Thereasea Elder interview recording, 1993 June 15
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| Leslie Brown | Would you just state your name for the beginning, please? | 0:06 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Thereasea Clark Elder. | 0:10 |
| Leslie Brown | Are you originally from Charlotte? | 0:13 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | I was born here, 1927, the 2nd day of September — one of six children of Booker T. and Odessa Clark. My early remembrance was that we lived at 905 Hamilton Street. This was in the Greenville area. The street that I stayed on, everyone was homeowners. And everyone had less than a high school education. My mother did day work, and my father was a porter at Myers Park Country Club. And the community was a very close-knit community. Everybody cared and shared everything with everybody in that community. They shared from clothing, flowers, vegetables from their garden, pear trees, apple trees, pecan trees, whatever. Everybody shared everything. | 0:14 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | The whole community cared for that community. If anyone was sick, the community cared for that whole family. The family would not have to provide for that person that was very, very sick. Everybody was aware of everything in that community. If you were sick or— They provided wood, coal, food, whatever, the rest periods for that family. I can remember a sister that was very ill. My mom did not have to sit with her at all. The family next door stayed with her until she passed, and then there was always someone there. I had a brother, [indistinct 00:02:30] the same thing. | 1:33 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | We were always very sheltered by the community. All of the activities that we did and recreation, the parents were always there. They always shared everything with us, from volleyball to baseball, hide and seek, horseshoes, it didn't matter. They were always there for us. We walked to school. And all the way to school, there was someone watching you to get home all the way, no matter. And if you did something you didn't have any business doing, you were reprimanded by that individual. They told your parents, and then you got it again. It just wasn't that you just did something and was something that was covered up. | 2:32 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | The city provided— This was about in the '30s, the late '30s. They provided activities during the summer months for playground areas at the local school. There was the Fairview School that was in our area. And we played, had supervision on the ground. But no matter if they had someone there that were instructing us in what to do, the parents were there, too. Everything that happened in that school, the parents were there. And before the play of the summer activities when we would be out of school for the summer months— | 3:27 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Miss Jessie Bainham was a teacher. She lived in the area. And she provided Sunday school, Bible school studies. She always taught us all of the things that we needed to know, how to entertain, what you would do, how you set a table. She used all of her china and all of these things to show us how to do that or how you entertain people, how you hold your cup, how you hold your glass, and how to be ladylike, how you dress, you wore your gloves, and this sort of thing. This is what she taught us, along with Bible study. And Miss Bainham did all of this with her own money. | 4:22 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Most of us learned these kind of skills from her. Later on in her life, she started a kindergarten. She would take nine kids and keep those kids until they were ready to go to first grade or kindergarten, and those were some of the smartest kids that— My oldest son is an engineer in Research for Ford Motor now, and he was one of the first ones. That's the oldest boy. He was in one of her classes. She really gave them a lot of basic things to do, and she did this because our parents were not able to provide that kind of knowledge for us. They provided all of the love and the support. | 5:11 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And the church and the community was really the backbone of all of our lives. There was Second Calvary Baptist Church. There was the Nazarene. There was C.N. Jenkins. It was C.N. Jenkins now, but it was Brandon Presbyterian. All of the churches in the area would get together and have what they call vacation Bible school, and they would have them at different times so the summer was taken up with children's activities. Later on, the city did build a swimming pool at the old waterworks. The new waterworks is on Beatties Ford Road. | 6:10 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | The old one was sort of the back of Johnson C. Smith. They had a swimming pool there, and my oldest brother was a lifeguard. My oldest sister did a lot of cooking, took care of children. We had a area that was totally a wooded area. Our parents cleaned that off for us to have picnics, and we did all of the things that you do on picnics now, playing ball, hopscotch. Kids don't know what that is. Marbles. We had plenty activities to keep us busy, and the recreation. And it was all done right in that little nucleus of the community. We didn't have to go anywhere, and we were entertained all day long. | 6:56 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | But you did your work. There was gardening to do. There was flowers to do. There was cleaning to do. You did certain things accustomed to the area, like redoing cleaning. You had to really clean, what they call dark nights, and you had to take everything out of the house during this time, clean that house. You would take the mattresses apart, lay all of the cotton out on newspaper on the ground. And then you had to take that cotton apart, and then you cleaned that room. Everything in that room was taken out and you cleaned it, and everything went back in. | 7:54 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | It was six of us. I had two brothers and four sisters. We shared the same bedroom. We had two bedrooms. My mom and dad had their bedroom, and then there was a bedroom for us. There was three beds. My two brothers slept together. My other two sisters, we shared a bed. I slept with my oldest sister. I don't know how in the world things were done, but we had— In the wintertime, it was where you had to take a bath in a number 3 tub. And then in the summer, it was really wonderful to get in the bathtub. We had the facilities, but the heat was not there. | 8:45 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Later on, we did the putting the furnace in ourselves to heat the house. A lot of things were done because a lot of people in the area had the skills to do whatever you needed done, and you could have this done. And a lot of people did a lot of these skills their own self. They painted. They repaired. They did plumbing. They did the heating. You didn't have to go get a permit to have this done, and these skills were there for that. And this was one thing that I found that benefit our community, is because of the skills that everybody had, and they shared it. | 9:38 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | There was one thing that I think will bother me the rest of my life, is that what was allowed to happen— It's the Southern Asbestos. This is a plant that was right next to where I grew up. And the Southern Asbestos— Nowadays, we worry about the asbestos in the ceilings in building. But when I grew up, we played in that same waste. They waste was just— Throw it right out back. And we played in all of that. Everybody in that area that went that way had to walk through that. In the summertime, the Southern Asbestos would raise their windows, and we had to clean screen doors twice a day because that stuff would cover the screens. | 10:35 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | We never knew that this was doing something to our bodies. We saw people that looked terrible that worked in the plant a long time. And over the years, there have been many people died of lung cancer and other forms of cancer, heart problems, that as a medical person, I believe that it stemmed from this. I myself have scarred lung tissue that attributed from this. Anyway, this was a nuisance dust. We really hated doing all of that work, because we had to clean it all of the time. | 11:39 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | I really feel that the whole area was supposed to go business, and that's when they came through and demolished Greenville. But at the same time, they was finding out what the asbestos was doing to the people. So, all of that was cleaned up, and they wanted to make it business. But our parents were so smart because they had seen what they had done to Brooklyn and some of the other areas, and they said, "No, you will keep this place residential." And this is what they had to do. But we feel that it was demolished because of the asbestos and what it had done to the people, because there was so many of them that have died from cancer. | 12:26 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | The other thing was World War II. When this happened, everybody was ready to go to World War II. Let me back up some. When President Roosevelt was elected, the C.C. Camp started, and this brought about— When he came, there a— And I don't recall what. If you were about to lose your house, there was something that you could do. And these were stickers that was put on your house to let you know that the government had these, on your home. My parents never would tell us what it was. There was not a sticker put on our house, and they would not talk about it. But everybody there were able to save they homes. We don't know how they did it, but they did. No one in that area lost they home. The C.C. Camp was established, and we had young men going off to C.C. Camp. | 13:25 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | There were soup lines, but we were never in a soup line. And it's because of the things that I think the community did themselves. They helped provide the food. There was so much canning and so much stuff that was done all year long. The gardens, everything was put up. And we were never hungry, homeless, or nothing. And our parents did not make that much money, and they had to make house payments. It was seldom that you had a new piece, because these were handed down. And even where they worked for— The people that they worked for, they were white people. They would send clothes, and these were furnished. | 14:41 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | My brother was one of the most eloquent dressers that went to Second Ward, because my daddy was a— They called him a porter, but he was more like a personal valet to all of the rich people that went to Myers Park Country Club. He was able to see all of the shows and all of the things that would come through there, like Bill Robinson and Shirley Temple. And he would come home and tell us about it because he worked in— And Myers Park Country Club is still a well force in our community. And