Vermelle Ely interview recording, 1993 June 17

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Leslie Brown	Well, the first question I have is, are you originally from Charlotte?	0:02
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Yes, I am. I was born right here in Charlotte on January 10th, 1933, at the same place that I lived for many, many years. I was born in that house on, let's see, the address there was 616 East Stonewall Street. And that's where I was born, at that particular house. And of course, the house had made some changes over years. But I do have a picture that I'll share with you.	0:06
Leslie Brown	What neighborhood did you live in?	0:43
Vermelle Diamond Ely	I lived in a section called Brooklyn. Another name for, it was Second Ward. And it was one of Charlotte's Black neighborhoods, one of the sections that was geared toward businesses and entertainment and that kind of thing. Our school, only Black high school, was located in that same neighborhood called Second Ward.	0:45
Leslie Brown	Now, who called it Second Ward and who called it Brooklyn? Was there a difference?	1:13
Vermelle Diamond Ely	We never have really, really found out how Brooklyn got its name. I have heard some people say that having gone north or to some of the entertainment cities or whatever, that Brooklyn may have gotten its name that way, but I never have been quite sure of that. But Second Ward was the name that it was given. The neighborhoods were named First Ward, Second Ward, Third Ward, and of course, Fourth Ward is in existence now, but it wasn't early years. So, that's how. I'm not sure about how it really got its name Brooklyn, but that's the way we always referred to it, as Brooklyn.	1:20
Leslie Brown	Can you describe the neighborhood?	2:11
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Well, Brooklyn consisted of all types of homes, all kinds of people lived there. You had some doctors, some teachers, some people that worked in service. And it was just a neighborhood of all kinds of people. You had large homes, you had small homes and some referred to some of the homes as shotgun houses. It was just a neighborhood that consisted of all kinds of homes and all kinds of people lived in that neighborhood. We had one elementary school, which was called Myers Street. And all of us, well, we lived close enough to walk to Myers Street, of course, Second World was just a couple blocks away and we walked to school each day. And of course, the streets were not—some of the streets were paved, some of them were not. Stonewall Street was not paved. But my early years, Alexander Street, where the school was located was a paved street, first street. A street that led from downtown. We had what we call The Square, that where Trade and Tryon and cross each other downtown. That was kind of the dividing point of the sections, of the areas. And of course, the paved streets were the ones from downtown where the buses traveled, or trolleys before that.	2:14
Vermelle Diamond Ely	They were like the main streets. They went through the section of Brooklyn. Of course, the side streets were dirt streets, and other roads. Very close together. I can remember when it changed, in the late 40s. You may be familiar with Independence Boulevard, now. This was—I never have understood how we changed from living on East Stonewall Street to South Independence Boulevard, but we did. They changed. They moved the houses back and of course, Stonewall Street became Independence Boulevard. There's a short section of Stonewall Street still in existence that's near the Observer now. But the street, the houses were well-kept. We didn't have grass and stuff like people do now. Most of the time houses didn't. I can remember our house had a wooden fence around it. We had a nice, clean dirt yard that we kept just like people keep the grass. We swept the yard nice and clean. Then when we finished, we took the point of the broom and decorated it real pretty. (laughs)	4:02
Vermelle Diamond Ely	So, people took pride in their homes even though they didn't have grass or flowers. But when the boulevard was open, the house was moved back and of course, we—my dad planted grass and we had had a little low hedge that went around the yard at that time instead of the fence. I can remember when, well, our house I'd say stood about middle ways to the boulevard. That's where our front steps—	5:24
Vermelle Diamond Ely	In fact, at our back steps, we had, what was it, a fig tree right outside the back steps. Of course, when they moved the house back, they moved the house back so far that that fig tree came up in the front yard eventually. But it was interesting to see them move those houses. And we lived in, I guess maybe 10 rooms in that house.	6:00
Vermelle Diamond Ely	It was a two-story house, a very big cold house in the winter. But they put that house on rollers and that was something that people came from all over to see them move. And of course, when they moved our house, they didn't get it finished before quitting time on the afternoon. And of course, my grandmother told the men they were working, said, "Please let me know when you get here in the morning." Said, "I want to be out of here when you decide to move this house." And of course, when she went to the door, well, we was still in bed and she was fixing breakfast. And when she went to the door to find out if they were ready to start moving the house again, moved it so easily that when she got to the door before she could ask the man about it, he said, "How'd you enjoy your ride?" So, they had already moved the house.	6:36
Vermelle Diamond Ely	But it was interesting to see that. And you could look out and see houses. A lot of people had their homes that didn't have space to move them back, had moved them to other sections of town and you could see them. They put those houses on a truck or flatbed or whatever you call it. And you could see a house going down the street some days. So they even moved a stone church that they turned around. It was a huge thing. They turned facing Stonewall Street to facing the other street. So, that was really something to see. But our house, when we were growing up was where we had the backyard. I was telling you how large the yard was and how far they moved the house back. We had the space to move. But my mother and father were both teaching school, but we had had chickens and we had pet rabbits. And of course, the chickens were not all pets. They weren't pets. They were for our livelihood.	7:33
Vermelle Diamond Ely	And they had a garden where they planted beans. And a lot of people did that. I remember when they got ready to open the boulevard, when they had to move the houses back, we had to do away with the chickens and all. We had had one rooster for a long time. And I can remember my dad, we didn't want to kill the rooster, but he had to be killed. So, we had to do away with all the chickens. So, this one rooster, I remember him ringing his neck. And I don't guess he wanted to leave either, so he had a tall basket. They used to ring the chicken's necks and put them in the basket. And he put that rooster in the basket. And he did that that morning. And when night came, he was still jumping. He just did not die right away. And of course his neck was broken, but he was still fluttering and had the basket going all around the yard. Because we watched it and cried. And my mother made chicken salad out the rooster and we didn't want to eat it. Because we loved the rooster. So, I guess enough about the chickens. Oh, but can you ask me another question here now.	8:45
Leslie Brown	Who were your neighbors?	10:15
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Oh, let's see. Across the street from us, one of the ladies that was a school teacher, she taught first grade at First Ward. And she may have taught [indistinct 00:10:33] Harris. I remember her, because I used to go and visit with her. Her husband was a lawyer. And of course, he would go away on trips and every time he'd go away, I'd get to go spend the night with her. So, I'd pack my suitcase like I was going out of town. And I go and spend the night with her. And in fact, she said she couldn't even finish. She had to make sure she finished her work before she even stuck her head out the door, because soon as she put her head out the door, I'd stand out there waiting for her to open the door. Said I'd call her Lees. Her name was Louise.	10:18
Vermelle Diamond Ely	But I remember him going away. Well, when he would come home from work, I would be there and she had fixed dinner. And she still laughs about this with me. She said, I'd tell her husband, whose name was Pete, said, "Come on. Come on, Pete." Say, "Lees got meat for dinner. Lees got meat." So anyway, we'd have birthday parties for her and carry cookies and punch and I did all that. This was across the street. We had another family that lived up the street from us that had a lot of children. And the street was our playground, more or less, because they didn't have places for us to go and play like they do now. So, it made it nice, because we were surrounded with people with a lot of children. And we'd play in the street. We'd have softball games or what we'd call roll a bat. You hit the ball, then you roll the ball to hit the bat, that kind of thing. So, we were just surrounded with all kinds of people. We were not separated like the teachers and all lived on one street and somebody else lived on another. But we were just all mixed up.	11:09
Leslie Brown	Were there any altercations between the children in the neighborhood?	12:37
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Oh, yes. Like always. You'd have your little petty arguments and fights, but they didn't ever amount to anything very much. They would just be childlike things.	12:40
Leslie Brown	What were the boundaries of the neighborhood? The boundaries of Brooklyn?	13:01
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Let's see. I guess Brooklyn was started from, I would say Brevard Street after you left the main Street, Trade, the bus turn at Brevard, and of course Brevard Street all the way to the creek where Cherry began on the other side of the creek, going that direction. And then it extended from that same area all the way out to Trade Street. And on the other side of Trade Street was First Ward. Before you get to Cherry, there was another section, a part of Brooklyn called Blue Heaven. And that extended to Mulhair Street. Extended on that end to Mulhair. So, it was just kind of like a big square area. I don't know how to describe it, but that's the best I can do. Those streets I know are not familiar, but.	13:08
Leslie Brown	Now, what were the bad sections of town?	14:32
Vermelle Diamond Ely	A part of Brooklyn was considered a bad section of town, McDowell Street. And that's just a portion of it because we had a lot of churches that were on McDowell Street. But there was one corner that I can remember growing up that they would call, I think they called it Murder Corner or something like that, because it had a lot of things that happened that was near the corner, 1st and McDowell, in that area. And just below that, well, it was like between where my street school playground was and going toward [indistinct 00:15:22] Street going toward downtown, but just in that one short area. You are referring to the bad sections of Brooklyn? Or just any section—	14:39
Leslie Brown	Any part of the city.	15:33
