Wilhelmenia "Menia" Adams (primary interviewee), Vialet Robinson, and Jean Thompson interview recording, 1993 June 08

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Chris Stewart	Miss Adams, can I ask you to give me your full name, so we can get a reading on the tape—	0:01
Wilhelmenia Adams	Wilhelmina Roper Adams. 1819 Baxter Street, Charlotte, North Carolina.	0:06
Chris Stewart	Could you do the same for me, Mrs. Robinson?	0:14
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	0:16
Chris Stewart	Could you just state your name?	0:17
Vialet Robinson	Vialet W. Robinson.	0:20
Vialet Robinson	[INTERRUPTION 00:00:22]	0:22
Chris Stewart	I'd like to start by asking all of you if you've always lived here in Charlotte, and here in Cherry. Were you born here?	0:27
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm. I was born right down there on Baxter Street.	0:37
Chris Stewart	Right on Baxter Street. You were—	0:39
Wilhelmenia Adams	That's where I was born there. I was born in that house.	0:40
Chris Stewart	You were?	0:43
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yes, I was. My mama and daddy was married in that house.	0:44
Chris Stewart	Really?	0:46
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yes. My mother, she built that house—She had it built when she was just a teenager.	0:47
Chris Stewart	Really?	0:52
Wilhelmenia Adams	She said she always wanted one, and people back then wasn't really in for education like they are now. You know, she was about 12 years old, she was married twice. And she was about 12 when she got married the first time. Working [indistinct 00:01:08] people didn't really work.	0:53
Chris Stewart	Uh-huh. Were you born in your house—	1:10
Vialet Robinson	I was born [indistinct 00:01:14] 510 Cherry Street.	1:14
Chris Stewart	In the house?	1:15
Vialet Robinson	In that house. In the front bedroom. I had a brother, he's dead now but he was born in the back bedroom.	1:16
Chris Stewart	Really? Really?	1:22
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	1:24
Chris Stewart	When, if you don't mind my asking this very indelicate question, what year were you born?	1:24
Vialet Robinson	I was born in '26.	1:31
Wilhelmenia Adams	I was born '28.	1:33
Jean Thompson	I was born 1927.	1:33
Chris Stewart	Well, we've got '26, '27, and '28. (laughs) Were you born here in Cherry as well?	1:35
Jean Thompson	621 Baldwin Avenue. It wasn't Baldwin then, it was Morgan Street.	1:41
Chris Stewart	It was Morgan Street. So, none of you all were born over at the Good Samaritan? You were all born in your houses.	1:44
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:01:51]. I had a doctor. [indistinct 00:01:57]. Dr. Pathel was my doctor.	1:56
Chris Stewart	What was the name of the doctor?	1:59
Jean Thompson	P-A-T-H-E-L.	2:05
Wilhelmenia Adams	Pathel.	2:05
Chris Stewart	P-A-T-H-E-L. I'm trying to think. There was a Dr. Pettis as well. We heard about a Dr. Pettis, but he was in the third ward area.	2:05
Vialet Robinson	This doctor [indistinct 00:02:18] come out of first ward.	2:17
Jean Thompson	He came out of the first ward but he was all over doctoring. Somebody might have had his name wrong.	2:19
Wilhelmenia Adams	Somebody had his name wrong. [indistinct 00:02:26].	2:24
Chris Stewart	Really? Really? Really?	2:27
Vialet Robinson	I just don't know but I believe—I just can't say but I think my grandma was my midwife.	2:27
Chris Stewart	Really?	2:34
Vialet Robinson	Later on, once I got up in some size, we had Dr. Craig.	2:35
Chris Stewart	Craig?	2:40
Vialet Robinson	Family doctor. And he would always get lost in his car coming here. [indistinct 00:02:48].	2:41
Chris Stewart	Did your mom and dad grow up here as well or did they come here from—	2:50
Jean Thompson	My mother came from, what you call, the grove. She was [indistinct 00:02:58] from the county, and my daddy was from Menhill, [indistinct 00:03:01].	2:53
Chris Stewart	Menhill?	2:58
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm, and my mother from the grove.	3:00
Chris Stewart	What about your parents?	3:04
Wilhelmenia Adams	Well, my mother died when I was baby but my mama was born in Georgia.	3:05
Chris Stewart	She was?	3:09
Wilhelmenia Adams	But my grandfather brought them out of there when she was a year old.	3:10
Chris Stewart	Who raised you after your mother—	3:14
Wilhelmenia Adams	My grandfather. My grandmother. John A. Bell, they owned all of that land right across the street there.	3:15
Chris Stewart	Really?	3:21
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm. My granddaddy worked on the turpentine farm in Savannah.	3:22
Chris Stewart	He worked on what?	3:27
Wilhelmenia Adams	Turpentine farm.	3:28
Chris Stewart	Oh, turpentine farm.	3:29
Wilhelmenia Adams	So he came to Charlotte and they built a house, right up there on Queens Road and Lutheran Street. Right across the street from the little theater, [indistinct 00:03:42] baptist church [indistinct 00:03:45]. When Cherry was 20 years older than Meyers Park. [indistinct 00:03:50] was saying Cherry was for the slaves. We was here 20 years before Meyers Park.	3:31
Chris Stewart	What do you mean that lots of people say Cherry was for the slaves?	3:56
Wilhelmenia Adams	See, Black folks lived in this community.	3:59
Chris Stewart	During slavery times?	4:02
Wilhelmenia Adams	No, no. See, that was for all—The people that worked, see Meyers Park, it's a white community back here. And Black folks worked in the kitchen, and they was trying to say they was here before we, but we was here before they. We was here 20 years—	4:03
Chris Stewart	Did your grandfather—He built his house, so he owned his house.	4:21
Wilhelmenia Adams	My grandfather owned three houses and two lots, right here on Baxter.	4:25
Chris Stewart	And your?	4:29
Vialet Robinson	My mother, as I told you, she bought this house. Built it. Really built it. You know what I mean. She was a professional cook. She could cook. [indistinct 00:04:44]. I wish for her biscuits many day. But I had an aunt, my grandmother had a home, it's still there, on Lutheran Street down there. I had an aunt, [indistinct 00:04:59] the friends house from Queens Road up there, coming out back. Now, I remember saying the Meyers, the one that owned this—That might be where they got the slavery from, I don't know, but the Meyers [indistinct 00:05:16] the Meyers Park name come from the Meyers. I remember Mr. James Meyer, Mr. Richard Meyer, Mr. Ronald Meyers, the ones—And I don't know who their father was but anyway, that's who this land come from. And they sold to the Black people here.	4:30
Vialet Robinson	And I don't know whether it would be convenient for them to live here to be nearer the most of them that worked in Meyers Park, to be near there. But anyway, the Meyers wanted the Black people to have this community. That's why we got it, and that's why people wanted it so bad. I can just visualize something, but I know the Meyers, I never remembered them real well. They always wanted it just to be for the Black people.	5:33
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. Miss Adams, what about your parents? Where did your parents come from?	6:04
Wilhelmenia Adams	My parents, [indistinct 00:06:12] my daddy was in Charleston and my mother's from Chester, South Carolina.	6:11
Chris Stewart	Chester.	6:15
Wilhelmenia Adams	But her parents moved her here when she was four years old.	6:17
Chris Stewart	When she was four?	6:18
Wilhelmenia Adams	Four years old.	6:19
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	6:20
Wilhelmenia Adams	They moved from Chester here. And they farmed out off of Selwin Avenue. It was called the Wakefield Farm.	6:21
Chris Stewart	Off of what avenue?	6:27
Wilhelmenia Adams	Selwin.	6:27
Chris Stewart	Selwin?	6:27
Wilhelmenia Adams	Selwin. That's [indistinct 00:06:32].	6:28
Chris Stewart	Right, right.	6:32
Wilhelmenia Adams	It was a farm out that way then, and they worked on that. It was called the Wakefield Farm.	6:33
Chris Stewart	Wakefield Farm. How many families were out there working on that farm?	6:38
Wilhelmenia Adams	I have no idea, honey. I don't know. But [indistinct 00:06:44].	6:41
Chris Stewart	When did they move into town then?	6:44
Wilhelmenia Adams	I don't remember that. I don't remember them telling me that. But when they moved into town, they bought a house down on Waco Street, at that time. And it was Wallace Street then. My grandfather was a minister, and farmed. He farmed [indistinct 00:07:06] and a minister. [indistinct 00:07:08] minister. And my grandmother taught school here. At Morgan School, she was the first PTA president, but they let her come up there and teach because she was trained through her father was a white physician.	6:46
Chris Stewart	He was? Her father what?	7:24
Wilhelmenia Adams	Was a white physician, a doctor.	7:27
Chris Stewart	Yeah?	7:29
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah.	7:30
Chris Stewart	Your mother was a teacher you said.	7:34
Wilhelmenia Adams	My grandmother. My grandmother was a teacher here. She would teach children.	7:37
Chris Stewart	So your grandmother's father was a white physician?	7:41
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yes. Yes. My grandmother.	7:44
Chris Stewart	Was your grandmother's mother married to your grandmother's father?	7:51
Wilhelmenia Adams	No. No. She was a cook in the kitchen, and he fathered my grandmother and two other children by her.	7:54
Chris Stewart	Uh-huh. What did your grandfather do for a living when he came here?	8:00
Wilhelmenia Adams	Well, my grandfather, when he came to Charlotte, he had money. He brought it from down there, but in the later years when President Roosevelt got the WPA, he started working there. But see, he had these houses over here. He got rent from those houses, and then my father, he built the house on Baldwin Avenue for my father and my uncle. And them two houses still standing.	8:06
Chris Stewart	Did most people in this area own their own houses?	8:29
Wilhelmenia Adams	Well, I had a couple uncles, the Russels here in Cherry. My uncle Lewis lived four houses down there across the street from the school, and those houses still stand. People live in them. All my side of people, they was carpenters and all that, on my daddy's side. They built houses, and they still building houses.	8:31
Chris Stewart	Uh-huh. What about your parents, what did your parents do?	8:51
Jean Thompson	As I said, my mother was a professional cook. She worked in the mountains in the summertime. She worked with people in the mountains, then sometimes the beaches, and that's just what she did. My father, he worked at the South Atlantic Manufacturing Company for 38 years. I don't know he ever had but one job. And my mama, when we came along, my sister and I, I have one sister, [indistinct 00:09:23] Lucille Wallace, and when we came along, my mother stayed at home most of the time with us.	8:55
Chris Stewart	So, before she had her babies, that's when she was traveling and doing [indistinct 00:09:32].	9:28
Jean Thompson	Yeah. That's when she built the house and all of this, and she married my daddy. They met out at South Atlantic Manufacturing Company, and they got married right down there in that house. My mother didn't work when we was coming up. She did maybe for one of those people that she had known, friends of hers that she worked for—	9:31
Chris Stewart	I see.	9:53
Jean Thompson	—might would want her maybe a day or something like that, she would—Being so close to them, they took care of her. She was just a good cook. She just cooked. She just knew how.	9:54
Wilhelmenia Adams	My grandmother, she did washing clothes and things for the people of Meyers Park, the [indistinct 00:10:15] and all the people up on what we call Sugar Hill.	10:10
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. So, did the people basically down in the Cherry area, did a lot of people in the Cherry area work for the white people up—	10:18
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yes.	10:27
Vialet Robinson	Yes.	10:27
Jean Thompson	Yes. And they chauffered. My daddy was a chauffer and a waiter, and he waited at Hotel Charlotte. He was a private chauffer. And my mother was one of the most prominent cooks in this area.	10:30
Chris Stewart	Really?	10:42
Jean Thompson	Yes. She worked with [indistinct 00:10:47] people, she worked for Lewis Rose and a long time for JB Eprits.	10:44
Chris Stewart	With JB who?	10:50
Jean Thompson	Eprit. [indistinct 00:10:53].	10:51
Wilhelmenia Adams	Eprit department store [indistinct 00:10:55].	10:53
Jean Thompson	She worked there for a long time. And up until she got sick and died, she worked for [indistinct 00:11:04].	10:55
Chris Stewart	Okay. You mentioned, Miss Thompson, it sounded like there's some tension between Meyers Park people and Cherry people about who was here first-	11:08
Wilhelmenia Adams	That's over with now. They [indistinct 00:11:19] all about it. We was here first.	11:17
Chris Stewart	When you were growing up, and when you were first settled here, was there tension between [indistinct 00:11:29].	11:22
Vialet Robinson	Those are our best friends up there.	11:33
Chris Stewart	Really? How come?	11:34
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:11:38]. Now, Wilhelmina and I, we was right together. Been together all our lives. I lived across the street, she was here. And then I was across the street right there, but we played together with Dr. King, DP [indistinct 00:11:50] company over there, his three daughters. We could be on our porch and hear their mother call time to come home. See, in our community, we had white folks living up on [indistinct 00:12:00] Amherst, Baldwin Avenue. This has always been an integrated neighborhood.	11:37
Wilhelmenia Adams	On this end.	12:05
Chris Stewart	Now, when you say integrated, do you mean that Black folks would live right next to white folks?	12:07
Vialet Robinson	The white folks might live on this end and they live on this side—	12:11
Jean Thompson	They lived on Carns Street from—	12:14
Vialet Robinson	Lutheran Street down.	12:19
Jean Thompson	From Lutheran Street back across 4th Street and on that way, white. It was really—I know what she means when she say integrated. And I always wondered why the white children right down in here with us, coming all the way down Protestant, Luther, Baldwin Avenue would come down. And I wondered why they didn't go to [indistinct 00:12:41] School but integration. I guess it was so now, they would. [indistinct 00:12:47].	12:20
Chris Stewart	So you said you played with—	12:46
Vialet Robinson	Yeah. We played with them girls. They come over there now, honey they going to be—	12:47
Jean Thompson	They looked for us.	12:54
Vialet Robinson	They looked for us.	12:55
Jean Thompson	That's right.	12:55
Chris Stewart	So, did you play with them during your entire childhood, even into high school and stuff?	12:55
Jean Thompson	Yeah, when we could get together. Most of them went off to school.	13:03
Vialet Robinson	They went off to school.	13:07
Jean Thompson	They would go off to school and we'd stay home because we couldn't go off to school.	13:07
Chris Stewart	Go off to college?	13:12
Jean Thompson	Yeah. Well, training school, junior college, come up with the high school then, but most of them would send them off. It was like a training, boarding school. Then when they're old enough, they go onto college.	13:13
Chris Stewart	Okay. Here's a question. I'm not from Charlotte, right? So, can you define for me the Cherry neighborhood, geographically, like boundaries? What streets bounded Cherry?	13:27
Wilhelmenia Adams	Well back then, [indistinct 00:13:43] out in the square, the shopping center?	13:39
Vialet Robinson	Midtown.	13:46
Wilhelmenia Adams	It was midtown or whatever they call it. I still say Charlotte town, but anyway, the street stopped at Cecil Street—	13:47
Chris Stewart	Cecil?	13:54
Wilhelmenia Adams	Cecil, uh-huh. Because all the rest of them was to—	13:55
Vialet Robinson	Pastor.	13:58
Wilhelmenia Adams	Pastor. Offenhome Pastor. Thomas Offenhome Pastor, see—	13:59
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:14:06] exactly where we are. Where the Hardy's and all that little shopping center right there, you go down the hill from here—	14:05
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, we used to cross the creek—	14:13
Jean Thompson	That shopping center down there, where the shopping center is.	14:15
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	14:16
Jean Thompson	Okay, well right across the street—	14:17
Chris Stewart	Is that on Cecil Street?	14:19
Jean Thompson	Yeah.	14:20
Vialet Robinson	It would've been.	14:20
Jean Thompson	What part of Cecil Street [indistinct 00:14:23]. It's still Cecil Street.	14:21
Wilhelmenia Adams	Kings Drive [indistinct 00:14:31]. Okay. Kings Drive was cut through there. That wasn't there. That was Pastor. [indistinct 00:14:35].	14:29
Jean Thompson	That's what I'm saying.	14:34
Wilhelmenia Adams	Cecil Street is still there. [indistinct 00:14:41].	14:38
Jean Thompson	Part of Cecil Street is still there.	14:39
Chris Stewart	So, Cecil Street though was one of the boundaries?	14:41
Jean Thompson	Yeah.	14:44
Chris Stewart	Okay. What was another boundary?	14:45
Wilhelmenia Adams	Queens Road.	14:50
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, Queens Road up here.	14:51
Chris Stewart	Queens Road.	14:51
Vialet Robinson	4th Street and Morehead.	14:51
Jean Thompson	Morehead.	14:51
Chris Stewart	This was the Cherry neighborhood?	14:55
Jean Thompson	Cherry neighborhood.	14:55
Chris Stewart	Was it all Black folks that lived in the Cherry neighborhood?	14:58
Wilhelmenia Adams	No. No.	15:01
Jean Thompson	Not only the whites that came down-	15:01
Chris Stewart	On that one side.	15:03
Jean Thompson	Yeah.	15:05
Wilhelmenia Adams	On Baldwin [indistinct 00:15:08].	15:05
Chris Stewart	Okay. But this is how you defined Cherry [indistinct 00:15:12].	15:07
Wilhelmenia Adams	Down Brooklyn was a creek.	15:14
Jean Thompson	It came down through there. The creek is still there but it's covered up.	15:18
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. Now, when you were growing up, and I guess we're talking mainly about the 30s, right? So we're—	15:20
Jean Thompson	I was born in '26.	15:30
Chris Stewart	You were born in '26, but when you can remember is basically starting in the 30s, right?	15:32
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	15:38
Chris Stewart	Who were the people you looked up to in your neighborhood as a child?	15:42
Jean Thompson	My mama and daddy. Sorry, but—	15:46
Chris Stewart	No.	15:49
Jean Thompson	I was around them. [indistinct 00:15:50].	15:49
Vialet Robinson	Now, it's different from us, Wilhelmina and I. They stayed down there in their yards, most of them. See, we didn't. [indistinct 00:16:01]. Not like us. We didn't. We would go to Miss Robert's house, Miss Roper, some other people around here. We would go to other-	15:50
Chris Stewart	You said Miss Robert's house?	16:09
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, Miss Lucy Robert, right next—1870 [indistinct 00:16:13].	16:10
Chris Stewart	Lucy Roberts?	16:15
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm. Hey, come on in.	16:16
Vialet Robinson	Lucy Roberts—	16:17
Chris Stewart	And who—	16:17
Vialet Robinson	Eileen Roper, her mother [indistinct 00:16:20] and go down to her grandmother's house—	16:19
Chris Stewart	Now, why—	16:21
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:16:26]. I mean, Joy, my granddaughter [indistinct 00:16:30].	16:27
Chris Stewart	Why would you go over—What was over at Miss Robert's—	16:29
Vialet Robinson	Her daughters. Her daughters were. She had two daughters and a son, and [indistinct 00:16:39]. This was our [indistinct 00:16:42] second home, right here in this house.	16:34
Chris Stewart	And this is where you were raised?	16:42
Vialet Robinson	Yeah. [indistinct 00:16:46].	16:44
Jean Thompson	Nine years old.	16:45
Chris Stewart	I see.	16:47
Vialet Robinson	This was her home. We could come in here and throw a party so quick, tell Miss Roper we're going to have a party.	16:47
Wilhelmenia Adams	This was more like the neighborhood center.	16:53
Vialet Robinson	Neighborhood center.	16:54
Chris Stewart	So, all the children would come and play here.	16:57
Vialet Robinson	Yeah. Now, we had more [indistinct 00:17:03] friends than we had girl friends around here. Like Alexander boys, the Poppy boys, the McGumyas and all them. We had more of them. We were all about the same age. Just like in the mornings, when we was on our way to second ward, we would go up the street. We would call Lucille, we would call this person, come on, let's go. We went in a group and we came back home in a group. But only thing different, when we'd get a ride, stop somebody and let us ride, Mr. BC or Mr. Mongo, the boys would push us away. They would jump in the car. See, we had [indistinct 00:17:36] if it was raining, Sugar Creek. We could go across Sugar Creek. We had to go around Forest Street. We had only two girls in Cherry could walk to [indistinct 00:17:48] Osina and Elsa Sloan.	17:00
Chris Stewart	Only two girls who could what?	17:50
Vialet Robinson	Walk a [indistinct 00:17:53].	17:52
Chris Stewart	What were their names?	17:53
Vialet Robinson	Osina and Elsie Sloan.	17:58
Chris Stewart	Osina and Elsie Sloan?	17:59
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm. So, we had to go all around Forest Street to get to second ward. We didn't have no—	18:01
Chris Stewart	To get to school.	18:05
Vialet Robinson	Yeah. We didn't have no buses running over here carrying us to school. No. We didn't have transportation like the city bus running—	18:08
Jean Thompson	And we didn't stop for the snow either. It's snowing, it's raining—	18:13
Vialet Robinson	We still had to go.	18:17
Jean Thompson	I know we came down from Cherry Street one day, there was a pile of us together and it started raining. It was real dark and hailing and all that. We went in that lady's house, we didn't even knock. We went in [indistinct 00:18:33].	18:19
Vialet Robinson	At the time, back then, everybody knew everybody over here.	18:33
Chris Stewart	Right. How would you say this neighborhood has changed in the past—	18:35
Wilhelmenia Adams	Drastically [indistinct 00:18:41].	18:40
Jean Thompson	No comparison to what it was [indistinct 00:18:47].	18:41
Chris Stewart	Can you tell me what—	18:41
Jean Thompson	New people.	18:49
Wilhelmenia Adams	We got new people over here. We got drugs over here—	18:49
Vialet Robinson	A lot of them have [indistinct 00:18:55].	18:52
Wilhelmenia Adams	And then we got so many people disrespectful. Kids not going to have any manners at all. They say everything. If you go to their parents, parents get mad and the first they say, "I'll call 911." And see, that's the wrong thing, the law on these bad kids. Now, when we was coming up, if I did anything wrong over here, I got a killing there and a killing when I went across that street. Because Mrs. Robert and Mr. Robert would beat me, and my grandmother and grandfather would too. If you say anything to us, and we get [indistinct 00:19:27].	18:55
Vialet Robinson	You better not roll your eyes.	19:27
Jean Thompson	You know, my parents, they didn't care who [indistinct 00:19:35]. You think we didn't have friends because my parents kept us in the yard down there. They didn't allow us running around here and there. We stayed in that yard and we loved it, and I'll tell anybody, I love my mother and father for doing that, keeping me there in that yard. And we had friends, my daddy would build us a tree swing, and that would bring children. We would play. We really did have a good time. I had a good time in Cherry and at home.	19:31
Chris Stewart	You just lived down the street, right?	20:06
Jean Thompson	Yeah, they're building me a house now down there. I got a picture of it. But the house that was there, mother had this house built with this long porch all the way across. I'd go back to that house now, with the long porch—	20:07
Wilhelmenia Adams	We all had long porches because we had them too.	20:20
Jean Thompson	We had a long porch across the front and it went down on one side. On the side porch was my playhouse. I didn't have nothing to worry about. My mama, she didn't have no trouble with us. We didn't give her any trouble. I promised the Lord I wasn't going to be [indistinct 00:20:40]. Because when I got ready for food and stuff, we didn't have to worry about what we were going to eat. She believed in gardening. She had a big garden in the back. I didn't have to worry about running away, or you know what I mean.	20:22
Chris Stewart	Did other people have gardens—	20:52
Vialet Robinson	Honey, we had the biggest garden in Cherry [indistinct 00:20:56].	20:53
Wilhelmenia Adams	I don't know about being the biggest garden in Cherry—	20:55
Vialet Robinson	Yes. We had peach trees, apple [indistinct 00:21:04] all that. My grandfather owned lots from a corner, all the way back to EP [indistinct 00:21:11] all of that.	21:00
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:21:13] all the way to Baxter Street. They used to raise potatoes—	21:12
Vialet Robinson	Another thing we did was—Now, those houses right there was built in '39 going down Baxter. [indistinct 00:21:25] those houses. And one down there—	21:15
Wilhelmenia Adams	Was in 1910.	21:32
Vialet Robinson	And we played down there, Wilhelmina and I, we played down all back there and the kids want to go swimming, they went swimming in the creek back here.	21:33
Jean Thompson	I said that. I played with Wilhelmina also but we had our little secret [indistinct 00:21:48].	21:43
Chris Stewart	You what?	21:48
Jean Thompson	Played when we got out of school. She and who's her face, Sara Stevenson?	21:49
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	21:53
Jean Thompson	We played before we got home, but then my mother and them, they didn't have to worry about us because they knew we was right over here and school right there. But we had a good time when we played there.	21:55
Vialet Robinson	My grandfather had the—Him and Mr. Jim Fair, they're the first two had—	22:03
Chris Stewart	Fair?	22:08
Vialet Robinson	F-A-I-R. Had the first grocery store here in Cherry.	22:08
Wilhelmenia Adams	And he used to run [indistinct 00:22:16].	22:13
Chris Stewart	Where was it? Where was it located?	22:16
Vialet Robinson	My grandfather's store was right here. [indistinct 00:22:20]. Right across, next to our house, because we had an eight room house right there. Porch went all the way around, then we had the garden and my grandfather had these other two houses. [indistinct 00:22:30].	22:17
Chris Stewart	So, what kinds of things did you sell, did your grandfather sell in the store?	22:29
Vialet Robinson	Those big Nehi sodas, and they were five cents—	22:34
Chris Stewart	They were Nehi?	22:37
Vialet Robinson	Cheese and everything. I have a book right now, it done turned yellow, with some of these people still living, owe my grandfather money—	22:39
Chris Stewart	You do?	22:47
Vialet Robinson	Because he was giving them credit for it.	22:47
Chris Stewart	Do you have any of the records that your father kept besides that, that book? Did your grandfather—	22:50
Vialet Robinson	See, my grandfather, I got an antique desk in my house, belonged to my grandfather. And he [indistinct 00:23:03] because he kept money and different things in there. And after my aunt died, I inherited the antique desk. So, happened one night, one Sunday, I was [indistinct 00:23:15] pulling everything out, and I came across a picture of Reverend Nasser. My grandfather was a deacon at Friendship at the time, Friendship Baptist Church, and pulled this picture out. So, I called some of the deacons of the church, and that's the only picture they didn't have. They went up to his college and they were trying to find a picture of the pastor. So, I gave it to Bill Irving. He had one made and they present it to the church, and that was 1904.	22:56
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:23:46].	23:43
Chris Stewart	Do you still have the picture?	23:45
Vialet Robinson	No, I gave it to Bill, and he's dead now. [indistinct 00:23:54] give me my copy, his son and them been looking, looking for the copy, and I want it because my grandfather's handwriting is on it. I bless him out every time I see him. I told him, every time I go, I ask the deacon to get the picture, but I can get a picture from the church but I want my original copy.	23:50
Chris Stewart	Yeah. You want your—	24:08
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, uh-huh.	24:11
Chris Stewart	That's one of the other things that we're doing while we're on our trip. We've got a machine, it's called a copy scan, that can make reproductions of pictures, and we can actually take pictures of pictures. And if you have things that you'd like to accompany this interview once we're done, we could come and take pictures of the pictures, so then they could go with it.	24:11