we were dressed from those people sending clothes home to us, and we were able to wear really nice clothes. And what we couldn't wear or what we couldn't— And even if we could, if somebody else needed it, they got it. And then there was some people that would go down to their family farms and bring back food, and this is how this was— Nobody went hungry. | 15:39 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | One thing growing up, there was always drug abuse in the community. It wasn't that it was alcohol, because there were the drug houses, there were the beer joints, and there was the actual drugs. What we've known as marijuana, what we've known as heroin, it was there. But nobody would give it to other children. It was there, but they would not allow. If you went in a beer joint, you got it. You knew better. The people that ran the beer joint would not allow you there. And the people in that community made sure you didn't. When you went by, you went on the other side of the street to go by. And they allowed those people because there was a caliber of people that did that, but they would not allow the children to actually see it. | 16:53 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | If someone was inebriated, they took that person home. They did not see that, nobody. You would never see the hanging on the corners and these sort of things. They just didn't do that until later years. But these are the things that we grew up with. Drugs was not new to most of us. We knew this. But there was that protective area in the community that would not allow the children to see it, nor be a part of it. Because I think if they had, they would've shut those people down. But there were the grown people that did it, but we were protected from it. | 17:55 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | The other was the education. Going to Fairview School was a real joy. I loved school. I loved the teachers. These were the role models in our community, our teachers were, and then the adults. Everybody took time for the child. That old proverb, it takes a whole village, it's just so true. You were nurtured in education, in religion, in yourself. The community built self-esteem. I was always told that I was really important, that I was loved, that, "You keep that good work up. I'm so proud of you. You look so good today." There was always that kind of building your self-esteem. | 18:49 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | I would go to school, study hard to make it. When I left Fairview School and had to walk to West Charlotte High School, that was a— I almost had not been out of the community to go that far, because it was a very sheltered type of life that not only my parents, but what the whole community did. We had to walk to West Charlotte High School, and that was a long ways from Greenville to West Charlotte. But you would meet up on what we call a belt road with all of the Greenville children walking to West Charlotte. We wish we could have ridden a school bus, but a bus was not provided. | 19:47 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And those years at West Charlotte was from 1938 through 1944, and then after graduating from West Charlotte. And all of this supporting your ego and your self-esteem was all along, every year. The church recognized all that you did all these years. The school, the Fairview School, the faculty from Fairview, they would always come back. They would come and visit your parents and sit down and talk to the children. They were still a force in our life in education and religion. Excuse me. There was a lot learned at West Charlotte, a lot learned in socialization, the things that went out around you about the cafes where you weren't supposed to be, not even passing by these areas. The kids would go in there, and we would hear the next day how they got whippings at home. We were always afraid to do that, anyway. There were dances that were across town. | 20:46 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And Second Ward was a rival. The students were rival of each others', like school spirit-type rivalry. But the football games, I never cared for football. I didn't understand it. The school went to the problem of having Jack Martin and Mr. Johnson, these were teachers, to explain what football was for us. I remember that. I went to my first football— In the shop, they made these little WC, standing for West Charlotte High School, and we were supposed to wear those little things to the football game. | 22:07 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | We went to the football— My first trip to the stadium, and I was run off of there by the kids from Brooklyn. The Brooklyn name was a name that you just would be fearful of. But I never went to another football game. And I don't go today because I really don't— I was so frightened, I ran from the stadium to what is known as the Charlotte Eye Ear Nose & Throat Hospital. And that's where I went, and I stayed till somebody carried me home. That was a frightening experience, not only going to the stadium but being run because West Charlotte beat them. | 22:54 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And that was something that they did in those days, until another little group of kids that— Because we were really frightened of the name. It was really foreign. We had heard a lot of different things about Brooklyn. One thing was that everybody was mean, was this. And it wasn't true. But we knew better than to go over there. Our older sisters and brothers had gone to Second Ward High School, and they suffered at their hand because they were going with they girls. It was the fist fights, the running, but it was never like the violence that we see today. It was mostly, "You don't come," or, "You don't do this." It really wasn't that much hands-on. But there were some little fights and things. And these are the type things that we had heard, and we were frightened of that. But I had sisters and brothers go there. Nothing happened to them. | 23:42 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | With going to West Charlotte— And I sang in the glee club, and I thought I really could sing. I did enjoy that. That was one of the things that I enjoyed at West Charlotte, was the glee club and the regular classes and really the outreach of different children from different areas. Because we were then thrown with kids from this area, the Biddle area, the Greenville area, and children from the Huntersville area. Everybody became a nucleus there at West Charlotte. | 25:01 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And there again, you got the support and things that you needed from the faculty there. They also would really push you on. And if you was having a problem, they would really help you with it. Teachers were really great. And the principal, oh, Mr. Blake was something else. He was the principal of West Charlotte and demanded the best. He would pull out of you whatever it was to pull. And West Charlotte really excelled, and their graduates really excelled. We have graduates, and especially from the Greenville area, city managers, city lawyers, judges, all across the country from the Greenville area, kids that we grew up with. One of the boys that is in that '36 class that graduated from the Fairview School, he's now a millionaire and still lives here, too. And most of the Greenville kids, most of the people we know have excelled. | 25:43 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | One area I wanted to talk about was the Fairview Homes. That was the essence in apartment living in those days. Everybody that lived in the Fairview Homes are now productive tax-paying citizens, homeowners, professional people. And it's the way that the government looked at what they were doing and providing. The change came in the recent year, excuse me, came in recent years of how we look at public housing now. But it was totally different then. Everybody was very acceptable of the people that lived there. They were very good people, and still today. And I feel if it was the view that we had back then that they would use now, we would have people more motivated to do, too. | 26:59 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | After leaving West Charlotte, I came to Smith. I was not old enough to go into nursing. I stayed here a year and a half at Johnson C. Smith, and I left and went in nursing. This was in 1945. This was the height of World War II, and I wanted to be a US cadet nurse. So, I went to Durham and enrolled in nursing at Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing. I did studies at Howard University, Duke University. We had classes over there. And then after graduation, came back to Charlotte and worked at Good Samaritan Hospital until I did some studies at Chapel Hill in public health and went into public health nursing. | 28:07 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | It's one incident— When I graduated from high school, the whole community, again, was totally behind encouraging you to continue on. And everybody gave you something, although none of us had anything. Like I said, a lot of things were given to the community through people that worked for white people. And today, I still have a set of glasses that Ms. Nancy Harrison gave me, and they were wine glasses, when I graduated from high school because that's all she had. But while I was off in school, I always had money sent to me from the white people that my parents worked for. They would send money, and the community would send money for me. It may be a dollar. And when I would come home, I would run around and do all of the nursing in the community, caring for everybody. And I was just a student nurse then. But they valued my opinion. Again, I think it was just to make me continue, to motivate me on. | 29:26 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And then after graduating from that, I worked at the hospital as a head nurse there, and then started in public health. I did public health here in Mecklenburg County for around 28 years. When I started in public health here, we were segregated. We did several programs for them, integrated through what we called Making It Possible for Black Nurses To Visit in White Homes. And this was in the middle '60s. I started to work in '62. It was one nurse, Minnie Graham, and myself, were told that if Black nurses were to visit in white homes, it would be entirely left up to us. | 30:46 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | So, we had to go through a lot of traumatic experiences to do this. They put us in an area in the Paw Creek area and told us, "If these people will accept you," and that was a lot of the Klan area, "If they will accept you, Black nurses will be accepted anywhere in the city." So, for a year, this is what Minnie Graham and I did, and working with integrating that. After a year, we went into team nursing, and that flourished. So today, that's one thing that I feel that we accomplished. | 32:04 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | The other thing that I did in public health that I am— is that we did a program for the high-risk infant. We started the high-risk infant program working with girls that were