M. H. Crockett and Myrtle Crockett interview recording, 1993 May 29

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Leslie Brown	H. Crockett.	0:01
Annie Valk	And his wife, Myrtle. Hopefully.	0:03
Leslie Brown	And his wife, Myrtle, hopefully. We're interviewing them in their home in Raleigh. Today's date is May—	0:06
Annie Valk	28th.	0:13
Leslie Brown	This is being done by Leslie Brown and—	0:16
Annie Valk	Annie Valk.	0:19
Annie Valk	—for the next three—	0:19
M.H. Crockett	Come over here, if y'all don't mind, will you?	0:26
Annie Valk	That's fine.	0:27
Myrtle Crockett	What about [indistinct 00:00:31].	0:28
Leslie Brown	I'll give you another.	0:28
M.H. Crockett	I'll give you another table if you want it.	0:31
Annie Valk	No, I'm fine. We're starting a project that's starting this summer, and it's going to go on for two more summers after this. It is focused on understanding African American life during the period of segregation. We are working in North Carolina this summer in five areas. One is in the Durham/Raleigh area. Then we're headed to Charlotte for a couple of weeks, and then up north to Enfield and doing some work up in Edgecombe, and Halifax, and Northampton.	0:37
Annie Valk	We were thrilled when we read your biography and your book that you're from Rich Square, because we'd love to find out something about Rich Square. Then Wilmington, and then New Bern. That's where we'll be this summer. Next summer and the summer after, we're spreading out to six other states in the South. We haven't figured out exactly where we're going to be going in those places, but Atlanta will probably be one of those places. We're hoping that next summer we'll be in Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana.	1:16
Annie Valk	What we're trying to do is to interview as many people as we can who remember living through the period of segregation, and trying to basically understand what everyday life was like. We see this period as a very I'm and overlooked time period that historians have learned a lot about slavery, and Emancipation, and Reconstruction, and they've learned a lot about the civil rights movement starting with the 1960s. But that very important period in between has been kind of overlooked.	1:55
Annie Valk	What we're interested in understanding is, what happened during that period? What were people's everyday lives like? Also, what were the kinds of institutions and organizations that people were involved in and that people built, that then made the civil rights movement possible? We are interested in just asking questions about things like family life, school, religion, church, education, sororities and fraternities.	2:32
Leslie Brown	A little bit of everything.	3:08
Annie Valk	Yeah, a little bit of everything.	3:09
Leslie Brown	We have a series of—	3:11
Myrtle Crockett	You got some paper, daddy?	3:13
M.H. Crockett	Huh?	3:16
Annie Valk	Actually—	3:16
M.H. Crockett	You're Mrs. Valk?	3:17
Annie Valk	That's right.	3:22
M.H. Crockett	V-O-L-K?	3:23
Annie Valk	V-A-L-K.	3:23
M.H. Crockett	V-A-L-K.	3:25
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	3:26
M.H. Crockett	And your name again?	3:31
Leslie Brown	Leslie Brown.	3:32
M.H. Crockett	Ms. Brown.	3:32
Leslie Brown	B-R-O-W-N.	3:33
M.H. Crockett	Ms. Brown. This is interesting. Is this being done through Duke and Western?	3:44
Annie Valk	—the organizations. This summer, the people who were doing all the interviews are graduate students from Duke, North Carolina Central, and UNC Chapel Hill.	3:52
M.H. Crockett	Is that how you got acquainted with that daughter of mine, Barbara?	4:09
Annie Valk	The way that I got acquainted with her was when she read the article in The Atlanta Constitution. She called me to say that I should interview you, that she was excited about the article and she wanted to recommend both of you as people that we should talk to. Then from her, I bought a copy of the book also. So, we read that and we have that information about you as well. She turned you in.	4:13
M.H. Crockett	I called her the other day and blast her out. I was like, "My experience is no different from (laughs) any others." Well, same thing then for all the Black institutions and most of the Black folks. But it's different, and reactions might be different, and so on and so on. We did exist. We had existed up until now through it all. But nevertheless we could have done without it. Yes.	4:50
Leslie Brown	Would it make you uncomfortable if I put the microphone between the two of you so that I'm sure to pick up both of your voices?	5:31
M.H. Crockett	No, that's all right. You're the boss lady.	5:39
Leslie Brown	How did you know that?	5:44
M.H. Crockett	I want to be careful about—I don't know about what I'm saying are criticisms. Will you go over this tape? Or this is the final thing? I don't want to rub anything in—	5:49
Annie Valk	What happens with the tape is that they will be transcribed. Although, not every tape that we do is going to be transcribed, depending on the quality of the tape. In the case that this is transcribed, a copy of the transcript will be kept at Duke University. We have a form that we would ask you to sign saying if you agree to have this kept at Duke University. At this point, we haven't figure out whether we would want to send a copy of it back to you so that you could see it ahead of time.	6:09
Annie Valk	One of the things that you could do would be if you agree to have this interview kept at Duke, you could ask that if anyone was going to use it to quote you, or if anyone wanted to even look at the transcript, that they would have to contact you first. That would be a possible arrangement that you could make if you were concerned about what—	6:56
M.H. Crockett	Well, I don't suppose I have anything—too concerned about.	7:19
Annie Valk	The other thing that I mentioned to you on the phone is that we're hoping to do 500 interviews this summer, and then hopefully at least another 500 next summer, and the summer after that. Yours is just going to be part of a very, very large collection. I think that within that context, certainly you wouldn't want to get in trouble for what you said, but within that context yours is just going to be part of a very large piece. And so, the things that you say aren't necessarily going to stand out.	7:29
M.H. Crockett	I don't know about getting into trouble. Whatever I tell you actually existed, (laughs) and I don't see anything—I just feel—	8:08
Annie Valk	Well, let's see how it goes. If there's questions that we ask you that you don't—	8:25
M.H. Crockett	You do the questions.	8:29
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm, although I have some ideas about, or we have some ideas about things we'd like to talk about, but a lot of what we'll talk about will be determined by what you want to talk about too. If we happen to ask you a question that you don't want to answer, you don't have to answer it. That's up to you.	8:30
Leslie Brown	I had to get lessons again.	8:54
M.H. Crockett	I told Barbara, she's about the biggest mess that I ever— (all laugh). She's my gal, but—	8:58
Annie Valk	I was quite happy when she called and recommended that we talk to you. Okay, we got set last time?	9:10
Myrtle Crockett	Why don't you ask her to bring it? Check the sound on it.	9:20
Leslie Brown	All right.	9:20
M.H. Crockett	[indistinct 00:09:30] it again. They cleaned it off a little bit. I'm hard of hearing, I don't know.	9:20
Myrtle Crockett	You do know, [indistinct 00:09:39].	9:36
Annie Valk	Well, if you can't understand something that either of us says, please ask us to repeat it. We'd be happy to do that. Leslie is deaf in one ear, too.	9:40
Leslie Brown	I'm deaf in one ear.	9:51
Myrtle Crockett	Huh?	9:51
Leslie Brown	I'm deaf in one ear.	9:54
Myrtle Crockett	He won't admit his.	9:55
Leslie Brown	I have to admit it so people don't keep asking me [indistinct 00:10:05].	10:02
M.H. Crockett	Well, we dealt with them. [Indistinct 00:10:11] two Deaf children. It was experience. All right.	10:07
Annie Valk	Okay. We certainly want to talk a lot about your experiences at the school in Raleigh, but we also wanted to find out some information about both of your—	10:17
Annie Valk	We're interested in how both of you ended up becoming educators. What was it that led you to want to be teachers, and to work in schools? Go ahead.	10:58
M.H. Crockett	Well, I was born in Tennessee, 12 miles east of Knoxville. At that time, we had no way of getting into high school from there. Consequently, it delayed my education. I was an older person getting out of high school. The Reverend John Brice, who lived in our community, was the vice principal at Palmer Memorial Institute, Sedalia. He took me down there, and I spent two year there in high school. Then I transferred from there to Hampton really to take a trade, but I changed my mind after I got to Hampton and then went on into the School of Agriculture.	11:25
Annie Valk	When you say that there was no way to get in to school in Tennessee, could you be more specific about what that means?	12:43
M.H. Crockett	Living 12 miles—Born in this little community, our two room school was on one hill for Blacks, and a two room school on another hill about two miles difference for Whites. Neither had a way to get into Knoxville. There wasn't a high school out. See, that was a long time ago. Consequently, it delayed my getting out, and through my interest in keeping busy working I even helped the teacher after I finished the 8th grade in the wintertime when I couldn't work. I still stayed around the schools, and that created an interest in Reverend Brice to take me on to Sedalia. Having been lost a few years, I transferred to Hampton. I went from there to finish high school and college. That was the reason, that was the delay there.	12:52
Annie Valk	So, Reverend Brice lived in Tennessee, but he worked at Sedalia?	14:16