Jean Thompson	That'd be good.	24:34
Chris Stewart	We can talk about that at the end of the interview though, okay?	24:37
Vialet Robinson	And this Saturday coming, we're having our first Morgan School reunion down here, and we invited all the former principals, teachers, students, and friends to come.	24:41
Chris Stewart	When is that?	24:53
Vialet Robinson	Saturday at 5:00 [indistinct 00:24:59].	24:58
Chris Stewart	This Saturday at 5:00?	24:58
Vialet Robinson	Yeah. 5:00 down here at the Morgan—	25:00
Jean Thompson	Down at the school down here.	25:00
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm. Morgan School.	25:02
Chris Stewart	Morgan School, Saturday at 5:00.	25:03
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:25:06].	25:04
Chris Stewart	We might just be there.	25:06
Vialet Robinson	We'll have lots of [indistinct 00:25:10].	25:10
Jean Thompson	Get a lot of information.	25:10
Chris Stewart	Is there somebody who we could call to talk to about that?	25:10
Vialet Robinson	Well, the child who's in charge of it, she's a very young girl. I'm on it too, but she's very young. She don't know too much about Morgan like we do because we was—	25:14
Chris Stewart	Right. So, you're the people to talk to about it.	25:27
Vialet Robinson	We was born over here and we went to Morgan. She went there about four years, we went seven years.	25:27
Chris Stewart	I'm actually going to be gone this weekend, but maybe we can give you a call, somebody can give you a call about coming down.	25:34
Vialet Robinson	And then maybe you can talk to [indistinct 00:25:41]. There's some more people was born here in Cherry, went to Morgan, older than we are.	25:39
Chris Stewart	Right, right, right.	25:47
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:25:49].	25:47
Chris Stewart	I'd like to talk a little bit more about your families if I could. Who made the decisions in your families? Who made decisions about household expenses, about who you were allowed to date, who you were allowed to hang out with—	25:49
Wilhelmenia Adams	My daddy, about dating.	26:04
Chris Stewart	Yeah. How did your dad decide who you were going to be able to—	26:07
Wilhelmenia Adams	Well, he wasn't real strict on it but he was strict, I have to say. And I couldn't wear stockings until I was 16. I was a heavy girl and I couldn't be wearing socks dating. [indistinct 00:26:25] wearing socks. That drove me crazy, because I wanted to wear stockings. But I could not wear stockings until I was 16. I couldn't go out with boys. They could come and see me, but we had a porch over there then, and I had to sit on the porch or if it was cold, stay in the house. But I couldn't go off and visit. We did get a chance to walk and buy ice cream, and we'd go up there in Spoons, up there on Hawthorne Lane and get ice cream.	26:11
Chris Stewart	On what lane?	26:56
Jean Thompson	Hawthorne Lane.	26:58
Wilhelmenia Adams	Hawthorne.	26:58
Chris Stewart	Hawthorne.	26:58
Wilhelmenia Adams	And Spoons until the [indistinct 00:27:02] Hawthorne. We'd go up there and walk up there and back.	27:02
Chris Stewart	Was your father also mostly responsible for disciplining you, the kids, in your family?	27:05
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah, he would. Tell you truth, we didn't get none because we knew best.	27:13
Chris Stewart	Really?	27:16
Wilhelmenia Adams	But he would [indistinct 00:27:20] he'd make me stay home. He wouldn't let me do things. That was my whooping.	27:17
Vialet Robinson	Now, one thing—	27:23
Chris Stewart	What about with you, Miss Thompson?	27:24
Jean Thompson	Well, my grandfather and grandmother both—My grandmother died at 42. I was just in 8th grade. My grandfather died when I was in 10th grade. My aunt taken over. But see, we was raised, we knew what to do and what not to do, you see? There wasn't nobody but my sister and I then, there was eight of us, but we was the only two home at the time.	27:26
Chris Stewart	So, the rest of your brothers and sisters had already left?	27:48
Jean Thompson	Yes. They was in Washington and New York.	27:51
Chris Stewart	Did they go off to live with other people or had they just grown up and gone off and gotten married—	27:53
Jean Thompson	They've grown up and got married, went off.	27:57
Chris Stewart	What about you, Miss Robinson?	27:58
Vialet Robinson	Well, my daddy—	27:59
Chris Stewart	Your dad?	28:00
Vialet Robinson	—was the provider. He went out and made the money, and believe it or not, he would come straight home and he would give the money to my mama. And then he would take—They would get together and give him the bus fare, whatever expense money he needs, he would get that. But she controlled the money. She bought the food and everything that we needed in the house. She did the discipline. My daddy never whooped me a day in his life, because my mama didn't allow it. She said that he was heavy handed because he was a man. She did the whipping, and I'd just soon have my daddy.	28:03
Vialet Robinson	But my daddy never whooped me, but if I did something, and she said, "I'm going to tell your daddy when he come home," I'd cry. Oh my goodness. My daddy fuss at me? Uh-uh. I didn't allow my daddy to fuss at me. He could just tear you up when he fussed at me.	28:39
Chris Stewart	Really?	28:55
Vialet Robinson	Not [indistinct 00:28:57] hitting on you all the time, you know? He didn't do that. Oh no. She did the controlling who we went to see. We didn't have no problem with that, because as I said, my mama never did allow us running up and down the street. Everything we needed, we always got it at home. [indistinct 00:29:22]. We didn't have no trouble about boys coming because when they would come, she'd allow—My daddy used to take us to footballs games. He'd get a crowd of us girls and take us to the football game. I don't know where he'd go. He wouldn't come in, he'd just take us there and be there when we were getting ready to leave, to see us home. And of course, we was members of the United House of Prayer for all people, that was the—	28:55
Chris Stewart	[indistinct 00:29:55].	29:54
Vialet Robinson	No. It started in a little tent. I wasn't there. This was before my time. I don't think I was. No, I wasn't. A tent on 3rd and Caldwell, okay? It went from the tent to Long Street, the House of Prayer. Talk about good times.	29:56
Chris Stewart	Really?	30:13
Vialet Robinson	Okay. Then that's when they went to [indistinct 00:30:18].	30:16
Chris Stewart	Can I ask you, Miss Thompson, was your grandfather then the person who disciplined you?	30:19
Jean Thompson	No, my grandmother.	30:26
Chris Stewart	Your grandmother?	30:27
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	30:28
Chris Stewart	And how would she—	30:29
Jean Thompson	If we did anything wrong, she would beat us. She would come right across the street in Miss Robert's yard and get a piece of willow and come back and tear us up. Wilhelmina know about that tree.	30:33
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yes, Lord.	30:43
Jean Thompson	And—	30:43
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:30:47].	30:43
Jean Thompson	Uh-huh. See, I didn't get in no trouble. My granddaddy called me baby. I was the baby of the family.	30:51
Chris Stewart	I see.	30:52
Jean Thompson	There wasn't none of us get into trouble. We didn't get in no trouble. We knew how to respect—	30:53
Vialet Robinson	If you got whooped, everybody in Cherry knew.	30:59
Jean Thompson	Knew it.	31:01
Vialet Robinson	It was so rare.	31:01
Jean Thompson	Yeah, rare.	31:03
Chris Stewart	How many people lived in your house?	31:05
Vialet Robinson	Well here, it was just four of us.	31:07
Wilhelmenia Adams	Well, in my house, we had eight rooms over there. Wasn't nobody there but my sister, myself, my grandmother and grandfather, but we had enough room for my cousin down on Baldwin. They lived in a big two story house, my uncle's house, and it's still standing, 721 Baldwin Avenue. They would come down. They would come through the back way. And we could hear them coming. They mother be after them, beating them, they running down to the grand mama's house. And she knew when she get here, she wasn't going to beat them, because my grandmother wasn't going to let Estelle beat those kids. Because she didn't beat them with a stick. She beat them with an iron cord. So, if they want to spend the night, they was welcome.	31:09
Chris Stewart	How about you, Miss Robinson? How many people lived in your house?	31:51
Vialet Robinson	It was four. I have a sister. I have one sister, and my mom and dad was four of us.	31:57
Chris Stewart	Were there any other adults around?	31:59
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:32:02].	32:00
Chris Stewart	Adults who disciplined you in the neighborhood?	32:03
Wilhelmenia Adams	Oh, yes. Miss—	32:06
Chris Stewart	Not you, Miss Thompson.	32:14
Vialet Robinson	That's what you're supposed to do. [indistinct 00:32:15]. Yes. Mr. Roper.	32:14
Chris Stewart	Mr. Roper?	32:16
Vialet Robinson	That's her daddy.	32:17
Chris Stewart	[indistinct 00:32:18] dad.	32:18
Vialet Robinson	Honey, he was good. He didn't care. Honey, if you come in and leave that front door over here, tell you quick, close that door. I can't heat up all Cherry.	32:19
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mr. Roper never bothered me. We always got along. [indistinct 00:32:32].	32:28
Vialet Robinson	He wasn't mean. He was just—See, we was over here all day because we lived across the street, just like when the gypsy came along. Wilhelmina, myself, and [indistinct 00:32:44] all of us, sitting out there in the street playing [indistinct 00:32:48]. The gypsy came along, they was going to get us. We passed by my house and Wilhelmina's house and ran to Miss Robert's house.	32:32
Chris Stewart	The gypsy?	32:55
Vialet Robinson	Yeah. They used to come [indistinct 00:32:58].	32:56
Chris Stewart	Who is that?	32:56
Vialet Robinson	We don't know. [indistinct 00:33:02]. They're good in South Philadelphia. They had a place [indistinct 00:33:08] in Philadelphia.	33:01
Chris Stewart	When would they come? Would they come occasionally, more than once?	33:08
Vialet Robinson	Honey, we don't know.	33:12
Wilhelmenia Adams	They would come [indistinct 00:33:15] long time, but you can hear, they spread the word. Because the gypsies coming, you would know they were coming before they got here.	33:13
Chris Stewart	What were they doing here?	33:21
Wilhelmenia Adams	I don't know. We didn't know. [indistinct 00:33:25].	33:22
Vialet Robinson	They'd steal. They'd film flam a couple people up the street. They went in their house up the street.	33:25
Jean Thompson	They'd steal the children.	33:30
Chris Stewart	And they'd steal children?	33:32
Vialet Robinson	Yes. If they'd have caught us, we'd have been gone, but they couldn't catch us. Wilhelmina was the last one behind.	33:33
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah, but I got there.	33:40
Vialet Robinson	We told Miss Haddy to get the shotgun.	33:42
Wilhelmenia Adams	I remember them coming by but they never bothered—I always played in my yard—	33:44
Chris Stewart	Who's Miss Haddy?	33:48
Vialet Robinson	She's dead now. One of my neighbor's mother.	33:49
Jean Thompson	She was a grandmother.	33:53
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm. We played with them.	33:55
Jean Thompson	Who lived up across the street.	33:55
Chris Stewart	And you'd run to her house and tell her to get the shotgun?	33:57
Vialet Robinson	Yeah. [indistinct 00:34:02].	33:59
Jean Thompson	Our parents worked. My parents worked, both them, and they would be in the evening, coming home at night. Wouldn't be until night when they got home. In the evening, when a storm would come up, like 9:00, a storm would come up in a minute. We'd run over there and get on that porch, Miss Robert's porch and we'd get in the house when the rain start falling. She would just pull all the shades down—	34:03
Wilhelmenia Adams	Because I was scared.	34:26
Jean Thompson	She'd take the fuse out the fuse box, because the lightning would strike, she'd say—	34:28
Chris Stewart	This is Miss Roberts?	34:33
Jean Thompson	Miss Roberts?	34:34
Wilhelmenia Adams	Miss Haddy Saxon.	34:34
Chris Stewart	Miss Haddy Saxon.	34:34
Jean Thompson	It was Miss Robert's mother.	34:38
Chris Stewart	Okay.	34:39
Jean Thompson	And it was safe haven for us.	34:39
Chris Stewart	I see.	34:45
Jean Thompson	Because my brother and I, we were by ourselves until our parents came home.	34:46
Chris Stewart	Did you have relatives that lived nearby? It sounds like you had relatives that lived nearby.	34:52
Wilhelmenia Adams	I had plenty relatives [indistinct 00:34:56].	34:56
Chris Stewart	You had relatives also, Miss—	34:56
Wilhelmenia Adams	My grandmother lived down the way because [indistinct 00:34:58].	34:56
Vialet Robinson	About that time, Aunt Dora and them lived up the street too.	34:58
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah. My Aunt Dora lived up the street.	35:01
Chris Stewart	Your daughter?	35:07
Wilhelmenia Adams	My aunt.	35:08
Chris Stewart	Your aunt.	35:08
Wilhelmenia Adams	I had two aunts lived up the street.	35:09
Chris Stewart	How about you, Miss—	35:12
Jean Thompson	I had one aunt that lived the first house coming down from Queens Road—	35:12
Vialet Robinson	And Haddy lived next door [indistinct 00:35:17].	35:15
Wilhelmenia Adams	She moved up there.	35:17
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, Haddy lived—	35:22
Chris Stewart	What were the occasions for family gatherings? What were the times when the whole family would get together and celebrate something?	35:26
Wilhelmenia Adams	Birthday, Christmas, Thanksgiving.	35:33
Vialet Robinson	It didn't have to be [indistinct 00:35:42] in my house and this house either. Whenever we wanted to have a big feast, we had it. [indistinct 00:35:44] in the backyard.	35:41
Chris Stewart	I mean extended family too, when people would come and just—	35:45
Vialet Robinson	Yeah. Because we had lots of relatives that would come in from out of town, Washington and New York. And my aunt would just have a crowd in the backyard over there. We would just have a feast.	35:48
Jean Thompson	I had one aunt that lived, at the time when we were small, lived out in Hickory Grove.	36:00
Chris Stewart	Hickory Grove?	36:07
Jean Thompson	Yeah. And she had a house with children, about nine, I think. Nine or 12, I don't know. But when she's home, that would be all we needed. We'd just run and meet them and be glad to see them. They'd just come, I don't know, just times like that. It's not like that anymore.	36:08
Chris Stewart	What would you do for these celebrations? Would you cook special food? Would you drink special drinks? What would you do?	36:29
Wilhelmenia Adams	Well, we'd drink special drinks. The grown ups would have their own. Children drink lemonade and ice tea. And most of it was penny-ade, we called it back then.	36:38
Chris Stewart	You called it penny-ade?	36:47
Wilhelmenia Adams	Penny-ade, like Kool-Aid.	36:48
Vialet Robinson	It didn't cost but a penny then, Kool-Aid didn't.	36:50
Chris Stewart	It was like the same thing as Kool-Aid, but you called it penny-ade?	36:52
Vialet Robinson	That's all what it was. It cost a penny.	36:54
Chris Stewart	It was called penny-ade.	36:55
Wilhelmenia Adams	And you could get three cent sodas too. Three cent. [indistinct 00:37:04].	36:58
Vialet Robinson	That record player there, it's about 50 years old. That's what we used to play our music on.	37:06
Chris Stewart	And you played records and danced?	37:11
Jean Thompson	Danced in the street.	37:12
Vialet Robinson	Yeah. We learned how to dance right across the street there in front of [indistinct 00:37:18].	37:14
Chris Stewart	What kind of dances did you learn how to dance?	37:18
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:37:23] the big apple.	37:25
Chris Stewart	The big apple?	37:26
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:37:28] trucking. We learned to dance on a tisket a tasket.	37:31
Chris Stewart	A tisket a tasket?	37:33
Jean Thompson	Chuck Webb.	37:38
Chris Stewart	Chuck Webb?	37:39
Jean Thompson	Kick Webb [indistinct 00:37:44].	37:40
Chris Stewart	Besides these family gathering type places, what were other things that you did for fun when you were growing up here in this neighborhood?	37:45
Jean Thompson	We'd visit the park, the 7th Street park, and swing here on the Providence. We'd go to that one a lot. After school, we'd go to the [indistinct 00:38:07]. That's why the children [indistinct 00:38:07]. We would play up in Cherry with school friends, but we played up in those parts a lot.	37:52
Chris Stewart	How about the two of you?	38:14
Wilhelmenia Adams	We were here and went to Morehead park playground.	38:14
Vialet Robinson	But we had our own playground right [indistinct 00:38:24].	38:20
Jean Thompson	Other part of Cherry would come down here—	38:24
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:38:27]. So, we would sit in the backyard. People would come along the street and want to know how come we're not working? We'd be sitting down the park, out there playing cards.	38:27
Jean Thompson	Playing cards.	38:34
Vialet Robinson	My granddaddy said he wouldn't let me [indistinct 00:38:38].	38:35
Jean Thompson	And all that was lawn back then, and that's where we stayed. It was something—	38:44
Vialet Robinson	And we had [indistinct 00:38:51] two sons, Zach and Andrew. They would come down. They'd bring the goodies, the Mr. Goodbars when they was back for a nickel.	38:50
Jean Thompson	And we'd play cards. My preacher came down here one time, and we were out in the backyard playing cards. He'd preached about it next Sunday. My daddy got [indistinct 00:39:09]. What my children do in my house, it's their house, that's why I buy it. I [indistinct 00:39:13] to them, I work hard for my children. They were at home, and you got no right to go back and tell nobody what they do. If I allow them, it's all right.	38:58
Wilhelmenia Adams	Wasn't no sin.	39:20
Jean Thompson	He didn't like that a bit.	39:21
Vialet Robinson	Now, we have two churches over here, [indistinct 00:39:28] celebrate their 125th year Sunday.	39:24
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:39:33].	39:30
Vialet Robinson	And the Lutheran Church up there, it's a Holiness Church now, it's 105.	39:33
Jean Thompson	And you take Pleasant Hill Baptist Church right here on the corner of Baldwin and [indistinct 00:39:42] it used to be on Queens Road. But it's a graveyard on Queens Road. The little theater is sitting over a graveyard, and that church used to be right up there. There's two houses right in here, little houses right across the street, they came off of Queens Road. My mother was living over [indistinct 00:39:58].	39:38
Chris Stewart	Did you say that the theater is built on a graveyard—	39:58
Jean Thompson	Over a grave [indistinct 00:40:01].	40:00
Vialet Robinson	They moved some of the graves but some of them still there.	40:01
Jean Thompson	Some of them bodies were there so long, they should've never bothered them bodies. They didn't get them all. [indistinct 00:40:09] move them all.	40:06
Chris Stewart	Were there any areas that were bad areas, that you were told you should not go to?	40:09
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yes.	40:16
Vialet Robinson	Brooklyn. 2nd Street.	40:17
Jean Thompson	That's where everybody was hanging out in Brooklyn.	40:21
Chris Stewart	What was going on in Brooklyn?	40:22
Wilhelmenia Adams	Killing.	40:24
Vialet Robinson	Everything.	40:24
Chris Stewart	Killing?	40:25
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	40:26
Wilhelmenia Adams	Everything.	40:27
Chris Stewart	What other kinds of things?	40:28
Jean Thompson	Killings, and [indistinct 00:40:32].	40:28
Vialet Robinson	They had bootlegger houses. If you want to go—Like [indistinct 00:40:36] say let's go to Brooklyn, have a good time. The theater was over there, all the funeral homes was over there. Everything was in Brooklyn. Wasn't no way else but Brooklyn. Even our high school was in Brooklyn, Sycamore High. We had to go there.	40:32
Chris Stewart	Did you resent having to travel to Brooklyn—	40:49
Vialet Robinson	To go to Sycamore?	40:52
Chris Stewart	Yeah.	40:53
Vialet Robinson	No.	40:53
Wilhelmenia Adams	No. We didn't know [indistinct 00:40:56].	40:55
Jean Thompson	That's the way it was. And you [indistinct 00:41:00] what was there at that time. It had always been going on, so you accepted that.	40:55
Vialet Robinson	And most of the doctors, the teachers, and things that we have in the school system now, they graduated from that school. I went to a funeral Sunday. She taught all of us in the 2nd grade, Miss Fraser. Her funeral was Sunday, she came out of Brooklyn.	41:04
Chris Stewart	Out of the second ward.	41:22
Vialet Robinson	Second ward school too—	41:23
Wilhelmenia Adams	Out of the Brooklyn community.	41:23
Vialet Robinson	The community. She came out of the community but she also graduated from Sycamore. It was all the teachers, all the doctors here in the city. We didn't have but one Black school, high school, and it was Sycamore High.	41:27
Chris Stewart	When was West Charlotte created? When did that open?	41:37
Vialet Robinson	1939.	41:39
Chris Stewart	Okay. Okay. So, you weren't yet—	41:39
Vialet Robinson	See, that's not the new West Charlotte. It was the old Northwest. It was down on [indistinct 00:41:50].	41:45
Chris Stewart	Right, right, right. Was this area called Blue Heaven—	41:50
Vialet Robinson	Yes, right across the [indistinct 00:41:58].	41:55
Wilhelmenia Adams	That's out from Brooklyn.	41:58
Vialet Robinson	It's down here, as you pass Pearl Street Park. But they said Pearl Street Park, that was Brooklyn.	42:00
Jean Thompson	And that was bad.	42:05
Chris Stewart	What was bad about it?	42:06
Wilhelmenia Adams	It was just bad [indistinct 00:42:09].	42:08
Vialet Robinson	They had a creek running down through there. They had some—	42:09
Chris Stewart	They had a what?	42:10
Vialet Robinson	It was a creek running—	42:10
Wilhelmenia Adams	The creek, the one we had to cross when we'd go to school.	42:13
Vialet Robinson	Creek running down through there, but it's turned some doctors and teachers out of there. [indistinct 00:42:21] nice came people came out of Brooklyn. [indistinct 00:42:23].	42:15
Wilhelmenia Adams	The principal, Blake [indistinct 00:42:27].	42:24
Vialet Robinson	He came from Brooklyn.	42:27
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah. He was from Brooklyn.	42:27
Vialet Robinson	Sycamore graduate too. [indistinct 00:42:32] West Charlotte.	42:30
Chris Stewart	Where did you go shopping for clothes—	42:33
Wilhelmenia Adams	Downtown.	42:38
Vialet Robinson	Downtown [indistinct 00:42:39].	42:38
Wilhelmenia Adams	Downtown [indistinct 00:42:40] was the main thorough. [indistinct 00:42:43] and Ingrids. [indistinct 00:42:44] was a little more expensive, but poor people could go to [indistinct 00:42:46] and dress up real good. But they had little old credit stores. You'd buy clothes on credit, called Atkins. What was the name of that store?	42:42
Chris Stewart	Atkins?	42:53
Vialet Robinson	There was a bunch of them down there.	42:53
Wilhelmenia Adams	But you could go buy your clothes. They wasn't worth [indistinct 00:43:02] up there. But these children wanted [indistinct 00:43:07] you could go there and buy clothes and you'd wear them out when [indistinct 00:43:11]. Well, you would. But that's how poor people had to do.	42:58
Chris Stewart	Did they treat you differently than the white folks down at [indistinct 00:43:20].	43:17
Jean Thompson	You mean then?	43:19
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	43:19
Jean Thompson	Uh-uh. No, no, no. Never could tell the difference.	43:20
Wilhelmenia Adams	I've never been mistreated, because I knew I wasn't going to be sitting on that white [indistinct 00:43:33]. If you didn't do what you wasn't supposed to do, you didn't have no problem.	43:27
Jean Thompson	Really, I never had no feeling towards white people. I never did come in contact with that—	43:37
Wilhelmenia Adams	We were never taught hate.	43:42
Jean Thompson	There was no—	43:42
Wilhelmenia Adams	Never taught hate.	43:42
Jean Thompson	Never, no. Never. [indistinct 00:43:48].	43:42
Chris Stewart	What about groceries? Did you do any grocery shopping, or did you basically grow—	43:48
Vialet Robinson	We went to Jimmy Normans.	43:51
Wilhelmenia Adams	Jimmy Normans was [indistinct 00:43:55].	43:51
Chris Stewart	I'm sorry. What was the name? —	43:55
Jean Thompson	Jimmy Norman.	43:55
Chris Stewart	Jimmy Normans, and where was that?	43:57
Vialet Robinson	Baldwin Avenue.	43:59
Wilhelmenia Adams	Up there on Baldwin.	44:00
Vialet Robinson	The store's still up there but—	44:00
Chris Stewart	Is it empty?	44:03
Vialet Robinson	No. Somebody runs it but—	44:03
Jean Thompson	It's Tip Top now.	44:04
Vialet Robinson	—I don't know. I ain't got the name of it.	44:04
Chris Stewart	And was that like a supermarket?	44:07
Jean Thompson	No. It was a little country store. You know they have loose eggs and loose potatoes, and all that.	44:09
Vialet Robinson	You got peanut butter out of a barrel, the lard and all that.	44:15
Wilhelmenia Adams	And this store right here, what's up here now was JT [indistinct 00:44:23]. It was a store there. [indistinct 00:44:27].	44:18
Vialet Robinson	Mr. Cups.	44:27
Wilhelmenia Adams	Cup and Sadler.	44:28
Chris Stewart	And Sadler?	44:33
Wilhelmenia Adams	He owned it. [indistinct 00:44:34] Sadler had.	44:34
Chris Stewart	Were these all Black owned stores?	44:34
Vialet Robinson	No, they was white.	44:36
Jean Thompson	They was white.	44:36
Chris Stewart	All of them that you just mentioned?	44:36
Vialet Robinson	They're white but I tell you [indistinct 00:44:42].	44:36
Jean Thompson	Everybody knew him. He was just like one of us.	44:44
Vialet Robinson	He told on somebody and someone killed him. A couple years ago.	44:48
Chris Stewart	Really?	44:52
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm. Not over here. Downtown.	44:52
Chris Stewart	What about beauty shops? Where'd you go to get your hair done?	44:58
Jean Thompson	My mama [indistinct 00:45:03].	45:02
Vialet Robinson	There was Lena Harrison and KB Fair.	45:02
Chris Stewart	I'm sorry. What were the names?	45:07
Vialet Robinson	Harrison.	45:09
Chris Stewart	Harrison.	45:10
Vialet Robinson	And Fair.	45:11
Chris Stewart	And Fair.	45:11
Jean Thompson	That was just on Baldwin—	45:11
Chris Stewart	Was that the same Fair that—	45:13
Jean Thompson	Yeah. [indistinct 00:45:16]. Yeah. That's the man. He's just on—	45:14
Wilhelmenia Adams	That was her father-in-law, the one I said had the grocery store with my grandfather.	45:18
Chris Stewart	Were the beauty shops in somebody's house?	45:23
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah, it was in their shop.	45:25
Chris Stewart	In the shop.	45:26
Jean Thompson	Miss [indistinct 00:45:29] was in the shop. [indistinct 00:45:32].	45:29
Vialet Robinson	She filled a room up in my house. She sure did.	45:33
Jean Thompson	She built a porch [indistinct 00:45:36].	45:34
Chris Stewart	What were the fashions for hair when you were in high school?	45:37
Jean Thompson	Baseball.	45:41
Wilhelmenia Adams	Baseball.	45:41
Jean Thompson	And some of what you're seeing today, the waves and all that. [indistinct 00:45:48].	45:43
Vialet Robinson	Different kinds of waves. See, these are finger waves now, and this was Marcella when we had them.	45:49
Chris Stewart	What'd you talk about when you went into the beauty shops?	45:56
Jean Thompson	Everything like today.	46:00
Vialet Robinson	You sit there and listen to them gossip about everybody and everything.	46:01
Chris Stewart	Gossip?	46:04
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	46:04
Jean Thompson	I can't say too much about the beauty shops because my mama always done mine.	46:08
Chris Stewart	Were there ever any talking about organizing, like civil rights organizing?	46:12
Wilhelmenia Adams	No.	46:19
Jean Thompson	No, we—	46:19
Vialet Robinson	There wasn't nothing when we was coming up.	46:19
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:46:26] I think everybody be—My mother and them said people are just people, and there's not but two kind of people, there's good people and bad people. And I just came up that way. Everybody was just people to me.	46:28
Chris Stewart	Do you remember any controversies or anything that happened in this neighborhood when you were growing up? Anything that just sticks in your head—	46:37
Jean Thompson	Yeah, we had the—Excuse me. We're speaking of the creek devils down there. We talk about the [indistinct 00:46:52] down there. We had a rain real hard and there was a swinging beach down there.	46:45

Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:00:01] too. Helen, Allison was down there. I know two of my classmates that was in our class got drowned. Curtis Blakely. He was Blakely's cousin.	0:01
Vialet Robinson	Alfie Gardener, I know he was in my class.	0:12
Jean Thompson	And it was a bunch of them. Helen, a girl—most of all of them was all from Cherry on that end—	0:17
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:00:20]	0:19
Jean Thompson	The upper end, it wasn't this end. All the kids was out of there.	0:21
Bill Crumpton	So did the bridge break?	0:25
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah—	0:25
Jean Thompson	They saw the black cat. They had a black cat. And they were swinging on that swinging bridge. And the water was all in all of the bridge and they was diving in. And the bridge had never been no good. Because they always swing all the time. And they were down there swinging.	0:30
Vialet Robinson	We broke on them, we had to go across that broken bridge.	0:38
Chris Stewart	Hmm, hmm. Were there any big meetings? Or that occurred here in this neighborhood?	0:48
Jean Thompson	Oh, we had meetings. We had a community club with adults. Like Wilhelmenia's mother Roper now, Mr. Green—	1:01
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah.	1:03
Jean Thompson	Mr. Bling.	1:03
Chris Stewart	What was the name of the community?	1:03
Jean Thompson	It was Cherry Community Organization there.	1:03
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm. [indistinct 00:01:16] Jim [indistinct 00:01:17] Johnson.	1:03
Jean Thompson	Yeah, but I'm talking about what Mr. [indistinct 00:01:22]	1:19
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah.	1:20
Jean Thompson	Had that, the community organization.	1:20
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah.	1:20
Chris Stewart	What kinds of things did they do?	1:26
Jean Thompson	Honey, they did a lot for the community. [indistinct 00:01:31] for this community. Because they did a whole lot of things. Like, people they were sick, and hungry and things like that. And they was good. And then, on some night, Roberta and Thelma would open the cellar up. For us, we go up there and meet our friends in there, maybe two hours or something.	1:31
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	1:51
Jean Thompson	Then the whole group, all the [indistinct 00:01:53] all us would walk back down the street. They see that everybody go in the house and then we would go out, next morning, we would meet up again on our way to school.	1:52
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	2:01
Jean Thompson	We went to the cellar, we called it our cellar. Up there where the barber shop is now.	2:03
Chris Stewart	Is there still an organization?	2:08
Jean Thompson	Oh, we have a [indistinct 00:02:15] community organization.	2:14
Vialet Robinson	They stayed in the city for a long time [indistinct 00:02:16]	2:14
Chris Stewart	[inaudible 00:02:19]	2:15
Vialet Robinson	Do you think I was worried about the [indistinct 00:02:24]	2:23
Wilhelmenia Adams	They just coming into town.	2:23
Jean Thompson	Now.	2:23
Chris Stewart	They just came into town. What are you fighting over? With the city. Did you say you were fighting with the city over something?	2:23
Vialet Robinson	Oh yeah, but just—	2:28
Wilhelmenia Adams	That's for the Cherry residents. I'm a member of the [indistinct 00:02:36] community. But [indistinct 00:02:38] because I'm a home owner.	2:30
Chris Stewart	Uh huh.	2:39
Wilhelmenia Adams	I'm not involved in—	2:39
Jean Thompson	I don't rent one of the [indistinct 00:02:43] houses but I not involved in that [indistinct 00:02:45] though.	2:42
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. Huh. Let's talk a little bit about school. Di you all go to Morgan Street School?	2:46
Jean Thompson	Uh huh.	2:56
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:02:57] Morgan.	2:56
Chris Stewart	Yeah.	2:56
Vialet Robinson	So it was a elementary and—	2:56
Chris Stewart	So, tell me something about your teachers.	3:00
Vialet Robinson	Okay. In the back. I want to speak about my third grade teacher.	3:02
Wilhelmenia Adams	Ms. Crawford.	3:10
Vialet Robinson	Ms. Crawford. Ms. Crawford, okay. Now, my first grade teacher was Ms. Harrison [indistinct 00:03:16] My second grade teacher was Ms. Shoot.	3:11
Wilhelmenia Adams	Ms. Shoot was nice.	3:18
Chris Stewart	I think we might be interviewing Ms. Shoot, maybe not her but-	3:21
Jean Thompson	Yeah.	3:23
Chris Stewart	—we are interviewing—	3:25
Jean Thompson	No, Ms. Shoot is not shooting. She was in Washington when I was in Morgan too. But she [indistinct 00:03:33] I was told she got married again.	3:27
Chris Stewart	—oh, okay.	3:34
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah, you did tell me.	3:35
Jean Thompson	Yeah, she's in town.	3:35
Vialet Robinson	Well, I'm going to speak about my third grade teacher. I always tried to be real nice in school. And one day, Ms. Crawford gave me a note, she's like, "Give this to your momma." And I said, "Oh my God, what for?" And I was racking my brains. Just thinking about what have I done? And then, I opened it. I would never open momma's letters or nothing like that. When I got home, momma wasn't dressed.	3:43
Vialet Robinson	And I said, "What's going on?" And she caught me by my hand and back to school she went. And I said, "Now, what is this?" She said, "You stay out here til I come back." She left me on the outside of the door. The classroom. And she went in and she had a talk with Ms. Crawford. The next morning, she got me up out of bed and she had my hand again, downtown she went to Katie's Jewelry Store.	4:05
Vialet Robinson	And, see, Ms. Crawford told her that I needed glasses.	4:33
Chris Stewart	Oh.	4:37
Vialet Robinson	I was nearsighted. When I would go to the blackboard, I'd go up to the Blackboard and be right like this. Nobody never noticed it. My momma never noticed it. They never noticed that I was nearsighted. And so, momma said Ms. Crawford cried when she talked to her, that she was mean to me sometimes when she really shouldn't have been. Because I couldn't see [indistinct 00:05:00]	4:37
Vialet Robinson	And when she found out, she told mother and mother went straight and got me some glasses. And I want to say, well, we did have teachers that were concerned about the students.	4:58
Wilhelmenia Adams	Oh yeah.	5:08
Vialet Robinson	Uh huh because-	5:08
Wilhelmenia Adams	Very concerned about us.	5:09
Vialet Robinson	—uh huh. And because, you know, children don't understand. When they see other, they don't understand. But anyway, I really appreciate Ms. Crawford, and I appreciate as long as I live for seeing about my glasses. Because my mother wasn't concerned about. She just thought I was also, you know.	5:09
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	5:29
Vialet Robinson	And that's what I would say about Ms. Crawford. And she was a doll.	5:33
Chris Stewart	Do you remember any other teachers that were really special to you?	5:37
Jean Thompson	Oh [indistinct 00:05:42] myself and with a teacher. But she was [indistinct 00:05:47] Ms. [indistinct 00:05:49] Ms. Crawford. Ms. [indistinct 00:05:50] Ms. Gunne is still living, the head. And Ms. McKenzie is still living. When I seen, all of a sudden, at the film. Ms. Gina is still living. And Ms. [indistinct 00:05:58] is still living.	5:45
Chris Stewart	Hmm.	5:59
Jean Thompson	And Ms. Murray used to live up the street. She was born and raised over here, in [inaudible 00:06:03]	6:00
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	6:03
Jean Thompson	And [indistinct 00:06:05] then some of them, they go to school, during the summer go to New York University. Or somewhere in New York to get their masters. And I can give credit, that the only school, Morgan, that had teachers with masters degrees.	6:04
Chris Stewart	Really?	6:19
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	6:21
Chris Stewart	What kinds of things? You said that they were all really special and important. Why? What kind of things did they do for you?	6:21
Jean Thompson	Well, they knew our parents for one thing. So some of them are like [in 00:06:33] my aunt went to school with all of them at [indistinct 00:06:36] and did anything wrong, they will tell you quick. You go home and tell, they call your parents by the [indistinct 00:06:44]	6:28
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	6:45
Jean Thompson	And tell them to come up here. Or come to school to see me.	6:46
Vialet Robinson	And you better tell.	6:50
Jean Thompson	You better tell. Because they wasn't mean to you. They tried to keep you straight. Because we had kids, now, the kids in [indistinct 00:06:59] went there. The kids up on [indistinct 00:07:02] came to [indistinct 00:07:03] That's over there in Brooklyn. They came over. And just like the other school, we had some mean kids. Like some of my, well, my baby brother. And a bunch of [indistinct 00:07:14] boy would [indistinct 00:07:15] across the creek. When school is out.	6:51
Jean Thompson	So they were just playing, having a good time.	7:18
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	7:21
Jean Thompson	To me, everyone, even the principal, Ms. Anderson, she died 33 years ago. She dies the same year, same month my sister did. And she was one lady. We could [indistinct 00:07:34] down here. We could hear—Now we had a bell but she got out there and rang the cow bell.	7:23
Chris Stewart	Hmm.	7:38
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	7:38
Jean Thompson	And you knew you should be in your seat.	7:41
Chris Stewart	How many students were in the school? How many students—	7:45
Jean Thompson	Most of the time, we had about 400 because we had a, back then, we had kids in this community.	7:48
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:07:53] five or six children.	7:52
Jean Thompson	Yeah, we had-	7:57
Vialet Robinson	There were just two of us. Two of [indistinct 00:08:00] Eugene had [indistinct 00:08:02]	7:58
Jean Thompson	—well see, [indistinct 00:08:10] school and you went.	8:09
Vialet Robinson	No, they were older.	8:09
Jean Thompson	They was older.	8:09
Vialet Robinson	Yeah.	8:09
Jean Thompson	Nobody was [indistinct 00:08:10]	8:09
Chris Stewart	What things did you learn in school? What do you remember learning?	8:10
Jean Thompson	Your tables, your timetables.	8:11
Vialet Robinson	Timetables and your Lord's prayer.	8:12
Jean Thompson	Lord's prayer and the [indistinct 00:08:17] prayer.	8:16
Wilhelmenia Adams	And poem.	8:16
Jean Thompson	Poem.	8:16
Chris Stewart	What kind of poems?	8:18
Vialet Robinson	The Golden [indistinct 00:08:19]	8:19
Jean Thompson	You couldn't get out of third grade unless you knew the timetables.	8:19
Vialet Robinson	Hmm. I can't remember now anything though. But we did things like that. The [indistinct 00:08:20] was—	8:20
Jean Thompson	Yeah, I loved [indistinct 00:08:34] we used to take these imaginary trips, going somewhere.	8:24
Chris Stewart	Oh, where would you go?	8:52
Vialet Robinson	Everywhere. We would go to Italy, we'd go to—	8:52
Jean Thompson	Everywhere and anywhere.	8:52
Vialet Robinson	—mm-hmm.	8:52
Jean Thompson	That's the only thing they don't have in the school system here now. And that's what they need.	8:52
Vialet Robinson	Yeah.	8:52
Chris Stewart	So how would you take these imaginary trips?	8:52
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:08:53]	8:52
Vialet Robinson	We just go to the customs and we [indistinct 00:08:55] in the book.	8:55
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	8:56
Vialet Robinson	It would tell us about that country. And then, sometimes our teachers would have us dress up like those people.	8:56
Chris Stewart	Oh, really?	9:03
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, and another thing. We had prayer in school.	9:04
Vialet Robinson	Yes, we—	9:06
Vialet Robinson	Swear his allegiance to the flag and we sung every morning. I [indistinct 00:09:12] when the world's war two broke out. I was in the seventh grade. And, every morning we started singing [indistinct 00:09:20] song. And pledged allegiance to the flag. And everybody say [indistinct 00:09:25] It was something.	9:07
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	9:27
Vialet Robinson	To even think about.	9:28
Chris Stewart	Hmm.	9:30
Vialet Robinson	And our boys are leaving, they was leaving and going to the service.	9:30
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	9:32
Vialet Robinson	Because I had, my oldest brother went to Washington—	9:35
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:09:37] I didn't notice we're all getting in such bad shape [indistinct 00:09:47] to pray at school. And when they did that, things seemed it just was bad to worse.	9:42
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	9:54
Vialet Robinson	And our children find out if you can't spank your child now, it would be child abuse.	9:57
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	10:02
Vialet Robinson	Those two things hurt this world more than anything else. I don't care what nobody says.	10:02
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	10:12
Vialet Robinson	I got whipped and it didn't me less of a person. And I didn't have no, I wouldn't call that abuse. And I still spanked mine.	10:14
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.	10:15
Vialet Robinson	And I got [indistinct 00:10:20] and I do spank them now.	10:19
Jean Thompson	I'm going to call 911 on you.	10:23
Vialet Robinson	Because you just going to have to have some type of [inaudible 00:10:31] If a child walked up to me today and tell me, "I'll call 911 if you hit me." I'm going to hit him.	10:31
Jean Thompson	I swear, a cousin of mine gone a told them, he said, "When I get through beating y'all, really, you know, you can call 911."	10:37
Vialet Robinson	I got a little eight month old grandbaby. And I [indistinct 00:10:47]	10:44
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	10:45
Vialet Robinson	And she know, and when [indistinct 00:10:50] she said, [indistinct 00:10:53] eight months. They know.	10:48
Jean Thompson	We got two [indistinct 00:10:56]	10:54
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	10:54
Jean Thompson	They know it now.	10:54
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	10:54
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.	11:05
Chris Stewart	So, you all went to Morgan School.	11:05
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	11:07
Chris Stewart	And then you all went to [indistinct 00:11:09]	11:07
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	11:08
Chris Stewart	So did Morgan Street go up to seventh grade? And then, [indistinct 00:11:15] started at eight?	11:12
Vialet Robinson	Yeah.	11:15
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:11:16] started at seven.	11:17
Chris Stewart	At seven.	11:17
Jean Thompson	But we-	11:19
Vialet Robinson	We went to the eight.	11:19
Jean Thompson	—see, we were all in the school in the city went to the [indistinct 00:11:24]	11:21
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	11:23
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:11:25] I could have brought my picture over here. My graduation. All the schools in the city wore robes. And I know a class of 39 didn't wear none. They were bad.	11:26
Vialet Robinson	That's right. We didn't get to wear one—	11:34
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:11:37]	11:44
Jean Thompson	You know the reason why? [indistinct 00:11:41] because I was going to tell you that's the reason.	11:44
Chris Stewart	What's the reason why?	11:53
Jean Thompson	They came out from Brooklyn, Blue Harlem. [indistinct 0:00:11:50]	11:53
Jean Thompson	Yeah, they came over here. [indistinct 00:11:54] they came over and disrupt the class.	11:53
Wilhelmenia Adams	Blue Harlem in Brooklyn.	11:53
Jean Thompson	Over there in the Morgan School.	11:58
Chris Stewart	People from Brooklyn—	11:59
Jean Thompson	Let me go over and get my picture if I can get up here.	12:00
Chris Stewart	—people from Brooklyn came over for the graduation—	12:03
Jean Thompson	No, no, no. They had a school over here.	12:06
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:12:07]	12:06
Chris Stewart	They came into your class.	12:06
Jean Thompson	No, came in with her class.	12:12
Jean Thompson	No, my class had them in there too. But not like-	12:24
Vialet Robinson	We had [indistinct 00:12:25] and everybody seemed to wear a red robes. We wear a red robes.	12:25
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:12:26]	12:25
Vialet Robinson	And we couldn't wear the robes.	12:28
Chris Stewart	Did you—	12:29
Vialet Robinson	Oh, it was so bad. They were just bad.	12:30
Wilhelmenia Adams	It kills me to get up.	12:31
Vialet Robinson	But Morgan School, when the sixth grade, when I was in the sixth grade, we had a class [indistinct 00:12:40] prom and looking like they was more like it was a get together, it was just a dinner, a good dinner. And we had, because this was given to the sixth grade class. The sixth grade, sorry, I'm sorry. The sixth grade was giving it to the seventh grade. See what I'm saying?	12:34
Chris Stewart	Yeah. For a special gift for the seventh grade?	13:04
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, like in high school. The eleventh grade used to give—	13:04
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	13:06
Vialet Robinson	But this was the only year that I [indistinct 00:13:13]	13:08
Chris Stewart	Hmm. That was the only year that Morgan—	13:12
Vialet Robinson	That we had that.	13:13
Chris Stewart	And it was when you were in the sixth grade?	13:15
Vialet Robinson	Yeah. Mm-hmm.	13:16
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. Well, tell me something about the Second Ward Schools. You remember your teachers from the Second Ward School?	13:20
Wilhelmenia Adams	They were so different. What we were used to.	13:25
Vialet Robinson	And I was—	13:28
Wilhelmenia Adams	Because we always stayed in one room.	13:30
Chris Stewart	Oh.	13:34
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:13:34] you go in high school. You couldn't change classes.	13:34
Vialet Robinson	But you know-	13:34
Wilhelmenia Adams	That was hard for me to get used to.	13:34
Vialet Robinson	—yeah.	13:39
Chris Stewart	How come?	13:39
Wilhelmenia Adams	I don't know. I guess I was—	13:40
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:13:43]	13:41
Wilhelmenia Adams	—but I forget my classroom. When I leave there, I'm downstairs, maybe I had to go to the third floor. But I go second floor and take a—	13:45
Vialet Robinson	You could get lost, all them crazy stairs over there.	13:54
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah there was a wall between, you know, when you come [indistinct 00:13:59] a wall. You had to turn and go up.	13:56
Vialet Robinson	They didn't need that wall. But I got sent home when I was in the eighth grade. And just [indistinct 00:14:07] got to Second Ward and I was already afraid and I'm scared of the Second Ward. So I said there's so much [indistinct 00:14:12] school.	14:03
Chris Stewart	Hmm.	14:10
Vialet Robinson	And I got sent home.	14:14
Chris Stewart	How come?	14:16
Vialet Robinson	My sister, okay, we had a detention hall where you had to go if something happened and you had to go detention hall. You had to stay there after school.	14:16
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	14:27
Vialet Robinson	But I was just doing gym class when I was—in education when I was taking gym class. We had to [indistinct 00:14:42] this particular day, the teacher did not have class. But she was using a gym suit. If you had your gym suit, that was like [indistinct 00:14:50]	14:30
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	14:50
Vialet Robinson	And that particular day, I didn't have mine. So she tells me, "You got to go to the detention hall." Because I didn't have my gym suit.	14:53
Chris Stewart	Uh huh.	15:00
Vialet Robinson	See. So, when I went to detention hall, my sister came up there to get me. Because she wouldn't dare go on home without me. And I said, "I'm in the detention hall. I can't go home. You see." And, oh, she had a hard time getting me out. She went and called mother on the telephone. She said, "Mother, Vialet had to stay in detention hall. I can't get her out of there. She's doing [indistinct 00:15:18]	15:01
Vialet Robinson	You better tell her, you know, get herself home. Tell her I said get home right now.	15:19
Chris Stewart	Huh.	15:23
Vialet Robinson	And I was so scared. I was scared. Well I didn't know. I—	15:24
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:15:28]	15:27
Vialet Robinson	—I went home.	15:31
Vialet Robinson	I told them, when I went home, I told mother, I said, "Mother," I said, "now you told me to come home from detention. I guess you know you going to have to take me back to school. Or I won't get back in there." She said, "Don't worry." She said, "I will take you back." She said, "Don't worry." I goes [indistinct 00:15:44] she took me back. She [indistinct 00:15:46] she dressed herself up. She got me by my hand and she went over there to the school. And this is what she did.	15:31