ages 19 under. At that time, they were mostly 17 through 19. We developed a program wherein we would work with these girls, with agencies, and this sort of thing. We designed a whole program for these women and their babies. Later, and I cannot remember the year, we were overwhelmed with the teen pregnancy problem. And what we had to do, we had to lower the rate, so we started from 19 to 15. | 32:51 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | When I retired, we were dealing with 14 and under. We had to drop that low because of the overwhelming number of pregnancies, and we did not have the staff to work with that. Today, they're still working with the high-risk infant with children 14 and under. I am not sure if they are incorporating the ones up to 19 now or not. But that was another program that I did in public health that I was very proud of, working with the Center for Human Development and, at that time, Charlotte Memorial Hospital, the infant program there that we were working with there. | 34:05 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Going back to some of the early childhood, the things that we did when I was in high school, I had two sisters that moved to New York. I used to go every summer to New York to work just to make money to come back home, to buy my clothes for the year and my books. I was able to do that every summer by the help of them. And that goes on to show when children grew up, they always reached back and helped the other ones with their education. My oldest sister was a nutritionist. And my other sister, she worked in food services. She traveled throughout the world with her husband working on Army bases because he was in the Army, as most of the fellas were. In those years from '41 to around '45, '46, most of the fellas were in the Army. Most all of our boyfriends and subsequently our husbands were in the Army. | 34:58 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | That's a whole new era of discussion of what it was like to be in a Black community and getting information from your loved ones, your brothers, and your boyfriends and friends. Whenever a letter came in, it was shared with the community, where they were located and what was happening at that time. The letter was read to the whole community because it was still that nucleus that we talked about. We were fortunate. None of the fellas that we knew were killed. Most of them were in the Engineering Corps, anyway, from our community. But a lot of them saw a lot of fierce fighting. We had fellas that were in the European theater, and then there were those that were in the Japan theater. A lot of them made careers out of it. My brother-in-law has a career decorated well with honors and things that he received because he made a career out of the Armed Forces. | 36:11 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Most of my community work has been after leaving high school and nursing. But most of my work has been in nursing because I've always felt and still feel that African Americans do not have access to health. One thing that comes to mind is that we are the last to receive information on any medical problems, for instance, high blood pressure. We are just now getting the information on what we should eat and how and nutrition, because the— And I think mass media is helping us with that. One thing that really comes to mind is the AIDS program. We know that we are rapidly succeeding in the AIDS program as a race of people, wherein this did not start out being a disease of African Americans, but now we are carrying the burden of that. The same thing with glaucoma, diabetes. We just don't get the educational information that we need with this. | 37:41 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And this is what I am attempting to do any way that I can, is to educate African Americans on health issues, how to access health issues, how to get better health, and to really change the whole profile of African American children in their health. We are attempting to teach them to keep history, records of illness in your family, hereditary factors, and pass this on to your children. I insist that my grandchildren have a history of everything that has gone on as far as my knowledge of knowing what has gone on in my family in the heart, the blood, arthritis, whatever, that diabetes is in there, and to teach them how to avoid this. I have made sure that my daughter-in-law know what— She can help get rid of this. We can get rid of high blood pressure or heart problems by the things that we can focus in on through education. | 39:24 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And I think that more than anything else, the preventive measure is what I look at that we can do. That disturbs me a lot. A lot disturbs me about the environment in which we live, trying to pass that on, also, of what we as African Americans can achieve, because we don't get this information. All across the country, we take the blunt end of the environment, the worst part of the environment. We need to speak out more about this. And that's what I'm doing now, and then. | 40:56 |
| Leslie Brown | What kind of medical problems did you see and work with in the Greenville community while you were in high school and while you were doing [indistinct 00:41:56]? | 41:45 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Okay. Most of it was heart problems. We saw what was told to us as heart dropsy, strokes, these sort of things. It was heart dropsy. We didn't hear a lot about diabetes, but I'm sure it was a part of it. Most of the things that we saw was strokes and heart dropsies, where there was the swelling in the extremities and the people could not— They were not admitted to the hospital. Most of them died at home, and most of them did not have the proper elevated beds. We saw the people suffer there that way. The kids kept— If it was in the wintertime, the doors were open. Doors were not locked. The boys would keep the fire going, and the family was fed from everybody in the community doing things for them. They didn't have to do anything. | 41:59 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | But what we saw mostly, what I recognize now, was heart dropsies, what they call heart dropsy, cardiac failure, and high blood pressure. There was stroke. There were kidney problems, that I know what it is now, but we didn't then. And it was those kind of things. They did a lot of own treatment, self-treatment of things that— Especially for asthma. We saw a lot of asthma. But I never knew anyone to die from it, but it was a lot of asthma. I myself had asthma. | 43:05 |
| Leslie Brown | [indistinct 00:43:49]. | 43:47 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And children with pneumonia. I had a brother die of that. That was a lot. And it was because of the treatment, that— And there was not much hospitalization. I can remember kids having their tonsils removed because of that [indistinct 00:44:20]. But mostly, the illness and things were just— Those were the things. There wasn't much in the way of children with cancer. We just didn't see that. In fact, cancer was a word that I didn't know. I am sure that some people had it. But we were not even allowed to see if that was that, if it was cancer. We just knew some people were very sick. Some, we could see as children. And some, we couldn't. | 43:49 |
| Leslie Brown | What were some of the causes of the problems that you saw? | 44:58 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Medical problems? A lack of access to medical care and really treating their own self or recognizing something that was passed on. They did not have physical exams. The first time that I can remember really seeing a doctor was when I turned— I was jaundiced. Don't know what it was from, but the doctor came out to the house. The doctors made home visits. I can remember when my brother was so sick the doctor stayed at our house all night. And when Mom or anybody got sick, he would come out to the house. But this was when you were ill. It was not a preventive thing. Prevention was things that were handed down like, for instance, during the wintertime, you were given some medicine like your cod liver oil, or you were given a dose of castor oil to get rid of any bugs or this sort of thing. | 45:08 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | I had asthma, so I had to wear protective covers that were made out of, say for instance, an old sweater. I had to wear that to protect my chest. Kids wore something around their neck to keep the germs away. It was called asphidity. They would put that on. There was stuff like they would make up— If you got a cold, and this was the big thing, if you got a cold, they didn't want you to get pneumonia. And they would mix up tallow. It's like the grease from a lamb. They would mix this with some other stuff, and I don't know what all the mixture was. They would grease you in that and cover you up, and you could not get through any air. The odor was terrible. And- | 46:34 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Okay. When they would put this cover on you, and the odor was terrible and you could not hardly breathe, this would really make you feel better. They would also mix up onions and put sugar on it and this was something if these were the red onions with sugar, and this acted as a cough syrup. They also used rock candy. There was a lot of natural herb things that they used and the odor were terrible from trying to breathe, but eventually you would feel very, very good. | 0:01 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | We had known people to have TB that were cared for. They were in the bed and they were cared for right at home. Everything was done for them right at home, and people were protected. They did not allow people to visit in that home. There were homes that were quarantined against things like measles or smallpox and these sort of things, and people did not visit. | 0:52 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | They would take food and take things to the people, put it on their porch and then they would leave and the people would come and get it. But everybody cared for everybody there during that time. I had a wonderful childhood growing up. We had sisters and things that cared for us, my older sister knows. They did all of the care for us at home. | 1:21 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | They taught us how to bathe, and they did all the platting and corn rowing and combining our hair. They taught us to dance. When my mom and those would go to work, we would hook up all sorts of things. It was a lot of fun. And the dancing that we would hook up radios with the hooks on the loud speakers and things like they would use in the music box. There were people that played the guitar and these sort of things, and they would hook up these things with the lights and we had fish fries and they would have watermelon, they had games, they would have open pots where you would fry fish. These were all very special events, and they made money off of these things, and the churches would have what they call picnics and these sort of things, taking children around to different things. | 1:53 |