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Any part of the city?n Third Ward was—I don't think any of them really bad sections. I didn't get that impression. We had as children, and I think adults too, that we had neighborhood little fights and things. But the kids from Third Ward would always run you back home if you were over there. Especially if we were talking to some of their boys or girls, boyfriend/girlfriend kinds of thing. If you'd go over to visit them, and of course, they'd run you back home, but nothing like now. It's just rocks and running. But we would just have those kinds of fights. But now, there's a part of 2nd Street, I think I mentioned, that was referred to as the block. And of course, they may have had a lot happening there on the weekends. There were restaurants, they called them cafes during that time. The theater was there.	15:37
Vermelle Diamond Ely	And of course there was, I guess an entertainment area that was called the Green Willow Garden. And it was behind the fence, because that was off limits to us. But as children, we'd always try to find a peephole to see what was going on behind the fence. But there you had your dancers and they would have on weekends, gay parties. We'd sit on the sidewalk on Friday and Saturday night and watch them dress up. We knew some of the ones. You knew who they were. And of course, they had our men's clothing all week, and on Saturday nights, they dressed up in high heels and went to the Green Willow Garden to their parties. Of course, we never got a chance to see, except through the fence. But I imagine you might have heard a lot of things happening on the block, but it still wasn't bad in comparison.	16:43
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Things have just gotten worse over years. But those are the only bad sections that were just referred to as being bad. Of course, I think Brooklyn just may have gotten the name of being bad anyway, just period. How some sections, for instance, second Ward was the first high school. And when they opened West Charlotte in later years, in the late 40s I believe, then we became great rivals. Kids from this side of town and the kids from the other side of town. Of course, they referred to us as being the bad kids from Brooklyn. And we'd always have fights over games, over the boys and girls, or whatever. But in fact, the two high schools were great rivals. They had scheduled games with the high school, the other high schools around, but they eventually had to stop Second Ward and West Charlotte from playing, because of the fights.	17:53
Vermelle Diamond Ely	And usually, it was not the students that were doing this. It was other people in the neighborhood. Those younger men or people that were not even in school, but we got blamed for it. But like I said, Second Ward was always the bad section. Eventually, they stopped us from playing for a few years because of fighting. And so then in the middle 40s, somebody got the bright idea that they decided to let us play again and played at Memorial Stadium and called it the Queen City Classic. That was with Second Ward and West Charlotte football teams. And they still did the same thing after one of the [indistinct 00:20:01]. I can remember being at a game, and of course then as I mentioned before, it was just like rock throwing. Breaking out windows in the bus and things like that.	19:07
Vermelle Diamond Ely	But in the mid 40s they had the first Queen City Classic. That was an exciting thing because in 1948 they decided to have a queen for the Queen City Classic. And that was rivalry again between the students from Second Ward and West Charlotte. And I was the first Miss Queen City. And that was in 1948. But I don't remember if they fought that year or not. I always got away from it, if they did. But those were, I guess, trouble spots in the area, in the city. And of course you had your outlying areas like Greertown and places like that where you were very seldom—They were more or less in the county, didn't hear about too much going on. At least I didn't.	20:10
Speaker 3	Did the different neighborhoods or the different wards have different reputations? Were they different from each other?	21:01
Vermelle Diamond Ely	They were. Excuse me. Well, we all started out basically in the Brooklyn area. People moved out, as it happens now. But for instance, this side of town, the people that moved away from Brooklyn moved to Biddleville. And of course, they consider themselves the upper crust of Charlotte's Black neighborhoods. They were better than we were. Like I said, Second Ward always got the bad name, but they were the ones that always would start things, really. But they thought they were better. And of course, they took the teachers from Second Ward school. A lot of people say they took the better teachers and your better students moved out and moved to this side of town. Of course, that was not necessarily true to my mind, because there were a lot of families left in Brooklyn.	21:15
Vermelle Diamond Ely	These children did not come from professional homes, but they were good children, smart children. And we felt as though we were just as good as the others. Of course the ones that lived in First Ward thought they were a little better than the others too, so. And then of course, they looked at the people from Greertown as coming from the country, more or less. But all of us, it was a class kind of thing. They always felt they were better from First Ward and Biddleville. And Greenwood was from the project mostly, during my time. Of course I know it wasn't that way. I remember when the project was built. But it was different kinds of people. At least they thought they were different. We were all basically the same, just living in a different section of town.	22:45
Leslie Brown	What about Cherry? What kind of an area was Cherry?	23:41
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Cherry was an area that had the same kind of thing. Now, they didn't have as many businesses, but they had the elementary school, they had churches, they had all kinds of homes, they had all kinds of people that live there. The story has been told sometimes that Cherry was built because of the affluent neighborhood Myers Park, for their maids and butlers and whatever to live. But that was not, to my mind, necessarily true, because those people, a lot of them never worked in service. We had a lot of teachers that lived there, had doctors, and they had, like I say, their own businesses, like little grocery stores and beauty parlors and things like that. So, it was not necessarily just built for—Now a lot of them may have lived there and were able to walk there. But that was not the sole reason that I think Cherry was really built.	23:49
Leslie Brown	In addition to places like the Green Willow Garden, I think that's a wonderful [indistinct 00:25:04], were there other places you were not allowed to go?	24:59
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Some of us were not even allowed to go to Second Street period, except on the block. But they had all those restaurants, until you were older that you were able to go in those cafes. They had a Pool Room that was in that same area. They had another place that was called Sis's Place? I think it was a log cabin, it was called at one time. And we weren't allowed to go there. And then there was a cafe called Fred Kemp's Cafe. I think before that it was Fred Patton. And then another owner was Fred Kemp. But McDowell Street was not a good place until later, when they opened the theater. We had a theater on Second Street, which was called The Lincoln, and another theater, eventually, on McDowell Street. That was after the streets got better. They weren't as bad as they had been, I think, in some earlier years. But there was, what was the name of the theater there? Savoy.	25:10
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Of course, we had our own theaters, because I can't remember, but I have heard older people talk about going to the movies downtown, like The Carolina, they have a White movie that they would allow Blacks to come in and sit upstairs. But during my time, they had stopped Blacks from coming to the movies. From what I understand, they would throw popcorn stuff down on the kids. I don't know how bad that was, but I imagine they did. But they had stopped them from going to the movies. And I can remember having to go, to see really good movies, we went as far as Concord, that's a place about 20-something miles from here. And then we went in the White movie, but we had to go down the side of the movie and go upstairs. But they would allow us to come. And that's where you got a chance to see the late movies.	26:31
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Now, of course the Blacks theaters would have your chapter pictures. They'd call them serials. You'd go see them every week and see what happened last week, that kind of thing. But we were not allowed, there was a place called, well, it's now called the Grady Cole Center, and it was called The Armory when I was growing up right near the Memorial Stadium. And that was called The Armory. And that's where they used to have all the dances. The bands would come and they'd have the big dances. And course, we weren't allowed to go. And you'd have few shootouts and stuff when somebody stepped on somebody's foot. I remember somebody getting shot one time, but that's why our parents didn't allow us to go when we got older, because you know we tried to slip off and go. So, that was one place we weren't allowed to go until later, when we were old enough to get our own tickets and go. But—	27:37
Leslie Brown	What movies did you go to see?	28:46
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Oh, let's see. Hopalong Cassidy. All the westerns, Johnny Mack Brown. Some of these you never heard of, I'm sure. Superman. He is been around for a long time. They had another one called Captain Midnight. There were a lot of continued pictures. I can remember going to the movie. We went to the movie just about every Saturday to see the serials, especially. We called them chapter pictures. And my brother and I both still love popcorn and my mother just could not stand the smell of it. But anyway, you know the big brown grocery bags that they have now? My brother would pop a grocery bag full of popcorn and go to the movie on Saturday. And he would go in there and spend the day. And it started getting dark. I'd go home, I think, sooner than—He'd stay in there all day. I don't know how they ever made the money, because the kids would go and spend the day. But I'd have to go back and get him. And my mother said, "It's time to come home." Stay in the movies and eat popcorn all day.	28:49
Vermelle Diamond Ely	And later, we were able to catch the bus and come out on this side of town. There was another theater called the Grand Theater that's down there near Smith. That building is still standing there. And we were able to catch the bus and come to this side of town and we'd see a little better movies sometimes. It was a little quieter, a little cleaner, and that kind of thing. On this side of town where the ritzy Blacks lived, we get to come over here and see the movies. And then there was an old, I think he was Jewish, but he was real nice man. Mr. Nougie, I think.	30:08
Vermelle Diamond Ely	But anyway, Mr. Nougie would come down here, had a flashlight that he'd shine in your face, especially if you were making too much noise. And he'd shine the light and he'd come down the aisle and say, "Vermelle, your mama said catch the next bus. Come home." He knew everybody by name. He'd come in there and get you and tell you, "It's time for you to go home. Your mama said for you to come home." But—	30:45