Vialet Robinson	She told Mr. [indistinct 00:15:55] was so nice [indistinct 00:15:56] he invited her in [indistinct 00:15:58] a seat across from him at the desk. And so, she asked him, he told her, he said, "Mrs. Robinson, I'm glad to have you today." So she said, "Well, Mr. [indistinct 00:16:08] and she said, "Mr. [indistinct 00:16:11] I'm glad to be here but I want to know why did you send my daughter to the detention hall. Why did she have to stay an hour after school." He didn't know.	15:53
Chris Stewart	Hmm.	16:18
Vialet Robinson	And my momma said, "She didn't [indistinct 00:16:21] and don't know why." So he said, "Go ahead and get Mr. Gym teacher." And when she came, she had on this white blouse and this Black shorts. Real short.	16:23
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	16:34
Vialet Robinson	And so, Mr. [indistinct 00:16:37] said, "Mrs. Butler, so why did you send Vialet home?" And so she said, "Because she didn't have her gym suit."	16:36
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	16:44
Vialet Robinson	Mother pushes her chair back to the table and she stood up and she [indistinct 00:16:49] herself. My mother did. And she said, "Now, Mr. [indistinct 00:16:49]	16:45
Jean Thompson	That's my 1942 class—	16:48
Vialet Robinson	—she said, "You want to tell me that you sent my daughter home because she didn't have-	16:51
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:16:59]	16:57
Vialet Robinson	—[indistinct 00:17:02] but after I got back in there, Mr. [indistinct 00:17:06]	16:57
Jean Thompson	That's me there.	16:57
Chris Stewart	Now, this is your 1942 Morgan School—	17:11
Bill Crumpton	[indistinct 00:17:12]	17:11
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:17:12]	17:11
Jean Thompson	We graduate with robes on there. Until in the late 50s.	17:14
Chris Stewart	Do you have the original address?	17:19
Jean Thompson	Yeah, that's what I mean because I-	17:20
Chris Stewart	You had this reproduced.	17:21
Jean Thompson	—yeah, I did. I had this, I had to do [indistinct 00:17:27] this is our 50 reunion. That's some of those students. And that's me there. He's a twin. We had—I had [indistinct 00:17:37] everybody wanted one. They didn't have they picture and I had mine.	17:25
Chris Stewart	That's really nice.	17:41
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	17:41
Chris Stewart	This is great. This is exactly the kind of thing that we would be interested in, like just even taking pictures of. This is exactly—	17:43
Jean Thompson	Yeah, that was 51 years ago. And we had a reunion. And this is my—this is our fourth grade teacher, Mrs. [indistinct 00:18:01] this is our seventh grade teacher.	17:51
Chris Stewart	What's her name?	18:03
Jean Thompson	Audrey. [indistinct 00:18:07] now she was Brody when we was there. She lived up the street here.	18:08
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	18:11
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	18:11
Chris Stewart	Well, this is wonderful. So were you going to talk about, what do you remember? We were talking about how scary it was to go from Morgan Street School to Second Ward School—	18:13
Vialet Robinson	It's not Morgan Street.	18:31
Chris Stewart	—oh, it's Morgan School.	18:49
Wilhelmenia Adams	It's Morgan School, yeah.	18:56
Vialet Robinson	Morgan School, not Morgan, I don't know why they do it [indistinct 00:19:07]	19:04
Vialet Robinson	That's not the only one.	19:07
Chris Stewart	Really?	19:07
Vialet Robinson	Because everybody always say, "That's not Morgan Street." But [indistinct 00:19:07] was Morgan Street.	19:07
Chris Stewart	Right, right. So—	19:07
Vialet Robinson	Anyway, it's Morgan—	19:07
Chris Stewart	—how long did it take you to get used to—	19:07
Vialet Robinson	—[indistinct 00:19:07] about a week, I was ready about a week.	19:07
Chris Stewart	Did it?	19:07
Jean Thompson	Who? The [indistinct 00:19:07] leave Morgan and go there.	19:07
Vialet Robinson	I wasn't scared.	19:07
Vialet Robinson	I was.	19:07
Vialet Robinson	I got lost, lost in the [indistinct 00:19:07]	19:07
Chris Stewart	Were you excited?	19:07
Wilhelmenia Adams	No, I don't think so. I don't think so.	19:07
Chris Stewart	What was it like to go from Morgan to Second Ward?	19:07
Vialet Robinson	Well, as I say, we [indistinct 00:19:11] Morgan because we went to Second Ward from [indistinct 00:19:15] school from the sixth grade to the seventh grade. And we left and went to the eighth grade over there.	19:10
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	19:18
Vialet Robinson	And all the kids that left Morgan with me, we was in the same class. In the eighth and ninth grade. Until I got in the tenth grade, I stayed in the same homeroom for three yourself because we didn't change homeroom. From 10 3 to 12 2.	19:20
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	19:34
Vialet Robinson	I wasn't excited about something—	19:35
Chris Stewart	Did you hang out? Were your friends from Morgan School, were they—	19:37
Vialet Robinson	I think that was my problem because I didn't have anybody in my class from Morgan School. Nobody. But Mr. Moreland, he was taught physics in the eighth grade. He was [indistinct 00:19:58] He was a good teacher. So when I went there, I was in 8 5. I didn't [indistinct 00:20:08]	19:44
Jean Thompson	Oh.	20:07
Vialet Robinson	I didn't take any class—	20:07
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:20:08]	20:07
Wilhelmenia Adams	I just don't remember. I don't remember any—	20:07
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:20:11] Morgan. Well he in your [indistinct 00:20:15] too.	20:13
Wilhelmenia Adams	With Morgan?	20:15
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	20:15
Vialet Robinson	I think I was in 6 5.	20:15
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	20:15
Vialet Robinson	I just don't remember nobody from Morgan School.	20:21
Jean Thompson	When I went there, we left Morgan and from the seventh to the eighth grade, and we was in 8 5. I went over to the shop. And I didn't take any class on the eighth grade teachers. I had taken my English on the ninth grade, Mr. Wiley. Mr. Fraser. Remember Mr. Fraser? And Ms. Malone, Ms. [indistinct 00:20:45] all of those.	20:24
Chris Stewart	So you didn't take classes from eighth grade teachers? You took them from ninth grade teachers. How come?	20:46
Jean Thompson	Well see, the school was overcrowded. See, we was in 8 5.	20:51
Chris Stewart	You were in, I don't understand. In 85?	20:55
Jean Thompson	8 5.	20:56
Vialet Robinson	No, 8 5.	20:56
Vialet Robinson	Eighth grade but you're either in one, two, three, four, five.	21:00
Chris Stewart	How does that work?	21:03
Vialet Robinson	Classrooms.	21:03
Chris Stewart	Homerooms?	21:03
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, homeroom.	21:03
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	21:03
Chris Stewart	Okay.	21:08
Jean Thompson	See, they had to make a homeroom for us. See—	21:09
Chris Stewart	Because your class was so big.	21:12
Jean Thompson	—yeah. See, we came from Morgan so-	21:13
Vialet Robinson	I was in the eighth grade and I had all eighth grade classes.	21:16
Chris Stewart	So what homeroom were you in? 8—?	21:20
Vialet Robinson	5, 8—I was in 8 4.	21:23
Chris Stewart	You were in 8 4.	21:27
Jean Thompson	I'll tell you, when I was in the tenth grade, I had taken math on Ms. McCorker. And she was eighth grade math teacher then.	21:27
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	21:35
Jean Thompson	And I didn't take anything in front of her.	21:36
Vialet Robinson	I did, I had her.	21:37
Chris Stewart	Yeah—	21:38
Vialet Robinson	She was my [indistinct 00:21:41]	21:39
Chris Stewart	—did you have favorite teachers while you were there?	21:42
Jean Thompson	Yeah, Mr. Levi.	21:45
Vialet Robinson	Mr. Levi?	21:47
Jean Thompson	Yeah.	21:47
Chris Stewart	Why was Mr. Levi your favorite teacher?	21:48
Jean Thompson	I was in his home from 10 3 to 12 2.	21:51
Vialet Robinson	I was in the Morgan-	21:53
Jean Thompson	And Mr. Levi was just Mr. Levi. He made you study. [indistinct 00:22:00] I was taking chemistry in front of him. And Mr. Levi didn't play with you.	21:54
Chris Stewart	Yeah. Because he was a tough teacher.	21:59
Vialet Robinson	But they tell me, you know Mr. Levi will make you stay in after school [indistinct 00:22:12] But they tell me some boys kept him in school. I mean, he was going to keep them in. They went to school. They bought food before they went and were prepared.	22:09
Chris Stewart	Hmm.	22:24
Vialet Robinson	Then, when he finished, he told you all can leave now. They said, "No, we're not ready to go." So [indistinct 00:22:36] ready to go, we [indistinct 00:22:38] he said, "You all can go now."	22:27
Vialet Robinson	"No." And when he stopped saying that, they really kept [indistinct 00:22:46]	22:40
Chris Stewart	Huh.	22:46
Vialet Robinson	I think it was dark when they let him out.	22:46
Chris Stewart	Huh. Did you have a favorite teacher, Mrs. Adams?	22:49
Vialet Robinson	All of them.	22:51
Chris Stewart	You liked them all?	22:52
Vialet Robinson	But I'd say Mr. Devon was my favorite. He was my course teacher as well as my biology teacher.	22:53
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. How come? How come he was your favorite?	22:57
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:23:02]	23:01
Vialet Robinson	I don't know. [indistinct 00:23:04]	23:01
Vialet Robinson	But he just, I don't know, it seemed like he had a special interest in me.	23:08
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	23:13
Vialet Robinson	And he told me, "I want you to continue singing. You got a voice that could take you somewhere." And if I had listened to him, I think I might would have gotten somewhere in life.	23:13
Chris Stewart	Hmm.	23:29
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:23:29] I did good. I don't have nay complaints. It's just [indistinct 00:23:29] but that's not in this [indistinct 00:23:31]	23:29
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	23:30
Vialet Robinson	But there's just something about him and his interest in me.	23:31
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	23:37
Vialet Robinson	That made want to do.	23:38
Chris Stewart	What kind of singing did you do?	23:52
Vialet Robinson	Just chorus singing.	23:52
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	23:52
Vialet Robinson	Chorus.	23:52
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.	23:52
Vialet Robinson	In my church choir.	23:52
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. What kind of extra-curricular activities did the school offer for you? What kinds of extra things—	23:53
Vialet Robinson	Basketball, yeah, I played basketball.	23:57
Vialet Robinson	I did too.	23:58
Chris Stewart	You played basketball. Did you play basketball on a team?	24:00
Vialet Robinson	Yes.	24:03
Chris Stewart	The girl's basketball team.	24:03
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:24:07] Kathleen.	24:03
Chris Stewart	Who was the coach?	24:03
Vialet Robinson	The coach was Mr. Moran. Howard Moran.	24:12
Chris Stewart	And who was your captain?	24:14
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:24:17]	24:15
Chris Stewart	When were you-	24:18
Vialet Robinson	Then we had a lady that came and taught us, a coach. What was her name? Ms. Hill, I think that's her name. Mr. Hill.	24:18
Chris Stewart	Ms. Thompson, you didn't play basketball?	24:26
Vialet Robinson	No, I cheered. I was on cheer squad.	24:29
Chris Stewart	So you were in a cheer squad?	24:33
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	24:34
Chris Stewart	What did you cheer for?	24:34
Vialet Robinson	The football team. Second Ward.	24:34
Wilhelmenia Adams	Second Ward.	24:34
Chris Stewart	The football team.	24:34
Vialet Robinson	And I still holler for Second when they meet, and that name, I holler.	24:40
Vialet Robinson	Yeah.	24:41
Vialet Robinson	And we did all that—	24:43
Chris Stewart	A cheerleader all your life for Second Ward.	24:45
Vialet Robinson	—oh yeah, [indistinct 00:24:47] we will.	24:46
Chris Stewart	Do you remember any of the cheers that you did?	24:48
Wilhelmenia Adams	I remember one. [indistinct 00:24:53] the Second Ward.	24:50
Vialet Robinson	Ra, ra, ra. [indistinct 00:24:57] see, our game was in the daytime.	24:53
Chris Stewart	Uh huh.	24:59
Vialet Robinson	We would leave school and go down, and see, we lived closer. We could walk.	25:00
Chris Stewart	Uh huh.	25:03
Vialet Robinson	And go back [indistinct 00:25:05] we didn't have to pay for it 24 [indistinct 00:25:07] going a game. Now, you have to pay so much money. I don't even go.	25:04
Chris Stewart	Oh, yeah.	25:11
Vialet Robinson	I'd stay home [indistinct 00:25:13] and hear the noise down here.	25:12
Chris Stewart	Where did the football games play, I mean, where did they play?	25:18
Vialet Robinson	In Memorial Stadium.	25:22
Vialet Robinson	In Memorial Stadium.	25:23
Chris Stewart	Did you travel?	25:25
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:25:27]	25:25
Wilhelmenia Adams	—go out of town.	25:25
Chris Stewart	Would you go out of town?	25:25
Vialet Robinson	Oh, yeah, I went to [indistinct 00:25:30] I went lots of places with the team. We did.	25:31
Chris Stewart	And did you cheer throughout-	25:35
Vialet Robinson	Oh yeah.	25:36
Chris Stewart	—all your high school?	25:36
Vialet Robinson	Oh yeah.	25:37
Chris Stewart	How about the two of you? Did you play baseball, basketball throughout all of high school?	25:39
Wilhelmenia Adams	No—	25:42
Vialet Robinson	I did tenth and eleventh grade. Twelfth grade, I didn't play.	25:42
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. How did you learn to play basketball?	25:49
Vialet Robinson	With gym class.	25:50
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm. [indistinct 00:25:54]	25:53
Chris Stewart	Did you also play it with other teams from around the area?	25:53
Vialet Robinson	We played [indistinct 00:25:58] but the other team, [indistinct 00:25:58]	25:57
Chris Stewart	Uh huh.	25:57
Vialet Robinson	And we played them.	25:57
Chris Stewart	Uh huh.	25:59
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	25:59
Chris Stewart	Tell me about the rivalry between West Charlotte and Second Ward.	26:08
Jean Thompson	When we was coming off the buses, they—	26:12
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:26:15]	26:12
Wilhelmenia Adams	Bush and—	26:12
Chris Stewart	Clinton?	26:18
Wilhelmenia Adams	—no, Bush and—what's that man in the [indistinct 00:26:22] what's his name? [indistinct 00:26:27]	26:19
Chris Stewart	Oh, yeah.	26:21
Wilhelmenia Adams	But when our rivals would come from a girl from Second Ward, maybe they going with a boy from West Charlotte and they going to get on because they going with their, you know, it's—	26:30
Chris Stewart	Is that where the rivalry came from? Well what—	26:38
Jean Thompson	It was some of it like that, not all. It's just when we played football against West Charlotte and Second Ward win the game, West Charlotte better not start nothing.	26:43
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	26:55
Jean Thompson	Because we wasn't all going to start a fight. When West Charlotte win, oh, you going to have a fight. Because Second Ward School was going to start a fight.	26:55
Chris Stewart	Yeah.	26:59
Jean Thompson	And see, lots of those kids, some of them lived on this side of town. But they went to West Charlotte. Because it was a new school.	27:01
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	27:07
Jean Thompson	They didn't want to go to Second Ward.	27:07
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	27:08
Jean Thompson	And like that, and they get to calling us names. And we didn't like it.	27:09
Chris Stewart	What was the difference? What—the difference between the student population of Second Ward and West Charlotte?	27:14
Wilhelmenia Adams	We had more students.	27:21
Chris Stewart	Uh huh.	27:22
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	27:22
Chris Stewart	How come students who lived over here and maybe closer to Second Ward went to West Charlotte?	27:24
Wilhelmenia Adams	They just wanted to go. They didn't want to go to Second Ward. They were, "I don't want to go to Second Ward. I want to go—" [indistinct 00:27:35] they had a bunch of them. [indistinct 00:27:37] I know some of them went and they came back to Second Ward because my two cousins went but one never did come back, the other one did. Doody came back.	27:29
Chris Stewart	What was it about West Charlotte that made them want to go—	27:46
Wilhelmenia Adams	Oh, it was because it was a new school.	27:48
Chris Stewart	Oh, okay.	27:50
Wilhelmenia Adams	Hmm.	27:50
Chris Stewart	Okay. So, the teachers that you had at West Charlotte, did they discipline you?	27:54
Wilhelmenia Adams	You mean at Second Ward?	28:00
Chris Stewart	Uh huh.	28:01
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah.	28:01
Chris Stewart	I'm sorry, it's Second Ward, yeah.	28:02
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, they keep you and put you in detention hall.	28:03
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:28:10] after school.	28:10
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	28:10
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:28:10] a bunch of them.	28:10
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	28:10
Jean Thompson	Even going to the library. You can get put out of the library. Because we [indistinct 00:28:15] and we went in and were going to take over the library. Ms. [indistinct 00:28:19] put us out of there.	28:16
Wilhelmenia Adams	I didn't have [indistinct 00:28:22] to Mr. [indistinct 00:28:22] he was always—	28:21
Jean Thompson	Oh, Mr. [indistinct 00:28:22] I was looking in the auditorium to see what time it was one day, he come grabbing me, talking to me. What I was looking in there for. I told him, "I'm looking for the time."	28:22
Chris Stewart	What was the name? What was his name?	28:35
Jean Thompson	Mr. [indistinct 00:28:36]	28:35
Chris Stewart	Possum?	28:35
Jean Thompson	Yeah.	28:35
Chris Stewart	Oh, a nickname?	28:35
Bill Crumpton	Was that the nickname the students gave him?	28:36
Jean Thompson	Yeah, we called him possum so much that he started calling his own self possum. Possum [indistinct 00:28:49]	28:39
Chris Stewart	How come he got that name?	28:50
Vialet Robinson	Because he was sneaky.	28:51
Vialet Robinson	He is sneaky, he would sneak up on you.	28:51
Chris Stewart	What was his—was he the-	28:54
Jean Thompson	He the principal.	28:57
Chris Stewart	—he was the principal. Uh huh. Did the teachers ever play favorites to the students?	29:00
Wilhelmenia Adams	I'm sure they did.	29:05
Vialet Robinson	Yeah.	29:06
Jean Thompson	Oh, yeah, yeah. I can tell you one thing. At both school, if you was Black, you wasn't never been Ms. Second Ward.	29:06
Chris Stewart	Really?	29:14
Jean Thompson	Yeah. They always was picking somebody—	29:15
Vialet Robinson	Light.	29:16
Jean Thompson	—light. And then they was gone.	29:16
Chris Stewart	Oh.	29:16
Vialet Robinson	Mr. [indistinct 00:29:21] I mean, Mr. Moreland, he was my favorite.	29:24
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	29:26
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:29:27] I worked in the cafeteria.	29:26
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.	29:32
Vialet Robinson	And I always take care of Mr. [indistinct 00:29:33]	29:32
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	29:32
Vialet Robinson	I mean Mr. Moreland.	29:32
Chris Stewart	Were there other times where students who were light skinned were favored rather than dark skinned students?	29:34
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	29:41
Chris Stewart	How?	29:41
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:29:42] the twins, the Friday twins. I'm talking about all of them [indistinct 00:29:48] I got the pictures of every one of them at home.	29:41
Vialet Robinson	Well, you see, my sister worked in the office and then she was in that class.	29:53
Jean Thompson	Now, I'm talking about Ms. Second Ward and Ms. Homecoming. That's what I'm talking about. I got pictures of them. That's what I'm talking about. Ms. Second Ward and Ms. Homecoming. I got pictures of every one from [indistinct 00:30:08] on down.	29:59
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.	30:06
Bill Crumpton	Did they choose these queens because of their complexion?	30:17
Jean Thompson	I don't know. I just can't remember—	30:17
Wilhelmenia Adams	It seems like it.	30:17
Jean Thompson	—yeah. Because we didn't vote on it.	30:18
Wilhelmenia Adams	It always seemed like they would be the winners.	30:20
Bill Crumpton	And were they all light skinned?	30:24
Wilhelmenia Adams	Hmm.	30:24
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:30:26]	30:24
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	30:24
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:30:28]	30:24
Chris Stewart	What kinds of values do you think the people who were really important to you? Like your parents. Your grandfather, your grandmother, you said, or your teachers. What kind of values do you think they instilled in you? What kinds of things did they teach you about how to live your life?	30:30