| Leslie Brown | When did people stop treating you like a child? | 3:11 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | I think after I married, and my mom never did. My mom never. I could not do that to my children. They told me when they were in high school, "Mom, I'm grown. I can think for myself." And I was not really that comfortable until after my first child was born. Although I was a nurse, my mom still dictated to me what to do, what I was supposed to do for my children. It was just something that I didn't do. I had a younger sister that was very stronger, that demanded things and I think that's when things started changing, because in high school she would speak her own. She was much more forceful and demanding in things than I was, and I don't don't know reason why. I listened to everything my mom said. I believed every word that preceded out of my mom's mouth. Whatever she said, that was gospel truth and I believed that, but I had some other sisters and brothers that did not. | 3:32 |
| Leslie Brown | Did you find that the responsibilities that you took on for yourself, for your family, for your community, did you find that those responsibilities increased or became more challenging or more difficult in later adolescence than in earlier adolescence? | 4:54 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | I think later, because I was exposed to doing things, but these were things that nowadays I know that was supposed to help me to grow in doing things. But the things like going to purchase items or letting you do a little shopping or letting you go pay bills, this was one thing that we had to do. We had to walk to town to pay on the piano, to pay on the radio, and that might have been $2 or $3 that we had to go and pay that bill. And that was to make you responsible for meeting your debts and paying your bills. That was part of the education that you had a responsibility. Not only did you have a responsibility for yourself in learning, you had a responsibility for the whole community. | 5:15 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And I think that's why most of the people in this age level feel that you have to go out and do all of these other things because you never were just on your own. This was something that you had to feel the responsibility of your neighbor as well as your own family. It was never just left with just you. And I think the nursing reinforced that. You have to provide for others as well as yourself. And I think that all the way through my life, that my parents and the community enforce that on us. That you're never just yourself. You are responsible. | 6:29 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And as the Bible says, you are responsible, you are your brothers keepers. You have to share whatever you have, whether it's good or whether if they're suffering or if you have something good, you got to share that too, because without each other there is no world. There isn't anything but another human being and in helping them, and helping to relieve the suffering and the pain. I just can't stand suffering or watching that and not being a part of helping to relieve some of that. When I think about how people hurt, that hurts me very deep. I realize that came when they were teaching the things that they were teaching, it came early, but the enforcement has always been there. | 7:32 |
| Leslie Brown | What was the role of the church in those [indistinct 00:08:58]? | 8:51 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | The church was one that enforced whatever you were learning at home. To obey your parent, and that you were a product of this world, you had to share in giving. We were taught that you obeyed your parent and you shared whatever you had in the community, and that you too was responsible for everything that went on in your community. If you were looking for something to better somebody or to help somebody, you did that. If you had it to give, then you give it, and you share whatever you had. That was the role. My dad and six other deacons started our church, and that was the thing that we all learned. Everything was shared. This is what the church taught mostly. And they always came to the rescue, it didn't matter what the problem was. And if everything was running well in the community, everybody was happy, and it was jubilee time. And we had a lot of wonderful activities that they would plan. | 8:57 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | It was never like I don't have anything to do. They played those things, and we never really realized how they would go about doing it. This was something that when we knew anything, it would be happening. But after I grew up, I could understand how they planned. And they had been planning and implementing activities that would keep us busy. | 10:40 |
| Leslie Brown | What were some of those activities? | 11:11 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | We would have ball games, like baseball. They even had tennis. My dad had worked at the Miles Park Country Club and tennis rackets. He brought all of that stuff, because he was exposed to a lot along with my mom. They were exposed to a lot of things that White people did that they would bring home and implement those things with us. We had tennis rackets, we had tennis balls, now think about that. But they would give him those things. Baseball, we played dodge ball, and they played right along with— that was always the cooking and the eating, and we did it outside. | 11:13 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | There was always the fish fries, the watermelon, the hand ice cream things, the hot dogs. We had those things, but everybody would come together in the community and bring these little cupboard dishes, and they would bring these things to do. I can remember [indistinct 00:12:22] pies, sweet potato pies, biscuits and hot rolls and fried chicken, and these things would just be there and this is what we would do. This is the fun that we would have. And there was always activity like Fairview School, they would always be putting on plays, and everybody in the community went to everything that school put on. | 11:58 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | I wish you could see them. They would be hanging out windows and everywhere, because the auditorium would be packed and they wouldn't have nothing but just little fans. But they would be there when the school and the church put on any program, they were there. When there was a funeral or somebody— every church had their bell, and when that bell tone you knew that whoever was very sick and that church had died and they would know where to go to carry to go to food and everybody would know this. This was just something, it was almost like the drums they used to use in Africa, these would ring bells. That would be Nazare bell or that would be Second [indistinct 00:13:36] bell or that would be Brandon or whatever church. But that's the things that we knew. | 12:52 |
| Leslie Brown | Would you describe a funeral? | 13:45 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Okay. A funeral, the wake was at the house. When the person would die, the hearse would come and pick them up. They would bring them back and in the casket and the casket would stay in what was known then as the front room or the living room. And people were there around the clock from the time they died with that family. Food came in from everywhere. There was all the food. There was that force in the community that women that would see that, everybody clothes were ready for the funeral, and everybody would come and they would sit, they would talk, and this went on until the day of the burial. And the family was never alone, there was always someone there. And there was always praying and singing over the body that was there. And everybody saw the body, all of the children would look to see, and sometimes the veil would go up. There was a veil that covered. | 13:48 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | I had heard about where they would put them on a cooling bench, but I always saw them in a casket. I never saw anyone without being in a casket, but the body did come home. The body was moved from the home to the church in a procession and then the funeral was held at the church, and then the burial. And then the family would come back and they would still stay with that family for weeks. The family was never alone. It was always somebody there to help fill that void. | 15:27 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | They did not stay all night, but they were there late in the afternoon, and it was always somebody coming. And our community was one telephone and it was a community telephone, you just had to go and use the phone, but everybody paid a nickel to use the phone. But if you had to use the phone twice that day, you only paid one nickel. And if it was an emergency, they would call anyway. And Jane Ross and Lois, they were the ones that had the telephone, and Jane Ross was one of the first Black policemen in this area, and his wife and daughter still lives today here. | 16:04 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And Jane Ross had quite a name for himself. I can't remember the year that we first got Black policemen, but this was really something that we aspired to. And really, I had no earthly idea that they were even trying to get Black policemen here, but it was something that the whole community was very proud of. He and Bob Houston were the first Black policeman on the force here, and that was a big celebration. | 16:56 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | When anybody went off to college, it was a big celebration. When a baby was born, it was a big celebrations. And babies were born at home, there were people that midwives that delivered babies at home in that community. And when things got too complicated, they were taken off to the hospital. But usually when someone went to the hospital, you were almost expecting them to die. It was as if you were going to a funeral. When they would go to the hospital, the people would just weep and weep and weep, because they looked at it that you weren't coming back. But the ones that I remember going did come back, and the ones that I remember dying died at home. | 17:38 |
| Leslie Brown | What kind of care did people get in hospitals? | 18:23 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | I suppose that they received sort of the same thing that you could get at home, but it was a highly respected hospital. The hospital that— | 18:31 |
