I don't remember now, but it was about 70 some words a minute. And she said, "Good Lord, you sure can type." | 17:32 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Trying to discourage me, she called out the name of this NBC machine, but it was a bookkeeping machine. But she didn't said bookkeeping, she said some other odd name. "Have you ever worked the so-and-so phone machine?" I didn't even know what she was talking about. I said, "No, but I'm willing to learn." She said, "Well yeah, you're a good typist you'll probably do well." She said, "Okay, I'll take you down to the department and give you a test and we'll give you test on the machine." I said, "Well I don't know the machine yet to give me the test." "Well yeah, you're right. Well we'll give you a trial anyway. Can you come back?" She said, "Come back this afternoon, get a physical and all that. This is Friday, so you can start working on Monday." And I did. | 18:33 |
| Olivia James Cherry | It was August. It was August the seventh or eighth, 1950 that I started working at Macy's, and I learned that I had integrated the accounts department. The girls were extremely nice to me and I think that was because they wanted to make me feel at home. And also they were glad that they could be nice to a Black girl. I think that's the way they felt. Anyway, the supervisor was a Jewish girl and she was very nice too. And things went well. But it got to be very monotonous and no advancement. So after seven years I resigned and then I worked for Kelly Services, did a beautiful job for them. And later I worked for the government. My last job, not my last job, but one job in New York I was working for the Army Corps of Engineers. I worked for the Council of Churches and my last job was for the personnel for Lutheran Church of America. And that was outstanding, beautiful job. And I met my present husband through his cousin, whom I worked with at Macy's. And we courted long distance and later got married. So that's another story. | 19:12 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Anyway, you couldn't go to Howard Johnson's when I went to New York in 1950. You go, but they wouldn't wait on you. And I found it to be that way in a lot of places for a long time. They wouldn't wait on you to discourage you, but the law was in your favor in New York, and you could ride anywhere on the subway. It'd be very hard to segregate people on the subway because those trains come in with eight to 12 cars on them. And you are standing at various places depending on where you get off or where you get on and where you going to get off. So you'd all get on the car and it would've been a hard thing. And I don't think they ever had segregation on public transportation. The bus you could sit anywhere. And when the ban was lifted and I would come home by bus, I would always sit up front. It was such a novelty. I loved it. And I could see where I was going and all of that. I don't like to sit in the back of a car now. | 20:29 |
| Olivia James Cherry | But I left out one part. When I first went to Washington and we were coming home on the train, several of my classmates and I were living there, the trains were segregated and we were in the back, last cars, no food, no Pullman, you could not sleep, you could not get into a compartment. You had to sit up and it was dirty. And we would go to Cape Charles, Virginia. The train take you there and you get the ferry to Norfolk. And I was going to Hampton and let you off at Old Point Comfort. And one day I said, I'm sick and tired of this sitting back here on this boat too. And I went up front and you can see, I can't pass. My husband can, he looks White, and he's not White. I can't pass. But I said, I'm going to sit up front, in front of the boat, and I can see everything and enjoy myself. And I sat there and read my book and mind my own business. And no one bothered me, they let me stay right there. Didn't say anything to me. | 21:30 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And one time my ex-husband and I went to living in New York. When we came down here to Hampton, we would go to Woolworth, get ice cream and thing, take home, and we just automatically sat down. And we realized this was in the fifties, we couldn't sit there. But it was Woolworth, and in North Carolina college students in the sixties that was first integrated. Those students took a lot of abuse. I didn't go through anything that bad, but I was segregated against. And it made me mad, but it did not make me feel inferior. It did not stop me from fighting, so to speak, trying to make things better, trying to ignore the Lord, all of that. And I never really got into any trouble. But I always knew that I was somebody and that God made me this color because that's the way he wanted me. Not because he wanted me to suffer. | 22:33 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And all of us have suffered, every race, and will suffer. And people will suffer here on earth because of what Adam and Eve did to us. I had a very strong mother, she's deceased now, four years. And she always told us that we were somebody and we should never feel inferior or act inferior. And when we said, "I can't do it." She said, "What?" If you had curse, she wouldn't have asked you any stronger, what did you say? She wouldn't allow us to say can't. So that helped me because when I was working at Macy's and I saw those girls going to town on the bookkeeping machine, just turning out work. And I said, "I can't do that." I said, "Wait a minute." I thought about what my Mother had said. They can do it. That's what she'd tell us. She said, "If someone else can do it, you can do it too." Whatever's good for you, you're not going to do bad things that they're doing. | 23:29 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And I was very good, and whatever I did, I was very good at it and worked well and enjoyed it for a while. And as I say, there was no advancement and it was very monotonous. And so I just left the job. But I was on different jobs and I'm 68 years old and I'm retired from Norfolk Social Services as a word processor. I worked there nine years, worked at the school board, Norfolk School Board for 10 years here. Yeah, Norfolk School Board. And I've been living here now for 22 years this month. Came from New York. I love this area. It's called Cloverdale in Chesapeake, south Norfolk. And I love it. And of course there are no Whites out here. But I have lived near Whites and gotten along fine. But we still are exposed to, I guess I shouldn't say segregation, but I don't know other word to say, to use. | 24:16 |