Vialet Robinson	Well, at that stage, for us people, this is one thing they really made stick out in my mind, that people were just people. But it was two kind of people. Which they always said, there's two kind of people. There's the good person. And there's the bad person.	30:45
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	31:01
Vialet Robinson	But other people are just people.	31:03
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	31:05
Vialet Robinson	And I mean, that's really—	31:05
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.	31:07
Vialet Robinson	—that stuck with me. And it still does. And when I worked, I worked at a little button shop. And it was a lady there, I'd say she's passed now. Mrs. Copp. Do you know she was talking to me about another White lady. And I said to myself, [indistinct 00:31:23] who she talking to." And then, she [indistinct 00:31:25] she said it but she did. She said, "You know anyone told me that she paid this woman 25 or 30 dollars a week." This Black woman, 25, 35 dollars a week for working for her.	31:07
Vialet Robinson	And I said, "Black?" And she said, "She—" she forgot who she was talking to.	31:41
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	31:49
Vialet Robinson	She didn't see Black on me like she see White on her. Because I was [indistinct 00:31:55] so.	31:50
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	31:55
Vialet Robinson	And I guess, she was doing the same thing. But see, that wasn't important. What she was saying.	31:59
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	32:03
Vialet Robinson	People are just people. I don't care who it is. There's good Black people, good White people, good every. That's just the way it is. That's what I—	32:05
Chris Stewart	What about you, Ms. Thompson, do you remember?	32:09
Wilhelmenia Adams	Well, [indistinct 00:32:13] my grandparents always said, "Tend to your own business."	32:12
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	32:16
Wilhelmenia Adams	And always told me, "You got any money, know how to use it. Use it right."	32:20
Chris Stewart	Hmm.	32:26
Wilhelmenia Adams	And I do tend to my own business. Now sometimes [indistinct 00:32:32] don't see me in days.	32:30
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. What about your teachers? Did your teachers instill anything?	32:34
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, mine always told me what I told [indistinct 00:32:41] that you can be anything that you want to be.	32:38
Jean Thompson	You want to be.	32:44
Vialet Robinson	Just strive and keep your head up high. And don't let anybody talk you down.	32:50
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	32:51
Vialet Robinson	Because you are just as good as anybody else. [indistinct 00:32:54]	32:51
Jean Thompson	Now, just [indistinct 00:32:56] the day of the graduation [indistinct 00:32:57]	32:56
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	32:57
Jean Thompson	I want to say, like I told you all already, it was all [indistinct 00:33:01] up there. And she's president of senior class. And she was on the honors society. All the rest was Black.	32:59
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	33:05
Jean Thompson	And that my granddaughter, she was a junior marshal. She was on [indistinct 00:33:07] society. And, as I say, I always try to tell Kim the right things to do. Not the wrong this. Always, I'm trying to tell her do right, not wrong. So we left there. And she said, "Let's go to Aunt Neena's." And I didn't even see [indistinct 00:33:34] myself. Kim was looking for [indistinct 00:33:36]	33:06
Jean Thompson	And she's [indistinct 00:33:37] me. She crazy about me. And, honey, we were straight over there. And got the two devils.	33:33
Chris Stewart	Hmm.	33:42
Vialet Robinson	That's the little—	33:43
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:33:45] on that now. And we went, I didn't see her [indistinct 00:33:48] but she was looking for [indistinct 00:33:50] because we left our graduation to go to George graduation.	33:45
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. Can you tell me, again, I'm thinking about values and these kinds of things. Can you tell me the point at which you considered yourself to be an adult woman? When you thought that people weren't treating you as a child anymore. Or that you felt you were an adult woman.	33:54
Vialet Robinson	I told you about me when I thought I was old enough to wear stockings, and my daddy wouldn't let me wear them. I was 16. And I thought I was grown—	34:15
Chris Stewart	So when you could wear stockings, then—	34:24
Vialet Robinson	—mm-hmm. I felt like [indistinct 00:34:28]	34:25
Chris Stewart	—mm-hmm.	34:25
Vialet Robinson	But that was the only thing [indistinct 00:34:32] I wanted to wear stockings.	34:30
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	34:30
Vialet Robinson	That was just something that I just felt like I had to do. And I thought I was old enough [indistinct 00:34:40]	34:32
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	34:40
Vialet Robinson	To wear.	34:42
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	34:42
Vialet Robinson	And when the day came that I can wear stockings that made me feel like I had really arrived.	34:45
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What about you, Ms. Thompson?	34:50
Jean Thompson	Well I didn't wear stockings until I was a junior in high school.	34:53
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	34:56
Jean Thompson	And back then, World War II was going on. And we couldn't afford it. We used to do down to [indistinct 00:35:03] and buy the stockings. And too expensive to wear. We only wear them on Sunday to church, then come home and take them off. Just like then, when you had two or three pairs socks. And you had to come home and wash those things out.	34:57
Jean Thompson	Nowadays, kids, they going to throw them down in the—[indistinct 00:35:24] and say nothing of it. And when we had to wash our socks and things out at night.	35:22
Chris Stewart	What was the time that you thought that you felt like an adult person, adult woman?	35:30
Jean Thompson	When I got married.	35:36
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	35:38
Jean Thompson	When I left home.	35:40
Chris Stewart	When was that?	35:41
Jean Thompson	1952.	35:41
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. What about you, Ms. Robinson?	35:47
Vialet Robinson	I don't remember. I got married late.	35:53
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	35:56
Vialet Robinson	And I just worked. I just moved here, go to work, come home, you know.	35:58
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	36:01
Vialet Robinson	And I don't know.	36:01
Chris Stewart	It wasn't something that you really thought about? You didn't really think about it?	36:06
Vialet Robinson	No, because my sister, when she started taking [inaudible 00:36:13] when my nother told her that she gave up on me, she didn't start to come until mother told her. But when mother told her, she may as well have told me. Because I started right then too.	36:12
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	36:21
Vialet Robinson	And so, you see, I just don't remember of anything that really changed my life from—so no, I just don't remember.	36:23
Chris Stewart	When you were in high school, did you date? You said you had people come to sit on the porch. Did you date?	36:31
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, I dated but—	36:37
Chris Stewart	What did you do on dates?	36:38
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:36:41] you walked to get ice cream.	36:39
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	36:39
Vialet Robinson	And then you come back and we played rackets a lot.	36:44
Chris Stewart	What did you play?	36:45
Vialet Robinson	All kind—	36:46
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:36:48] that's what—	36:49
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:36:49]	36:49
Jean Thompson	—yeah, and see, my sister and her, [indistinct 00:36:50] sitting on thank you porch crying.	36:49
Vialet Robinson	In love. In love—	36:49
Jean Thompson	He's like [indistinct 00:36:50] how did my sister—	36:49
Chris Stewart	Who did you like to listen to?	36:49
Vialet Robinson	My sister and her.	36:49
Chris Stewart	What kind of blues did you like to listen to?	36:49
Vialet Robinson	All of them.	36:49
Jean Thompson	All of them. [indistinct 00:36:50] I said, "What is y'all doing out here crying?"	36:49
Vialet Robinson	It hit the spot.	36:50
Chris Stewart	Uh huh.	36:50
Vialet Robinson	I'm telling you I was too busy putting the people together [indistinct 00:37:16]	37:13
Vialet Robinson	That guy, Rick-	37:14
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah.	37:17
Vialet Robinson	—Rick, he was the [indistinct 00:37:19]	37:18
Jean Thompson	Yeah, Rick, I can't think of his name now. Ricky [indistinct 00:37:21]	37:18
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:37:21] the first one [indistinct 00:37:21]	37:20
Jean Thompson	Hmm.	37:20
Chris Stewart	What did you—	37:20
Vialet Robinson	But we not going to go into that.	37:20
Wilhelmenia Adams	Into what?	37:20
Vialet Robinson	That first—[indistinct 00:37:21] who is he? Tell me who he is.	37:20
Wilhelmenia Adams	Hmm.	37:20
Vialet Robinson	Oh, Menia, you know.	37:20
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:37:21] yeah.	37:20
Vialet Robinson	Oh, you know, when you came over the Second Ward, remember?.	37:21
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm. Hmm, that was my first husband. Oh he had this big car. This big Packard car.	37:45
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:37:51]	37:48
Chris Stewart	Super car.	37:53
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah, she [indistinct 00:37:55]	37:53
Jean Thompson	You going to shut up, then, don't get me started.	37:55
Chris Stewart	Now, you can go ahead and get started.	37:59
Vialet Robinson	But [indistinct 00:38:08]	38:07
Jean Thompson	Hmm. Mm-hmm.	38:07
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:38:08] it didn't matter, it was going to get a long [indistinct 00:38:08]	38:07
Chris Stewart	So did you fall in love with the car first, and then the man?	38:08
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:38:12] was the car.	38:13
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah, that was the car.	38:13
Chris Stewart	I take it you didn't get along—	38:17
Vialet Robinson	—well, he [indistinct 00:38:20]	38:19
Jean Thompson	I knew him, I knew him because he was from a agency.	38:20
Wilhelmenia Adams	Everybody knew him.	38:21
Jean Thompson	We all knew him.	38:24
Vialet Robinson	I didn't know him that much.	38:28
Jean Thompson	I did.	38:28
Vialet Robinson	Because when they were moving in the Second Ward, that's what I—	38:31
Jean Thompson	They were the best times [indistinct 00:38:32]	38:31
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah, over there.	38:31
Chris Stewart	Really?	38:31
Vialet Robinson	Black or White.	38:31
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:38:35]	38:31
Chris Stewart	Where was it?	38:31
Wilhelmenia Adams	194—	38:31
Jean Thompson	I was in it.	38:31
Chris Stewart	Where was it?	38:31
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:38:40] my church [indistinct 00:38:42]	38:31
Chris Stewart	Really?	38:31
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah.	38:31
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:38:44] and I didn't want to be in nobody else's. I didn't even want to be in mine. And I could [indistinct 00:38:45] talking about, I could have outdone her. Because I understand [indistinct 00:38:45] they we're the ones good for me. Uh, uh. But I just didn't have an interest in it.	38:44
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	38:58
Vialet Robinson	They were going, really, from here.	38:58
Chris Stewart	Tell me about your wedding, Ms. Adams.	39:02
Jean Thompson	She had the prettiest wedding that I ever went to. [indistinct 00:39:07] up the street. Now, we say [indistinct 00:39:09] they all say [indistinct 00:39:11] We old folk, we still think [indistinct 00:39:13]	39:04
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, I'll show you because I'm the same—	39:12
Jean Thompson	Yeah. And that church was jammed with White people, Black people, every kind of people. That girl has more silverware. See, at this house, were loaded with stuff. This is her mother and father gave her a wedding. But my sister [indistinct 00:39:37] but don't want ever want me to get married to a [indistinct 00:39:41]	39:20
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	39:40
Jean Thompson	My sister cry. She cried and cried. [indistinct 00:39:44] to cry.	39:40
Chris Stewart	How come?	39:40
Jean Thompson	We all [indistinct 00:39:46] and she didn't want her to marry so—	39:40
Vialet Robinson	I would like a [indistinct 00:39:50] 17.	39:40
Jean Thompson	—uh huh.	39:40
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:39:53]	39:40
Chris Stewart	How long did you stay married?	39:54
Wilhelmenia Adams	About three years. But it was in and out. I married, we went back down the street again. And I [indistinct 00:40:03] and come home. He's getting mad, he just mean—	39:55
Chris Stewart	He was mean?	40:06
Wilhelmenia Adams	—I didn't know that.	40:06
Chris Stewart	Hmm.	40:06
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah. He was mean.	40:06
Vialet Robinson	I didn't realize that. I just thought—	40:08
Wilhelmenia Adams	I didn't know [indistinct 00:40:10] I really didn't know her. She was—	40:09
Chris Stewart	Did he hit you?	40:10
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yes, he did.	40:14
Vialet Robinson	Because my sister was going with friends, into town, she was going with his brother [indistinct 00:40:19] oh, he was nice. I had—	40:15
Wilhelmenia Adams	Who?	40:21
Vialet Robinson	—[indistinct 00:40:21] he couldn't have been.	40:21
Wilhelmenia Adams	No, he wasn't. [indistinct 00:40:25] he's still here. He came to see me this summer when he was here.	40:23
Chris Stewart	Did you leave him? Or did he leave you?	40:29
Wilhelmenia Adams	I left him.	40:42
Chris Stewart	Good.	40:42
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:40:43] do anything [indistinct 00:40:43]	40:42
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:40:43]	40:42
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:40:43] go along.	40:42
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:40:43]	40:42
Chris Stewart	So after three years, you left?	40:43
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	40:44
Chris Stewart	Did you come back here?	40:45
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yes, ma'am.	40:46
Chris Stewart	You stayed here?	40:47
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yes, ma'am.	40:47
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	40:52
Wilhelmenia Adams	Then I got hooked up again. [indistinct 00:40:53]	40:52
Chris Stewart	On a wild school trip.	40:55
Wilhelmenia Adams	Hmm. But [indistinct 00:41:01] I learned my lesson well. I learned from my experience.	40:56
Chris Stewart	What did you learn?	41:06
Wilhelmenia Adams	Not to do it again.	41:07
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. How long were you married the second time?	41:10
Wilhelmenia Adams	15 years.	41:12
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. How many kids did you have?	41:14
Wilhelmenia Adams	I had three. Three girls.	41:16
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	41:19
Wilhelmenia Adams	And two living now.	41:19
Chris Stewart	Was that with the second marriage?	41:21
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	41:22
Chris Stewart	Do you have any kids with the first marriage?	41:23
Wilhelmenia Adams	No. Hmm, hmm.	41:24
Chris Stewart	What about you, Ms. Thompson? When did you get married?	41:26
Jean Thompson	I got married in 52.	41:28
Chris Stewart	You got married what year?	41:29
Jean Thompson	52.	41:32
Vialet Robinson	1948.	41:32
Chris Stewart	48 the first time and then—okay. And how did you meet your husband?	41:33
Jean Thompson	Right at church.	41:37
Chris Stewart	Oh, really?	41:38
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	41:39
Chris Stewart	What did he do?	41:40
Jean Thompson	What did he do, what? You mean work?	41:42
Chris Stewart	Yeah.	41:44
Jean Thompson	He worked for 40 something years for [indistinct 00:41:50] supply.	41:45
Chris Stewart	Uh huh.	41:50
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	41:51
Chris Stewart	For what supply?	41:51
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:41:53]	41:52
Chris Stewart	[indistinct 00:41:53] supply, okay.	41:52
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.	41:52
Chris Stewart	Okay.	41:56
Jean Thompson	He retired from there. [indistinct 00:41:58] they ever had was him.	41:56
Chris Stewart	What did you do to court? And that's for everybody.	41:59
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:42:03] I walked up now and got a ice cream just like [indistinct 00:42:08] back then, it wasn't nothing for Black, you can't do in this community.	42:07
Chris Stewart	Right.	42:10
Jean Thompson	And then, we would go down to Mary Mac'S place. On Baldwin Avenue. And call a hole in the wall. But she had a little café there. And we'd go down to Mary's. Everybody from across town would come over to Mary's. And we'd all our friends from school there at Mary's.	42:11
Chris Stewart	At Mary's café?	42:26
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm. And then, we'd go back to church. [indistinct 00:42:43]	42:28
Chris Stewart	Would you—	42:44
Jean Thompson	That's why everybody [indistinct 00:42:44] here in [indistinct 00:42:44] we went to everybody's church. My grandma tells me that I have to prayer, I was a Lutheran. Back to church, well, they had vacation Bible school. We'd be so glad when the next one starts. When we can go to vacation Bible school.	42:44
Chris Stewart	Uh huh.	42:50
Jean Thompson	We didn't care who [indistinct 00:42:52] my grandma or [indistinct 00:42:54] that's good. [indistinct 00:42:55] we go straight to the House of Prayer. And there was [indistinct 00:43:00] we had two holding this church here. One on Lutheran Street and one on Main Street.	42:51
Chris Stewart	Uh huh.	43:04
Jean Thompson	My grandma didn't care what [indistinct 00:43:07] and we went to church.	43:04
Chris Stewart	Right. What about the House of Prayer church? What was—	43:08
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:43:12]	43:11
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:43:12] but I tell you one thing, they got the best peoples in that church. They don't get in trouble. No, sir, they don't get in trouble.	43:11
Wilhelmenia Adams	But the House of Prayer—I've been a member of the House of Prayer. My momma put me in there when I was a baby. I don't really know when I, you know—[indistinct 00:43:28] okay, they have service six nights a week, seven nights a week.	43:19
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	43:33
Wilhelmenia Adams	Every night of the week. We had somewhere to go. And they always had programs. Oh, and they have a cafeteria and they always have food. [indistinct 00:43:44] down on Long Street, they used to have—	43:34
Jean Thompson	Soup kitchens.	43:45
Wilhelmenia Adams	—[indistinct 00:43:48]	43:45
Jean Thompson	Soup kitchens.	43:45
Wilhelmenia Adams	But they had a whole lot of kitchens and things there.	43:45
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.	43:45
Wilhelmenia Adams	I mean, I've always been there. I've worked in there too. I mean, I have worked in there.	43:54
Chris Stewart	What about the Holiness Churches. Tell me—	44:00
Wilhelmenia Adams	We can tell you about them [indistinct 00:44:03]	44:02
Chris Stewart	—yeah, and—	44:02
Jean Thompson	We just go.	44:06
Chris Stewart	—you just go—	44:07
Jean Thompson	We have friends, you know, you don't show up, a person invites you to their church, you don't tell them, "No, I don't go to your church. I'm a Baptist. I'm a from the House of Prayer." No, you don't do that. Lots of people do but I don't. And I go. Now, we got Ms. Wallason up here. We've known her all my life. She has church up on Darn Street. I go to [indistinct 00:44:26]	44:07
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	44:26
Jean Thompson	But you just, you know, I don't down anybody's church.	44:27
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.	44:30
Jean Thompson	But the Holiness Church, you know, they a little different with everybody else so—	44:31
Chris Stewart	When you went to go visit, the Holiness Church, how was it different?	44:36
Jean Thompson	Oh they just say [indistinct 00:44:42]	44:40
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	44:43
Jean Thompson	And they, you know, they sing along and they shout a lot. It's very [indistinct 00:44:49] I know song too.	44:45
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	44:50
Jean Thompson	Because I was in the Holiness Church with my cousin, me and her niece.	44:50
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	44:50
Jean Thompson	Was being ordained. [indistinct 00:44:58] and I [indistinct 00:45:00]	44:50
Chris Stewart	Hmm.	44:50
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	45:00
Chris Stewart	When she was ordained, she was—	45:03