| Leslie Brown | Good Samaritan? | 18:51 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Good Samaritan Hospital. The nurses wore black stockings and black shoes, all the dark outfits, and it was real gloomy looking. It wasn't a bright atmosphere at all. And I think that they looked like death, and everybody felt that you were doomed anyway because the uniforms were so dread looking. And you did not see the smiles and things on their face, because they didn't really have anything to really work with. When I went in nursing, and I went to Durham, we had to wear white uniforms. We were the white and blue. And that had changed, but when I was growing up it was this dark color. | 18:52 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And you see penicillin was just coming out when I went in training and that was in '40, '45, I think it was 1945. And penicillin was just coming out. They were using [indistinct 00:20:12] prior to that, and this is what you were giving for all of these other things. And you would get all these rugs, you would get hot packs, you get the same thing in the hospital that you would get. It could be provided at home like they do now with these home health courses and things that they give. I can remember after finishing, I went through what was called the American Red Cross Home Health Program, and it wasn't too far from what was going on when I was a girl. The big thing was the penicillin and we would give it, but see we lost a lot of people giving penicillin, couldn't take it. And a lot of things were not recognized at that time. I've seen people that died from taking penicillin injection, and then some other medications too. | 19:56 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | It's one thing that I always thank the Lord so much for. I thank him all the time. I never gave a wrong dose of medication or a wrong treatment, and I really thank God for that, because I've saw so many other people do it because of miscommunication or just not taking the time to realize what you were doing and really watching and observing what you're doing. And I think all of that also stems from early childhood, going back that you supposed to care for those people. And one thing in nursing that they told us, "When you nurse someone that is sick, you're nursing that whole family. The whole family is sick." And I just think that you put that personal care thing when you're caring for people, if you just want to be treated like you would want them to treat your family or you in that. But I think that caring for people is one of the most wonderful things that you could do in life is providing relieving pain and that sort of thing. And we cut the ball. I want to really— | 21:24 |
| Leslie Brown | Would you talk about your training in nursing in the hospital, and what life was like in Durham? | 23:11 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Oh, okay. I left Johnson C Smith University and went to Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing. This was a diploma graduate. Lincoln had a high status of career for African American nurses, and it was a tough curriculum. The curriculum that they had, the year that I went in was the first year in what they call preclinicals. You did not go into directly into the hospital to work, you first had to go through a six month educational program, what they call preclinical. And then you had to work with senior nurses to do the things that you carrying out nursing duties. And then you had anatomy and physiology and pharmacology, and the people that taught you, you could not take your exams under them. We had people that came over from Duke University and from Wade, it was another hospital there. | 23:17 |
| Leslie Brown | [indistinct 00:24:45]? | 24:43 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | It was not in Winston, it was in Durham. Wade, can't think of that name. But anyway, we had instructors and things from Duke that we had to discuss things with and talk about. | 24:46 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | We went through verbal tests. Had to tell them what you knew, not answering no questions here. You had to talk to them and tell them what you knew. And it was demanding, because nurses on Sunday morning, we would see the kids from North Carolina Central. They would be going to church and we'd be washing windows and washing bed pans and scrubbing those walls. We had to wash walls, scrub bed pans and boy, it was something else. You had to do your uniforms and you had to have clean— although you could send them to the laundry but they would get mixed up with other people and you would lose them, and you only had so many. And then there were certain things that you had to do. And one of them that was doing World War II, we had to go over to the USO to entertain soldiers, and then we had to go out to the hospitals to write letters, sing, perform, and do whatever for the fellows that were sick. | 25:03 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And that was something that was required for us to do, and it was a joy in talking to them. We met a lot of wonderful, wonderful people. I have a lot of poems that were written for me from one of the fellas that wrote poems, and I used to go to him to talk to him. We played table tennis, that was one of the main things that we would do, and Chinese checkers and then the regular checkers. We played tic—tac—toe and the dot things, I don't even know what that is or not. You know how you draw dots and things? We played that with them. We read and just talked. We danced a lot. It was a lot of dancing. | 26:21 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And we would just dance with each other just to entertain them. That was some of the fun times. And the curriculum were very tough when exam times were coming around. We started out with 28 in my class, and I think about 18 of us finished, it was about 18 that finished. Because if you didn't make it past that first year, you were out, and it was very tough. Some of them left because they were passing the curriculum but they just found out they didn't want to be the nurse because it was tough. | 27:10 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | It was during the war, and we had to do everything for every patient. If a male patient had to be prepped for surgery, we had to do it. We only had one orderly, so we had to do that. We had a ward for mentally ill people that you had to care for. We had the pediatric ward. We had the surgery. We had to do a lot of the deliveries, and then the regular surgical floors and then the medical floors. The medical floor was one of the toughest one, that's where you had to do a lot of skill nursing, because a lot of it required that kind, because you still saw the cardiac failure, the heart problem, the diabetes, the edema of the legs, the kidney problems. The medical floor everybody hated that floor, because you would go home all down because most of those people there, you knew were not coming out. We saw some of the worst cancer things for people, they were on the medical floor too. | 28:02 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | We would be glad to get on the orthopedic floor. My favorite operating room was reconstructive surgery. I loved orthopedic surgery, because you saw so much rewards from that, and you saw things that would happen with someone were crippled or couldn't walk, reconstruction surgery would rehab that person to be active or care for themselves. Surgery was a good part of my life. I spent 14 years in the operating room and enjoyed that with that, and that was exciting. I did about four years in the maternity ward and delivering babies and this sort of thing. And I did deliver a set of triplets that are living here in Charlotte today, and that was a lot of fun. In the maternity ward, it was a lot of fun. | 29:31 |
| Leslie Brown | [indistinct 00:30:42] when you cam back? | 30:41 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Yeah, that's where I did the four years, it was here at Good Samaritan. And I did 14 years in operating room, including some time in operating room when I was in training, because I was supervisor in the operating room, went off for some training and I stayed up an extra three months, I believe it was in the operating room at Lincoln, because I enjoyed operating room. And then most of my operating room experience was here at Good Samaritan Hospital. | 30:45 |
| Leslie Brown | [indistinct 00:31:19] hospital in Durham was started by Blacks. It got a lot of support from the Duke family. And good Samaritan here was started by the [indistinct 00:31:29]. | 31:19 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | White. | 31:30 |
| Leslie Brown | Did you find any differences between the two hospitals? | 31:31 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Durham was more on its own. It did what they wanted to do. They were not answering to the White establishment, as to where it's here, the diocese here controlled, even when I was working there, they dictated as to what should be done and how it should be done there at Good Samaritan. And I still think that they had a lot even after it was torn down. According to the history that I had heard, that they wanted to save this to be with the Episcopalian church that is now over in the Hoskin area. They had one area left of that hospital, and that was the chapel. And I understand now that it is in storage. But the diocese said that they were going to help with that, And that is down at Duke. They tell me all of the histories at Duke from the Good Samaritan. | 31:37 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | But I always felt like when I was at Lincoln, there was no control over the religious aspect. But the kids that went to Goods Samaritan, they had to go to that Episcopalian church. You had to go whether you were a Baptist, Presbyterian or whatever, you had to go to that services, and you would be required to go to chapel for these sort of things too. But that did not spill over to the graduates that worked there, but it was with students. A lot of them after graduation remained with the Episcopalian church, but all of them didn't. So I don't know whether that was good or whether it was helpful. I don't see any of the graduates any worse off, but I do see quite a few that are still Episcopalians and I thought that was the idea behind that, to get them to remain with that. | 32:44 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And even I think Durham had more of an outreach curriculum. I found at Good Samaritan that it was a closed hospital, and it was very little in my book growth, and I always will feel that was one of the reason to shut it down, because that was one of the oldest hospitals in the country. It had been much more outreach coming into it, it would've brought more ideas, skills. But if you worked there, you still did not have any influence on what was going on on the curriculum. The curriculum was made up of people that graduated from Good Samaritan and it remained that way. It was no outside growth. Like in Durham, you brought people from everywhere that brought a lot of skills in and made things better. It's like the lady had a friend and she had this pot roast, and it was one of these prime ribs and she asked, she said, "Why do you cut that?" | 34:24 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | She said, "I don't know. My mom cut it." And she asked her mom, she said, "I've never seen one cut a roast." These were two young girls talking, and they had invited them to dinner and these standup prime rib roast things, and the girl had cut it. And she asked her mom and her mom said, "Well I don't know. I cut it because that's what my mom did." So she asked her mom, she said, "I cut it like that because I didn't have a pot big enough to put it in." So that's the sort of thing that I see when you close yourself off, you don't get the growth that you need and you don't learn what can be from somewhere else. And even though we were outsiders, because I was coming from Durham and I had a lot that I wanted to implement, but you could not do that because the establishment at Good Samaritan just wouldn't allow you. | 36:04 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And it's the same thing with the alumni today. And I feel that the small part that they do have left from Good Samaritan is in storage somewhere because it's not that growth that they needed a long time ago to bring them into what they need to be discussing and doing. They feel limited in it. And even the Richardson is putting the stadium on the very place that is standing, and it's in the minutes at the courthouse that it is supposed to be an erected stand there. And I understand some of them were able to get some of the bricks they have from the old hospital to do that. | 37:04 |