Speaker 3	Was the Grand Theater Black owned?	31:10
Vermelle Diamond Ely	No, it wasn't. I don't think any of them really, really Black owned. But they had Blacks that worked the—I don't know who was upstairs working in the movies themselves, but they were in the ticket windows and the concession stands. But out here, Mr. Nougie and his wife ran the Grand Theater. There were two Whites.	31:13
Leslie Brown	Were there movies with Black movie stars?	31:41
Vermelle Diamond Ely	The only movies I can remember were Cabin in the Sky with Lena Horne. And very few that I can remember. Trying to think what else I remember from a long time ago. That's one that sticks in my mind, I know.	31:43
Leslie Brown	What were the other gathering places?	32:12
Vermelle Diamond Ely	On Second Street, again, we had soda shops to open up. It was like a pharmacy and drugstore where we would go on Sundays for entertainment. We'd do that and we'd catch the bus and there was another grill called Sportsman's Grill on this side of town. It's up near where Excelsior Club is now, just before you get to there, called Sportsman's Grill. That's what we would do on Sundays. We'd catch the bus. Bus fair was, what? Like, seven cents. And we'd go for bus rides on Sunday and go to the soda shops and meet your friends and talk. There was a place that was right over here called Sunset Park, which was kind of like a dance hall at night and a club where they had lots of entertainers to come into. Like James Brown and some of the big name stars now that have come through here. It's almost unbelievable that we saw them at Sunset Park.	32:18
Vermelle Diamond Ely	But they built a swimming pool there, too. And of course, that's where I learned how to swim. But I went with the Boy Scout troop. My girlfriend and I both had brothers that were scouts and of course, we begged the Scout Master to let us go. We had to get up five o'clock in the morning. Buses didn't start running until 6:00. So, we would walk from my house to downtown to Square and sometimes we'd walk all the way, because we'd save our money and go to Krispy Kreme, buy donuts. But we took swimming lessons with the Boy Scouts. They didn't have any classes for girls during that time. So, two of us did learn how to swim, then at the end of the swimming, swimming class they have closing at the end and they show off all the things that they had learned. I even took lifesaving course while I was in that class with them. He just let us do the same thing the boys were doing.	33:38
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Of course, when time came for the closing, he made us get in the closing exercise, too. Of course we were the laughing stock. We were almost ashamed. All these boys and two girls with the Boys Scout troop in the water closing. But it was fun. At least we learned how to swim and we had a good time. Let's see, other places that we used to go, things like that?	34:43
Leslie Brown	Was that swimming pool publicly owned or privately owned?	35:11
Vermelle Diamond Ely	I think it was privately owned, I believe. Because later we had one called—at Double Oaks, which was publicly owned. But this one was private, I think, because the people owned the club and I think the swimming pool. And it was Black owned.	35:20
Leslie Brown	[indistinct 00:35:44].	35:42
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Mm-hmm.	35:42
Leslie Brown	Do you remember when the Double Oak swimming pool was built, originally?	35:46
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Oh, let's see. That's going to be a guess. I would say I started seeing in 50s, early 50s, I believe. Because Double Oaks Housing Project was open during that time. And I started to work, started teaching in 1953. And at that time, most of the teachers that came here from out of town lived in Double Oaks area. And they were real nice apartments. And that's where you had most of your teachers to live before they bought homes. Some of them got married and bought homes and stayed here. But I would say that pool probably opened sometime in the 50s. But the other one was open way—Because I imagine it was probably closed by that time. That place was still there. It changed names from Sunset Park to—We would go there, they could had a area around where you could have picnics too outside, around on the grounds. But that was in the 40s, that I remember. And it was there before that, I think. I can't remember when it opened though.	35:47
Leslie Brown	Well, what were your earliest childhood memories?	37:30
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Oh, earliest childhood memories. Well, I can give you one example of when I first started at school. That's a real comical one. I started school when I was four. The mother had a real good friend that taught first grade at Myer Street. And she took me to school with her. And of course they had already been teaching me how to do things at home anyway, so. And then we had a neighbor, I think the lady had had a baby about the same time her mother had had me. So, she knew exactly how old I was. So, of course, she told on me and they put me out of school. I got put out of school when I was four years old. But I had a birthday in January. But they didn't have the rules now. You had to be six. You're supposed to be six years old. But now they extend it to the middle of October October 15th, 16th or something like that.	37:38
Vermelle Diamond Ely	But anyway, after I had my birthday, which was in January, I don't think they realized I was four. They probably thought I was five. Anyway, she took me back after I had my birthday. I went back to school and I stayed there after five years, when I became five. But they had told me at home, "If anybody asked how old you are," I was really actually four years old, and I think you could ride the bus for free, you didn't have to pay, if you weren't over five, and six years old I had to be in school. So my mother had told me, "You're four at home, five on the bus, and six in school."	38:39
Vermelle Diamond Ely	So, of course, anytime you say, "Vermelle, how old are you?" I say, "Four on the bus, five at home, and six at school." I told all of it. She says she going to kill me, every time I said it. But that's what they had taught me. Four at home, five on the bus, and six at school. So, that was my age. I can remember my brother being hard to dress. He didn't ever want to put on clothes and go to church. I could see him standing on the dining room table with his clothes on. They'd have to dress everybody first and then try to work on him. And he would put his little white shoes and tap dancing on the dining room table, trying to keep him still until time to go to church.	39:30
Vermelle Diamond Ely	And we'd go downtown. And I can remember my mother saying, the clerks in the stores, "Bring those children in here and let us see them." And he would just act up. And she'd spank him. I have told her many times that if they had child abuse laws when we were growing up, they'd have put you and my daddy away for life. Y'all would never get out. But she'd spank him, because he'd never—and he would go through the house and if you came to visit us, you had to turn the chair up in order to sit down. We had to keep chairs turned down, because he would go through the house and pull down—You see why he didn't even want to talk about it. Pull all the chairs down. He just go through the house and pulling chairs down.	40:27
Vermelle Diamond Ely	So, we just kept them turning down. My mother just kept them turning down. I have a picture I'll share with you too. There was an insurance company that used a family for a calendar, and for some of the insurance brochures that they had. And of course, we went to have the picture made, and they had a book for me to look at with my mother. And of course, my brother was on the floor. They sat him on the floor and he had a calico dog that was on the floor beside him. And I remember he always did a love money. He still does. But they had to put a penny on top of the dog's head to make him sit still long enough to take the picture.	41:17
Vermelle Diamond Ely	So, we had fun growing up. Of they couldn't leave us alone very much either. We'd fight. But yet, if anybody want to bother the other one, then we'd fight together. So, those are some of the early things that I can remember.	42:20
Leslie Brown	You remember your grandparents?	42:43
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Yes, my grandmother and grandfather. We grew up with them. They were more like mother and daddy. The rest of us were more like the children. My mother and father. This is my daddy's mother and father. They were the ones that built the house that we lived in. And my grandfather, years ago before we came, well, I guess he was still driving. He drove what they call a hat, like a taxi from this railroad station, and he worked for the drug stores carrying packages and carrying passengers back and forth. He had horses and he had bulldogs during that time.	42:48
Vermelle Diamond Ely	I can remember my mother talking about the bulldogs and how smart they were. And she was expecting one of us, they were big dogs and real heavy. But I think she always felt like they knew that she was pregnant. And when the dog was running one day and was about to run into her, he just slid, put on brakes to keep from hitting her. He would've knocked her down. But you'd leave home sometimes and you couldn't get back in the house, because they weren't sure who you were. My granddaddy would have to leave us on the corner and then he'd go home and get the dogs calmed down so we could get in the house. But my grandmother was with us. My grandfather died when I was in about sixth grade, I think. And my grandmother lived to be 91 years old. She lived here in this house with us before she died. And we moved here in 1962.	43:43
Vermelle Diamond Ely	But my mother and father both were teaching. Of course, during that time my father taught at Second Ward. And at that time, they would not hire two people from the same family in the same school system. So, she had to get a job in another county. She worked for Mecklenburg, the county. The two schools had not merged during that time, city school and county school. So, she worked in the county under different superintendents. They're separate all together. So, she went from Charlotte to a place called Cornelius, North Carolina to work every day. And plus, the school at Cornelius was called Ada Jenkins. And then after integration, they moved to Davidson.	44:57
Vermelle Diamond Ely	I don't know whether they were integrated then or not. I don't think so, after school's merged. But anyway, she went to Davidson to work and of course, from Davidson to after integration, she worked here in the system. Things had changed. Well, my father had retired too, he was not here. But she worked at Barringer in later years after integration, until she retired. My grandmother taught school years ago. But during that time they didn't have high schools and colleges. I guess it is almost like anybody could teach if you could teach children how to do anything. So, she worked at a little place called Laslow, teaching school. And after that, she was a beautician. You've probably heard of Madam CJ Walker Beauty Products. She's one of the first ones. And I have a copy of her certificate that she got from Madame CJ Walker when she came through Charlotte. I'll share some of those things. One of the things that my granddaddy was carrying, had to have a permit to carry on the hat, he had a—	45:59