M.H. Crockett	Yeah, he was the vice principal.	14:21
Annie Valk	I see.	14:23
M.H. Crockett	Palmer Memorial Institute. Sedalia, North Carolina.	14:23
Annie Valk	Were your parents teachers? Or what did your parents do?	14:32
M.H. Crockett	No. I'm the fourth child of 10. My father worked in zinc mines in Moscow, Tennessee. My mother was just a housewife before.	14:38
Annie Valk	Did any of your other brothers and sisters go to Sedalia also?	14:58
M.H. Crockett	No.	15:03
Leslie Brown	Did your other brothers and sisters go to school?	15:06
M.H. Crockett	Huh?	15:09
Leslie Brown	Did your other brothers and sisters go to school?	15:09
M.H. Crockett	They finished grade school out there. Really, I am the only college graduate in my family. However, after I left there or whatever, possibilities was I think getting into Knoxville to finish the high school. The ones under me finished in Knoxville. Transportation was made available.	15:13
Annie Valk	I see. You said that then when you went to Hampton you were thinking about going into a trade?	15:41
M.H. Crockett	Yes.	15:49
Annie Valk	What were you planning to do?	15:50
M.H. Crockett	I thought about bricklaying, but I changed my mind after I got there. I went into the School of Agriculture.	15:53
Annie Valk	How did you decide to go to Hampton after Sedalia?	16:04
M.H. Crockett	I was recommended through Dr. Brown, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Reverend Brice. Since I wanted to get into trade and was older, I was the person.	16:07
Leslie Brown	Why did you change your mind from bricklaying to horticulture?	16:24
M.H. Crockett	Basically, it wasn't really what I wanted after I got there. I changed my mind definitely after I got there. I didn't want bricklaying. Uh-uh. This went on and on into college work.	16:35
Annie Valk	How was Hampton set up at that point? Were the trades a separate part of the institution than the college program?	16:57
M.H. Crockett	Well, they were—No. At that time, trade school was set up differently. Of course, the college part was set up according to whatever field you wanted to go into, teaching, that is, the teaching of public schools, or vocational agriculture. At that time, they were going into one or two different areas in the college. I'm trying to—Well, they were going to into the higher areas of education at that time in the 30s.	17:06
Annie Valk	What did your program in horticulture consist of? What kinds of classes did you take? In horticulture?	18:06
M.H. Crockett	Yes.	18:14
Annie Valk	What kinds of classes did you take?	18:16
M.H. Crockett	I took a full course in agriculture and horticultural classes, gardening, and various other portions that constituted the—in the horticultural area. I specialized in those particular courses. Then I had some experience in summer work going to New Haven, Connecticut. I worked there during the summer on a big farm that owned by folks. In that particular area, they shipped out vegetables, grew vegetables and shipped them out to various parts of the country.	18:18
Annie Valk	Was this a private farm in Connecticut—	19:04
M.H. Crockett	Yes.	19:06
Annie Valk	—that hired people from Hampton?	19:06
M.H. Crockett	Yes, this man, this family in fact, they would go to Florida in the winter and come back by and pick up two or three boys from A&T College and Sedalia, contact there. And Shaw. We lived together up there in a little cottage that the man had for us. That helped in my particular area. However, the others might not have gone in that particular area, I know.	19:08
Annie Valk	You said you did that two summers?	19:53
M.H. Crockett	I was up there three summers.	19:56
Annie Valk	Three summers.	19:56
M.H. Crockett	Yes. Three summers.	19:56
Annie Valk	With your degree in horticulture, were you planning to teach?	20:04
M.H. Crockett	Yes. Yes, I had hoped that I would teach consequently. When I finished, the opportunity came for me to go to Rich Square to teach vocational agriculture in 1934. I finished in '34.	20:08
Leslie Brown	Mrs. Crockett, are you from a family of educators?	20:41
Myrtle Crockett	I guess you would say so.	20:46
Leslie Brown	Your parents were teachers?	20:48
Myrtle Crockett	Mm-hmm.	20:49
Leslie Brown	Did you have—	20:52
Myrtle Crockett	Yeah, my mama and daddy both finished college. Papa finished Shaw and mama finished Elizabeth City. Finally, she did. Papa finished early, but mama didn't finish until I was a big girl because I had to stay home and cook, take care of the family, and let her go to Elizabeth City. But she finally made it through. They finished normal school at first, and then they would go back and get these other two or three years through summer school. When he came to Rich Square, that's how we met. That's how we got together.	20:54
Myrtle Crockett	My daddy was principal of the school there at Rich Square. In fact, the school bears his name, WS Creecy High.	21:34
Leslie Brown	I'm sorry? What was the school?	21:39
Myrtle Crockett	WS Creecy. C-R-E-E-C-Y, High School. That's what it was. But since the integration, they have done away with—Well, the school still bears the name, but they've done away with the high school folks, just got a little people there—Exactly what was I talking about?	21:43
Leslie Brown	You said that your father was the principal—	22:08
Myrtle Crockett	Oh, yeah.	22:10
Leslie Brown	And your mother—Was your mother a teacher at the same school?	22:10
Myrtle Crockett	She was a teacher. She taught with him at the same school.	22:14
Leslie Brown	What did your mother teach?	22:18
Myrtle Crockett	Primary folks through I think it was 4th grade, 3rd, something along there.	22:19
Annie Valk	Did they inspire you to become a teacher? Or how did you decide?	22:28
Myrtle Crockett	At that time, there was nothing else to do if you went to college. But—well, there was a few nurses at that time. No secretaries and stuff like that. A few nurses, and they weren't getting paid and that didn't interest me. There's just nothing else to do but teach. That's all we do. So, I came on to Shaw. In fact, being a daughter of my daddy, I had to go to Shaw. We had no say-so in going to Shaw.	22:31
Annie Valk	I see.	23:11
Myrtle Crockett	If I'm going to send you here. He's a Shawite. He loves Shaw to death. He wanted his ag teacher—I wasn't teaching at Rich Square at the time. I was 23 miles away from Rich Square, little place called Ahoskie. You know Ahoskie. I was in Powellsville, which is a little bitty place, smaller than Rich Square. That weekend, I had gone home. I was out at the pump getting some water when this new man came around the corner. I wanted to know who he was. (laughs)	23:13
Myrtle Crockett	So, somebody told me, "That's the new teacher in agriculture." "I'd like to meet him." They said, "Well, he'd like to meet you too." I said, "Whoo, woohoo."That's exactly how we met, at the pump. He laughs at some sweater I was wearing. He laughs at it now.	23:42
Myrtle Crockett	All of us, there were five children, all five of us have college degrees. Some of them have gotten farther than that. I studied, but I never got a master's. I went into babying. After I married him, I had these three kids and people said if you got pregnant you know you had to—Couldn't work. Possibility. Stay home with the children. So, I didn't want those other kids. We had three. We thought that was enough. My brothers all have, and my sister has two masters. I don't know what you call Pap's degree. It's in religion, theology, something, I don't know.	24:04
Annie Valk	Did they all go to Shaw also?	24:46
Myrtle Crockett	Everybody. One brother went and they put him out. He tells it everywhere, "Shaw expelled me." Put him out at midnight. I forgot the story, but they put him out and he went on to Virginia Union. The other four was finished here. Their children, most of them, had finished Shaw. So, we just got that—Just teachers. We got to training each other.	24:49
Annie Valk	When you were growing up, were you then expecting that you would become a teacher like your parents?	25:17
Myrtle Crockett	Yeah. Like I told you, there was nothing else to do. That's all I knew.	25:26
Annie Valk	Did you go to high school in Rich Square?	25:34
Myrtle Crockett	Rich Square. My daddy founded the school, so all of us just grew up on the campus. I really lived my mama's life over again. Everything that she and my daddy did, he and I have done. Stayed on the campus and my dormitory. I said I never thought that it would happen. We were living in town here, in Raleigh. In fact, we bought a little house over there on Jones Street. We said the Governor was on one end, and we were on the other.	25:36
Myrtle Crockett	We bought this little house, and he came in one day talking about going out to—Somebody had approached him about going out to the Governor Morehead's school. That's what thought about it. Well, I hadn't thought about it. I thought to myself, let's go out there. Let's think about it. I didn't like that too much. I just didn't know. I didn't know the language, Deaf, and a big note of Braille. I just thought it'd be too big of a task for me. All my friends, it's funny how people do, when the news got out that people were interested in his coming out there, then my friends starting calling, "Don't you go out there at that school. Those children got all kinds of diseases. Your children are going to catch it. Don't you dare you go out there." They said everything.	26:06
Myrtle Crockett	He'd come home for lunch, I'd be sitting in there crying. He came in one day and said, "Let me tell you something, I'm going out there. You can do what you want to do." So, I got up from there, stopped crying, and got ready. That's how we happened to be out there. I was babysitting that year. One of the children had been born. I had three. He made the third. So, I was not at work. That was a way of going to work. And so, we went on out there and figured that I'd go back to school and learn something or whatever, my Braille. And I did. They put me into Braille, teaching the blind.	26:58