| Olivia James Cherry | All right. People don't come right out with you can't do this or can't do that or we don't have the signs anymore. We used to have signs over the water, Colored water and White water. And we come home from high school and we'd stop in Fisherman's it was called, and Woolworth. And one day we were stopped in Fisherman's, I just said, devil just got into me. And I went over and drank the White water and a little White boy, a White stock boy said, "Oh, you can't drink that water." And I said, "Oh, what's wrong with it?" He said, "You supposed to drink that water." So I drank the water that said Color and drank it that said White. And I said, "Oh, I don't see any difference here." And his face got so red and he didn't report me, just the grace of God that I didn't get into trouble because I tried things. I just didn't like it. | 25:18 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And one year, in 1959, I came home from New York with a brand new car, white car, beautiful car, looked so aristocratic, and this policeman was trailing behind us. I was driving, and I was on Queen Street where you know now how you have this is right turn only, this lane is, and this lane is for straight. And not having driven at home, I didn't know, and I was in the right only lane when I should have been in the through lane. And before I got up there and checking the traffic and everything, I put my signal on and went in the other lane and went across that street, and the policeman put the siren on. | 26:02 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So I pulled over to the side and he asked for usual driver license and all. And he said, "Well Mrs.," my name was Harris then. "Mrs. Harris, you see," and New York tags on my car. "You you see down here, we obey the rules and regulations." And I said, "Oh yes, sir." And I always say sir to them. It's not being condescending, I give people respect that are in authority. And I say, sir, if I don't know their name. Even when I see people on the street or somebody I want to get their attention and it's a man, I'll say sir. Anyway, he said, "I see you're from New York." And I didn't say anything because I'm from Hampton, New York was my home. | 26:45 |
| Olivia James Cherry | I said, "Yes, I realize that that I was a turning lane and I wanted to go through. So I signaled and I went in the," I hadn't done anything wrong really, but this beautiful white car, he really looked so aristocratic. They don't even make him anymore. Rambler Ambassador. And being a Black couple and all and New York tag, all those things were against me. So that was 1959. So he said, "Just be careful while you're down here, while you're in our town and obey the laws." And I said, "Yes." And when he walked away, I said, "Dumb bunny". My husband said, "Don't do that, don't say that." He didn't hear me. I wasn't that loud. Anyway, that was in the back. | 27:27 |
| Olivia James Cherry | But since I've been home living here and my mother was still living, so I would say it's about six years or so, in the eighties, my aunt lives in Newport News and my mother and I had visited my aunt in Newport News. And we were coming home and it was like 12, one o'clock, coming to Hampton where my mother and father lived, my last stepfather. I had two stepfathers, one died early, other one was 91 and a half when he died. He was beautiful too, just like the first one. Anyway, all of a sudden I look, we in this little neighborhood just like this is where my mother lived, where the property is now. And I said, "Mother, police is behind us." And she said, "Oh, no." I said "What?" "Oh, what's wrong?" I said, "I have no idea." So I just proceeded to the house. | 28:07 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And when I got there, he pulled up behind me and asked me to roll your window down and give me your license. I said, "What's wrong?" He said, "Well, I noticed back there you hesitated. Are you lost?" I said, "No." He said, "Chesapeake, what are you doing over here if your license say Chesapeake?" I said, "This is my mother. I'm visiting my parents." I was just as indignant as he was. And I said, "What you talking about I hesitated?" I said, "It's a stop sign back there and I stopped at the stop sign." And I did. I always obeyed those things. I don't want to be killed. He wasn't even there then he just came, I don't know where he came from. | 28:54 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Anyway, I said, "What is the problem? Why are you stopping me instead of sit out here trying to catch some of these drug addicts and what have you? Why aren't you checking them instead of following me?" My mother said, "Olivia, Olivia." I wouldn't have been that bad if nobody been in the car because they will beat you. They're still beating people. They're beating them. We know that because we saw what they did to Rodney King, and then they got off. Now tell me, prejudice, Jim Crow-ism isn't still alive? It's very much alive. The only difference is we have laws that don't necessarily protect us, but we can use them in court and we may get satisfaction and we may not. But we didn't get it years ago and people were lynched, killed for no reason. | 29:35 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Anyway, he said, "All right, just be careful." I said, "Yes." And we went in the house and my mother said, "Lord girl, I was so scared." I said, "I wasn't." And we told my father about it. He said, "Where? What?" He getting up coming to the door. I said, "No, Pop, they gone. Forget about it. Forget about it. That's just something to do. They just saw two women or saw a woman, they don't know what they saw." | 30:19 |
| Olivia James Cherry | The same thing in schools. For instance, I brought my son down here from New York school, 11 years old and went to school here in Chesapeake to Truitt, and the school never sent his transcript. I went to the school before we left town, asked them, gave them the address and everything, of the school, to send the transcript to the school. They did not send it. Then we went up there visiting because my 11-year-old son's father still live in New York. Went to visit them and went to the school and told them they hadn't sent a transcript, the school's waiting for it. They never sent it. This is a Black school, all Black school, next block from where we live, which is predominantly Black neighborhood. But all the schools out here are very well integrated, more Whites than Black. They never did get the transcript. They didn't know exactly what group to put him in. But until he proved himself, he did his work and everything worked out okay. | 30:45 |