| Leslie Brown | What kind of outreach did Lincoln Hospital do? | 38:06 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Like I said, this was during World War II and the soldiers, we did that. And that was in the community. The community came into the hospital and they did work there in the hospital. There was people that would come in. And we fixed— Well you have to understand this: we couldn't go down to Winchester Surgical Supply and order these things. So the community came in and made dressings out of old sheets and these sort of things that were autoclave. They came in and did that. The community came in and did programs for raising money, funds and things. The doctors wives came in to the hospital and worked too. It was a lot of outreach. There was outreach from the hospital to the college that we did. There was that type of relationship when we would crown Miss Lincoln, whatever I have this, the community came in. | 38:09 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | It was a lot of work with the community. The administration worked closely with the leaders all over Durham. That is how Durham is. They worked out there. For instance, you have in Durham now called the Lincoln Clinic. We were not able to do that here. Even though Good Samaritan had been around, they changed the name to the Oaks. They can't get anything named Good Samaritan. They've tried to put something on this campus to remember, and I truly think, Leslie, that it stems back from not reaching out, and it's a real closed area, and not bringing other skills from other people, other nurses. | 39:20 |
| Leslie Brown | Why do you think Good Samaritan didn't reach out or bring outsiders in? | 40:26 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | I think it was the Episcopalian Church that did this, that stopped. Because if they had accepted other ideas and these sort of things, it would've changed the total focus of the whole curriculum and the way the administration and everything went. I think that would've changed. And I think that is what we see the growth in Carolina Medical today is what we have. They had to stop saying [indistinct 00:41:09] Hospital because of all of the influx, all of this other stuff. | 40:34 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | They grow so much when you bring other people in, other ideas and other skills. You can accept them or reject them, but hear them and listen to them. Because I think I had a lot to offer, because I had been exposed to so much more in Durham. We were on North Carolina Central, we were on that campus. We were in the churches, we were in the libraries, we were with the community. And you did not find that type of community activity going on from the hospital out. When you go in there, it was closed. You just could not really go in there and bring no new ideas. | 41:14 |
| Leslie Brown | Do you remember clinics for children? | 42:13 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Like a pediatric clinic? No. Even in public health, when I went in public health in 1962, we had nowhere to send people that were a clinic like people were sick, because Good Samaritan Hospital didn't have a clinic. We had to rely on doctors. And this was one thing that hampered public health nursing in the African American community, because we had to call, there was just certain doctors that would go. | 42:13 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | If we had to send somebody in, we were making a home vision and someone was sick, we would have to call a doctor to come in if we could not take care of the problem ourselves. And sometimes they would come and sometime that they would just too busy in the office to come. We did a lot of injections, penicillin injections, B12 injections, which is illegal now. You don't do that now because of what could happen to you and the patient. But we did a lot of things then that is real questionable now that you even have to almost have standby equipment in the hospital to do, but we did that. | 42:53 |
| Leslie Brown | Let's say before 1964, did children need to be immunized or inoculated? | 43:45 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Yeah, they had those clinics. | 43:54 |
| Leslie Brown | And where were those clinics held? Who ran them? And I'm thinking specifically for African—American children? | 43:55 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Okay. The Mecklenburg County Health Department. And it was left up entirely to the discretion of that nurse. Most of the Black nurses would set up clinics in churches, or whatever facilities that they had. I can remember one nurse working up in the Huntsville area, and she would have to go and make a fire early in the morning to make a fire. And I have heard about when they made the fire, some people would bring their childrens in to cook, and I've heard some of the White nurses talk about they couldn't go in the clinic and work because the children's were smelling so bad. But it was mostly in churches that they would set up a clinic, and in the schools that they worked in and it was left up to her. But most of the nurses would do that. They had to have— but it was a loose thing that required about immunization. | 44:06 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | But they had done such a fantastic job in the community telling parents, because see, the Black nurse got every birth certificate, whether you were a private doctor or whether you were a clinic doctor. They got the birth certificates and they visited homes according to the birth certificate. They would take the birth certificate with them and the birth certificate, they would make sure that it was correct, and that's how they got in to take care of the mother and the baby, and they would visit all of the other family members. It was a real unique way of getting into the Black homes. Then they had the schools that they had. You were assigned to a geographical area and you took care of everything in that area from what we call morbidity, this was the senior citizen, like with high blood pressure strokes or whatever. | 45:16 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | And we had a rehabilitation program that we would go in to keep. We would do the physical therapy. We were the therapists as well as the nurse, and doing your physical appraisal of the individual or whatever. You had certain things to do in your school, and a lot of it was the dental, your eye exams, examining for deformities of any, especially the typhosus of the spine or whatever, any curative of the spine or anything. You would do that on school kids, whether they were orthopedic— or send them in orthopedic clinic. That was one fortunate thing that we did have orthopedic clinic we could send them to. But if there was a medical problem, we didn't have a clinic. | 46:16 |
| Leslie Brown | You talked about the special role of black nurses in the black community. What about the role of black doctors? | 0:02 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | The black doctor before the '70s was one that was just as powerful as the community itself. Remember, the doctors were visiting the homes. When I was growing up, the doctors would come out to your house to visit if you were sick. I can remember when my brother was sick, the doctor spent the night there, and this is something that they did because they had a clientele. | 0:12 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | They also worked in the community. They did just as much work in the community as anyone else, but they did it on a medical standpoint. They would teach, just like the minister. They worked very close with the black minister in teaching about politics, voting; they taught the aspects of, "Don't want you to eat this," and talking to you and telling you. We do not have the black — Not in this area. We don't have the black physicians working as an outreach. Most of them do their work in the office. I am not familiar with an African American physician working with the Cancer Society, the heart, diabetic. I'm not — The American Red Cross, the AIDS program. I'm not familiar with them working today in these areas that affect us so much. | 0:50 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | But back then, they worked very close with us. When I had a problem, even in the '60s, and had a client that I was working with, if I could not decide what was wrong, I could call Dr. Lowe, Dr. Pride, Dr. James. I could call them old physicians and they would respond. They would even help teach us how to look, observe, and do these things. It was a very close relationship with us. Now, they dominated us and we had respect for their positions, but whatever they said, "Do," that's what we did. | 2:04 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | It was close knit, a relationship with the black nurse and the black doctor. But I don't see that now and I think that's something we have lost. I think it's something that the black community has lost. I don't see black physicians talking about teen pregnancy or the results of early childhood. I don't see them in the midst of the problem that's affecting us now, and I really think that integration has caused that problem, and this is a personal viewpoint that I see that we have lost touch with each other. | 3:04 |