Myrtle Crockett	I'm so glad. It's something I enjoyed. Oh, I just love it. I just loved teaching that.	27:43
Leslie Brown	Where did you learn Braille? Where did you go to learn—	27:49
Myrtle Crockett	Another girl and I got smart and went to Columbia. Had to get out of North Carolina.	27:54
Leslie Brown	It wasn't possible to learn Braille and to teach the blind in North Carolina?	28:00
Myrtle Crockett	No. What was it daddy, not possible. You couldn't go to—Schools didn't—Chapel Hill, they didn't offer it. So, we went up there. Ms. Lumas, she was the lady who had written the Braille book. We went up there and got under her. We got enough to get going. Then every year we'd go back and get a little more. Then at school, there were two or three teachers who had finished the blind school and knew Braille already. He formed classes. Teacher of the blind would take this course under this other teacher. That's how we got it.	28:04
Myrtle Crockett	Then went on from there. A lot of them went on.—They finally went to Hampton and got their degree in special education, those folks who were teaching the blind and the Deaf. You want to add to it?	28:48
M.H. Crockett	This school was set up at Hampton for teachers who worked in these two particular areas, Deaf and the blind. Of course, all of the schools in the South, Black schools in the South, were together, had both groups on the same campus. Not so with the Whites. That's where Dr. Cooper set up summer school at Hampton, and made it available for teachers to come from down at the college, and from schools for the blind all over the country with experience come there and teach us the courses in special education that area. Which was God's blessing for the Black teachers from Virginia to Texas. Teachers attended the summer school there, which lifted us a whole lot.	29:09
M.H. Crockett	We got our degrees in special education there. Not all of them. Some teachers went to New York University, and some went to other schools that had courses. Consequently, that's how we pushed our program after I accepted this position out there.	30:33
Annie Valk	Can we go back some to the period between when you were teaching at Rich Square and when you started at the school? In 1944 was when you—	31:04
M.H. Crockett	'44 when [indistinct 00:31:16].	31:13
Annie Valk	How long did you teach at Creecy?	31:17
M.H. Crockett	Two years. I came here to Raleigh as an agricultural agent from rotational work to agricultural agents, which was headed by leaders out at A&T College, of course, in cooperation with North Carolina State University. So, I stayed in extension service here in Wake County for eight years after leaving down Rich Square. I accepted this position here. Then when I came here, that led to her coming here. We married and such.	31:20
Leslie Brown	What did you do as an extension agent?	32:09
M.H. Crockett	I traveled all over the county with 4H clubs, and worked with the adults, farmers, of course in agriculture.	32:13
Leslie Brown	In agriculture. What kinds of things did you do with them? Can you be specific about when you went to visit a farmer, what did you talk about with him or her?	32:24
M.H. Crockett	Back at that time, tobacco and cotton were—	32:37
Leslie Brown	Those were the crops that were [indistinct 00:32:43].	32:42
M.H. Crockett	Everything. They were everything. There was a very dire need for even the farmers who owned the farms to have a garden. Many of them didn't even take time to have a garden.	32:43
Leslie Brown	Their own garden.	32:59
M.H. Crockett	That's right. So consequently, not knowing basically too much about tobacco and cotton and so forth, however they didn't need most than that, because we got that through the specialists. We worked in that area, plus the fact that I worked in the farm people classes at nights, and had the 4H club work in some communities in the county.	33:02
Leslie Brown	What did you teach in your night classes?	33:38
M.H. Crockett	Basically, we talked about—Some of them couldn't read and write. You'd be surprised.	33:42
Leslie Brown	So you taught writing and reading?	33:46
M.H. Crockett	We did our best in bringing them up to date as far as we could. Plus, including some information about farm work, building up. At that time, girls went to college. Boys stayed home and plowed. You go back at that time. Consequently, that left a void for the younger boys. That's when we took courses and tried to build them up educational-wise, and the need to think about the results of farming and tenant farming.	33:49
Leslie Brown	Were a lot of the farmers that you worked with, they were tenant farmers?	34:36
M.H. Crockett	They were tenant farmers, and consequently they had no—They just didn't necessarily want to go to school or anything at the time. And so, that's when I established evening classes, 4H club work in certain areas. Of course, it's basics at that time for the people out of A&T College. It was a little wrinkle in there. At the time I went to Rich Square, we would work in the schools as a regular teacher and get paid. Then you'd visit the farm people after hours.	34:41
M.H. Crockett	That was part-time work, really. I was paid as a regular teacher. The next year, I was put on the full program with the farmers that the Commissioners would give me—pay the full salary. The Commissioners backfired.	35:51
Leslie Brown	So they didn't pay you the full salary for your work?	36:18
M.H. Crockett	No. I worked pretty much for the state of North Carolina for nothing. It was only through her daddy that I survived really, to tell you the truth. I survived. He did everything he could. They promised him that they'd do this and that, and then it backfired on him. Anyway, I hung in there until Mr. Mitchell, John W. Mitchell, who was head of the extension service out of A&T College. One of the finest men that ever walked. He built agriculture really throughout the state. He came down and this position became vacant here in Wake County, and asked me if I wanted to take the job.	36:29
Leslie Brown	To take this one, mm-hmm.	37:16
M.H. Crockett	Nothing else for me to do but say yes. I'm not getting paid for anything. And so I came on up here in March of that year.	37:19
Leslie Brown	What year was that, just for the record?	37:36
M.H. Crockett	'36.	37:38
Leslie Brown	1936.	37:38
M.H. Crockett	1936, March 10, 1936.	37:38
Leslie Brown	How did the people at the Morehead School hear about you?	37:43
M.H. Crockett	I came here as a Hamptonian. People at the Tuttle Community Center were in charge. Through Hampton Club really, I became a member of the Board of Directors. Two of them worked at the School for the Blind. This became vacant, and they asked if I would be interested. So I said, "Well, maybe." We had our interview. They had troubles there. Basically, three principals stayed out there for a period of 10 years [indistinct 00:39:03]. That was one of the reasons she didn't want to go.	37:49
M.H. Crockett	But anyway, it was an adventure for me, and it was an increase in salary. She was guaranteed a job. My salary was $175.00 a month and room and board. I lived in the dormitory. Room and board. Laundry. At that time, we couldn't practice, Raleigh's system, with her.	39:08
Leslie Brown	You couldn't teach in Raleigh?	39:48
M.H. Crockett	She couldn't get on.	39:50
Leslie Brown	She didn't get on, mm-hmm.	39:53
M.H. Crockett	Pretty hard. Back then. So, it was not [indistinct 00:40:01] for her to teach, and for me to do the other. Basically, that was part of it and I took a chance. Even though three principals had a disaster over a period of 10 years.	39:55
Annie Valk	Had either of you had any contact with blind and Deaf people before, or experience teaching?	40:21
M.H. Crockett	No. No.	40:27
Myrtle Crockett	I had a couple of blind friends.	40:30
M.H. Crockett	She was in class with the only college graduate.	40:35
Myrtle Crockett	My daddy was a minister too, by the way, and these girls belonged to his church. So, we had grown up corresponding. That's all I knew, write a letter now and then.	40:38
M.H. Crockett	So we sent her, Columbia. I stayed here during the summer and teach down at the [indistinct 00:41:04]. It wasn't encouraging, what I saw when I went for the interview. Would you be interested?	41:00
Leslie Brown	Yes, we are interested. We read that—	41:21
M.H. Crockett	When I went for the interview, I talked to these teachers who were out there in connection with the Tuttle Center. Recommended—There was a chairman of the board. I asked that—	41:23
Myrtle Crockett	You talk so—talk louder.	41:40
M.H. Crockett	That I come for an interview and he promised that if I would go out there under the present supervision, superintendent, and not explode that they were going to bring in a brand new young, energetic superintendent at the end of the school year. He was obviously—Chairman was a reliable person. He ran a bookstore downtown. And so, I took the chance to go for the interview. I went out in August and interviewed to look at the place. It was terrible. Rats, roaches, the dining room hadn't been cleaned up from the last meal that the children had eaten. That spring, or whenever school closed, the beans and the cornbread was still on the plates. Roaches everywhere, rats running here and there while you walked around.	41:48
M.H. Crockett	The school was just run down. There wasn't a windowpane in one of the dormitories. But I had made my promise so we went. On those conditions. I promised him that I would endure whatever came about.	43:32
Annie Valk	So you agreed to take the position before you actually went out there and looked at the campus?	44:00
M.H. Crockett	Yes. Yeah.	44:06