| Olivia James Cherry | But in the beginning, they just ignored him. And I guarantee if it'd been a White boy, they would've written to the school, they would've been persistent and they were not because they really didn't care. And especially the fact that it was a young Black boy. My son was 17 when he wanted a car. He had saved his money, he had $3,000 to put down for this car. He saved his money in New York. We taught him how to save. We taught him from the very beginning. And he was working part-time and he said he wanted a car. And I said, "I don't know Kevin, you're 17." So he was very disappointed and he saw what he wanted, little red sports car. And we came home and I thought about it on the way home. I said, "I'm sorry you're angry with me." He said, "No, I'm not angry with you." He said, "I'm just disappointed." I said, "But I just don't think you are old enough." | 31:42 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So I thought about it. And here's a child, 17, getting ready to graduate from high school, has never given me any trouble. I never had to go to school for anything he had done. My mother had to go to school for me because if they hit me, I did what she told me. I hit them back. And you're in a fight, they going to send you home, your parents have to come. I didn't have a bad record, but they knew me. Everyone knew me. | 32:33 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Anyway, I thought about it and I thought about it overnight. I said, "He's been good. He has minded me, I haven't had any trouble. When he tells me he's going someplace, he is there. He's done very well. I think I'll let him buy the car." | 32:56 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So that morning I said, "Kevin, wake up. I want to tell you something." He said, "What?" I said, "You can buy it." "I can, Ma?" I said, "Yes, you can. We're going today to visit Hampton, the [indistinct 00:33:18]." I said, "We'll go today and get it." "Oh mommy, thank you." I said, "You have to pay the car note. You have to pay the car insurance. You have to continue to pay your telephone." | 33:09 |
| Olivia James Cherry | He was going to school and working at Virginia Power and he was 17 and he's been working there ever since. And this December he would be 34 years old. He's been working there past 17 years, and has as a wife and children. This baby will be four tomorrow. That's his daughter that's 13, and that's his stepdaughter that's 11. And that's my little heart, my other son, my stepson's son, who's 11. | 33:25 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Anyway, he got his car. He asked me, he said, "Momma, if I give you the money, will you write the check for all my different bills?" And I said, "Yes." So I gave him some envelopes I marked on there, car payment, car insurance, telephone, all of that. And gave him a strong box, a fireproof box to put his things in. And the money was always there. He reminded me, "Mommy, my car note is due next week." And the money was always there. I wrote to check. I was glad to do it for him. He paid for his car, he did all the things he was supposed to do. He was a fine young man. He still is a fine young man, working diligently. And he's come up against some segregation, but not a lot like us. | 33:54 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And not long after we moved down here and I happened to deal with my mother-in-law's house, and I looked, the bus passed by there, the school bus, and I looked and my son's sitting on the back seat just enjoying himself. I said, "My God, we worked all this time to get from the back seat and he's sitting on the back seat." | 34:43 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So when I got home I said, "Kevin." "What mom, what did I do wrong?" I said, "You're sitting on the back seat." "Oh yeah, yeah, I like that because nobody else sits back there, I have plenty of room all to myself." I said, "We've been struggling to get off the back seat and you are in the back seat." But see, he didn't look at it like that. | 35:02 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And when Roots came out, he and my stepson, my son's two years older than he, they didn't believe all the things we'd tell them about segregation? | 35:17 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And this is [indistinct 00:35:33]'s stepson [indistinct 00:35:33]. | 35:28 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And they said, "Oh, that was true what you were telling us. So many things that happened." Now in my family and all, no one ever was killed or lynched or anything like that, but people were lynched in Virginia, State of Virginia. Blacks were lynched for a long time, but didn't happen thank God to any of our people. | 35:33 |
| Blair Murphy | Do you remember hearing about it when you were growing up? | 35:51 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Oh, yeah. There were different families that it happened to, but it didn't happen to us. | 35:54 |
| Blair Murphy | Happened in this area, or? | 35:59 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Well, I was in Hampton when I was growing up, and oh, over here they tell me, excuse me, this is called South Norfolk or Chesapeake, a borough of South Norfolk. And this is Klan Country, Klan town. Just behind us, a few blocks where most of the White people live, there were riots and what have you. They were very much against Black folk. But I haven't experienced any of it since I'm living here. Of course, it's many years later. And for the most part in school that's subtle. | 36:03 |
| Olivia James Cherry | For instance, I went to PTA, executive board meeting, anyone, it's not just officers, anyone can go to PTA, executive board meeting. And I worked with PTA in New York so I knew what PTA was about. And when I walked in there, even though they had one Black person, one woman on the board, so therefore I was the only Black woman attending the executive board meeting. | 36:37 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And the lady president, I guess she was, she said, "Yes, may I help you?" I said, "Is this where you going to have the," I knew what she was getting at. "This is where you going to have the executive board meeting?" She said, "Yes." I said, "Well, I came to attend the meeting." "Oh, oh yes, yes. Feel very welcome." They were very uncomfortable with me in there, and they didn't seem like they went by their agenda. Seemed like it was something you did in a hurry. And the Black girl, well you could tell she was just a token and she was a little bit afraid being on the board and I there. Of course Black people had been very—When they're in those positions and you come, they don't think you should rock the boat. But see, that's tokenism. They'll put one here and one there and what have you. | 37:06 |
| Olivia James Cherry | The March on Washington in 1963, August 1963, my son Kevin [indistinct 00:38:02] Harris was 22 months old and his father and I went to Washington for that march. And we were very close to where Martin Luther King made his speech. And my son was such a good baby. Like I say he was 22 months old. We had little sunsuit on him that was red, white and blue. I thought that was so appropriate. And we had him in the stroller and had water and things, juice and things for him. I had stayed with my brother. My brother lives in DC. He's a retired Captain from the Army. | 37:53 |