Vermelle Diamond Ely	Do that.	0:02
Leslie Brown	To carry—I'm sorry, to carry what?	0:03
Vermelle Diamond Ely	To carry. Mm-hmm. To carry—I'm not sure. I'll let you see that. See, I'm not sure what the drug was. But anyway, you had to have a permit to carry, from the drugstore, when he was driving a hack, like a taxi.	0:04
Leslie Brown	Well, how were decisions made in your family?	0:21
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Oh, by everybody. Grownups. My grandmother and grandfather, and my mother and father. There was a close relationship between all of them. Her mother's mother died in childbirth, and her father raised her, and her grandmother. She lived in—grew up in Tarboro. She moved here, we were more or less, like I said, like the children. My grandmother and grandfather did everything but there was a real closeness between them, because even when we moved here, my dad's mother chose to come and stay with us, with a daughter-in-law. And she stayed here with us instead of—So they made decisions together. So I think that made it important 'cause of the good relationship between all of them.	0:26
Leslie Brown	Did anyone in the family have particular responsibilities in decision making? Someone take the family budget and someone else housekeeping?	1:40
Vermelle Diamond Ely	I guess maybe, they may have. My daddy did the grocery shopping. And plus we had our chores to do, so far as cleaning the house. My grandmother did most of the cooking. And well, when I was real young, I can even remember my great-grandmother too, that lived there with us. I'll tell you a story about it. You asked about early years. I remember my great-grandmother was still living. My brother did not decide to talk until he was about two years old, I believe. He wouldn't say anything. They named him Henry. You know Henry in the funny paper they never said anything. But anyway, my great-grandmother had somehow, somewhere along the line, I don't know when it was, but the first time he decided to say something, they always said he told a lie the first time he opened his mouth. But the first things that came out of his mouth was, we called great-grandmother, Dawn.	1:48
Vermelle Diamond Ely	So he said, "Dawn hit me." Those were the first three words that he ever said. And my great-grandmother was very old, had gotten very old at that time and it had just upset her. She cried and cried and went on and she said, "I didn't hit that boy." But somewhere along the line, I don't know whether it was that year, the year before or when, she had probably hit him and he finally decided to say it. The first thing he said was, "Dawn hit me." And of course she never forgot that. She said, "I didn't hit that boy." But we all lived there at the same house. And of course I don't remember my great-grandfather, but my great-grandmother was one of the lantern holders. Her picture's in the archives over at our church, one of the lantern holders for when they built the old church, which was on Church Street in 3rd Ward, on South Church Street.	3:10
Vermelle Diamond Ely	And of course my grandfather was one of the builders. And my grandmother, I remember hearing her talk about how they would fix dinner for the men that were building, doing the work. And at night, and my great-grandmother was a lantern holder, they would hold the lantern so the men could see how to work. They were working after hours too. So—	4:07
Speaker 3	Do you know when she was born?	4:33
Vermelle Diamond Ely	My great-grandmother? No, I really don't. Uh-uh. I don't even think I have a picture of her. And you don't think about writing things down when somebody can tell you until it's too late. You don't realize. You look back now, I've gotten into doing some things now and there's things that I wish I had asked, of things I wish I had saved. All that kind of—I really don't. I really can't remember.	4:35
Leslie Brown	Did your great-grandmother or your grandparents tell you any stories about their lives?	5:05
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Yes. My grandmother used to tell stories that she had heard from her mother about slavery time. And when they built these houses, there were two White men and one of them still comes here. They installed the furnaces and everything in all these houses. They were built by Spangler's Construction Company. And they would come here all the time to hear her tell stories about slavery time. Now they heard more of the stories, I believe, than I have heard. But I have one in particular that I remember was how they were fed. They cooked for the big house, and of course they had a board.	5:14
Vermelle Diamond Ely	She said there was a board in the floor that they had taken loose, so when they would slice meat for the family, they'd slice off enough for them and put it under the board in the floor. And that's how they fed their children, off some of the same food that they were eating, but they had to hide it. And that's how they were able to eat well, as well as some of the others, the people in the big house were eating the same things. But I just remember that particular story.	6:03
Speaker 3	And your grand grandmother was from Tarboro, you said?	6:40
Vermelle Diamond Ely	My mother's family was from Tarboro. My grandfather on my mother's side. In fact, she still has the farm that's located in Tarboro, thinking maybe about 160 something acres of farm land still there and owned by—I think there were seven brothers and maybe one sister. But the farm is still there and she rents her part out to somebody else who's doing some farming there now. But my great-grandfather on her side was from England, and his wife, of course the constable when we went down there, he was telling us, he knew he them. And of course he said, "I look just like—" His wife was Indian and said, "I look just like her." So they were kind of mixed. Some of them were born—Most of them were born real fair. And of course some decided to go one way and some decided to go another. Of course, her father decided to go join the Elks and be Black even though some of the others didn't choose to.	6:43
Vermelle Diamond Ely	And of course I remember hearing her tell the story about how they buried her grandmother. And they had two cemeteries, one for the Whites and one for the Blacks. And how after so many years they dug up her grandmother and put her in the other cemetery, and put the two of them together, because the grandmother was Indian and Black. And plus the grandfather was buried, all the others were buried in the White cemetery. This is within the family. And course they said her father should be tarred and feather to be marching out in the street with the Elks. The Elks were all Black. So that was on my mother's side. And plus she grew up, her father, I can't remember what year he died, but we were all grown when he died, the two of us.	8:15
Leslie Brown	How has the history in your family been passed down?	9:29
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Well I guess a lot of it from memory, from talking to them and telling us stories, things about what happened. Another instance, what I was telling you about, see a lot of these things we remember from hearing them laugh and talk about it and telling us about it. When we were born, I think, my daddy used to kid my mother, I can remember that, about not taking the two kids down there, taking them over 'cause we were both Black. But she said that wasn't so, that wasn't why she didn't take us. But you remember stories like that from hearing them talk. And of course they kept a lot of pictures and my daddy took pictures. I have a camera too, I can't put my hands on it right now, things scattered one place or another.	9:34
Vermelle Diamond Ely	But a box camera, old box camera, that took real good pictures because those pictures are still—I can show you some of the pictures that were taken with that camera. And of course they kept family albums. And this was another way of passing the history on. I remember when my nephew was in school, he had to try to go back and try to do some of his family history. And of course he started this book backwards and we never did change it, but these were some of the things that we might be interested in looking at. Those were my grandparents. And he tried to bring them up to today's time.	10:36
Leslie Brown	Were there certain settings where your family would tell its history?	11:32
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Just to sit down and talk? No, not necessarily. Just a general conversation. Wasn't a time where we sat down and told stories or anything like that.	11:38
Speaker 3	So in your household when you were growing up, at various times, was your great-grandparents or at least your great-grandmother and your grandparents and your parents and your brother and you?	11:53
Vermelle Diamond Ely	And me.	12:04
Speaker 3	Were there other people who lived?	12:06
Vermelle Diamond Ely	No, that was all.	12:08
Leslie Brown	Who was responsible for child-rearing?	12:13
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Excuse me. Well my grandmother took care of us most of the time because my mother and father both were working. And like I said, she did the cooking and she took care of the children while they went out to work.	12:17
Leslie Brown	And who was the disciplinarian in the family?	12:35
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Everybody. Next door neighbors, up across the street. Anybody. Just anybody that wanted wanted discipline you could. But I guess, my grandmother, I would say equally, because we didn't get any special treatment from anybody that I can remember. You did something wrong, anybody. You'd get two or three whippings, you might get two or three whippings about the same thing. So I don't think one disciplined us anymore than the other. I will tell you these funny stories about my brother, but he stayed into something all the time. And I can remember another childhood memory, him on a little tricycle and my dad was try trying to get—He had gotten into something up the street. Well he had gone up the street on the tricycle first of all and that's when he caught him at the corner. And he got after him. And I told you about the fence around the house, and it had a little swing gate. And of course the driveway area had a high gate that you could open up and go down.	12:39