Annie Valk	What did you know about why the other principals hadn't stayed very long?	44:10
M.H. Crockett	It was around in town here. It was around the town that they couldn't survive under the conditions that were out there.	44:18
Annie Valk	And those were the conditions—	44:35
M.H. Crockett	For the superintendent.	44:36
Annie Valk	Okay, so was the problem with the conditions that the superintendent was letting the school run under?	44:39
M.H. Crockett	Yeah, the hardships and so forth that they endured and couldn't get anywhere with any suggestions. Under those obligations, I tried it. I endured, but it was hard.	44:48
Leslie Brown	When you became the principal of the school, were the teachers both Black and White, or just Black?	45:18
M.H. Crockett	No, just Black.	45:26
Leslie Brown	Just Black.	45:27
M.H. Crockett	Just Black.	45:27
Leslie Brown	Had many of the teachers been there a long time?	45:29
M.H. Crockett	Yes, a good many of them had been there several years. Of course, it made a lot of changes. I think there were about 30 teachers when I was out there in the area somewhere who were vocational teachers in the area.	45:33
Leslie Brown	Did they all live on the campus also?	45:58
M.H. Crockett	No.	46:00
Leslie Brown	Most of them did not.	46:01
M.H. Crockett	A good many of the lived on the campus, but some lived in town here.	46:02
Leslie Brown	You write in your book that as you made suggestions and changes in the schedule and in the way classes were run, and quality of life for the students, that some of the teachers didn't like the changes that you made.	46:16
M.H. Crockett	They didn't.	46:39
Leslie Brown	What didn't they like, and why didn't they like it?	46:39
M.H. Crockett	Well, they just wanted to do—There was no pushing for them to do a good job. They accepted whatever.	46:45

Leslie Brown	Some didn't want change.	0:03
M.H. Crockett	Others didn't want to change. So consequently they held a conference on me. They went into the superintendent's home, there's a home. The superintendents of the school was over the Ashe Avenue unit, White school full of blind and over us too. And of course these, he was younger, the teachers didn't like the changes. So they went over and had a conference conference with him. Much in all of that.	0:04
Leslie Brown	The superintendent supported you or?	0:50
M.H. Crockett	Well, we didn't, there wasn't anything they could do that year, that one year. And of course we went along and I took advantage of those who's experienced, some of them liked what I was doing, others didn't. And so at the end of the year, they retired the superintendent and brought Mr. Peeler in. I shouldn't.	0:56
Leslie Brown	What's the first thing you did as the new principal? Do you remember the very first rule or the first act or the first thing that you had done?	1:42
M.H. Crockett	Well, it was a matter of.	1:55
Leslie Brown	It's so many things.	1:59
M.H. Crockett	Yeah, trying to get their cooperation. And also, we had these dormitories and houseparents to deal with children, which could create a problem. But anyway, I went along with some things that I didn't want, had to. But I endured through that particular year, whatever came up and there were one or two reactions, but I didn't bother. And one or two of the teachers who were solid with me pushed it, but all in all, this one year was what we had to do and then when the new superintendent came in, well, we just sat down and talked over things and hired teachers and so on. And several of the older teachers, several of the teachers who had been there and had, some were in on this, going visiting and so forth, so on. It didn't last long. Didn't last long. Changes were made.	1:59
Annie Valk	I have a technical question about, you said the superintendent that governed the Morehead school was the same one who governed the Ashe Avenue?	3:27
M.H. Crockett	Yes, that's correct.	3:40
Annie Valk	Was this school part of the state system of education or?	3:41
M.H. Crockett	No.	3:48
Annie Valk	Okay.	3:49
M.H. Crockett	No, separate and distinct. We had our own board of directors.	3:49
Annie Valk	Okay.	3:53
M.H. Crockett	They determined to pay that the teachers were getting, which was way down, was below what the teachers in the regular school were making. Of course, teachers that at that time didn't make much anyway, regardless of where he were in public schools or anything else. But anyway, we were lower than the teachers. Regular teachers, not Raleigh teachers. I mean by that, Raleigh teachers have always been above in general.	3:56
Annie Valk	And did the board of directors do the hiring for the school also, or did you?	4:40
M.H. Crockett	No, they didn't do the hiring. No, we went through, I interviewed and sent them to the superintendent and I had, see, my first interview was with the teachers and sent them on to the superintendent. That's the way it was done then. We began to work on salaries. We put it on the public school basis, that's what we had to do to get any teachers coming out of college. And we worked on that and got that up to par. We also worked on the academic side of it. We tried to follow the public schools as much we possibly could with our blind children.	4:50
M.H. Crockett	It was different with our Deaf children. We accepted them at six years of age or over, and consequently, many of them came in two or three years older than that. And so we worked in that area trying to get the basics. Consequently, we hired teachers on their level, and we raised the salaries to put the regular teachers were getting, for example, we would, out in the county or in other counties. And Raleigh had always had a little supplement to offer, but we couldn't get there so we had to settle for that. But we got some good teachers, young teachers, I preferred younger teachers who would. And so then they set up the school at Hampton, right before we set up the school in Hampton for us, for the schools in the South. And that was a tremendous help to us. And many of our teachers took advantage of that. At that time, the state of North Carolina paid teachers for going out of state, paid their, gave them.	5:47
Annie Valk	Paid for their tuition or?	7:21
M.H. Crockett	Yeah. They put a clause in, New York University, and other schools. Couldn't go in the South at that time. We couldn't go to University of North Carolina or something. And so our teachers went to, I tried to get most of them to go to Hampton, get this special education, and they did. We had problems there in getting money. I went to the person who was in charge of dispensing funds for the teachers to go out of state or go out, get a higher degree, whatever area, and some special education. So I went to him one year, he turned me down. We got nothing.	7:22
M.H. Crockett	So I went back to him the second year, and he said, "Are you back here again?" I said, "Yes. I'm back here asking for funds for my teachers." Says, "Well, you're not going to get any. And you know why?" I said, "No, I don't know why." "White teachers are not asking for it." So I made, I complimented him, not in a good manner, and walked out of his office and got nothing. We didn't get anything about teachers. So you can see the attitude, you could see that. And that was about the end of it. But our teachers went on, sacrificed and built the school.	8:39
Annie Valk	I was curious about when, well, you mentioned that when your husband was thinking about taking this job, that your friends were calling you and saying that these children are diseased. And I was wondering what the common perception of blind and Deaf children was when you first started at the school, when you were thinking about taking this job.	9:37
M.H. Crockett	These people thought in terms of blind children having diseases. Diseases which caused blindness.	10:02
Myrtle Crockett	Syphilis and anything.	10:14
M.H. Crockett	What?	10:14
Myrtle Crockett	Syphilis.	10:18
M.H. Crockett	Yeah. And that was the general opinion, not only education. And so they held that opinion, which was not true. And they didn't know enough about deafness but only to be afraid of it.	10:19
Leslie Brown	This is a difficult question to ask, but was there a different perception of Black blind and Deaf children than of White blind and Deaf children? Did people think of Black blind children differently than they thought about, did they also think that White blind children were diseased? Was that a common perception?	10:43
Myrtle Crockett	I don't know, has that crossed their mind really.	11:08
M.H. Crockett	I don't know. But I don't know. I can't answer that. But I can only answer for us.	11:16
Myrtle Crockett	That was never—	11:21
M.H. Crockett	[indistinct 00:11:22], I can only answer, what was that?	11:22
Myrtle Crockett	That was never brought up.	11:24
M.H. Crockett	No, but it was in the community here. Raleigh people called "The School for Deaf and Dumb," which was done away with way back then, a century ago, but that still lingers, and when we lived on the campus, we had our friends who come out. "Don't use those swings, you might get a disease." That's what we had to live down. And that was part of our job, creating an atmosphere, changing the beliefs of these people.	11:31
Annie Valk	Connected to that, I had a question about who were the people who wanted to be teachers at this school? Particularly when the salaries, before you were able to equalize the salaries some, what led people to be teachers at this particular school as opposed to in another kind of school somewhere?	12:26
M.H. Crockett	There was a general opinion that there was a surplus of Black teachers. Surplus of Black teachers. And that those didn't get hired, were interested, would become interested in us.	12:51
Annie Valk	So it was because they needed a job, not because they particularly wanted to work with blind and Deaf?	13:13