| Olivia James Cherry | He was exposed to a lot of segregation. He went into the Army in 1942, he joined the army and he spent 20 years in there. He was in most states in the United States. And he was in the Battle of the Bulge, which was in Germany. The Americans were really caught in a jam. And he said, I will never see my mother and my sister again. But thank God, he did return home and he's a retired Captain. And then he worked for NASA for 27 years. But getting back to going to— we stayed with him, and going to the March in Washington. | 38:39 |
| Olivia James Cherry | A reporter from New York, I think, interviewed us, took a picture and all that, was in the paper, and asked me why was I there? And I said, "I'm here to help to make things better for my son." But my son is exposed to segregation on his job right now for Virginia Power Ledger-Star, which is the largest newspaper company here in this area. And they have grievances. And when they come up with their grievances, they're not listening to their people, don't pay that much attention to them. | 39:28 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And then some of the Whites are going with some of the same problems and there's some different stories. So it's still going on. And sometimes it's kind of settling, sometimes it isn't. Getting back to my brother. My brother had been overseas and he and his wife and my mother were in Knoxville, Kentucky on their way there. And he stopped at this restaurant to get something to eat, and they would not serve them and he went off. He is not necessarily the vocal one. I'm more vocal than my two brothers. My mother said, "She's worse than two boys. Between two boys. But he went off because he said, I had been overseas and I almost died for my country and you cannot serve me here. And my mother was afraid that he would be lynched or something because this was still in the forties. And she said, "Come on Wilson, let's go." And my sister-in-law said the same thing and they left. | 40:01 |
| Olivia James Cherry | But there were several places where they would not serve them. And he, in his uniform, they still wouldn't serve him. And my younger brother, who is my half brother, that was the first stepfather I had, his son and he and my mother's son retired from the Air Force for 20 years. And he went in 1953 and for 20 years, and he was in, I believe it's when he was, he's in Texas now, retired of course. I believe he was in Texas or Florida. | 40:58 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And the officer in charge over him, his name is Wyche, W-Y-C-H-E. Freddie Wyche. The officer ripped his name tag and said, "Wyche, what? That's no name. You get your name and sew it back on." He said, "That is my name. My name is Freddie F. Wyche." And he was punished. I forgot how he was punished. He was punished for that, whatever they do in the service. And later they checked his records and found out that was his name. It's an odd name. I think it's part German name. Wyche. W-Y-C-H-E. So he got in trouble for his name. | 41:36 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And he's career. Both those boys are career. He taught radar. He never flew. He doesn't do many things in the Air Force without flying. And today he works the post office in Houston, Texas. He's 60 years old. I forget what his title is, but anyway, it's computers. If there's a problem on a computer, he can fix it. And when they received a new computer, his supervisor said, "Take the book home and study it so you'll understand and you can go to school if you want to." He started taking it down and put it back together. So he said, "Yes." And when he was a little boy, he used to break up his toys on Christmas day. And my mother and I were so annoyed with him that he was destructive and that was what was in him. He kept taking those computers down and put them back. | 42:25 |
| Olivia James Cherry | What else you want to hear? I don't know if I said a lot of what you wanted to hear. As I said, we moved to Aberdeen Gardens November 7th, 1937, 150 homes. It was a very close community. They had not completed it. There's one street across Aberdeen Road that's called Langston Boulevard. And that was the last street. They was still working on that. As I said, finally we were able to go to the elementary school, and graduated and went onto high school. | 43:21 |
| Blair Murphy | Was there a comparable community for Whites? | 44:01 |
| Olivia James Cherry | No, its only one, was and is the only one in the United States of that nature. And that really annoyed the White people. And it wasn't like low rundown projects that we had today. And it wasn't called a project either, but that's what it was. | 44:03 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Quite a few White people lived around us because it was a country area and beyond, it was way out, for people to live that didn't have cars. So it has a lot of green areas. So that's why they built it there. And the main highway is Aberdeen Road. And still today there is still one light at, I think it's Walker Road in Aberdeen. One traffic light, just past the school, depending on which way you coming. What we've done, oh, this is very important, I'm glad you asked me that. What we have done, even though I'm no longer a resident there, but I'm one of the originals, we've been to Richmond and has been declared a historic spot. We had this service pertaining to that and have pictures and we have a flag up that you see in other places. | 44:29 |
| Olivia James Cherry | It's basically a crime free area. It has been all these years and it still is. And the people keep their homes up for the most part very nicely. We had trouble when we went to Richmond, they wrote the proposal to obtain the historic status, and we were told that the proposal was the best that anyone had ever written for a historic classification. And we took a bus load of people three different times. We went and we had the most people, they were very impressed. Impressed with the proposal. There was the committee that worked on it. | 45:34 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Softball, they have Aberdeen Rattlers because there were rattlesnakes out there because it was country. And my mother killed two. One in September when we first moved out there, so that was 1938, and then the next year there was a rattlesnake. They say they come every year like that. And so that's why they name Rattlers, the softball team. And it was they who initiated getting Aberdeen a historic— | 46:23 |