Chris Stewart	— a minister?	0:03
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	0:03
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	0:03
Chris Stewart	What kind of minister?	0:04
Jean Thompson	Holies.	0:05
Wilhelmenia Adams	The Holies.	0:05
Chris Stewart	Really?	0:07
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	0:07
Chris Stewart	And you all went there?	0:07
Jean Thompson	Yeah, she was a Baptist, and then she went over. Yeah, it was beautiful. That girl, oh—	0:08
Chris Stewart	When was that?	0:14
Jean Thompson	About two years ago now.	0:15
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah.	0:16
Chris Stewart	Wow, wow.	0:17
Jean Thompson	Now she goes down, and she ministers to people in the community, if she know you sick. It just makes you feel good when you know that a child was born in this world, when she was a baby, to do things like that. She's just beautiful.	0:19
Chris Stewart	I'd like to talk to you all a little bit about traveling. Did you ever travel either by train, or bus, or car places?	0:35
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	0:41
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, yeah. I have, I've been in train, plane, bus.	0:44
Jean Thompson	Well I don't mean to hate. Me? Tell them I'm a world traveler.	0:48
Wilhelmenia Adams	Well I had been on— from New Orleans.	0:53
Vialet Robinson	Well, you take the United House of Prayer for All People. We on these luxury lines. They're really buses, and they come from Winnipeg county.	0:54
Chris Stewart	Winnipeg?	1:07
Vialet Robinson	Yeah. And when they roll out from Winnipeg County they are paid for, every House of Prayer is paid for, every bus is paid for. When we get anything you can bet people get their money right then and there, we don't owe nobody, not nobody. Now we used to be worth millions, but we worth billions now. They wonder how the the House of Prayer get so far so fast. We love what we do, and we love the House of Prayer, we love people. We love our neighbors, we love our sisters and brothers. We travel from the east all the way to California. We cover this continent.	1:08
Chris Stewart	How about during segregation? Did you travel much during segregation?	1:45
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, we did.	1:49
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm. I have traveled all my life, my uncle was a pullman porter and we—	1:50
Chris Stewart	He was a pullman porter?	1:54
Jean Thompson	Yes, my uncle and my grandmother. Then my son, before he passed away, he worked for [indistinct 00:02:00], and we would get on the plane anytime and go.	1:55
Chris Stewart	Do you remember traveling on Jim Crow cars?	2:05
Jean Thompson	Oh, yes.	2:07
Wilhelmenia Adams	Oh, yeah.	2:07
Jean Thompson	Wow, right in front of the locomotive, then. The locomotive.	2:09
Wilhelmenia Adams	Because there was no other transportation and when we went in all the way we had to sit at the back of the bus. I remember that.	2:12
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, and [indistinct 00:02:15]—	2:15
Chris Stewart	Where would you travel to on the train? [indistinct 00:02:17].	2:16
Jean Thompson	I would go to New York and Washington.	2:17
Wilhelmenia Adams	I'd go to Washington, [indistinct 00:02:19]. I thought that was something back then traveling for poor people. [indistinct 00:02:26].	2:20
Chris Stewart	How would you prepare to go on the train?	2:27
Jean Thompson	Have a chicken box.	2:29
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm, cage [indistinct 00:02:30].	2:29
Chris Stewart	A chicken box?	2:31
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	2:33
Jean Thompson	Oh, yeah.	2:34
Chris Stewart	Obviously, you have chicken in it, right? What else would you bring?	2:35
Vialet Robinson	Momma would bring everything on it.	2:37
Wilhelmenia Adams	Sandwiches and whatever.	2:40
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:02:47] and sodas and things. Yeah. 'Cause you couldn't go to the dinner then, because they weren't there. the [indistinct 00:02:47], then.	2:41
Chris Stewart	Right.	2:47
Vialet Robinson	When most of my traveling was by train, was when Tracy was in school and [indistinct 00:02:52] had to go, uh, out of town, like Raleigh or somewhere. I had done more traveling by bus and by plane than I have train, but I can say I went by train to Tracy. She was a delicate little girl and so I schooled her sometime. She was gifted and the top of the class. She got trophies from economical— Oh, she was just a good little girl for a school teacher.	2:49
Chris Stewart	When you traveled by bus, were you sitting in the back of the bus?	3:22
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yes, ma'am.	3:24
Chris Stewart	Can you remember any incidences on the bus?	3:25
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-mmm, no.	3:27
Chris Stewart	Where something happened or—	3:28
Wilhelmenia Adams	No, I never had that.	3:31
Vialet Robinson	I got [indistinct 00:03:36].	3:33
Wilhelmenia Adams	I've heard a lot of people having that problem and I've never heard of them.	3:33
Vialet Robinson	I never had no trouble with people. I don't know, I just [indistinct 00:03:38].	3:37
Chris Stewart	We talked to a man yesterday who was from Brooklyn and was telling me— This Mr. Williams was from Brooklyn and he said he remembered he was a—	3:38
Jean Thompson	Was it Charlie Williams?	3:45
Chris Stewart	Jimmy Williams is his name.	3:46
Wilhelmenia Adams	Everybody knows [indistinct 00:03:47].	3:46
Chris Stewart	He's actually a member of the Second Ward Alumni Association.	3:48
Jean Thompson	I might know if I see him.	3:51
Chris Stewart	Yeah. He told me that he remembered as a little boy riding on a bus with his mom and his mom was real tired because she had just gotten done working and she sat right in front of the back door of the bus and the bus driver stopped the bus and told her that she either had to get off or sit in the back and she wouldn't. She did do it.	3:52
Bill Crumpton	[indistinct 00:04:25] stand because the money was [indistinct 00:04:25].	4:18
Chris Stewart	Seats in the back, right.	4:21
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm, get her out of the bus.	4:22
Chris Stewart	Right.	4:24
Wilhelmenia Adams	There was a line, and you wouldn't [indistinct 00:04:25].	4:24
Chris Stewart	Do you remember the signs? The Jim Crow signs?	4:25
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm. When this was going around was working [indistinct 00:04:31] but Wilhelmenia do you remember when you and Francis [indistinct 00:04:33] and I took up the back. The bus had a long seat in the back.	4:29
Wilhelmenia Adams	Back, back.	4:38
Vialet Robinson	One long [indistinct 00:04:46] seat on one side.	4:38
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm, they tried.	4:39
Vialet Robinson	We took those three seats on [indistinct 00:04:46] bus and it was crowded with White people. We would not move and weren't in no segregated— We just did it. I don't know, why did we do that?	4:42
Chris Stewart	What's that?	4:55
Wilhelmenia Adams	The Devil.	4:56
Vialet Robinson	It had to be that.	4:57
Chris Stewart	So you're talking about the long seat up in the front? You took it [indistinct 00:05:01]—	4:59
Vialet Robinson	No, it was the long seat in the back.	5:02
Chris Stewart	— in the back and then— Oh.	5:03
Vialet Robinson	And then two on each side.	5:04
Chris Stewart	Okay, and it was crowded. The bus was crowded?	5:05
Vialet Robinson	Oh, yeah. Standing up. Yeah, standing up.	5:08
Jean Thompson	Well I will tell you one thing. When the streetcar was running, you could sit anywhere on the streetcar and be good.	5:10
Chris Stewart	You could?	5:15
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	5:15
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:05:15].	5:15
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:05:17]. Many days, I [indistinct 00:05:18] a blind man [indistinct 00:05:19] like [indistinct 00:05:19]. Get him down here to six and a half stops to Queen's Road. Had stopped then and ride down them backs to Queen was six and half and we could hear the streetcar coming from way down towards Queen's [indistinct 00:05:33].	5:18
Vialet Robinson	Yeah. [indistinct 00:05:34] every morning. We used to go to the bus stop and—	5:34
Chris Stewart	When was the streetcar running?	5:36
Vialet Robinson	Oh, Lord.	5:38
Jean Thompson	It began '38. Mm-hmm.	5:39
Vialet Robinson	It was seven cents. Seven cents, one way. I could get on Queen's Road down here, the streetcar. Going to town, doing my shopping and get transferred with that same transfer, I could come back on and I [indistinct 00:05:57].	5:40
Chris Stewart	Why do you think that the streetcar wasn't segregated?	5:58
Jean Thompson	Because we had a conductor at the front and one at the back and when you get on, you just flop down. Have you noticed those trolleys and things in Washington?	6:01
Vialet Robinson	And see, then it might've been a problem.	6:13
Chris Stewart	Oh, it goes both ways.	6:15
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, and you turn the seats back. You can turn the seat and that might be why it wasn't [indistinct 00:06:21] since you had to—	6:17
Wilhelmenia Adams	You not never talk about that.	6:23
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:06:24] because I don't remember. I used to remember [indistinct 00:06:26].	6:25
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah?	6:26
Bill Crumpton	[indistinct 00:06:28] back [indistinct 00:06:28].	6:28
Wilhelmenia Adams	Oh, but the bus had a line. Yeah. Well, you had to stand.	6:29
Jean Thompson	Yeah, the bus had a line, but the streetcar didn't.	6:31
Wilhelmenia Adams	I hadn't thought about that.	6:35
Vialet Robinson	The streetcar didn't and then—	6:37
Jean Thompson	Then streetcar didn't run all over town.	6:38
Wilhelmenia Adams	No, it didn't. [indistinct 00:06:37]	6:39
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:06:37] in line.	6:41
Wilhelmenia Adams	It was going right out here.	6:43
Chris Stewart	So does the streetcar pretty much stay in this general area, then?	6:43
Wilhelmenia Adams	It did.	6:46
Jean Thompson	It had to in a [indistinct 00:06:45].	6:46
Wilhelmenia Adams	It didn't [indistinct 00:06:46].	6:46
Jean Thompson	We would go to [indistinct 00:06:50] was everything.	6:49
Chris Stewart	Do you remember growing up, ever feeling like you were being treated like a second class citizen?	6:53
Jean Thompson	Actually, I haven't.	7:01
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:07:01].	7:01
Wilhelmenia Adams	No. I heard a lot of people say they have, but I haven't. Now, in my work, I've always worked with middle class people, White. My parents did. We never did have just negative feelings of White people.	7:03
Vialet Robinson	Right. [indistinct 00:07:17]—	7:17
Wilhelmenia Adams	And [indistinct 00:07:18] treat me bad.	7:18
Vialet Robinson	And when I work—	7:20
Wilhelmenia Adams	I can't instill that in my children and they don't understand when they hear other children talk, their parents talk about how mean the White people were.	7:22
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:07:28].	7:28
Wilhelmenia Adams	And I never had that problem.	7:31
Vialet Robinson	And when I—	7:31
Wilhelmenia Adams	We didn't have it and my children never encountered it. I didn't have it.	7:32
Vialet Robinson	The first job I—	7:37
Wilhelmenia Adams	Growing up and I didn't have it in my years of working.	7:38
Vialet Robinson	The first job I had when I started working was at JB Abby and Company.	7:42
Chris Stewart	DB Abby?	7:48
Wilhelmenia Adams	J.	7:48
Vialet Robinson	JB Abby. J, JB Abby and Company. Never was enough time and [indistinct 00:07:57]. No one. I never had no problems working at JB Abby and Company after—	7:49
Vialet Robinson	Even Mr. Abby. Anybody, any of the people in the office. I ain't done— I don't know. I just can't say what it was. I just never had no problem.	8:01
Chris Stewart	Let's talk about work for a little bit. What kind of work did you all do?	8:13
Vialet Robinson	Well, as I said, I worked at JB Abby and Company.	8:17
Chris Stewart	What did you do there?	8:19
Vialet Robinson	I was a elevator operator.	8:20
Chris Stewart	Oh, okay.	8:22
Vialet Robinson	Then I worked on the third floor which I had a lot to do. Dealing with all the sales people and stuff and I actually go to the office to take money out of the cash register. Go get change for them if they were busy. Busy days, I could take money from them and go get them change. Come back and [indistinct 00:08:41].	8:23
Vialet Robinson	I left that. I worked at MacLowan's. Most of this, I get good experience working from Abbey's to MacLowan's. You know, and I worked at MacLowan's, I was a waitress. They used to have a [indistinct 00:08:59] in the back and I hooked up with a good— Well, I enjoyed all my jobs, then I went into business. I was in business for two to five years. I had a sewing shop.	8:41
Chris Stewart	You did?	9:11
Vialet Robinson	And I done monogramming when it was outstanding. I'd done a monogrammed sock, I worked for race drivers, wrestlers. Thunderbolt pants and all them [indistinct 00:09:28]. You've probably seen some of my work on television. I got work overseas. I got work everywhere.	9:12
Chris Stewart	Do you have business records from your business?	9:34
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	9:39
Chris Stewart	You do? I might want to talk to you a little bit about those business records, maybe. What about you, Miss Thompson. What kind of work did you do?	9:41
Jean Thompson	Well, I worked in bookkeeping work [indistinct 00:09:48] bank.	9:47
Chris Stewart	Oh, okay.	9:50
Jean Thompson	I worked there and then I left that, I started working for the federal government to Bethlehem Center. I left that, I went to Mecklenberg County and worked at County Police Department and I retired from the county a year and a half ago.	9:51
Chris Stewart	Did any of you go to college to—	10:02
Jean Thompson	I went to Junior College.	10:05
Chris Stewart	You did?	10:06
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	10:07
Chris Stewart	And what kind of training did you get at—	10:08
Jean Thompson	I had taken commercial [indistinct 00:10:11].	10:10
Chris Stewart	You took what training?	10:14
Jean Thompson	I was more of a secretary.	10:15
Chris Stewart	Okay.	10:17
Jean Thompson	I also taken accounting and all that. I have all my records at home. I had made A's, all A's.	10:18
Vialet Robinson	Well, I—	10:24
Bill Crumpton	[indistinct 00:10:23] Junior college?	10:25
Jean Thompson	Coble College. Came out of first graduate class at Coble.	10:26
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:10:27]. I must [indistinct 00:10:30] my mother's grave for all of my education and everything. I seen [indistinct 00:10:34] when I did 12 years of schooling, but she taught me how to knit, crochet, needles [indistinct 00:10:40] anything with needles that was in the [indistinct 00:10:43] now. My sister had music. She taught her music teacher to play anything. Piano, she could play anything. She kind of got away from music. She's just lost. My sister just done got lazy. I tell her that. My mother bought a piano when we were little. My sister used to beat on the wall and she told my father. She said, "You know Dad, [indistinct 00:11:04] need a piano. We need to get a piano because I think she needs music." That's one thing. They always was together with everything. My dad went downtown with her and they got this piano. My sister was in no time learning. Boy, she was just really in music, not me. My mother gave me music, too because she said she wasn't going to do more for one than she did for the other, then. She tried not to do that. She gave me music.	10:30
Jean Thompson	I will tell you one thing. I'm not [indistinct 00:11:29] at all, but she had the best job of all. Wilhelmenia did.	11:30
Chris Stewart	What job did you have?	11:36
Jean Thompson	Domestic United.	11:37
Chris Stewart	Where did you work when you just got out of high school?	11:40
Wilhelmenia Adams	Oh, I did domestic work.	11:43
Chris Stewart	Okay.	11:45
Wilhelmenia Adams	Got that. But my job, it came through the Charlotte Area Fund.	11:46
Chris Stewart	Through the Charlotte Area Fund?	11:51
Wilhelmenia Adams	I've been very active in civil rights acts and I got stopped through them and trained and placed in domestic work within domestic household. I'm responsible making sure people in North Carolina, the state of North Carolina and a lot of other states getting Social Security with domestic work.	11:53
Chris Stewart	Oh, my goodness.	12:14
Wilhelmenia Adams	We weren't covered under Social Security and I'm the one that got that started.	12:17
Chris Stewart	How did you do that?	12:23
Wilhelmenia Adams	I took two busloads of Black women from here to Washington to sit in on Charlotte Jones at that time and got representative and asked them to support the best workers.	12:24
Chris Stewart	When did you do this?	12:36
Wilhelmenia Adams	Know what year was that? Do you know? I forgot.	12:38
Jean Thompson	I believe it was in the 60s.	12:42
Chris Stewart	What?	12:44
Jean Thompson	Domestic United. She had an office and everything.	12:47
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:12:49].	12:49
Chris Stewart	Okay, how long were you a domestic worker yourself?	12:49
Wilhelmenia Adams	All my life, just about.	12:55
Chris Stewart	Okay, and you decided that you wanted to organize domestic workers?	12:56
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.	13:00
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	13:01
Chris Stewart	Why? What were the problems—	13:02
Wilhelmenia Adams	Well, I—	13:03
Chris Stewart	— that you saw for domestic workers?	13:05
Wilhelmenia Adams	During the civil rights juggle and going around learning that these people, domestic workers were not covered under Social Security. I never paid Social Security and nobody was taking that. Some people were saying they were taking out Social Security, but they were not putting it in the Social Security bank. So that we [indistinct 00:13:27] no coverage. You don't have no money. So this is what we did. I up and I got people with Social Security card and demand that they paid in Social Security [indistinct 00:13:39] chance.	13:09
Chris Stewart	Were there other kinds of things as well as your struggle for Social Security that you also tried to fight for domestic work?	13:41
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yes. We tried to fight to get sick leave and things, but that never materialized. We got some people go get it, but a lot of them didn't.	13:47
Chris Stewart	You also say that you placed domestic workers with [indistinct 00:14:02]?	13:59
Wilhelmenia Adams	Right. Yeah, I [indistinct 00:14:03].	14:02
Chris Stewart	How did you—	14:04
Wilhelmenia Adams	If you needed some help, you'd call me.	14:04
Chris Stewart	Uh-huh.	14:07
Wilhelmenia Adams	And I get you a person and I had to have— Yeah, so people we trained for post-natal birth childcare. We went through the back of Red Cross and trained them to take care of [indistinct 00:14:20]—	14:09
Chris Stewart	You went through what to train them?	14:22
Wilhelmenia Adams	The Red Cross.	14:23
Chris Stewart	Okay.	14:24
Wilhelmenia Adams	We trained them in our— Then we go home if you had a new baby. You go home, you take care of that baby and do house keeping and take care of the baby.	14:26
Chris Stewart	And you were doing this in the 60s?	14:36
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	14:37
Chris Stewart	Who else was working with you?	14:39
Wilhelmenia Adams	I don't know, I had a lot of people.	14:41
Jean Thompson	Well, Anne.	14:42
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah, Anne Edmonds was my secretary.	14:43
Jean Thompson	Yeah.	14:45
Chris Stewart	Anne Edmonds?	14:45
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm. She called me a few weeks ago.	14:47
Jean Thompson	What was Sam Carnegey doing?	14:49
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah, he worked with the Aery fund. He would [indistinct 00:14:51].	14:51
Chris Stewart	Sam Carnegey?	14:53
Wilhelmenia Adams	Carnegey.	14:54
Chris Stewart	Carnegey.	14:54
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm, someone found something, the Charlotte Area Fund. Jim Pope and Jim Luss.	14:56
Chris Stewart	Jim Pope and Jim Luss, they're on our list to talk to.	15:03
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah.	15:06
Jean Thompson	Oh, gosh. [indistinct 00:15:06].	15:07
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah, they was very instrumental—	15:09
Chris Stewart	We have [indistinct 00:15:10].	15:09
Wilhelmenia Adams	— in helping me.	15:11
Jean Thompson	Yeah, get [indistinct 00:15:10]. I mean, Jim Pope [indistinct 00:15:13] times.	15:11
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	15:15
Chris Stewart	I'd like to hear some more about the kind of work that you did and the conditions of the work that— What were the conditions of the work?	15:22
Wilhelmenia Adams	Well, they were low paying.	15:30
Chris Stewart	Right.	15:32
Wilhelmenia Adams	We got to increase the hourly wage. [indistinct 00:15:35]—	15:33
Chris Stewart	How much were you getting paid when you started?	15:35
Wilhelmenia Adams	Some people were getting sent five cents a day and then we got that raise.	15:38
Jean Thompson	You know on that day, yeah, we went to WACA, New York.	15:44
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	15:46
Jean Thompson	Yeah, and when you told them you had all those buses [indistinct 00:15:48] all around the states—	15:47
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm, and every bus—	15:50
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:15:50] in New York to that convention that day.	15:51
Chris Stewart	What convention is that?	15:54
Wilhelmenia Adams	National Committal House of [indistinct 00:15:56].	15:56
Chris Stewart	I'm sorry.	15:57
Wilhelmenia Adams	National Committee of House of [indistinct 00:15:56].	15:58
Chris Stewart	[indistinct 00:15:56]	15:58
Wilhelmenia Adams	I was vice president of that. That's why—	16:03
Jean Thompson	It was all the United States that pulled in that day.	16:05
Wilhelmenia Adams	Jean [indistinct 00:16:07].	16:06
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:16:13]. You got to get up.	16:11
Wilhelmenia Adams	The housework making [indistinct 00:16:20]—	16:18
Jean Thompson	Bill here.	16:21
Wilhelmenia Adams	— take an hour.	16:23
Jean Thompson	Yeah, you been calling [indistinct 00:16:26]. I'm [indistinct 00:16:27].	16:25
Wilhelmenia Adams	We got that price raised up, that salaries raised up.	16:29
Chris Stewart	Uh-huh, [indistinct 00:16:31]—	16:31
Wilhelmenia Adams	Reason we put [indistinct 00:16:32] job.	16:32
Chris Stewart	Well, what would you have to do to get them raised up?	16:33
Wilhelmenia Adams	We just tell them.	16:36
Chris Stewart	People weren't just going to give you more money.	16:38
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm, and we stopped them from washing linen. You hear what people say [indistinct 00:16:43] linen. No domestic workers [indistinct 00:16:45] wash linen.	16:40
Chris Stewart	Uh-huh, uh-huh. Why not?	16:47
Wilhelmenia Adams	Because it's not becoming to the household worker. That's a special job and it shouldn't be handled that way. I wouldn't go around and do nothing but wash linen, but that's not being included in your daily schedule of household work.	16:49
Chris Stewart	What is to be included in your daily schedule?	17:05
Wilhelmenia Adams	Cleaning the kitchen, the stove, refrigerator and bathrooms and laundry. Some people have laundry and that's laundry, then you know you're going to [indistinct 00:17:20] laundry.	17:08
Chris Stewart	Uh-huh, uh-huh. How long did it take you to get the wages raised up?	17:26
Wilhelmenia Adams	It took us about six months.	17:28
Chris Stewart	What did you do to try and get people to—	17:30
Wilhelmenia Adams	Scare people. They thought we were going to strike.	17:33
Chris Stewart	What did you do?	17:36
Wilhelmenia Adams	Just told them that I didn't want to work.	17:38
Chris Stewart	How many women were involved?	17:41
Wilhelmenia Adams	Oh, about all of Charolette.	17:43
Jean Thompson	True that. There was a bunch.	17:45
Wilhelmenia Adams	About 6-10,000 active.	17:48
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	17:48
Chris Stewart	Really?	17:49
Jean Thompson	Oh, yeah.	17:50
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.	17:50
Chris Stewart	Is there still an [indistinct 00:17:52]—	17:51
Wilhelmenia Adams	Well, no. We lost the money. We were going strong there, then I could see money left.	18:00
Jean Thompson	Yeah, all that [indistinct 00:17:59].	18:01
Wilhelmenia Adams	And we couldn't [indistinct 00:17:59] the funding. Said we weren't strong enough to continue to [indistinct 00:18:07] and things.	18:04
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:18:08].	18:08
Chris Stewart	When did you lose the money?	18:10
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:18:13] been working then. 15, 16 years out there. About 18 years ago. Mm-hmm, 18.	18:16
Jean Thompson	Then Don Hower would take over while you went to [indistinct 00:18:28]—	18:24
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:18:28] got attempted, but she didn't—	18:31