M.H. Crockett	That's true. Well, they just wanted to work. They wanted to work period and consequently, they came out brand new, just as new as we were, thereafter. Consequently, we had some good teachers. We really had a choice back then because Black teachers were, I'll say that they were much more so than now. So jobs, there were no, like she said, secretarial jobs or jobs in the offices for Blacks. And consequently, it came, if you weren't a teacher or if you weren't a preacher, you were washing windows or something like that. That's about what it was.	13:22
Leslie Brown	Mrs. Crockett, when you first came to Raleigh, what did you perceive? Well, when you first came to the school, what did you perceive your role to be? Did you think that you had a particular, there were certain things that you should do, a particular role you should play as the wife of the principal and as a teacher yourself?	14:29
Myrtle Crockett	Well, maybe he could answer. Maybe he could handle that better than I could. I thought I did a pretty good job. But my mama had really talked to me in growing up because my daddy was a principal and mama was working with him, and just in common and just talking. And she would always tell me, just stay out of his business. That's her philosophy, just you stay out of the business, let him run the business. And I did for most part, but I think you'd have to have a certain personality to do it. But I just kept my mouth shut. I thought I did anyway. But he might know something I don't know, he knows.	14:53
Annie Valk	Were there additional social responsibilities?	15:38
Myrtle Crockett	Oh, I had the same responsibilities as the rest of them. We had old study hour, I used to hate it. That's one of the first things we did too. I meant to mention that when you were talking about it. Cut out that vesper services and cut out study hours. Those things worried us to death, griped me. One thing you have to get out of the home, the dormitory, across the campus to sit for two hours while some kids are supposed to be studying and they're not studying. The blind will sleep, and you can see why. They can't see, their eyes are closed so they're going to sleep. That's right.	15:42
M.H. Crockett	Well, she was, work was one of our strengths. Particularly with the blind children, visually impaired better known now than blind. And they just took to her like that. And she held her own all the way through and through life right now. They revered her, loved her. So that meant a whole lot. Living in the dormitory, I lived in the dormitory for six years and it got to the point where I was determined to get out of there. So they built a home for us. And while they were building my home, they built a home for Ashe Avenue. I don't know what he did for it. So the superintendent had that responsibility in it. When he built over here, he had to build, if they didn't have it over there, why then it had to be done. So they had to build two homes at the same time.	16:26
Myrtle Crockett	Let me mention this.	17:40
M.H. Crockett	And, what?	17:40
Myrtle Crockett	Before I forget it, they have nicknamed the building after him over there.	17:50
Annie Valk	Oh, really?	17:52
Leslie Brown	Oh, really?	17:52
Myrtle Crockett	Crockett and Peeler, after the two of them. What is it? Crockett Peeler Vocational Building. One of those, they built when the kids had to come over there. But he really never worked in the building. He can't understand why they put his name on that building. And they put it on Garner Road, you could understand but Ashe Avenue. And we grew up all those years not knowing anybody on Ashe Avenue, except the superintendent. You didn't even know the first people. Just didn't know them.	17:53
M.H. Crockett	So.	18:32
Annie Valk	How close were the schools geographically to each other?	18:34
Myrtle Crockett	Was it 10? How was it? 10 miles.	18:39
Annie Valk	Oh, okay.	18:39
M.H. Crockett	What?	18:39
Myrtle Crockett	Is it 10 miles?	18:39
M.H. Crockett	No.	18:40
Myrtle Crockett	To Garner Road?	18:40
M.H. Crockett	No, from Garner Road about, they called it five miles. They called it five miles. Across town. Do you know anything about Raleigh?	18:52
Annie Valk	A little. I know, I was looking at the map.	18:55
M.H. Crockett	See, we are on Garner Road, which goes out of town where the highway patrol is now.	18:57
Annie Valk	Right.	19:02
M.H. Crockett	That was our plant. And Ashe Avenue has been over there for years. When they built it from downtown, see, this whole thing used to be downtown. Then when Blacks entered the picture, they had to do something about them so they built it. So they rented this place in Raleigh. Then Mr. Lineberry, who was on board of education, on the board of the school, he had the idea that the superintendent, and they ought to have a school for Blacks. So he engineered this farm out there and built four dormitories, so the main building. So that started that. And he took over as superintendent from that point. He was on the board of directors, had a farm connected there. So that was this situation there and then we went on.	19:02
M.H. Crockett	We had four dormitories, and when we left, we had 10 dormitories. Well, I went to Hampton. I saw that there was a need for somebody to visit the parents in the summer. And since I was hired for 11 or 12 months, whatever you might call it, my thesis was part of that. So I sent papers out to the questionnaires out to the county, to the hundred counties to find out number of vision impaired people, Deaf people they might have there, who would be eligible to attend the school out here.	20:21
M.H. Crockett	And Dr. Cooper who was head of the schools said, "Crockett, I'm going to send this to your superintendent." That was Mr. Peeler. So he said it. And then that was really the beginning of my visiting the homes and the possible students who would enter, I could find out through the social services program, those who might be eligible to come to our school. And that was beginning of the summer of visiting the homes in the summer.	21:19
Leslie Brown	All of the students were from North Carolina?	21:59
M.H. Crockett	Yes.	22:02
Leslie Brown	And no students came from any other state?	22:03
Myrtle Crockett	They had one or two, didn't we?	22:06
M.H. Crockett	Had?	22:07
Myrtle Crockett	If a student came to our school, the state had to pay.	22:08
M.H. Crockett	What?	22:10
Myrtle Crockett	If as student came from out of.	22:14
M.H. Crockett	Oh, tuition was awful. They had [indistinct 00:22:18].	22:15
Myrtle Crockett	If somebody from out of state.	22:18
M.H. Crockett	I'm talking out of school now.	22:20
Myrtle Crockett	You didn't go to our school.	22:21
M.H. Crockett	I'm talking out of school.	22:21
Myrtle Crockett	North Carolina had to pay for it.	22:21
M.H. Crockett	We had one student, they had one student to come here from West Virginia. And her daddy was up in coal mine. Money, money, money, so he sent her over school here. Sent by her plane, picked her up by plane, tuition. So we all, yeah. At our peak, which was '62, '61 and '62, we had nearly 400 students out there.	22:24
Annie Valk	How many were there when you started in 1944?	22:56
M.H. Crockett	A hundred and some students.	23:02
Annie Valk	Wow.	23:06
M.H. Crockett	116 children.	23:07
Leslie Brown	Where did the students come from? What kinds of families did they come from? Were they all, were they poor? Were they farm—?	23:10
M.H. Crockett	Most of them were, yes. Yes, the lower groups of—occasionally we would get a child who was visually impaired to the point that they couldn't be helped in public schools. If a child was deaf, born deaf or something, it soon got out of control and couldn't communicate with them. If we could find out, that student, so we did. We did. And that was the beginning of snowballing with kids coming to the school.	23:19
M.H. Crockett	And then there's another angle after staying out there for a number of years, we had the choir. An excellent choir. Blind, and we had the Deaf children, the girls, to sign the songs. And at that time, principals and so forth were trying to raise money and we'd send our choir. And then we had John Hazel or one of the outstanding graduates from A&T College, blind. He did a fine piece of work and then I rehired him. He came in and he established himself with a group and he formed this little group called—	23:57
Myrtle Crockett	Rhythm Kids?	24:57
M.H. Crockett	Rhythm Kids, nothing but piano, chair. We had the—	24:58
Myrtle Crockett	Wash tubs.	25:07
M.H. Crockett	Drumsticks and so forth, that was the beginning of it. And it created interest. So we gave, that was the beginning of, really the beginning of our kids thinking they were somebody. We really had to teach that and teach them that they were somebody, that they were citizens just like everybody else. And so they began to exert themselves. And we were working hard with them academically. And so that had established us and we were running over, on and over. Couldn't build fast enough. That's the reason. So we had to learn while we were out there. We first renovated the main building, classrooms, added 13 classrooms and got rid of the tin shops for the vocational work and built a building for them. But first, we built a new auditorium and 13 classrooms. The gymnasium was a savior. We built a brand new gymnasium and a vocational setup came later for our vocational teachers to spread out. Then in early in the '60s, we built this Little School for the—this School for the Deaf, to separate them from the older children, from the older Deaf children.	25:08
Leslie Brown	I see.	27:05
M.H. Crockett	To create more language. We could teach the three things: speech, signing, and lipreading. With the little folks and start them out if they could. So that was the basis of these other three dormitories and a Little School for the Deaf. And we went in it '64. So when we left from out there, there were 10 dormitories, and a new setup for the vocational people, auditorium, gym, farm had been done away with, so forth, so on. So I think there were about 30 or 40 that we couldn't take in when I retired.	27:07