| Olivia James Cherry | They have a fine school. They had to tear that school down and built a new one. Every year, we have Deen's Day—Aberdeen, Deen's comes from. | 0:03 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Every year in September, it's about the second Saturday in September, and there is always a program. The Mayor of Hampton comes. The first manager of Aberdeen Gardens, Mr. Walker is still living. The first resident is still living. And she was my first mother-in-law. Her son was my childhood sweetheart. And we did marry and this was 1994 when they had the celebration and then when we had the historic, we received our plaque, the historic society. She was there at that program. I've taken some pictures of her and she was a little incoherent but not much. And we couldn't get her age straight. Her son is dead but all her children, three boys are dead. Just one daughter. | 0:12 |
| Olivia James Cherry | But anyway, she's still living out there in the original home and it's gorgeous. She's kept it up so nicely. Her husband dead many years ago and two years ago, her youngest son, my ex-husband, was killed. He did it to himself. See they have here she was 91 but we think she's even older than that. Anyway, she has a gorgeous yard, lawn and all. She's always had it. Miss Maggie Jones, that was my first mother-in-law and the first resident out there. And another lady that moved out hours after she did just recently died. Mrs. Mann. Bless you. | 1:08 |
| Olivia James Cherry | What else can I tell you about it? I just say basically surrounded by Whites and they didn't want to live with us anyway so we didn't have to worry about whether we could keep them out or whatever. So we just carried on very nice community. And they say like crime really? No, no crime has been committed out there. | 1:52 |
| Blair Murphy | Was there a selection process for the families? | 2:13 |
| Olivia James Cherry | It was low income families and those in dire need of somewhere to live. But the first priority was Newport News shipyard workers because they're very close to Newport News. But my father, because he applied for it and he had all these children, there was seven of us, and he had this butcher skill and store manager skill and low income, was able to get out there and he immediately became the manager of that grocery store. He had worked for a big Jewish market in Hampton and that's where he got his skills and his two older boys soon left home. So it really wasn't nine of us in the house. It was seven. Most of the people out there worked at the shipyard and there were some teachers and some nurses. And the principal of the school, Claude Anderson, he lived out there and he was a seventh grade teacher as well. And he did teach me. He recently died. My first job was 11 years old. I babysat his daughter. | 2:15 |
| Blair Murphy | Was there a business area at— | 3:44 |
| Olivia James Cherry | No, just that grocery store for a long time. And after that, I mean— | 3:46 |
| Blair Murphy | Was it Black owned or why not? | 3:52 |
| Olivia James Cherry | It was owned by Aberdeen. Oh, it's a co-op. So that means we all own it. Excuse me, you're helping me remember things. Yeah, we all owned it, had shares in it and years later a little tavern was built across from the school. That wasn't appropriate place, that's what it was. Oh, they had young ladies out there from the YWCA, they lived on Lewis Avenue and they had a supervisor over them. And the idea was for them to spread out in the community and help the people like sick people, childcare. And they, in the meantime, in those homes there they were learning home economics, gardening and all of that. | 3:55 |
| Olivia James Cherry | It was a training period for them. And then they would leave. They would graduate and some more would come. Yeah, that was the program that they had. The Aberdeen Association in which the manager of Aberdeen Gardens was president. They had a society where they wanted us to first of all keep the homes up so they had special time when they come around and visit your home for how you have done the things you have done home economics wise. | 4:47 |
| Olivia James Cherry | My mother won many ribbons for making bedspreads and curtains to match. My father would bring home the feed bags, big bags that chicken feed came in. My mother would bleach them and you put four together and that's large enough for a spread. And she bought some blue, pink, all different colors of cotton material and to make strips to hide those seams where she put those four together and make curtains to match with that same trimming. | 5:23 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And she wasn't plenty ribbons, blue ribbons. We had a fair every year, it was in the summer, probably it was August. People would bring their canned goods, things that they grew out in their garden where they had this half an acre of land, a quarter acre of land, excuse me. Half acre, half acre. And mother won prizes for that. We had church in that community center. We had that fair every year. We played basketball there. We had little family get togethers, picnics, what have you, there. | 5:58 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And they had different promotions where the one who sell the most tickets for whatever fair, they would win something. I won skates. I wanted skates badly. My mother and father couldn't afford them. So I said I'm not worried because I know I'm going to win these skates. And do you know today I'm still able to sell things. I usually sell the most of anything. And so I won. The man came and brought me my skates and I skated in the house. I said, "Whoa, my mother going to kill me." But she didn't know I skated in the house. I just had to try them out. And we used to skate up and down the highway, which was very few cars. Wasn't that many. Those are the activities we had out there at Sunday school and church. It was a large, it wasn't community center, it was a big gym of the school. So we used it for everything. I think that's about it. | 6:34 |
| Blair Murphy | Was your mother's family always from this area? | 7:28 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Yes. My mother and father were born in Hampton. My mother's mother was born, it was called York County. So that's near Williamsburg. My father's mother was born right there. My grandmother's mother was Cherokee Indian. I have two great. I had two great Cherokee Indian grandmothers on both sides. One on each side. My grandmother's father was White. My grandmother looked like a little White lady. My mother and my father, they met and living in this small town and all the families didn't know each other but they were good families. What you, what other questions? Because I can't think of anything else. | 7:31 |
| Blair Murphy | Was there a doctor in the area? | 8:32 |