Vermelle Diamond Ely	I guess that's where they used to take the horses in or whatever, but it had a high gate. But had one of those little tiny tricycles where you pedal, and I could see him pedaling there. My daddy was running at him. He pedaled that tricycle and he got to the gate. He was going so fast he couldn't stop. So he jumped off, the tricycle went on down the street. My daddy was right behind him. He jumped the little fence and in the house and around the dining room table, daddy was right behind him, never be able to catch him. By the time my daddy got to the back door, Kevin was coming over the high gate, up the driveway side 'cause he didn't get away. Because you had to go to bed at night anyway, and I can remember staying underneath the house. We had a, house was real high on the back, but it got lower as you went toward the front porch.	13:55
Vermelle Diamond Ely	And I remember doing something. I had gotten into something, I can't remember what I had done that time, but I stayed underneath the house until everybody had had dinner, was sitting out there. They'd go out and sit on the porch every evening. And my dad would go up the street sometimes and everybody would settle for the evening, I thought. So then I decided to slip in the house and go to bed, go sneak upstairs and go to bed. Did the wrong thing, because I took off my clothes to get ready to go to bed. I probably would've done better if I had gotten a whipping when I had my clothes on. But anyway, I still got that whipping. I guess you'd say we were bad kids, but not really. But kids nowadays get away with things like that, little things that we would get into. We were just mischievous, that's all.	14:44
Leslie Brown	Do you think there was a point when people stopped treating you like a child or started treat treating you more like an adult?	15:41
Vermelle Diamond Ely	You mean in the family or just people in general?	15:52
Leslie Brown	Both.	15:56
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Not really, because even all the way through elementary school you were still a child, and even through high school. And you went away to college, you still had to answer to some of these same people. In fact, some of these people right now, the lady I mentioned that I used to go visit, I'm still a child to her. She still tells me what I need to do and what I need not to do. But I think that's just something that was a part of them that we would just still children to them. That's some of the neighbors, people that live with us. And the same thing with family members. But you're still their children, regardless of how old you get.	15:59
Leslie Brown	Who are the people who are most important to you?	16:50
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Growing up, I think I may have shared this story with you when we talked before, I had a problem, an eye problem that I still have, and I grew up with this problem. And I would say all my family and friends, I have to thank for what I accomplished. And it's something that, and I think more kids now growing up, need to not look at things as being handicaps because they don't necessarily have to be. I had partial sight, there were some people that didn't have sight at all and they were doing well in society and I felt that I could too. Of course, I had to depend on all my teachers, and like I said, and all my friends to help, because I did a lot of my work orally, all my tests orally. Of course, somebody had to read some things to me, but I couldn't start to name.	16:57
Vermelle Diamond Ely	I would say all along the way I've had many, many friends that I have to thank for what I have accomplished. Even when I went away to school, I went away to—Because going to 2nd Ward, of course my father working there 'cause they said I would never graduate. And the only reason I did was because my father was teaching there at the school. And of course, I was determined to prove that that was not the reason, that I had the grades. In fact, if anybody had realized, my dad taught French. The only C that I got in high school was the C that I got under him, in French. So he didn't give me anything. He was harder on me, I think, than any of the others. But I did go away to school, I went to Raleigh, went to Shaw University and that's where I graduated.	18:15
Vermelle Diamond Ely	And I came back here to work in 1953 and I taught school for 32 years. Then retired in 1985. But I think if it had not been for some of the little—You know how children can be mean and cruel to one another and that's something we should not pay attention to, we need to let children not pay attention to the little unkind things that can be said, that you won't do this, you won't do that. And I think that made me even more determined to go away and do what I did. And I feel real good about it. And I wish others would not consider things as a handicap. Sometimes they not always handicapped.	19:15
Leslie Brown	I want to ask you about going away to Shaw, but before I do, what was it like to be May Queen? What did it mean to be elected May Queen?	20:02
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Okay, it was not a May Queen, it was Queen City Classic, which was a football game. Well the year before that I was Miss 2nd Ward, which was in 1947. It was a real good feeling because the students, it gave you the feeling that the students liked you for who you really were and not for who your parents were. And a few of them had those little feelings, but the majority of them did not, because otherwise I would not have been chosen as Ms. Homecoming to represent the student body. It was real good feeling to be. And then when we had the Queen City Classic, we were chosen, some of us were chosen to run against some of the ones from West Charlotte. And of course, we had a veterans school, there was a young lady that represented the veterans school. I guess they call it night school because they weren't all veterans. They had had other students, but the school was held right there at 2nd Ward.	20:15
Vermelle Diamond Ely	It was an exciting thing, especially the Queen City Classic, because I got flower arrangements, I mean, a bouquet from the mayor. I received, there was a dress shop here called Lucielle's, still now Lucielle Vogue. But at one time they were two separate stores. One was Lucielle's and the other one was Vogue. But from Lucielle's I got my dress and crown, which I still have. I don't know where the dress is. I knew I couldn't do anything with it if I had it. But I had a hair-do from one of the White beauty shops that I couldn't do anything with either. But it was really, really a good feeling to be recognized and to receive all the recognition and the support that I got from not only the students, but your family friends and from the community.	21:40
Leslie Brown	Did you also feel you had a certain responsibility?	22:47
Vermelle Diamond Ely	To live up to being—Yes, I did. You would end up feeling like people, other kids would still say, "Well this is something that I'd like to do. I'd like to be." And you have to do certain things in order to be. We had an honor society that we would tap to be in an honor society, 'cause coming along to our parents. Now being presented to society with a debutante ball, they had organizations that would do that for the White girls when they were presented to society. Of course, our parents did this for us. There were about 12 or 13 of us that were debutantes and we did all the other things. We even had Ebony Magazine to come to Charlotte and do a story. And that was really an exciting thing to be featured in Ebony Magazine. They did a feature, featured each one of us with a picture and a short story about the event which was held at the YMCA.	22:52
Vermelle Diamond Ely	That was the new YMCA that was built on Caldwell Street in—I can't think what year now. It might've been 1950, I believe. I still have my debutante dress that I look at occasionally. And we had a bracelet that had a cotillion, had the cotillion and the date on it. I still have that too. Lots of things. I just end up keeping a lot of things, and because you can see why I can't find anything now. But those were exciting times, and times that you look back at on and be proud. Make you proud and things that you'd like to show. Young girls come along now and you don't have to. Even down to our graduation, I had a classmate that was married before she graduated from high school, but it still does not mean that you can't go on to school and make something of yourself, even though you get married or make mistakes and have babies before. But it's still something that you don't have to continue doing, you can better yourself and be proud to be who you are regardless.	24:33
Leslie Brown	And how did you choose to go to Shaw?	26:05
Vermelle Diamond Ely	I guess that was kind of a personal thing too. My dad had finished. My dad finished Shaw. My mother went to Shaw, she didn't finish there, but that's where they met, at Shaw University. And he was a graduate. When he graduated though, when he graduated from grade school, what they call grade school here at Myers Street. And Myers Street only went—They went so far. His last four years of high school, he had to go to Shaw University in order to finish high school. So he stayed there those four years. And then he started the college at Shaw. Of course, the two of them met there. And my mother actually finished after we were born from Johnston's East [indistinct 00:27:09]. But I guess that was my main reason for choosing Shaw. It was one of the Black schools that a lot of our family friends had attended, so not just my father, but a lot of them had gone to Shaw.	26:10
Vermelle Diamond Ely	And another one of the main reasons that I went to Shaw too, during that time, back in 1947, we had several football players to go there from 2nd Ward and basketball players. And they were CIAA champions that year. So kids back during those times used to follow the teams. They were winning, you want to go to school that had a winning team. So that was another thing that encouraged me. I had a girlfriend that had gone to Shaw the year before. She finished in '48 and I followed her too, I guess. So I had a lot of reasons maybe to why I decided on Shaw.	27:27
Leslie Brown	What was student life like at Shaw when you were there?	28:15