| Leslie Brown | Do doctors carry special authority with the people in the community? | 4:00 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Today? When I was growing up, they did. The same two most respected people in the community was the black physician and the black preacher, and this is the essence of our life. They taught us all of the caring. For instance, when someone was sick in the community, the doctor came out and taught the community, taught someone in the community, how to care for this person, how to care for someone that just had a baby, and how to care for that baby and how to keep that mother — Mothers used to stay in a room for nine days, in a dark room when a baby was born and everything, and the doctors taught how to care for that mother and that baby. | 4:06 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | The doctors taught this to the people in the community and the minister taught them the other socialization things of the business part, of what you should be looking for, the voting, and the political, and the social aspects. But the doctor taught the medical aspects: how to care, if hot packs, or wet packs, or soaks, or anything had to be done, the doctor demonstrated that and not only to the family. He taught it to — The people would be coming in to help with that. | 5:12 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | I carried that out in my public health nursing. If I was going to demonstrate something for a family to do for a loved one, I would always say, "Have someone else there." When I would go out to do the teaching, I would teach another neighbor, or either another family member that did not even live in that house, how to do this because we had to teach how to give yourself insulin or do this kind of treatment or whatever treatment needed to be done, and this is what we would teach. I always made sure that I told more than one person. This is what the doctors did back then. They never would come out and just teach you. He would even go to the community and say — If nobody was there, and I would, too, like, "Come over here. I want to show you how to do this," and they were always willing to do this. | 5:53 |
| Leslie Brown | What do you remember of political activities in the community? What kinds of political activities were there? | 6:57 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | When I was growing up, my daddy was a Republican and my father was a Republican because he worked at MINES Park Country Club, and he saw the Republican as being the liberator because of Abraham Lincoln, and this is what the Republicans told him. Throughout his life, he was a Republican because of Abraham Lincoln. But even after we grew up and said to him that Abraham Lincoln didn't have a choice; he had to free the slaves because he was getting ready to divide the United States, my daddy didn't accept it that way. | 7:07 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | My mom was a Democrat. I can remember them really going to vote and they had to go through the process of reading that process that they went through of being able to read and write, and I can remember that the minister is the one that carried on these educational programs with them to get through that. But in my household, we had one Republican and all the rest were Democrats. Of course, we all were Democrats. But I can remember the minister telling us to go vote, vote, vote, vote. You register and you vote, keeping in the front of our minds what our people had went through to become registered to vote. | 7:54 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | There, again, you have this responsibility because people have died for this, for you to have this right for you to vote, and that tell you how — I can remember my minister teaching us how to slingshot vote. This is where you vote for — The way we got an African American on city council for the very first time, we did what they call slingshot voting. You see, when you go in the booth to vote, you can vote for four. But you see, when you vote for four, you cancel your vote, so you vote for one person and you vote only for Fred Alexander, who was the first black on city council. That's slingshot voting. | 8:52 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | But this was really throughout this whole area about how you go in to vote. Well, then the paper started carrying slingshot voting; this is what you did. But to this day, I practice the same thing. I don't ever cancel my vote. I decide on who I'm going to vote for and that's it because that's your right. I personally feel that you cancel yourself out because usually you only have one African American running. You know them other people are not going to vote for them, so that's what you do. | 9:42 |
| Leslie Brown | What were the signs of segregation? | 10:27 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | In growing up, we could not use water fountains; we could not use some door entries. You could not go in. You certainly could not use the bathrooms, the facilities. You could not eat at counters. You had a small place in the back they would come and wait on you whenever they wanted to. The whites was always waited on ahead of you and you had to wait. I can remember even in a grocery store, you had to wait or you had to be put back. | 10:31 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | I can remember having books in school that the pages were torn out. We always got books from the other white schools and the pages would be — They were worn books. We didn't have the locker rooms. We didn't have facilities where you could get your hot meals and these sort of things. Having everything second-hand; having to raise money to get things for your school that were quite obvious that the school was providing, the system was providing for other schools, we didn't have that. | 11:16 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Remembering it's better to walk than to get on the bus because you have to move to the back of the bus. I was working at Good Samaritan Hospital and had to ride the bus. I can remember getting on the bus; I always went to the extreme back of the bus. This is what I had been taught to do and I was not about to defy that. That had been really instilled what you could get into. We have seen people that would sit on the bus. This particular night when I got on the bus, I was working 11:00 to 7:00 at Good Samaritan Hospital and I got on the bus and there were two white men. Well, they were too white something; they were not men. They were hoodlums. | 11:57 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | There was a long seat at the back of the bus and just in front of it on this side was a seat that would sit two, and on this side it would sit two. One would sit on this side and the other one sit on that side. Meant that if anybody black got on the bus, the law was you sit behind them. The whites would sit from the front to the rear and you would sit from the rear to the front, so I sat on the long seat because I knew they were hoodlums. You could tell it from the way they looked. I was in my uniform with my cape and my cap and all. | 13:03 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Another black man got on the bus and he sat on the long seat with me. A black woman got on, and she sat in front of these white men and they hit her. The black man jumped up to help her and he said, "You are perfectly within your rights." They cut him. I ended up that night working on the emergency room with him and answering all sorts of accusations, ended up in court, and at that same time someone had blew up WBT power station and all— | 13:41 |
| Leslie Brown | [indistinct 00:14:31]? | 14:29 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Uh—huh. Because of all of this integration and all of this stuff. That was a very trying time for me because I had never had any brush with the law or anything like that, because I thought they were going to kill me too. But they were fighting and the bus driver just sit there. He didn't try to stop anything or he didn't try to make those people move forward, which if we had been really — We could have sued the company and this is what they were afraid of. But no one ever told us this. We didn't know this, and that boy didn't get anything out of that, and yet they cut him. | 14:30 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | It was with one of these hot blade knives that they cut him all in his face. His throat, his everywhere, and the only way — The police were changing duties the same as we would be changing, and there were plenty of them at the square, and although our screams and things never brought the police until I ran to the square, which is at the corner of TRADE and TRYNE, screaming for help. When they found — I said white and that made them just pull on the bus. But it was a black man that had been cut. | 15:13 |
| Leslie Brown | When was this? | 15:48 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Yeah. Oh, goodness. It must have been in about '49 because I don't even think I had children then. Must have been in about 1949. But I was out of nursing then and working here in Charlotte when that incident happened. But in growing up, I don't ever remember — Parents kept us shielded from that and we never had to encounter segregation in that manner. You would walk everywhere you went, but when we started riding the bus, we knew that you had to go to the back of the bus. We knew that when we were downtown we did not drink from those fountains. It was colored and white fountains there. | 15:50 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Although we would shop at BELT'S Department Store, JB IVY'S, which is now DELOIT, you did not have the facilities, and you had certain areas that you shopped in that store and people would not wait on you even as late as the '50s. Even in some stores now you have to say, "I was first, whether you're going to wait on me." It still happens with some of them. I suppose the same thing that's happened at DENNY'S today. You encounter those things. | 17:05 |
| Leslie Brown | What did you think of that? What did you think of segregation? | 17:47 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Really, I thought it was — As I grew up, I detested it. I hated that. But when I was young, I never heard my parents talk about things like this. I was always told that these are things that you don't do and this is what I obeyed. But I had sisters and brothers that did not listen to that kind of warning, and I guess they told me, "Just do everything that they say do," and that's what I did. | 17:54 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | But I thought my mom was Jesus Christ himself; whatever my mom said, that was it. It didn't matter. She was everything to me. My daddy had never had to say; my mother told me everything. My daddy was gone. I was glad to see him come when he was there, but my daddy worked all the time, and my mom did all of the teaching, along with the community. There was one man that lived next door to us. You could not tell him from a white man to save your life and some of his children. He would sit anywhere he wanted to on the bus. After I grew up and started riding the bus, I would sit with him and some of the people would say, "Well, she's sitting with that old white man." But it was the man next door that I grew up with. I knew him. From when I knew myself, I knew him, and he would also talk about things. | 18:39 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | He would talk about how he could go and do whatever he wanted to and in different areas where he could go. You see, it was people like that would come back and tell us, and they would laugh about some of the things that they could get away with. It's like Miss Davis; she was the principal of FAIRVIEW School. They looked — You couldn't tell them from white folks to save your life. They ate every Saturday morning down at the TULIP ROOM at JB IVY'S. You know? They would laugh about it because they thought they were white and they could bring back information: "It ain't so good to do this." He said, "It is no different up there than it is back here." It's where you have your own dignity and what you think of your own self. I did it just to experience it and to let them know that black folks can do it. You do have this same caring about yourself and how you can't act when you eat. | 19:49 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | But we used to laugh about it all the time, how they would eat in the Tulip Room, and the TATES. The Tates looked absolutely — They're whiter than any white people that you've ever known, so much so that when they opened up the Double O swimming pool, there were kids out there and white people would come by, and they would send the police over there. The white people were in the pool, the black pool, and they were black people. | 20:49 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Segregation is something that I'm sure had to happen but personally I don't think it has been everything that I would have loved to have seen happen. I really think that— | 21:22 |