| Olivia James Cherry | No, we had to go to Newport News or Hampton and we went to Hampton. When I say it was Hampton where we lived, but we had to go into town and this doctor we had been seeing all the time, Dr. Bassett. So that's where we went for the doctor. And I don't know what the adults did, but we had dentists in school. The dentists came every year 25 cents to check and clean our teeth every year. We had to go to the hospital in Hampton. Oh, and the hospitals were segregated for years until after the sixties. They had one section, same thing like they had here in Norfolk, one section for Black. And you could only have a Black doctor and they waited on you last. I'm sure people died as a results of this or got worse or what have you. | 8:34 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So things, they were good but they could have been much better. We were second class citizens and I mean that's the way they classified us and that's the way they treated us. But we still had a very happy life and made the best of the situation. My mother worked with PTA for many years and she tried very hard to get the schools integrated to get better materials for us. We had secondhand books. They were taken from the White schools and rebound and smelled awful. And pages were missing. That's what we had. And my mother with the PTA and some of the others fought for years to get better supplies for us. And their schools were supposed to be separate but equal and they were not equal, not at all. But there was advantage because we learned so much about our people from our Black teachers. Whereas our children today are not learning those things from school, from the teachers. | 9:31 |
| Blair Murphy | How was it taught? Was it— | 10:43 |
| Olivia James Cherry | It wasn't necessarily, it didn't seem to be in the curriculum. Included in the curriculum. It didn't seem to be. They would bring books and things and teach us. And my mother had some books, had one book said "A Hundred Facts About Colored People." But that wasn't, I don't believe it was in the curriculum. It didn't seem to be that way. But they just taught us a lot. And of course we had prayer and all that in church and school and we could do all of these things and we had different historical programs. For instance, Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth and Booker T Washington. We knew so many, we learned so many things by the Tuskegee Institute in Hampton, the Institute was at that time, from our teachers as well as at home. We gave programs at school like that. | 10:47 |
| Olivia James Cherry | We had a lot of interaction. It's true that we were segregated and we had used supplies and all of that, but we did well with what we had and we were not in trouble. You didn't even hear of anyone stealing, breaking your house or you didn't lock your door. You didn't lock your door there. The only stealing went on was somebody might go in your garden and pull something up or they might take a chicken here or there because we were hungry. Somebody was hungry. | 11:40 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So as far as what they doing today, because we didn't have drugs, so we know the main thing today is drugs and American people, the authorities, they let them in because, let the drugs in because it's killing our Black men. They glad, they're glad for that. Ku Klux Klan already said, "Thank you for killing your people." They're glad that we are killing ourselves. | 12:10 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So people were more concerned about one another. As I say, we were segregated but we banned together and we did so many things. For instance, the beach, they had Black side and White side and I always thought it was so foolish because the water is coming from the same place. | 12:35 |
| Blair Murphy | You mean like demarcate a line? | 12:53 |
| Olivia James Cherry | It was like a pier that went all the way, went out quite a ways in the water. | 12:57 |
| Blair Murphy | So on one side it was Black. | 13:05 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Bayshore and Buckroe, so you know didn't go over there, you stay on your side. And in 1934 I think it was, there was a terrible flood. It was 34, 36, a big flood we had in Hampton and it destroyed both beaches, the rides and hotel and everything and the Whites of course that's had nothing to do with, excuse me, with us so to speak because they had the money and they built their side up but our people didn't. | 13:05 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And eventually they put a little dinky hotel whereas we know several Black men that had the money and could have built a better hotel. You see a lot of our people know that they have through the years they've had second best and they make themselves satisfied. I don't want to be extravagant, but I want the best and the best that I can afford and not what I think I can afford. But I believe that I can afford it and therefore I'm going to go. For instance, just before I retired I bought this car new. I said this will probably be my last car and I'm going to retire in a year so I should start paying in a car. So I went and bought me a brand new car. Even the dealer tried to encourage me to get not a Honda or Accord but get like a Honda Civic which costs much, much less money. | 13:41 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And I put down $3,500 on it and he said, why don't you get so and so? I said no. He said That's okay. I said, and I'm not playing a game with you. I will save more money and I'm going to get what I want. I said, I'm not saying that so you can call me back or what have you. And they said, no, sit down, sit down. And so showing up, they finally gave me the call. Thank God I got five more payments to make and I've been able to make everyone and I thank Him for it. I thank Him all the time. I will call. So the White man still has his foot on our throat if we allow it. Now today we can go anywhere we want to go. We can do anything we want to do because even though our salaries sometimes they're different, a lot of times they're different. | 14:33 |
| Olivia James Cherry | We got the money, we got the buying power and we can do these things. We can do everything they can do and that's the threat to them. And that's what they were always afraid of. And they didn't want us way back during slavery. They didn't want the Black children to read, to learn to read. But some of their masters taught them and then they taught each other and they started out first in the Bible. They know that knowledge is power. So they tried to keep us down, but it was White people that built the schools for Black people. For instance, one of the Rockefellers, rich Rockefeller I think it was, I think he's one that was, oh I don't know if it's still around, this particular one, in Arkansas, somewhere down that way. That built the first school for Black children so that they could have the same opportunity. | 15:20 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So then they find out, see people are brainwashed and then people don't want to believe. They're brainwashed thinking that they are better. White people think they are better than we are. They have them better, a higher mentality than we. And then they don't want to accept it because they're selfish. People are selfish and they want to have everything for themselves. So they know if to give us a half a chance, we are going to excel. We are not low man on the totem pole. Our children are not, they're not in a stage where they can't learn the things that they put in the paper about us. | 16:09 |