Myrtle Crockett	A lot of our students had brain damage.	28:03
M.H. Crockett	See they had no set-up in public schools for their children. And when they integrated, the law, it became law that the public school set up some sort of program for the visually impaired, for the Deaf too, if you could. But didn't never, today it's not satisfactory as far as I'm concerned. We are just watching the situation while I live.	28:05
Myrtle Crockett	Tell her about some of your smart grads.	28:33
M.H. Crockett	Well, we have four doctorates.	28:39
Annie Valk	Great.	28:44
M.H. Crockett	Ralph Carson, Dr. Ralph Carson.	28:46
Myrtle Crockett	And they earned a doctorate's too.	28:46
M.H. Crockett	Really? Right. Went through Drew University, got his doctorate, made straight A's all the way through, and went into the ministry and established a school. Went over, totally blind, married and established school in Nigeria and stayed over there a few years and adopted one or two children, brought them back, so he's back up here teaching. He's been there for about 15, 20 years up at.	28:51
Myrtle Crockett	Garner-Webb.	29:22
M.H. Crockett	Garner-Webb's where he's at school, private college. And then came Marcus Ingram, who graduated with from Central with my daughter. And he was summa cum laude or something. Barbara was cum laude, wishing she could get one. However, she did get a scholarship, but he was brilliant and he still over at Central teaching economics.	29:24
Myrtle Crockett	It would be interesting to talk to him.	29:54
Leslie Brown	Yes, it would be.	29:59
M.H. Crockett	Fullwood, Dr. Fullwood was a leader on the campus. So we found out that there was some prejudice in hiring blind, visually impaired. They couldn't do this, and the principals wouldn't hire them, so it boomeranged on them. The name of the school, the North Carolina School for the Blind and the Deaf on Garner Road. It was at one time for Negroes, but not at Garner Road. So sent a group of students down, Fullwood headed of the group to speak to the legislature, asked them to change the name of the school. So we went through that with our, but they changed the name. North Carolina School, no, that's all right.	30:08
Myrtle Crockett	Changed it to the Governor Morehead.	30:54
M.H. Crockett	Governor Morehead School for the Blind.	30:54
Myrtle Crockett	They said.	30:54
M.H. Crockett	On Garner Road.	30:54
Myrtle Crockett	When they were trying to get jobs and everything, the resumes, talking about School for the Blind, people just decided—	31:14
M.H. Crockett	They were handicapped when they went in the door. When they went in the door.	31:21
Annie Valk	Right, if they even got in the door.	31:22
Myrtle Crockett	That's right, yeah.	31:26
M.H. Crockett	One of our most brilliant students finished the A&T College summa everything, was in music. And he went for a job in the band. The manager said, "You can't even sign your name." That triggered him. That triggered him to changing the name of school so he did.	31:27
Annie Valk	I was wondering related to this, and you're talking about needing to teach people that they were somebody and that they were citizens. I was wondering what kinds of reactions you got when you went and visited parents in the summers and how did parents respond to this kind of an opportunity for their children?	31:50
M.H. Crockett	In general, I was accepted. I presented it to them as an opportunity for their child to get an education, free. When they graduated from out here, if they were scholarly enough, the state paid their way through college.	32:15
Annie Valk	Wow.	32:40
M.H. Crockett	And that was my selling point. So we just got them. I went into places and regardless of what went on, that's when found out, but in general I was accepted very well and giving them our conditions and so forth and that the children will be looked after. And well, and it would take them off their hands.	32:42
Annie Valk	Right.	33:16
M.H. Crockett	You know what I mean? And finally we just had to make them go home at Christmastime. It was a real life for them out here. And they were free and they just socialized and they danced in the gymnasium, had a good time, but they had to go to school. And these programs that we would give, and we formed a basketball team with our Deaf children. And I always made it a point to put one albino on there, or visually impaired child on there to keep the morale up. And they loved it, loved the basketball team.	33:22
M.H. Crockett	So that led us to the point where we could, our choir traveled. At that time, principals were raising money for the athletics, so forth and so on. And our choir was a big draw for it, and virtually all over. We didn't go any farther than Asheville, but we covered from Asheville back this way with our choir. And the girls signing. And we picked, and so it just meant students for us. That's what the whole crowd was.	34:06
M.H. Crockett	Then we got this basketball team where we played basketball in the county schools, not the city of Raleigh, we couldn't compete with them. But we competed with Hickory Springs, Wake Forest, they were big high schools. And believe it or not, we made coaches out of them folks. Always in the runner-up championship and so forth and so on. And it just built our ego up, built our kids' ego up. And it gained respect. When we took our Deaf children, our basketball team to play, they went under the blind boys coming to play basketball. So when we got there, our Deaf boys shooting baskets. So we were always in the upper echelon of going towards championships.	34:50
M.H. Crockett	We had one thing that held us back. We had in the Deaf department, we had to go teach three years in the beginning. Child come to us at six, he had no background, no language background, I think. So trying to build him up to first grade level, it took at least took three years. And so we had them those years on and consequently, it would make them later getting out of high school.	36:00
Leslie Brown	I see.	36:33
M.H. Crockett	So we had to suffer some, one or two of our boys would get. And we had built our esteem up so high that the coaches looked at us like they wouldn't let them play after they got 19 years old and all that. We'd lost one or two good boys because of that. But they're still in school, and they were in school. They did a tremendous job and we filled gymnasiums for them all over the county and so on. And formed a league. We formed a league up in Virginia. And I carried them to, our basketball team to South Carolina. Carried to Georgia. Carried to Alabama.	36:34
M.H. Crockett	Then we formed a league of the Black schools. And we had a championship, each for several years. And we moved victorious in all of them but the last one, when they established the law here with our older boys, had to go to Morganton. But it crippled me, crippled me out here. See? But we had a good time and it was a fine thing for them. It was fun. We just established the ego in them just right, and gave the public a real knowledge of what they could do. We also won honors in schools under Mr. Harris.	37:26
Myrtle Crockett	Drama.	38:28
M.H. Crockett	Drama, dramatics. We could do that. We used to have contests in the city.	38:29
Myrtle Crockett	The state contests.	38:37
M.H. Crockett	So did our job in that too.	38:41
Leslie Brown	That's good.	38:44
M.H. Crockett	We just made a school out of it. Made a school out of it. And so that's it, see. So we integrated.	38:48
Leslie Brown	And that, what year was that?	39:02
M.H. Crockett	We started integrating in '68. We sent two teachers over to Ashe Avenue and she was one of them. She and Mr. Harris. And also, in another year, Mr. Stokes went to Ashe Avenue and then they sent two teachers over to me and reintegrated a little bit more after that. Mr. Peeler retired in '68, and then Mr. Cole came in, and in '70, that's when he required complete integration.	39:04
Leslie Brown	How did you feel about that, Mrs. Crockett? How did you feel about going to Ashe Avenue from here?	39:49
Myrtle Crockett	It was all right. Well, we knew we had to do it. I had built myself up.	39:55
M.H. Crockett	She built herself up to it.	40:03
Myrtle Crockett	And then I found out that the kids over there wanted me.	40:04
M.H. Crockett	They loved her.	40:08
Myrtle Crockett	So they say. Mr. Peeler told Mr. Cole, or somebody told him, said the kids told their superintendent and principal over there said, "If somebody's got to come over here, send Mrs. Crockett." But I don't know how in the world the kids, they didn't know me. But in talking to some of our students, I guess.	40:08
M.H. Crockett	I don't know.	40:21
Myrtle Crockett	I didn't know.	40:21
M.H. Crockett	The kids occasionally would get together, you know how it is.	40:22
Myrtle Crockett	But you know.	40:33
M.H. Crockett	Blind children still have manners and have mouths. Talking and communicating and at home and everywhere else consequently.	40:34
Myrtle Crockett	I guess.	40:42
M.H. Crockett	We had activities.	40:43
Leslie Brown	Before 1968, there were activities with the two schools, together?	40:45
M.H. Crockett	What did you say?	40:49
Leslie Brown	Before 1968, the students were, the students did things together that?	40:51
Myrtle Crockett	No, not, Garner, no. Not Garner Road and Ashe Avenue.	41:02
M.H. Crockett	No.	41:02
Myrtle Crockett	Not even the teachers at the [indistinct 00:41:04].	41:02
M.H. Crockett	No, we didn't know the staff over there, except when we would go off on trips or something like.	41:06
Annie Valk	Okay.	41:11
M.H. Crockett	To establish the, no, we didn't know the teachers.	41:11