Jean Thompson	Got attempted, but it didn't do any good.	18:31
Wilhelmenia Adams	She's [indistinct 00:18:31].	18:31
Jean Thompson	No.	18:32
Wilhelmenia Adams	They wouldn't file her.	18:33
Jean Thompson	Uh-huh.	18:35
Chris Stewart	I'd like to talk to you some more about the household workers. I don't know that we have time to do it now, but maybe I can arrange to come back and talk—	18:41
Wilhelmenia Adams	Then I can find some of my papers and things.	18:48
Chris Stewart	— to you some more about it.	18:50
Jean Thompson	Papers. She really had a good organization.	18:50
Chris Stewart	I would really like to sit down and talk to you about that. Yeah, I would really like to sit down and talk to you more about that.	18:51
Wilhelmenia Adams	Well, I'd be glad to talk to anybody anytime. Mm-hmm.	18:59
Chris Stewart	Maybe we can arrange at the end of the interview. We can arrange to set up a time next week and I can come back over and we can talk some more, if that's okay.	19:01
Wilhelmenia Adams	Okay, all right.	19:10
Chris Stewart	Well, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you think is important to know about Cherry, about your lives, about growing up?	19:12
Jean Thompson	Yeah, back then when my brother, me, [indistinct 00:19:27] myself climbing up in Cherry. We didn't have all this [indistinct 00:19:30]. Where I live now, right across the street, the street stopped right there and then going over to [indistinct 00:19:36] to watch Miss Nan Wooders house to ball with then. We got names for some of these streets like the street—	19:23
Vialet Robinson	Monkey Bottom.	19:48
Jean Thompson	Monkey Bottom.	19:49
Vialet Robinson	But it's been [indistinct 00:19:50] the name—	19:50
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:19:51]—	19:51
Chris Stewart	What did you call it?	19:52
Vialet Robinson	Monkey Bottom.	19:53
Jean Thompson	We called it Monkey Bottom.	19:55
Vialet Robinson	But that wasn't the name of it.	19:57
Chris Stewart	Monkey Bottom?	19:57
Jean Thompson	It wasn't the name of it, it was Water Street.	19:58
Chris Stewart	Well, now how did it get the name Monkey Bottom?	19:59
Jean Thompson	I don't—	20:00
Vialet Robinson	Don't ask me.	20:00
Jean Thompson	Don't ask me because I got it from my brothers and [indistinct 00:20:03] and then everybody—	20:01
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:20:03] Mr. [indistinct 00:20:04] and the way he got that [indistinct 00:20:05].	20:03
Jean Thompson	I don't either.	20:06
Chris Stewart	Did anybody tell you a story about that?	20:07
Vialet Robinson	No.	20:08
Jean Thompson	Now, I always say we had monkey peoples there, but I don't know. We was calling it Monkey Bottom before BC moved down there.	20:09
Vialet Robinson	Oh, yeah. It always has been Monkey Bottom.	20:16
Jean Thompson	Yeah, and I would have—	20:17
Chris Stewart	Who's BC?	20:19
Vialet Robinson	A madman. He [indistinct 00:20:20].	20:20
Jean Thompson	He's [indistinct 00:20:23]. Hold up. He was something else.	20:23
Chris Stewart	Tell me about him.	20:25
Jean Thompson	Well, BC he had a house full of kids. He had twins.	20:26
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:20:28] he's killed his son?	20:29
Jean Thompson	Huh? He killed Pete.	20:30
Vialet Robinson	He had a son he killed.	20:32
Jean Thompson	He killed Pete, but he had about, what, Mable, [indistinct 00:20:36], Sadie Lee, Dudley, Bonnie, Pete, Ella and the twins. It was about 10 of them. 10 kids he had down there and he made a home brew.	20:34
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:20:52].	20:51
Jean Thompson	Oh, [indistinct 00:20:52].	20:52
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:20:52].	20:52
Jean Thompson	You didn't know that, [indistinct 00:20:53]?	20:53
Vialet Robinson	I didn't know that [indistinct 00:20:54].	20:54
Jean Thompson	You know what [indistinct 00:20:55]—	20:55
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:20:58]. You know what?	20:58
Jean Thompson	Hmm?	20:59
Vialet Robinson	Where I live down here on [indistinct 00:21:00] Street, I could go across the street before they put those houses there and I could go all the way around and all [indistinct 00:21:05]—	20:59
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:21:00].	21:00
Vialet Robinson	— and come out up there way out on Baldwin Avenue up that [indistinct 00:21:08].	21:07
Jean Thompson	Back of the back [indistinct 00:21:08].	21:09
Vialet Robinson	I saw a [indistinct 00:21:10] laying back over in there.	21:10
Jean Thompson	I know, but see, BC would go over there on Providence and get, oh, oranges and all the stuff out the garbage can and he would go home and he would make the home brew.	21:12
Chris Stewart	[indistinct 00:21:21].	21:21
Jean Thompson	We could smell it all the way up here at my granddaddy's in the back alley.	21:24
Vialet Robinson	I always smelled it and didn't know what it was.	21:25
Jean Thompson	Yeah, home brew and Heidi—	21:27
Vialet Robinson	He drank that [indistinct 00:21:30]?	21:30
Jean Thompson	— no, Heidi. Her son, her brother and all of them had to drink that cold home brew.	21:31
Chris Stewart	That sounds wicked.	21:39
Jean Thompson	It didn't kill them, though.	21:41
Vialet Robinson	It's a bit wicked. I didn't—	21:42
Jean Thompson	It didn't kill them.	21:43
Wilhelmenia Adams	Heck yeah.	21:44
Jean Thompson	Made them high.	21:44
Chris Stewart	Your brother?	21:45
Jean Thompson	Oh, yeah.	21:46
Wilhelmenia Adams	I did, too.	21:47
Chris Stewart	You did, too?	21:49
Jean Thompson	Ah.	21:50
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah, I did, too.	21:52
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:21:55].	21:55
Jean Thompson	That home brew, uh-uh. Let's not get making home brew out of cinnamon. All that kind of stuff because my grandparents had to make—	21:55
Vialet Robinson	I [indistinct 00:21:56].	21:56
Jean Thompson	— grapes, you know. Wine, stuff like grapes.	21:58
Vialet Robinson	I don't want to put you on a [indistinct 00:22:03] but my daddy made a keg of what was it? Let me say the right thing because I [indistinct 00:22:05] locust beer.	22:00
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah, my daddy used to make it all the time.	22:11
Jean Thompson	Oh, yeah. [indistinct 00:22:14] make it all the time.	22:13
Vialet Robinson	Oh, no. Daddy— Ooh.	22:15
Chris Stewart	What is that?	22:16
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:22:15] the locust.	22:16
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:22:15].	22:16
Vialet Robinson	You know the long black locust? Yeah, they would put cinnamon [indistinct 00:22:24].	22:17
Chris Stewart	So it's a [indistinct 00:22:24].	22:21
Jean Thompson	Hang on, Vialet. The trees was all up there.	22:21
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, I know some of the trees [indistinct 00:22:24] up there, but—	22:21
Bill Crumpton	Locust beer.	22:26
Chris Stewart	Oh, so how would you make locust beer?	22:27
Bill Crumpton	I don't know, [indistinct 00:22:28].	22:28
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, he had a big old keg—	22:29
Jean Thompson	[indistinct 00:22:29] had a big keg [indistinct 00:22:30].	22:30
Vialet Robinson	— and you put straw in there and the only [indistinct 00:22:33] is—	22:32
Bill Crumpton	[indistinct 00:22:34].	22:34
Jean Thompson	But the—	22:34
Vialet Robinson	This was [indistinct 00:22:35]. This was no strong drink and they would think it's strong. It was more like a—	22:35
Chris Stewart	It wasn't like the home brew.	22:41
Vialet Robinson	Oh, no, no, no, no. My Daddy wouldn't make it that bad.	22:43
Jean Thompson	No, because the home brew, sometimes you could knock that local stuff. You could make it and— 'Cause we made a [indistinct 00:22:47]. My granddaddy didn't [indistinct 00:22:49] my brother never drank it up.	22:44
Wilhelmenia Adams	My granddaddy [indistinct 00:22:52].	22:52
Vialet Robinson	But I know Daddy made some local stuff.	22:52
Wilhelmenia Adams	He made, as I said earlier, English [indistinct 00:22:55].	22:55
Vialet Robinson	I didn't know anybody [indistinct 00:22:56].	22:56
Wilhelmenia Adams	But he would make that wine.	22:58
Vialet Robinson	And you know that [indistinct 00:22:59] locust—	22:59
Jean Thompson	Yeah.	23:00
Wilhelmenia Adams	In the [indistinct 00:23:01].	23:01
Jean Thompson	And that high, we had nothing—	23:02
Wilhelmenia Adams	And it'd be cold and kind of—	23:05
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:23:06] cherry trees [indistinct 00:23:09].	23:06
Wilhelmenia Adams	You [indistinct 00:23:10]. Boy, my brother and I used to sneak in there and get it.	23:10
Chris Stewart	It was nice and cold when it was warm outside?	23:12
Jean Thompson	Yeah, [indistinct 00:23:18] would say somebody came by and say, "Little girl, do you know where Miss So-and-so live?"	23:16
Vialet Robinson	And you could [indistinct 00:23:21]—	23:19
Jean Thompson	So we would say, "Yeah." We could tell them the name of the house and everything.	23:23
Vialet Robinson	Name and everything. That's why cherry trees all the way around here.	23:26
Jean Thompson	And my grandmother and grandfather never did have a lock on that [indistinct 00:23:31] house.	23:33
Chris Stewart	Really?	23:34
Jean Thompson	No. We did not have a lock on that door and that door would be [indistinct 00:23:36] somebody go there, knock on that door, Miss Robert might be over there and say, "Miss [indistinct 00:23:41] is not home." That person would go home. Honey, I got bars on my house over there and I got an alarm in my house, honey. Two, three, guns.[indistinct 00:23:49]. Because hun, you can't do nothing with these drug addicts wandering the street all night.	23:34
Chris Stewart	But you said Miss Roberts had a gun?	23:56
Jean Thompson	Miss Haddock.	23:58
Chris Stewart	Oh, Miss Haddock.	23:58
Jean Thompson	No, we told Miss Haddock to get their shotgun, but we didn't know Miss Haddock had a gun or not.	23:59
Chris Stewart	Oh, okay.	24:04
Jean Thompson	She lived down [indistinct 00:24:04], daughter and son.	24:04
Chris Stewart	Their daughter was [indistinct 00:24:06]. Right, right.	24:06
Jean Thompson	We just said that, but we were scared. We were literally running across the street.	24:08
Chris Stewart	Right, right. Away from the gypsies?	24:11
Jean Thompson	Yeah, but now I think everybody got a gun in the house, now.	24:14
Chris Stewart	Yeah.	24:15
Vialet Robinson	It was [indistinct 00:24:17] came to my house [indistinct 00:24:18] knocking on the door. I said, "Who is it?"	24:17
Jean Thompson	You sure it wasn't Ronnie?	24:21
Wilhelmenia Adams	It was.	24:23
Vialet Robinson	It might've been Ronnie. That live right down there?	24:24
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	24:25
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, yeah. He would say, "I'm a home [indistinct 00:24:27]."	24:26
Jean Thompson	That's him. That's him, that's right.	24:28
Vialet Robinson	Yeah. He told me he was so high. I said, "Well, you go back. You go home and finish your nap after night and come back in the morning. You don't [indistinct 00:24:33] at night."	24:30
Jean Thompson	Well, he came over here two o'clock on a night, too. That was Ronnie.	24:35
Vialet Robinson	Yeah. [indistinct 00:24:39].	24:39
Chris Stewart	Did each of you belong to different churches?	24:40
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	24:43
Jean Thompson	Yeah.	24:43
Chris Stewart	But you went to whatever? Sometimes people invited you to a church?	24:45
Vialet Robinson	Yeah.	24:48
Jean Thompson	We didn't have to be invited. If something was going on, just like [indistinct 00:24:52] on was it September?	24:48
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm.	24:49
Jean Thompson	Honey, we knew. My granddaddy knew that [indistinct 00:24:54] said, "Let's go to the House of Prayer."	24:53
Wilhelmenia Adams	That's right.	24:56
Jean Thompson	And then Regala going on. [indistinct 00:24:58]. Any church. The Holy Churches, the Lutheran Church.	24:58
Wilhelmenia Adams	The Lutheran Church would have a harvest festival.	25:03
Jean Thompson	Harvest festival.	25:04
Vialet Robinson	I still remember when I used to—	25:06
Chris Stewart	Do u remember any tent shows or entertainment shows coming through Charlotte area?	25:07
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah.	25:14
Jean Thompson	Yeah.	25:14
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah.	25:14
Chris Stewart	Putting up a tent?	25:14
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	25:15
Vialet Robinson	Not here. Not over here, though. In Brooklyn.	25:15
Wilhelmenia Adams	It's always in Brooklyn.	25:16
Chris Stewart	Would you ever go over there for them?	25:18
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yes, we'd sneak over there. We'd sneak over there [indistinct 00:25:21].	25:19
Chris Stewart	What would you see when you went over to to tent show?	25:23
Wilhelmenia Adams	Well, we'd see—	25:25
Chris Stewart	Do you remember?	25:26
Wilhelmenia Adams	I remember seeing some Siamese twins.	25:27
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm?	25:28
Wilhelmenia Adams	Two little girls. Little Black girls.	25:30
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm.	25:32
Wilhelmenia Adams	And—	25:33
Chris Stewart	When was that, Miss Adams?	25:34
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mmm, no. I don't remember when [indistinct 00:25:36].	25:36
Jean Thompson	Oh, no. It was a place called [indistinct 00:25:37] Gone.	25:37
Chris Stewart	Was that when you were in high school?	25:38
Wilhelmenia Adams	No, I [indistinct 00:25:40]. I remember that.	25:40
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm, over down south in [indistinct 00:25:42].	25:41
Chris Stewart	You were in elementary school?	25:43
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	25:44
Jean Thompson	The very day we graduated from [indistinct 00:25:45] School.	25:45
Chris Stewart	Did they have singers there, too?	25:46
Jean Thompson	They thought we was high school graduates.	25:47
Chris Stewart	Singers in the tent shows? Singers?	25:49
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah, yeah and then they had these people who—	25:52
Jean Thompson	The only thing I ever went to was the circus.	25:57
Vialet Robinson	Mm-hmm, circus was the [indistinct 00:26:00].	25:59
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	26:01
Chris Stewart	What was at the circus?	26:02
Jean Thompson	All the most [indistinct 00:26:03].	26:02
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:26:05] and animals.	26:05
Jean Thompson	Animals and all that kind of [indistinct 00:26:06]. The circus used to be over in Dilworth when we was little. I just fell out with all that stuff because I was [indistinct 00:26:15].	26:06
Chris Stewart	Is there anything else that you can think of that I haven't asked you about that you really want us to know about Cherry?	26:18
Jean Thompson	Ooh, [indistinct 00:26:24].	26:24
Wilhelmenia Adams	I can tell you [indistinct 00:26:25] I think he's [indistinct 00:26:26].	26:25
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:26:25] in jail and [indistinct 00:26:27].	26:26
Wilhelmenia Adams	That we all grew up with love.	26:28
Vialet Robinson	Yeah.	26:31
Jean Thompson	Yeah.	26:32
Wilhelmenia Adams	And we were loved.	26:33
Vialet Robinson	Yeah.	26:34
Wilhelmenia Adams	We didn't have a lot of fancy things, but we had love and I mean, not only from my family, but everybody else's family loves you.	26:35
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	26:43
Vialet Robinson	Right.	26:43
Wilhelmenia Adams	The children knew that they could depend on somebody if they needed anybody for any reason.	26:46
Jean Thompson	And now another thing—	26:49
Wilhelmenia Adams	But we had love. I [indistinct 00:26:52].	26:49
Jean Thompson	You ain't going to find very many people that born in Cherry, still in Cherry like Vialet, Wilhelmenia, and myself. We got another, Torrence Powell.	26:53
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah, I told them about [indistinct 00:26:59].	26:59
Jean Thompson	Uh-huh.	27:00
Chris Stewart	Actually, we are going to contact him.	27:01
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah, [indistinct 00:27:02].	27:02
Jean Thompson	Yeah [indistinct 00:27:02] I'll be [indistinct 00:27:03]. We really was born here. Lots of people came here when they was one, two years old, but we was born in this community.	27:04
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	27:06
Jean Thompson	We know when the streets stop and whatever. We knew everybody. You say, "Where's So-and-so?" We would tell you where's So-and-so and we knew every pastor in the church. You know things like that.	27:09
Chris Stewart	What about medical facilities? [indistinct 00:27:26].	27:24
Jean Thompson	Well, Dr. Cane, he lived right across the hill.	27:28
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm, [indistinct 00:27:31].	27:31
Jean Thompson	He was out here and I can see his house.	27:31
Wilhelmenia Adams	And Dr. [indistinct 00:27:33].	27:32
Chris Stewart	Was there anybody locally who had family home remedies or anything to take care of you? Like if you had a cold?	27:33
Wilhelmenia Adams	Everybody had that. Everybody had some of that.	27:40
Jean Thompson	Everybody. My house, we used to go across the hill and get sap [indistinct 00:27:45] off the tree that [indistinct 00:27:47] my grandmother used to get over there and ball that stuff. Shoot, we had the home remedies. What we used to do, it didn't kill us, but [indistinct 00:27:55] Doctor said it'd kill these kids, but it didn't kill my son because I sure rubbed him with all that stuff.	27:41
Vialet Robinson	Oh, I had some of that. Oh, a poke salad.	28:01
Jean Thompson	Poke salad? It'll make you [indistinct 00:28:05].	28:04
Wilhelmenia Adams	Poke salad.	28:06
Jean Thompson	I made me some. I [indistinct 00:28:07].	28:07
Vialet Robinson	Yeah, I [indistinct 00:28:08] need to have a [indistinct 00:28:08].	28:08
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:28:08] once a year.	28:08
Jean Thompson	You ain't [indistinct 00:28:10].	28:10
Chris Stewart	What is a poke salad?	28:11
Wilhelmenia Adams	Now when we went out of town.	28:13
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:28:14].	28:14
Jean Thompson	I'm [indistinct 00:28:15].	28:15
Wilhelmenia Adams	You went out of town.	28:15
Jean Thompson	Oh, because we're going to go to her house and get it.	28:16
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mmm, [indistinct 00:28:16].	28:16
Jean Thompson	My house on her yard.	28:17
Chris Stewart	What is it used for?	28:18
Wilhelmenia Adams	It's a salad.	28:19
Chris Stewart	What do you [indistinct 00:28:20].	28:20
Jean Thompson	It clear your system out, I guarantee you that.	28:21
Vialet Robinson	[indistinct 00:28:24].	28:24
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:28:24].	28:24
Chris Stewart	I see. I see what you're saying.	28:25
Jean Thompson	I [indistinct 00:28:26], I [indistinct 00:28:27]. I went to New Orleans [indistinct 00:28:29] last week when I gave you that.	28:26
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah. Got to cook it and it's so good.	28:32
Jean Thompson	That next to Jake Junior's house. That man had all that.	28:34
Chris Stewart	Were there women in the community— Like you said that you all were born in your houses.	28:36
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	28:46
Chris Stewart	Were there women in the community who were midwives? Who helped give birth to [indistinct 00:28:48] children?	28:47
Wilhelmenia Adams	My grandmother was living during the time I was born and that's who— I knew my mother had her.	28:49
Chris Stewart	Mm-hmm, do you know of any women who—	28:57
Wilhelmenia Adams	I don't know them.	28:59
Vialet Robinson	The [indistinct 00:29:07].	29:00
Wilhelmenia Adams	No, just did nothing but that or something.	29:02
Chris Stewart	Yeah.	29:03
Wilhelmenia Adams	But I [indistinct 00:29:07] I just didn't know.	29:05
Jean Thompson	I didn't know any either.	29:07
Wilhelmenia Adams	We didn't know.	29:08
Jean Thompson	Only a Doctor.	29:09
Wilhelmenia Adams	And my grandma, when she lived, she lived to see 114.	29:13
Chris Stewart	Oh, my goodness. Wow.	29:17
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm, she didn't like that when she died. She's 115. [indistinct 00:29:20].	29:20
Jean Thompson	My granddaddy died in '45. He was 95 in '45.	29:22
Chris Stewart	Wow. Did he ever tell you stories about when he grew up?	29:25
Jean Thompson	My grandfather grew up here in North Carolina in Rowan County, Salisbury.	29:30
Chris Stewart	In Rowan County.	29:34
Jean Thompson	Yeah, Salisbury. My grandmother grew up Wilmington, North Carolina but they met down in Chatham County, Savannah.	29:35
Chris Stewart	Oh, [indistinct 00:29:43].	29:43
Jean Thompson	And my grandmother went down in with her older sister and my grandfather was working on that farm. Well, my grandfather was 20 years older than my grandmother.	29:45
Chris Stewart	Oh, really?	29:50
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm. My grandmother always called him Mr. Bale. She never did call him John. Always called him Mr. Bale.	29:52
Chris Stewart	Really?	29:55
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm.	29:56
Chris Stewart	Really. Did he ever tell you things about when he was farming or when he was, you know, growing up? [indistinct 00:30:02].	29:56
Jean Thompson	No, he's— I don't know, my grandfather, he would always talk about his brothers and things. Everything, because he had brothers and them build homes over there. It was Brooklyn off of Bales Court over there. Then I think he just didn't tell us a whole lot. I say we knew a whole lot about our grandmother.	30:04
Chris Stewart	What did you know about her?	30:23
Jean Thompson	Oh, she's part Indian, too. She came from eastern part of the state and she was telling how her father and mother, they're [indistinct 00:30:34]. All of them real nice and everything. All of them migrate down the eastern coast right into Savannah. Things like that and she said she didn't work on no farm. My grandfather was a slave and I know he used to tell us when President Lincoln was in the chair and everything. He fought in the Spanish American war, too. He did.	30:25
Jean Thompson	It's been so long since my grandparents have passed away and some things I'll be home and it comes back to me, what they told me. Especially my uncle Julius. He used to tell us a lot too and that's my mother's brother. Say, I knew more about my mother's folks than I did my daddy's. Now, my Daddy's folks lived here. All of my daddy's folks lived out there in Grill Town.	31:08
Chris Stewart	In Grill Town?	31:30
Jean Thompson	Grill town. I don't know, y'all talk to George Wallace?	31:31
Chris Stewart	Hm-mmm. Should we?	31:33
Jean Thompson	He lived in Grill Town. Yeah, you need to talk to him. All the [indistinct 00:31:38] and all [indistinct 00:31:39]. They can tell you about that part of the country out there. That's where all my daddy's folks would live.	31:37
Chris Stewart	What was the second name that you said? George Wallace and who else?	31:46
Jean Thompson	Naomi Driny, but Naomi, that's my cousin. She's in the nursing home.	31:49
Chris Stewart	Oh, okay.	31:53
Jean Thompson	Mm-hmm, that's her grandson, [indistinct 00:31:55] but you get ahold of George. If you talk to our Pope, James Pope, you'll—	31:54
Wilhelmenia Adams	James Pope. He'll get you into—	32:01
Chris Stewart	We're trying to get in touch with him.	32:01
Jean Thompson	If you get in touch with him—	32:02
Wilhelmenia Adams	He might not be in town, but he travels a lot.	32:03
Jean Thompson	If you could talk to him, he'll tell you talk to George Wallace and most everybody you'll talk to will be my relatives, yeah.	32:04
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	32:11
Chris Stewart	Oh, really?	32:11
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	32:12
Jean Thompson	Years [indistinct 00:32:13].	32:13
Chris Stewart	We've got a couple more things that we need to do here. What we'd like to do is to write down your own family history. So we've got forms to fill out, but there's three of you and two of us. So we're going to have to do it one person at a time and it makes no difference to me. It takes about 15 minutes to fill out. Basically, what we ask you is your name, address, birthdate. Your parents' names, address, birth dates. Your brothers and sisters, your children. Those kinds of things. To accompany—	32:15
Jean Thompson	There ain't going to be very much in here. [indistinct 00:32:51] all my brothers live in Washington. My son is deceased and nobody but me.	32:50
Chris Stewart	Well, but—	32:57
Bill Crumpton	Oh, you know. What's close to we can get.	32:58
Jean Thompson	Oh, okay.	33:01
Bill Crumpton	We don't try to be completely accurate, but as best you can remember.	33:02
Chris Stewart	So who wants—	33:06
Jean Thompson	I'll take it. Get me because I'mma have to go eat. I'm hungry.	33:08
Chris Stewart	Okay, okay.	33:10
Wilhelmenia Adams	Yeah, I might have to, too because I'm diabetic.	33:12
Jean Thompson	She's a diabetic. I'll tell watching her over there by her [indistinct 00:33:14].	33:13
Wilhelmenia Adams	Mm-hmm.	33:16
Jean Thompson	Who in there? That's my Grandson.	33:19
Wilhelmenia Adams	[indistinct 00:33:20].	33:20