| Olivia James Cherry | There's nothing wrong with our children. I have a grand old grandbaby, one year old and her maternal grandmother got in the car and she looked around for her maternal grandfather. She said—they called him papa—she said "Papa?" One year old, just turn one year old. And I was there and heard it myself and tell her different names and things to say. She says, and one year old—they're not dumb! Children, Black folks are not dumb. And we know that to get ahead, we have got to excel. We just can't even be average. We be average, we be left in the dust. We still have got to fight. | 16:40 |
| Olivia James Cherry | But our more than our main problems is among ourselves. We don't help each other, don't do the things we should do. We are against each other. We're just like crabs in a barrel and have been saying that ever since I came into the world, since I could hear it, that crabs, you put crabs in there and they're climbing out and one is pulling the other one down. And that's just what our people do and they're jealous. People say to me, "Oh you got a fine new car."They say, "Well I wish I had." I said, "I'll give you the book." I'm paying for it just like you'd have to pay for it. It's no big deal. I got to pay for it. You can go get a car, you know? So don't be envious of me. | 17:17 |
| Olivia James Cherry | I'm struggling, we are struggling but we are getting there and we're doing the things we want to do. Be happy for each other, help each other, hold each other up. But something I be want to do it and I just don't understand. Anyway, we are our worst enemy. The White man's not our worst enemy. We are our worst enemy because if we were band together better than what we do, we could really get ahead and they tell us, buy Black owned. Blacks don't have anything for you to buy, very little. If they had something, they had decent things and then had those high end prices, we could do more. | 17:51 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And then we try to get them to do work for us and they'd give you a halfway job. You got to go get the White man to do construction. Do work on your house. I'm not saying all of them, but a lot of them, they'll just do enough to get by. So it's a lot that we have to do to help ourselves. The White man has instilled a lot of these things in us and we are still carrying it on. Some of us carrying it on and thinking that we are better than anybody. You are not any better than any all of us. The same God made all of us and we could move ahead if we worked together and stop putting everything on the White men. Because we are doing a lot of it to ourselves. | 18:23 |
| Olivia James Cherry | My grandmother used to, when I was a little girl, my grandmother would pay, would vote. My grandmother, take me with her downtown. She said, okay. Years ago they had what it called poll taxes. You had to pay, you know that? Knew that. And they did that to discourage us from voting. So my grandmother would, I went with her a lot of times walking places, walked all over town. My grandfather died just before I was three years old so she never remarried. And we go downtown and she said, "I'm going to, come on baby, I'm going to vote." She said, "You come on and go with me and see what we do." Said it's not going to help me. She always talked about dying ever since her husband died, that's when people did years back then. But she lived to be 76. Well she died in 1946, 2 days before I was 20 years old. | 19:06 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And that was a very sad day for me and sad time. Anyway, we went in town and she paid her poll taxes and vote and come on back home. She instilled that in me. She did it. She didn't raise me. We all lived at that house for a time. But my grandmother's house, it was just my grandmother there. My mother raised me but she taught me things and told me things. But my mother had two teenage girls, all the night, sisters would come in the summer and my older brother and me because young one wasn't born yet, to help us out. So we wouldn't, grandmother wouldn't have to take care of us, come and give us our cereal or supervise our playing or what have you. And they're still living today. And my brother would say, he's two years older than me, anyway, my grandmother instilled that in me and I have always voted. | 19:59 |
| Olivia James Cherry | I was going to the hospital for surgery and my doctor said, "You can come in Tuesday afternoon, go to the polls first." And I said, "Yes." This is a Jewish doctor in New York. I did and another time I'd had a miscarriage and I was coming home. I was so glad I was able to come out, on Tuesday was election day and we had to get a cab, my husband and I. And we went to the school to vote. This was in Brooklyn to vote and came home and I got into bed, rested myself. So I always voted and I tried to tell other people, instill it in others and children and all of that because it's what my grandmother did and now it's free. All you have to do is register and vote. And whereas she had to pay the poll taxes and some parts further south, you had to go through different tests and things and those people couldn't even read. So I had to go interpret, had to interpret a Constitution. | 20:46 |
| Olivia James Cherry | How could you interpret it when you're not even there for when you're with it, you know. Because you can't read, your mentality, not that you are stupid, you know, you just don't have enough. What do I want to say? You're not that perceptive, alert or what have you, because you can't read to put that together. Although a lot of them had a whole lot of real good common sense. But still that's something, the Constitution to interpret it that would be hard to do. So a lot of people did not vote and they stood in line for hours to vote. But it wasn't that bad in Virginia, even though they had a lot of lynchings years ago. Virginia wasn't quite that bad, but they had still had to pay the poll taxes before they get to vote. And I forgot what year, I'm sorry, I forgot what year that was done away with, but thank God it was. And you can go and vote now. And I make sure I vote and I ask my friends and all they vote and they do. People do for the most part. | 21:36 |
| Blair Murphy | Was your grandmother voting unusual for the time? Did a lot of people vote? | 22:34 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Yeah, yeah. | 22:38 |