Leslie Brown	What kinds of occasions would your students and the Ashe Avenue students have to talk with each other, and how would they know?	41:17
M.H. Crockett	They wouldn't know. We started having, Mr. Peeler started having teachers' meetings together.	41:26
Myrtle Crockett	Yeah.	41:34
M.H. Crockett	At the beginning of the year, that acquainted us some.	41:35
Annie Valk	This was beginning 1968?	41:39
M.H. Crockett	Huh?	41:42
Annie Valk	This was beginning in 1968?	41:42
M.H. Crockett	No, no, that was before.	41:44
Annie Valk	Okay.	41:45
M.H. Crockett	That was before. See, Mr. Peeler retired in '68. That was before he came in '45 as superintendent. And he was the one responsible for all this load we put on him. And he kept busy and didn't leave, he was something.	41:47
Myrtle Crockett	I think.	42:07
M.H. Crockett	We traveled together, we traveled and got the point where we would go to meetings together, national meetings. It was when the country, integration, it was rather interesting on one or two trips with one trip in particularly so. We went together and we went to Batavia to see when the states built a new school for the blind or something, they would always invite the national meeting to show off. And this, so they built this new school up in Batavia, New York. And we got on a bus, on a school bus together and went, and incidentally, Mr. Peeler and I would have to get together where we could stop where relieve ourselves. And that was a problem.	42:09
Leslie Brown	Yes.	43:13
M.H. Crockett	It was a problem. There were occasions when I went by myself, see, we merely integrated the national meets, the Blacks in the national meetings. My first meeting was in that we went, took a station wagon of teachers to a school in Missouri, 90 miles the other side of St. Louis. And we got out there. Of course, we had stopped, I made provisions to stop. And we didn't have places Blacks could stop and many a place, many of the city. So Charlotte had had a hotel and we stopped in St. Louis. Then we went on to the School for the Deaf and got over there.	43:19
M.H. Crockett	And so there was one other Black there. He was from Louisiana. So he and I had a dormitory to ourselves. And my other teachers, we had made arrangements for them to live in the quarters where the help lived. So that was one of the instances. But Mr. Peeler and I would always have to get together on where we were going and traveling. And so another instance was when we went to Louisville, Kentucky to a meeting, we had built a new place over there. A school, Blacks, where Blacks lived. They put us in over there where Blacks were in that dormitory.	44:07
Annie Valk	What kind of seating arrangements did you have on these bus trips?	45:07
M.H. Crockett	Huh?	45:11
Annie Valk	What kind of seating arrangements on the bus when you were on the trip?	45:12
M.H. Crockett	On the bus? Well, we didn't have any seating arrangements on the bus. You got whatever you could, because we divided it with the driving. I was driving the bus. Mr. Peeler would drive awhile, then Mr. Stowe would drive while see. And so we got there that like that. But there was no problem far as the seating was concerned. But we had to be concerned wherever we wanted to stop and relieve ourselves. And they were not always pleasant, but anyway, we got, went to Nashville, went to Kentucky, Roanoke, Kentucky, got there to, so next morning one of my teachers came in, "Mr. Crockett, chinches like to eat me up." I said, "Hush, hush. There ain't no chinches." He was just making up something.	45:19
Myrtle Crockett	These girls don't know about chinches, daddy.	46:14
M.H. Crockett	"Mr. Crockett, catch him and make him come on here." So I went on, looked at my blood and I went and looked at my pillow and just bloody as it could.	46:20
Myrtle Crockett	Daddy, these girls don't know what a chinch is.	46:26
M.H. Crockett	I was tired.	46:32
Leslie Brown	They are little bugs.	46:33
M.H. Crockett	You don't know nothing about them, don't you?	46:39
Leslie Brown	No.	46:40
Myrtle Crockett	Bed bugs. Stay on the bed.	46:40
M.H. Crockett	Little red bugs, man.	46:40

Annie Valk	—start of the interview, let me—	0:01
M.H. Crockett	Hello, this—Let me get this point of view. Arranged to go up to the national meeting to Batavia, Mr. Peeler made arrangements for us to stop at a motel right out of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. So we bused up, went on up there and stayed in the quarters, went onto Batavia, and came back and stopped at the same place. We came back to the same place Blacks were in this area, Whites were in this area.	0:06
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	0:33
M.H. Crockett	They had done that in our absence, in just two or three days. Fixed in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, they had done that. There we were, all together and so on, so on. And incidentally, if we got in bad in a service station, we just went on. The blind go on with teachers in there, those White teachers go on, go on. We integrated. We integrated two or three of them like that, just couldn't stop them. But those were the most interesting highlights of our travels. At several meetings, I was just about by myself in many instances. For example, when I went to Florida, there was a national meeting. Got in there and one of the workers, vocational workers from North Carolina, made one of the most glowing reports you've ever seen in your life. He told all us [indistinct 00:02:12].	0:43
M.H. Crockett	So the went, "What are you doing, Mr. Crockett?" I said, "I don't know anything about what he's talking about." They even had it, because it had rubbed the wrong way, but it didn't matter. So those are just a few of the things we encountered. And then when we integrated, our kids had to start a new life going to over Ashe Avenue at the dormitories. Over here we had a little more freedom. See, they had the housemother come in here and she wanted to know if I had a Black book, I said, "No, mother, I don't have Black book. I have a few regulations and that's it. These cases are separate as far as I'm concerned." Of all the rules, go to class at eight o'clock and so forth and so on, go to dorm at four, lights out at 11 o'clock, that's it. Every case was settled. We had a book of rules. And our kids, in transferring them, they had problems.	2:13
M.H. Crockett	We never made them go to church, but our bus would be loaded to go to church, going to church downtown about every Sunday, you see. Then he just started—he didn't want to go. Clamped down on.	3:39
Myrtle Crockett	Tell them that experience they had. [indistinct 00:03:59].	3:57
M.H. Crockett	When he started doing the walk over one Sunday morning, this was after Mr. Peeler retired, man sent him home, put him on the bus without knowledge of the parents. He got back to town and somebody notified the Attorney General's office. He said, "You don't have a leg to stand on, [indistinct 00:04:36] children." Sent on kid home, [indistinct 00:04:41], put her off. She was on a bus ride to Virginia, where she lived. It was dark, around 11 o'clock at night and she had to cross this same old land. They had no knowledge if she was coming, and that [indistinct 00:04:57].	3:58
M.H. Crockett	But they weren't as free and general when they went over their than some of the—One or two of the churches downtown would pick them up and carry them to—just take them to the Sunday school or church, Sunday school mainly I think though. That, he just didn't like it. He couldn't help and so that had to be stopped. [indistinct 00:05:38], she knows about one girl that went over there.	4:57
Leslie Brown	There were a few other questions we wanted to ask you about life, about your lives.	5:39
Annie Valk	Can I just ask one more question about the school too, before?	5:50
Leslie Brown	Oh sure.	5:53
M.H. Crockett	Yeah.	5:55
Annie Valk	And I don't really know how to ask this, but something that I've been thinking as you've been talking is how do you teach a blind child about racism, segregation, race? How do you explain to them if they can't see Black and White, how do you explain to them what that's all about? And about segregation and the places that they can and can't go and things like that?	5:57
Myrtle Crockett	If they're blind, you talk with them just as you do your own kids. That's not a problem with them. But it's the Deaf, they're the ones that are really hard. When it comes to color, the blind might not understand everything your saying when it comes to color, but of course as they grow up, they get the colors—they get them straight somehow and some way, I don't know.	6:37
M.H. Crockett	That wasn't much of a problem other than we had to pave the way for them to get to work when they got out of school or college, to go to work in the social services departments and so for and so on. All that was White.	7:05
Annie Valk	Well, just—	7:22
M.H. Crockett	So, we did get some of our graduates work there is the social services departments. As far as knowing about the difference and so forth, they felt that all along much more than the Deaf children. Deaf children will go anywhere.	7:23
Leslie Brown	In the South before the mid-1950s though, with the signs, Colored and White signs everywhere you went, and the danger that Black people were in if they went into the wrong door or used the wrong drinking fountain or did the wrong thing, where there was a sign in place. How did people who couldn't necessarily see the sign—Just like I wondered the same question about people who couldn't read. How do people learn?	7:47
Myrtle Crockett	Do you remember that incident in fair where one of the teachers—We had to carry kids to the fair every year. Everybody had to go to the fair. This teacher had a class of Deaf kids and the bathroom was just as you go into the gate. And of course, kids were in front of her. The kids went on into the bathroom, she didn't know they had it in mind. Anyway, she was behind them and when she looked up, all of these kids were going into the bathroom and a bunch of White ladies in there, children—	8:28