Item Info

Title:

Wilhelmenia "Menia" Adams (primary interviewee), Vialet Robinson, and Jean Thompson interview recording, 1993 June 08

Date:

June 8, 1993

Creator:

Contributor:

Description:

Name: Wilhelmenia "Menia" Roper Adams; Date of birth: 1907-12-15; Place of birth: Charlotte, NC; Occupation: domestic; Residence: Charlotte, NC. Name: Vialet Wallace Robinson; Date of birth: 1932-05-19; Place of birth: Charlotte, NC; Occupation: seamstress; sales; Residence: Charlotte, NC. Name: Jean Waters Thompson; Date of birth: 1926-04-23; Place of birth: Charlotte, NC; Occupation: clerical; Residence: Charlotte, NC
Informant ID: 1; Informant ID: 60; Informant ID: 78; Interviewed by: Chris Stewart and Bill Crumpton.

Occupation:

Domestic worker

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Language:

English

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Behind the Veil

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

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

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Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

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

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Interview number: 205
6e2eccea-e3ad-4444-8b3b-7997df548494
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Wilhelmenia "Menia" Adams (primary interviewee), Vialet Robinson, and Jean Thompson interview recording, 1993 June 08

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1. Wilhelmenia "Menia" Adams, Vialet Robinson, and Jean Thompson administrative file, 1993

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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