| Blair Murphy | Because people didn't, couldn't afford the poll tax? | 22:40 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Couldn't afford it, didn't see a sense of it, wouldn't go. But my grandmother was a teacher. She was a very educated woman and came from aristocratic family. So it was in her to do these things. My grandmother got married to my grandfather, 1901, and we still have the invitation. My aunt has it. When redevelopment took their homestead where my grandmother lived, and my mother and my aunt, the two sisters, went through everything. We found an invitation and my grandmother got married six o'clock in the evening, whatever. My aunt has it on the wall right at the door. I had it laminated for her. And that was really something. People didn't get married like that. | 22:42 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And she didn't get married until she was about 26 because she was waiting for the right person for her. And the person that could take care of her, put her in a nice home, put her in a brand new home, put her in a nice home, take care of her. And you didn't work then, she had worked prior to that. You're a homemaker then. And she kept a nice home and did all this laundry and even, and when he passed, she always sewed. And when he passed, she did sewing for her livelihood and laundry for one of our cousins, as well as some White people. And the beautiful white shirts and all, and the sewing she did, she was a good homemaker. And so was my mother and my aunt. My aunt was a nurse's aide, always wanted to be a nurse. But in those days her father, my grandfather, nurses had a bad name and he read bad reputation and he did not want her, he had money for her to go to school. | 23:28 |
| Olivia James Cherry | They were rather loose. Nurses were, I don't know why, waiting on the patients. As a matter of fact my aunt said waiting on different ones, the men had tried to get fresh and tell them to wash their penis and all that stuff. When you are not supposed to wash anyone's private in the hospital, they're supposed to wash it themselves or their family. So things like that. And the nurses were going with the patients so they could get more money. And people were very old-fashioned then. And her father wouldn't let her go to nursing school. But she did do nurses aid later and domestic work too. She had a nice livelihood. | 24:28 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Oh, her father, the Lively's, L-I-V-E-L-Y is their name, my mother's maiden name. There were several brothers. Their father had several brothers and they were all merchants. They said they would not work for the White man. They worked for themselves, grocery store, dry good store, feed store. They had all these different things in Hampton, as I say, they were aristocratic family. There were many ministers in that family. There were generations of them. And they came from, as I say, from York County and Middlesex County. And we have a cousin, his name is Alfonso Lively. He will be 100 years old in October. And he's very alert, very well. My aunt goes to see him at the nursing home every week. And just recently his two daughters decided he needs to go in a nursing home because they're not well. | 25:16 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And both of them had sickly husbands and he could not prepare his meals. He was forgetful. I mean they prepared the meals. He couldn't remember to put them in the microwave and he couldn't remember sometimes when he eaten and he was in the house there alone and went there one day and it was hot and he had the oven on and a lady would come in and clean up, but that was not every day. So he was in a high rise, senior citizen building. So it wasn't anyone to see him daily, see that he was all right. So for his own safety and care, they told him they would put him there. And so he accepted it very willingly. And prior to it he gave, he has three daughters, and he gave—Four daughters, two in Virginia, one in Washington and one in Indiana. And he gave all four of them their inheritance before he went into the nursing home because they'll take everything you have. | 26:18 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And he wanted to be sure they got something and they're all college graduates. And he told in the beginning, I'm going to send you to school and I want you to help me send the next one. All four college graduates have done very well by themselves, taking care of themselves and all. And now they taking care of him. | 27:12 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So he's done well. He did work in the shipyard, but I'm talking about the older generation. They did not work for any White men. They worked for themselves and they did very well. But see that depression came along and that upset so many people, it affected them. And that was in the thirties, I think it started in 29. And a lot of people have lost what they had and had to do differently. But they had high standards for themselves. | 27:32 |
| Olivia James Cherry | I'd say with my stepfather, my second stepfather, Daniel Bowman was his name. And he came from Franklin, Virginia. And he came to Hampton and he was looking for a job, so he went to the post office. And at that time Blacks were only work doing janitorial work. And he got a job like that. And this supervisor was a White lady that took a liking to him. He was well loved. He had such nice manners and a nice even temper even way about him. | 28:07 |
| Olivia James Cherry | So she took a liking to him and she encouraged him to do this, to do that. And he was the chief boilermaker, that meant he was in charge of the furnace. Big, a tremendous furnace, which they don't have today down there in the post office. You needed skills and the education for that. He only went to the third grade, but he listened and his English was superb and his mannerism and all. And my younger brother said, "But Pop, you were like Uncle Tom." He said, "No." He said, "I was just nice to her. And I listened to her and that's how I got ahead." | 28:45 |
| Olivia James Cherry | And he was retired for over 25 years before he passed. Because he was 91 and a half and he was still in his right mind. And he was preparing his breakfast and his lunch prior two weeks. Two weeks before that, when he began, he was losing a lot of weight and getting weak and he had diabetes. We thought he wasn't eating enough food? He had leukemia. They discovered that two weeks, within two weeks he was dead. He was too old to do bone marrow, what have you. And he knew he was dying and he was digging in his church and very much into the Lord and into life. And he was real good to my mother, both of my stepfathers were, and to us, beautiful people. | 29:23 |
| Olivia James Cherry | Let me see, what else can I tell you? I guess that's about it. | 30:05 |
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