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Very different from today. We had to be in a dorm at a certain time. When we left campus, you had to sign out. And you'd travel in groups of—I think when I first went there as a freshman, we'd travel in groups of at least four, four or five. It dwindled down as you got older, had stayed there longer. Seniors, I think, could go out alone, go downtown or wherever alone. But most of the time you had to travel in twos, threes, or fours, even to the ball games. We had to walk to the football games and of course we had to go in groups. It was a fun time. But you were never walking any place or leaving campus by yourself. But campus life itself was great. They had a lot of dances in the gym and of course the sports activities and—Oh, let's see.	28:20
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Some of the things that we used to do. There again, we ran into a rivalry kind of thing with Shaw University and Saint Augustine's College. They'd fight every time they would play too. And sometimes we'd get to go to other cities to see the teams play, but we had our proms and dances and things on campus. We had a canteen that we could go down at night and get snacks. We didn't have a whole lot to do. Like, kids can leave campus and go. We could go to the movies and the movies in Raleigh were like the one in Concord where we had to go upstairs and sit. But we were able to see the late movies, ones that were most recently out.	29:32
Leslie Brown	And what—	30:24
Vermelle Diamond Ely	So—	30:24
Leslie Brown	—I'm sorry.	30:24
Vermelle Diamond Ely	It's okay.	30:24
Leslie Brown	What did you dislike about Shaw? Did you dislike anything?	30:28
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Oh, well you always sometimes want to go off somewhere by yourself, so that was one thing that I guess maybe we complained about more than others, especially if you were courting. You always had caller nights on the weekend, freshman caller night was on Fridays. And we had this huge living room area, and you can imagine having your date come over and sit with 10 other couples sitting around, everybody's visiting at the same time. And then Saturday night, I think, where sophomores and juniors were able to entertain on Saturday night. So Sunday night was senior night, and you had a little more privacy when you got to be a senior. You could go sit out on the porch, sit out in the yard. But those first couple, two or three years, it was something, sitting around with everybody else courting.	30:34
Speaker 3	Were there clubs or organizations that you were part of while you were there or extracurricular activities that you participated in?	31:40
Vermelle Diamond Ely	When I first went there, they always have what they call rush parties with the sororities. We'll rush the girls and try to get you to join their sorority. They would have parties and entertain you and have picnics and things like that, trying to say this is the sorority that you need to join. And of course I chose AKA, which Alpha Kappa Alpha, that I joined in 19—Excuse me, must have been 1951, somewhere. And I became dean of pledges where I took in other girls. And that was a lot of fun. But I tried to protect my girls, I wasn't as hard on them as some of them were on us. But that was mostly what we did. The sororities were mainly, sororities and fraternities, fraternities would have dances and we would get to go to those. And they were all on campus, we never went anywhere off campus, except to maybe—I think some of our initiation meetings might have been off campus and we got a chance to go to some of the older ones houses in the city.	31:48
Vermelle Diamond Ely	I had a girlfriend, a couple girlfriends, one father ran on the railroad and worked in a presidential car. And the train would come to Raleigh and would be there for a couple days. And they would always, two or three of the workers on the train were from Charlotte and they would come on campus, because we had to sign out to go with them and everything, have permission from our parents to go, but they were friends of our family. And they would take us on the train and have this fabulous dinner with us. We got a chance to see the president's car with all the red velvet spreads and all the finery. And of course sit at the fine dining room table with the fine china and crystal and everything, and have strawberries and watermelon out of season. And just all kinds of things.	33:23
Vermelle Diamond Ely	But they've been running to Florida, wherever, to bring food. But that was always fun to do. And another one of my friends, you just had to make it. We made all the fun, the same as as here, before I went away to school. But another friend was married, her husband was in service. And of course when she get her check each month we'd go to the grocery store, the Piggly Wiggly, and we'd have a party. We'd have our own parties in the dorm. Some of them were legitimate, some of them were not. We put up a hot plate, and we were not supposed to have a hot plate to cook in dormitory, but we did. And we sneaked it in there. We even had fried chicken and had potato salad, and so everything you could think of at a party. Now, Dean Matron would come around and she would always smell food cooking. Anytime she smelled—	34:22
Vermelle Diamond Ely	I was always the one she'd come looking for. So, "Vermelle, where are you?" Anyway, she would come and join the party. She'd sit down and eat some of everything we had, except for what we had to drink. We didn't let us see that part. But anyway, she would eat, just enjoy the food and everything. And when she would leave, she'd take the hot plate with her. But she ate first. And one of the other things we didn't like, I guess we said we didn't like it, but we enjoyed it too because the lights had to be out at what, 11 o'clock? I think. Anyway, we liked to play cards and you had those beds, the double-deck beds, top and bottom. Some of the rooms, anyway.	35:20
Vermelle Diamond Ely	We would put a blanket up over the [indistinct 00:36:16], so you couldn't see in. And if some of us had a study lamp or something, we'd put it underneath the bed, we'd play cards. And then we'd get caught doing that sometimes. But we'd play cards sometimes all night or wait until she comes around. And she had been around and checked the halls and gone to bed, and then we'd get back up. But we had fun, doing a whole lot of things we shouldn't have been doing.	36:13
Leslie Brown	How did you decide to join AKA?	36:42
Vermelle Diamond Ely	I think maybe they didn't pressure me as much as some of the others. I had joined the interest group for Deltas and we wore red and white at the TID club: 'Til I Do. And every Wednesday we dress in the red and white. And it got to a place where they just kind of worried you to death. And I think the AKAs did not pressure you as much. And I liked some of the things that they did. They were not as rowdy a group as some of the others were. I guess maybe that's why I ended up. And then I had friends that had gone AKA before me, so that probably had a lot of influence on my decision.	36:51
Leslie Brown	What kind of contact did college AKAs have with older members?	37:48
Vermelle Diamond Ely	While we were in school? They were very close, because I think I mentioned earlier, we would get a chance to go off campus and go to some of their homes. And that was mainly during initiation time or celebration time when you came off-line. But they would entertain us. And we had a good relationship. And they were on campus, the graduates were on campus when we had functions going on. And we got the guidance from them that we really needed. And we didn't do a lot of hazing that sororities were blamed for doing along the way. AKAs didn't do as much. They weren't as rough, I don't think, as some of the others.	38:03
Speaker 3	How did you decide what you wanted to study at Shaw and what you wanted to major in?	39:04
Vermelle Diamond Ely	I think maybe I had probably made up my mind before. There wasn't too many things you could decide to do when I was coming along, because they didn't have job openings like they do now, so many different areas kids can go into and still make a decent living. Either you went to school to be a preacher, a teacher, or doctor, a nurse. And I knew I never would've made it nursing. I never wanted to do that, but I always enjoyed working with children. Even in the neighborhood when I was growing up, I always had little children. I'd play games with them and teach them how to do little things. I always had children around, so I taught Bible school in the summer when I was in high school. And even after I finished college, I had Bible school classes and worked with children in that way. So I think that was mainly the reason. I just enjoyed working with children.	39:11
Vermelle Diamond Ely	And I still do, when they're not too bad. Kids nowadays, we were on the train going to Maryland last week, and this is how you know it's still in you. A parent, one lady had two little boys, one was four and the other one was six. And they got on the train here in Charlotte and she had to go all the way to Boston. She could not do anything with those two little boys. She kept asking them, kept begging them to sit down, be quiet. They had worried everybody on the train, the conductors and everybody else, but she said, "I'm not going to talk to you anymore. I don't want to hear another word from you, another word from you for the next half hour, not another word." And one of them looked up at her and said "Mm-mm-mm." In other words, not a word, but just noise. And I can remember, I said, "I know what would've happened to me if I had done that. I'd have had one of those backhand licks from my grandmother if I tried that."	40:29
Vermelle Diamond Ely	But she had gotten to a place, I think she was about in tears. She couldn't do anything with them. And I was almost tempted to ask her, "Lady, do you want me to make them sit down for you?" I will show you how to make them sit down and be quiet. But I did that in the doctor's office one day and I did it before I thought. Kids cutting up in the dentist's office and they were just running and jumping. And I grabbed one, sat him back up in the seat before I thought where I was. I wasn't at school. But children nowadays, they know right from wrong, they just need somebody to just enforce some of the things. Some of the things that they know they're not supposed to do, they know better before they do them. Just need somebody say no to them.	41:35