| Leslie Brown | You mean integration? | 21:48 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Mm—hmm. Yeah. I'm sorry: integration. I would like to see the kind of relationship that African Americans had when I was growing up. It was the respect of your elderlies and each other. I can remember when Joe Louis was fighting, we had one radio in the community, and that was at my house. The radio was put at the window where the sound would go out on the porch and into the yard, and that's where the whole community would gather to hear Joe Louis fight. When Jackie Robinson was in baseball and how he opened that up, and how everybody was pulling for them so hard, and how we would be so happy when Jackie Robinson would score, how we would have parties. | 21:49 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | I was in nursing then, but we would be celebrating and that after a ball game. When Joe Louis would fight, I can remember him fighting Max Schmeling. This was supposed to be some big giant that I thought was going to really beat him up. When he was down, it would be so much noise going on, they would have to relay words to us that were way out in the street; it would just be such a crowd. "He's down and he's out," and, "He's on the count of this," and that would be just really a hallelujah time that we would be having with that. | 22:59 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | That, I feel, is lost. I think we have taken on some of the non—caring aspects of each other as I had seen and heard about in the white race. It's like I said if I had 50 cents, a quarter belonged to someone else; we don't do that anymore. We don't care for each other that way anymore. It's almost like it's their world. It's like the white world that everybody is supposed to be rich and have all of this money and all of this stuff. You are supposed to do this and you are not supposed to share this. I think there is a report out now saying that poor people give more than anyone else, than the rich people. | 23:35 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | You give more to charity than other people. You give more: you give more of your time, you give more of whatever material things that you have accumulated, you give that. But I don't see that, and I think integration has done that to us. I really do. I was one of those people that was, really, when we talked about integrating the school system, I was one of those [inaudible 00:25:07] that did not want to see the school system integrated, being around white people. I knew that it would be — I felt like it would be just like it is today, in the system here today. | 24:31 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | We have over 4,000 teachers and we have less than 800 black teachers in this system and our children are suffering from this because the main stay of the school system here is white women, and they don't understand black boys, black girls. What has come from that? We have the alternative schools; we have the behavior problem schools. It's like the little boy this year came home and said, "I'm tired of that white teacher telling me —" He's in second grade. "I'm tired of her calling me a nigger every day." They do things to children like this, and yet the children — It's some things that you can't even discuss because they don't even know how to tell you how they're being alienated in the classroom or how they have said things to them. | 25:29 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | I think that has created a lot of things just because, in the first place, it's like the programs and things that we have in the black communities now that are designed and implemented and carried out by white people, they don't know how to come in. If they have the money to see what happens is they bring these programs, and these programs are already designed to their making and what they want to see the black people do, and then they drop these programs, then they go back to southeast Charlotte, and they have the big fat salaries and no money is put over here for this program, so the program fails. | 26:34 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | It's just like we have a big program here now with a program called Success by 6. Well, that program has not created nothing, Success by 6, because they have designed this program and brought it in here and black folks don't live that way. They can't come in here and take their white values and say, "This is what you do." You see, if they would come in here and say, "Okay, Success by 6. We're going to mobilize this community and put someone over there that is black and pay them that live in that community to come up with some designs and programs," because no two communities are alike, then they could have had something Success by 6. | 27:21 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | This is something that I see that integration has hindered us. I want the same things. But I think the integration of the school system has done a lot of damage to the black community. What I would have loved to have seen was the integration of the pulpits first, and then — Because the children have suffered and they have had to carry on their backs the burden that we should have had as adults. I didn't want my children to go through that. | 28:08 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Consequently, I was at my children's school and they thought I was going to school there, because the teachers mistreated them. My son was an A student until he got into one teacher's classroom that really didn't care anything about him. My son was making As until he found out he was black, and he was in his classroom almost a semester before he found out, and then all of his sudden, my son suffered a lot of traumatic experience from that. | 28:54 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | By me being one of those people that — I can remember being at school every day for a solid week standing in that principal's face and in that teacher's face and making them change all the [inaudible 00:29:43] his folder to things that he had not done for my own child. My child was processed in that school system as a child to go to college from the day he went in. But there were other black children that were smart that were not. They wasn't put in that curriculum. It's so wrong, a lot of things that I see. | 29:27 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | It's the same thing with these Magnet Schools. They're putting the money there in those schools, and yet they have a managing—their—behavior—problem school over here, which is 99% black. Wherein they put somebody that is an Indian over at a school where there's mostly black kids, he can't even speak English, and he's supposed to be in a managing school. They don't even have — If these kids have emotional problems, then spend the magnet money to put there for these children with the emotional problems. This is something that we are seeing. I tell you, I think I saw this years ago, because I felt first that if we could get the pulpit, and this is the only thing that I see that's not integrated today, is the pulpit in the cemetery. | 30:06 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | They are not integrated. These are, to me, if you want to change something, then MOSES should be a leader. It should come from the pulpit. They don't even mix. Now, this is something that we were saying, "First, integrate the pulpits," and I don't mean I'm going over here to this church, because I don't want their religion, because I'm a Baptist and I'm a Southern Baptist, but I don't Baptist the way the Southern Baptists here Baptist. But I have my own what Baptists believe and do, and it's totally different from the Southern Baptist Association. | 30:59 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | But what I would love to do is for my pastor to go over to his pulpit, exchange pulpits, or there be a relationship with pastors or ministers in this area to talk about it, and I mean every denominational sitting down and talking about it, and coming to grips, and then it should have spread it from the pulpit. In my estimation, it should have went to the business world after the pulpit get itself together. See, it's not together. And then, it should have come down to the communities. Because we were saying, I was saying, "Well, every community has federal funds to integrate communities." This is what we were saying. "Well, it would take too long to do that." I said, "Not the way it's going." | 31:45 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | You see, if we had integrated the communities first, the kids would've played together. In the Greenville area, there were children, there were white kids playing with black kids. They were there because the white people lived in the area. In all of the outlining county areas, there were white and black kids together. The white kids got on the bus and went to school. The black kids had to come into town to live, but they were together. And then, I think the school should have been the very last thing that should have been integrated, with those kids coming together from those communities and going in on. | 32:33 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | Now, since it's ran the whole gamut, this is what they're looking at. This is where they're moving, toward community schools. To me, that will help bridge a relationship. But in my estimation, it's so much damage been done to the black community until it's going to take years of healing. Because we have lost, in my estimation of the kids that I have seen, we've lost a lot of children to being integrated, and kids dropping out. The rate of dropouts is humongous from school and it's because they don't feel comfortable there. I think everybody loves learning. I really think everybody loves learning, but the atmosphere's got to be acceptable and conducive to the child for learning, and I don't think it's all the children's fault. I really don't. | 33:18 |
| Thereasea Clark Elder | I really think it's the system and the way it is set up and designed because we don't have the black people in the system. It's designed that way because we don't have them there to teach or someone to speak for our children. So. | 34:27 |
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