Vermelle Diamond Ely	She worked at the Black school that was in Pineville, which was called Sterling.	0:02
Speaker 2	Sterling.	0:10
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Uh-huh. And Pineville is a small town, which is almost a part of Charlotte now. You know how small cities would just finally end up kind of—Going down South Boulevard 51, the new section, Carmel Commons and all those, it just kind of closed in. And that's where Sterling is located. I think they're still using that building for, I don't know, Headstart. They were using it at one time. But when I went to Pineville, I went to the White school, which was all the way into the city of Pineville, just a few miles down the road from the Black school. That was in 1970 when they first integrated, there were only two of us that went that year. I think there may have been two the year before, but there was still some problems.	0:10
Vermelle Diamond Ely	People still were not comfortable with Blacks coming into the neighborhood. My father was retired at the time and he wasn't that comfortable with me going either. So he went with us, spent the first day, helped me with the registration. I was like, "Well, if you're going, you going to work." So he stayed around. I don't think anybody really realized that he came more or less for protection. You have him coming and looking like he going to come in there to kill somebody. So he spent the first day with us to help with registration.	1:23
Speaker 2	So where did you teach when you first came back to Charlotte?	2:03
Vermelle Diamond Ely	I taught at a school—Marie G. Davis Elementary School, which was located in Southside. That's South Tryon Street. That was another one of the government project areas. One was Southside and the other one was Brook Hill. And they built that school to house those children, serve those children in that area. That's going toward toward York, South Carolina, going in that direction. Because it was York Road, they later built a junior high school, which is called York Road Junior High, right behind where Marie Davis was located and later changed the name to Kennedy Junior High. Kennedy might be still there. The school is still there, I don't know what they're using it for now though. But I taught at Marie Davis, first grade, for 17 years at Marie Davis. And I moved from there in 1970, taught at Pineville for 15 years and that's where I retired from in 1985. And I've been retired since then.	2:09
Leslie Brown	When you taught at Marie Davis, in addition to your classroom responsibilities, did you have other responsibilities as a teacher or did you feel you had other responsibilities as a teacher?	3:46
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Mother, father, doctor, nurse, because we didn't have all of those things. The nurses and doctors and children would come to school with no clothing and not knowing how to do anything for themselves hardly. It was just one of those things where you were everything to the children. I was going to show you, I had a picture of one of my classes. In fact, I got the book turned around backwards. Did you see it? I had something from both. This was at Marie Davis when the class was all Black. And then when I went to Pineville, my first year, I don't think I had one Black child in my classroom that first couple years. I think maybe the next year might have had two or three.	3:58
Speaker 2	There were three in this one.	4:57
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Three in that class. But we were everything, we had to teach them how to do everything for themselves. Even with the parents. They were not home. A lot of times, you'd have to feed them. Excuse me. Show them how to do everything. But they were loving children and they wanted to learn and they were good children. You could tell them what to do, they would do exactly what you say do. We had a principal that used to do little things, see what the children would do during a fire drill. And you may have talked to Dr. Mosley too, Mildred Mosley. Remember her from our meetings? But we worked at the same school and she was another one of, I guess, they call her a strict disciplinarian. But anyway, you say tell the children don't get out of your seat while I'm out of the classroom. You stay here. So one morning Mr. Moreland had a fire drill while we were all in a faculty meeting just to see what the children would do. Because you know my children and Mosley's children didn't move. But some started to run, started to go out and they said, "No, Mrs. Ely said for us not to get out of our seats."	4:59
Vermelle Diamond Ely	So I had to kind of change that, unless it's a fire bell, don't get out of your seat. But they didn't leave that room. And now nowadays, if you don't even have to have a five drill, they won't stay in the seats with you in the room with them. You can see how children changed over years though. But they were good children and they learned how to do a lot of things. That's what's so disturbing now, when you see our kids not getting what they really need. I don't know whether integration was good or whether it was bad in a sense. Sometimes I wonder if our children have gotten lost along the way with it because nobody takes the time with them.	6:44
Vermelle Diamond Ely	In fact, White children don't learn wholesale. You have your good students that are going, you can stand in front of class and work with, talk to them and teach wholesale everybody at the same time. Your smartest children are going to get it anyway, but the slow ones are not. And regardless of whether they're White or Black, they're not going to be able to keep up and they just getting lost in the shuffle. And I think the schools themselves were not equal so far as materialistic things. Not having the books and the equipment to work with them. I think if we had gotten everything that other schools had, our children could have done much more. I spent a fortune. I spent half of what I have made putting back into school trying to teach those children because we didn't get the materials.	7:33
Vermelle Diamond Ely	We would go to school supply places and stand and look through the books and things just to see, get the ideas and go back home and try to draw the pictures and try to duplicate what we had seen in the books. The school, we didn't have the money to buy them. And later after I was at Pineville, they started what they call a new way of teaching, new procedures so far as teaching children, what they call learning centers. And they were doing workshops, going to learn how to make this and how to make that. And I told my principal, who was White, I said, I don't want to go to a workshop, learn how to make anything. He looked at me. I know he thought I was crazy, but he said, "What?" I said, "I don't want to go to a workshop to learn how to make anything." I said, "That's all I have done all my life." And I thank the Lord every day for when I got to the place I could go downtown, go to the store and buy what I needed to teach these children.	8:35
Vermelle Diamond Ely	I don't need to go learn how to make anything. In fact, you could send them down here to my classroom, I can show them how to make anything you want to make. He didn't make me go either. It was real funny. He got a kick out of it. He laughed. He said, "What'd you say? You don't want to go?" I said, "No, I don't want to go." But then everybody couldn't understand why I didn't have to go to the workshop. I'd been making stuff all—We didn't even get things like paperclips and thumbtacks. And the books that we got were hand-me-down books from the other schools. Once they were thrown, we could go to the city dump and find first grade readers. Some of them had never been opened. You know how brand new books, the pages are still glued together, kind of never been separated? Brand new books that they had in a school during that year and at the end of that year they were discarded. And the next year, they were the little paperback readers anyway, but they got new books. So the end of the year, when they threw them away, we'd go get them. And those were the books that we had to use. But they still had the words in, that was the most important thing. And that's what it was all about.	9:57
Leslie Brown	You talked about the disparity in schools, but what were the signs of segregation?	11:13
Vermelle Diamond Ely	So far as the schools were concerned? Signs of segregation? Going back to my early years, and I did a lesson one day, I don't know whether it was during Black History month or when it was, but anyway, I did that with my class, an integrated class. And it was just telling them some of the things, how we grew up, not being able to, for instance, I remember going downtown with my mother. We walked downtown, first of all. And if they were shopping, if you had to go to the restroom, there was not a restroom for you. This was before they had the Coloreds and the Whites. They had little alleys between the buildings. And I just asked the kids, I said, "Can you imagine, how would you feel if you went to town with your mother and there's no place for you to go to the bathroom?" What did you do? We went behind the building. Little boys went behind the cars.	11:24
Vermelle Diamond Ely	And then later they had had restrooms that said White and Colored you could go in. Some places had them and some didn't. And the same thing with the water fountains. The lunch counters, we were not able to sit down and eat at the lunch counters. In fact, you weren't even able to go there and buy at most of them. Some of them had a little corner in the back at the end of the counter where you could go and maybe get a hot dog and a drink or you could go right inside the door and buy popcorn and peanuts and take them with you.	12:38
Vermelle Diamond Ely	There was some stores that wouldn't allow you to try on things, you just had to buy. There was one store that the only way to, like Montaldo's, you couldn't even go in unless you went down the side. At one time, you couldn't go in at all. Then later, they began to let you come in and go down the side of the building and go upstairs in the back door and do shopping that way. The buses, you had to get on the bus and if there were 20 seats on that bus, they were in the front of the bus, you couldn't sit down. You always had to go to the back of the bus. And you would sometimes ride with 10 to dozen empty seats in the front of the bus and Blacks standing, as long as they stood in the back, but they still couldn't sit down.	13:16
Vermelle Diamond Ely	I can remember, you asked me about where Brooklyn started. I can remember an instance where we were coming from town. It was late. I might have been coming from a movie 'cause it had gotten late in the evening. Had a bus driver—Well, there was a White man that had gotten on and most of the people that rode the number seven bus, which went to Brooklyn were all Black. But this man had gotten on and had asked this lady, this Black lady to get up and let him have her seat. And of course, that didn't sit well with the people on the bus, but they didn't say anything while they were there. But when the bus driver turned the corner, like going into the area that was really called Brooklyn, he called that White man to the front of the bus and asked him to get off.	14:20
Vermelle Diamond Ely	He said, "Now, I'm going to suggest to you one thing, your best bet is to get off this bus and go right through there and go back uptown." He said, "Because if I take you down through this neighborhood, there's no telling what's going to happen to you." Because those people were angry about him making the lady get up. And he knew that he had to drive the bus. He was White, but he knew that he had to drive down through those streets that I mentioned earlier, Second Street and McDowell Street. And there's no telling what they would've done to him. So he suggested the safest thing for him to do was to get off his bus because he didn't want any trouble.	15:16
Vermelle Diamond Ely	But I remember when one of the lunch counters opened up, well, Grants Five and Dime did open up one complete counter to Blacks. Excuse me. It was downstairs though, but they had the same counter that they had up upstairs, and we had the whole area. Let's see, some of the other, I think I told you about the movies, signs of how we were segregated. We had to have our sports activities, ball games and things like that, not at the stadium but on the high school practice fields. The school that they're getting ready to do now, Irving Avenue, they're going to redo, was originally Harding. Harding High School. And Harding was the place where Second Ward had to go and play their football games. Harding's practice field. Now, Harding's games were at the stadium though, but we had to have our games there because we didn't have a stadium. We didn't have any place for practice. They just practiced on the playground. Pearl Street playground. And the track that they ran was just around the neighborhood, up and down those dirt streets that I told you about. That's how they did their running, training.	15:52
Vermelle Diamond Ely	They'd leave the school and go up one street and down another one and down around till they got the Pearl Street playground in where they had their scrimmages. In order to have uniforms, Central High School where CP is, Central Piedmont Community College is now, it's old Central High School. Their school colors must have been blue and white because ours was ended up being blue and white. And that was because we got their hand-me-down uniforms. Once they were discarded, they were given to Second Ward. West Charlotte got Harding's, which were, their colors, I think, were maroon and gold. We ended up with the same colors because we had to use the same uniforms once they discarded them.	17:36
Vermelle Diamond Ely	We didn't have a band or anything when I was coming along, but later they were able to do that. And I think they did the same thing with the band uniforms. But this was how, but now all of these schools were still Charlotte Mecklenburg schools. The White high schools got all the equipment that they needed, all the uniforms, but the Black schools didn't. And it was even rumored, and I don't think it was really rumor because my father had a friend that was a coach and people had heard that the pay was different too for Black teachers and White teachers. A good example of that was one of the coaches who was coach at West Charlotte had the same name as another coach in the city, just so happened. And somehow other, their checks got mixed. The Black coach got the other ones check, went the wrong direction. And that's one of the reasons they found out what was happening, that they were getting paid more.	18:27
Vermelle Diamond Ely	When I went to work at Pineville, they would not believe that the video, audio equipment, all the tape recorders and all the film projectors and all the things that they had in that school had dust on them that thick. Had never been used. And we were, at Marie Davis, with one projector, one tape recorder, you know, that kind of thing. And when I got to the other school, all that stuff that had never been touched, it was just sitting there. My mother taught at Davidson, I think I mentioned to you. And in the county, they had a reading program where you went from child to child listening to them read and you had to drag a chair down the aisle or whatever.	19:49
Vermelle Diamond Ely	One day they received some of the nicest, prettiest, little rolling stools. Oh, she was so happy she could come over and sit. She had this rolling stool. She didn't had to drag a chair no more. She could roll them down the aisles and listen to the children read. And went back to school the next day and the guy that had delivered him came back and apologized. Said he was so sorry, they was supposed to go to the other school and they picked them up and carried them to the other school. So there were a lot of obvious things that would show you segregation. I guess, I can't start to name 'em. I just think of little instances, but those are some things that just come to mind.	20:46
Leslie Brown	Did you ever feel like a second class citizen?	21:42
Vermelle Diamond Ely	I don't think I ever did. We knew that we weren't allowed to go to certain places and we didn't have certain things. But I don't think we ever realized or felt that we were second class. We felt that we were still just as as good as the next person. We had what we had and we were happy. And I guess if we were poor, we didn't know it. And I don't think we really were, we might have been in somebody's eyesight, but not in ours, I don't think. We had parents and teachers that made you feel wanted and loved. The community was just like an extended family. Everybody helped everybody else.	21:47
Vermelle Diamond Ely	You had teachers that would do for you, give you, if your parents didn't have to give you, nobody went hungry. Nobody went without books. Nobody went without clothing and that kind of thing. It was just like we were one big happy family and we didn't feel like we were second class. And I just didn't register with her until, I guess after I got older and looked back. And it is too late to feel like I was second class by that time. But we just felt like we were deprived of a lot of things and our children probably could have accomplished much more had they had equal opportunities.	22:40
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Our teachers were well trained, they went to good colleges. And I think even coming from the experience that I had after I went to the White school, it got to the place, when I first went there, I was just like a bear. I was coming there to eat up some of their children. But eventually, everybody wanted their child in your room because they had experienced, talking to other parents. And their children had learned so much more and had done so much more. And it got to the place where Black teachers had the reputation of being good teachers. And they had to earn that, though, after everyone was going to the school. Because like I said, at first, I don't know what they thought we were going to do with them. But then after that, your principal would have to tell them, everybody cannot be in that classroom. But it was interesting, it was an experience.	23:22
Speaker 2	Were there certain values that you really tried to instill in your students?	24:47
Vermelle Diamond Ely	Yes, to try to get some of their ideas. Children are easy to talk to. They brought a lot of things from home, you could tell that, with the name calling and things like that. And the first thing I tried to instill in them, that is one word that you need to get out of your vocabulary and get it out as soon as you possibly can because that one word can cause you to get killed. And that was the word, nigger. And some of them come in there and it's the first thing, "That little nigger said so and so to me." I said, "I have told you more than one time. And so somebody's going to end up setting an example for the rest of you pretty soon because I'm going to turn my head." I said that to myself. But when you call one of them a nigger and he jumps up and hits you, don't look at me.	24:54
Vermelle Diamond Ely	But they learn fast. And I said, "If you use those words, you better use them at home. Don't let anybody hear you, because that's a word that, you'd think, and nothing against you. You've heard this before, we will use that word talking to each other. But it is a different thing when it comes from somebody else, I don't know why, but it's been a bad word to Blacks for a long time. And I guess maybe it always will be. But I tried to get my children to realize that all of you are human beings and you wouldn't want to be treated, and this was a lesson that I was trying to teach them when I was telling them about how would you feel if you have, and some of them even cried. But what did you do? And they were so sympathetic of the things that you couldn't do.	25:58
Vermelle Diamond Ely	And I also tried to show them the difference in color. Color had no meaning. That little Black boy said so and so. That little White girl said this to me. Let's just leave color out of it. That little boy or that little girl, we all just human beings. And they would start with Black and White. And so one day I just had a lesson with a piece of chalk, which was white and a black crayon. And I used the children as examples and I put the white chalk to one of the little White girl's arm. I said, "Now, is she the color of this chalk? What color is this chalk? It's white. But she's not actually the color of this chalk, is she?" Of course, they said, no. She belongs to a White race. This is race, not color. Black, by that time, Negroes, Colored people or what have you, had decided that a lot of people in the White race could not pronounce the word "Negro." It didn't ever come out like that. So they decided they wanted to be called Black, which took me a long time to use that term. But I just tried to show them that we were not the same color as that black crayon either.	27:02
Vermelle Diamond Ely	So we were talking about races of people. So those were just some of the little things that we tried, which were very important, I think, that to help them to get to understand one another and understand that we were all human beings and we need to learn how to live together and play together. And it really worked. Like I said, children are easy to get this across to, the parents were the ones that had the problems.	28:33

Item Info

Title:

Vermelle Ely interview recording, 1993 June 17

Date:

June 17, 1993

Creator:

Ely, Vermelle Diamond

Contributor:

Brown, Leslie

Description:

Name: Vermelle Diamond Ely; Date of birth: 1933-01-10; Place of birth: Charlotte, NC; Occupation(s): educator; Residence: Charlotte, NC
Informant ID: 94; Interviewed by: Leslie Brown.

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Educator

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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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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: 232
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Vermelle Ely interview recording, 1993 June 17

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1. Charlotte Meeting, with Vermelle Ely, Price Davis, Ruby McCathorine, Leslie Brown, and Anne Valk, 1993 May 19

2. Vermelle Ely administrative file, 1993

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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