M.H. Crockett	Girls, girls.	9:16
Myrtle Crockett	—were there and they had a fit. "Go away, you don't belong in here. Read it, you don't belong in here." Children, the Deaf kids, didn't respond, they kept going to a stall, kept going to the stall and the women kept screaming, "You can't go in there. You can't go in there." They was integrated that time.	9:17
M.H. Crockett	She was smart, see.	9:36
Myrtle Crockett	The teacher pretended she was deaf. Oh yeah, somebody finally said, "Somebody ought to be with them. Somebody ought to be with these kids." Teacher stood up there like she was deaf. (all laugh)	9:37
M.H. Crockett	We've had a lot of fun.	9:41
Annie Valk	So I get the sense from you that the Deaf children were a little more unruly or harder to control than the blind children?	9:55
M.H. Crockett	We had a problem.	10:00
Myrtle Crockett	Yeah, that's a problem.	10:00
M.H. Crockett	We had a problem, definitely a problem with that. My first big problem was that four Deaf boys went in the dormitory at night to see the girls. They had a good time. I got them together. Word got out fast. So we got them together and they was all right. Shortly after Mr. Peeler's came in. Five boys. And so I called him, I told him I was going to send four of them home for a little while for going and visiting the girls. He said, "Well, you better let me come over there. You better let me come over." I said, "Come on."	10:01
M.H. Crockett	So he got into the office and ask them questions. He had two teachers that had to sign to them. They told him right away that it was all right for them to go into the dormitories at night. So that taught him a lesson, taught him a lesson. Then after, when I called him and told him to say it was not, he never made that request anymore, just sent me a note. See? He'd found out that I wasn't anxious to send them home [indistinct 00:12:01]. They taught him a lesson too, how difficult it was to prove to them that it was wrong for them to go in and visit the girls at nights in the dormitories. And so that was the big show.	11:12
M.H. Crockett	After that, it was just normal sense. But we had to teach the girls. Boys, you had to tell them it was wrong. You had to teach that in the classrooms.	12:19
Annie Valk	Boy, you really had—	12:26
M.H. Crockett	Girls, we had to teach the girls to let somebody know when their period—They'd tell the teachers, because sometimes I had—Finally, I had ordered teachers not to send them back to dormitory unless it's absolutely necessary. Some teachers sent them back just to change their shirt or something like that, sent them back. There was one thing that we had at school, know when to send them back to dormitories. We had let them know that—had to teach the children that it was a natural thing for them to have their periods and to let somebody know.	12:36
Annie Valk	You really had the responsibility of being like parents to them—	13:17
M.H. Crockett	Parents, exactly right.	13:19
Annie Valk	—in terms of teaching all this stuff also.	13:19
M.H. Crockett	You're exactly right.	13:19
Myrtle Crockett	Well, the parents couldn't correspond.	13:25
M.H. Crockett	Exactly right, and so when the boys came back, the Deaf boys, the parents came with them and we talked it over and said, "So, Mr. and Mrs. Crockett, you have the authority to hammer my boys. You can do whatever, but just don't kill them." Deafness is hard.	13:26
Myrtle Crockett	Deaf was [indistinct 00:13:53].	13:36
M.H. Crockett	Difficult to handle, really. Said, "But just don't kill them." Remember that, but it did relieve me. But what they knew right from wrong and the parents couldn't get it over to and they'd get unruly, be unruly. It was a matter for us to educate them what was—all those things. In fact, I went to a conference out Illinois, the School for the Deaf in Illinois, went to a conference on teaching, working with these senior students, Deaf children.	13:53
M.H. Crockett	Teaching the Deaf childrens is difficult. But when they come to you, we had to put a band on the arms to find out, when they first came, to know who they were and where they came from. Seven in the class, so the teachers would mark a band on their arms. That's the difference, you see, no vocabulary, no nothing. No nothing, you know?	14:34
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	15:02
M.H. Crockett	Parents didn't know the sign language and just couldn't communicate. So that's when it took three years plus. We had an excellent opportunity in finding out the situation with our counselor and testing when you got up in the grades. It was mainly communication. We knew that this Deaf child was just as intelligent as a blind child, but it was communication. That's what it was and that's all it is, is communication. We could see the difference in IQ with the programs, but we had to know who was what and who was smart [indistinct 00:15:53], but that's your difference in Deafness and blindness. And that's true. True.	15:03
Myrtle Crockett	Deaf kids will really frank.	16:11
M.H. Crockett	They're real frank, yes.	16:12
Myrtle Crockett	They'd tell you the truth, tell it to you as they saw it. Whereas the blind kids didn't know how to cover up. That's right.	16:12
M.H. Crockett	Yeah, for example, when the new housemother came in—The head housemother was over at Ashe Avenue, and then she had control of us too, of my housemothers. And so she came in, all the joint, changed the regulations and so forth and so on. Told them that it was all right for them to strut around the campus on a Sunday afternoon if they wanted to walk around the campus and socialize. You can socialize and you can walk around campus decently, you can be indecent too. And then she told them that, "My daughter, when she goes out, she comes home, the boy always—does that to her does that to her when they're saying goodnight at the door," and so on, so on. She gave that to our houseparents. But she didn't go along with us.	16:18
M.H. Crockett	Finally when one girl came in the office and she wanted to see me. I said, "Come on. Come on in." "Mr. Crockett, this new housemother has given us the privilege to kiss, but now it's clear my boyfriend kisses so long." (all laugh) I was almost just laughing. See, we had a so—I said, "Okay, all right. You just don't say a word, I'll take care of it. I'll take care of it for you." I called the boy and said, "Listen, I'll tell you something. Your girl came in and said you kissed wrong. If she were my girlfriend I'd never speak to her anymore for reporting." (all laugh) That's the way I handle it, I was [indistinct 00:18:31].	17:25
M.H. Crockett	But it bombarded over on the other the campus too, walking around campus in the afternoons and their arms are all in each other. It can be ugly sometimes, particular visually impaired children, got ugly them, you put the brakes on. Put the brakes on, you see what I mean? Those are the things that built us up. We had regulations. We had good commencement programs. He would invite in my superintendent, Will Hoskins come down to [indistinct 00:19:21]. Well, she was in charge. She and Ms. Harris was in charge of graduation. Miss Seers and Miss Henderson [indistinct 00:19:27] lived together. And superintendent said that was one of our finest graduation exercise he had ever seen in all of his life.	18:32
M.H. Crockett	That's just one of the things of how we worked together, danced together and played together and so on, so on, so it became mutual. At one time we took a few years to do that because some of our teachers were—you know?	19:40
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	20:02
M.H. Crockett	Deaf or blind, no one could see. But we had to stop that, check that and they got them together. We worked beautiful together, except the classes. All the classes are separate. Teachers separate faculties and everything. But teachers mixed like that, especially when we had activities and stuff like that. It proved that you can live together, you can learn together and teach them a lesson. For example, we had a big snow in the '50s, good big snow in the '50s out there and going to the dining room, you'd look out and see the blind children going away across almost to the highway, trying to get a way to the dining room. See, they couldn't feel the concrete going round to the dining room, so we had to watch out for that.	20:03
M.H. Crockett	We helped them. See, our Deaf children could help in instances like those and so forth and so on. But that's together because we couldn't—But there was a difference in the graduations. Now in North Carolina had a law that we couldn't keep them after the 10th grade, which left them inadequate. But we didn't adhere to that law altogether because we kept some of our better students over and at least got 11th grade training, up to a point where some of them went to public schools, or went to the college. It fitted a few of them so they could make it, the bright ones. But that was a real handicap, a real handicap.	21:01
M.H. Crockett	They were old. They were 20 years old and I could and I couldn't. But at that time, Morganton was the only high school they had in the state for the Deaf until the school down here was established, in Wilson. It was third grade when I retired. My last year, when they had sent my older kids to Morganton and had thought they were going to have room for the little Deaf children and I had to set up the whole setup for the blind and here comes a statement, "Prepare for 100 little Deaf children to come back." I had to have them do a whole situation, get the little folks back in that new place that we had just opened in '64, for the Deaf.	21:58
M.H. Crockett	See, I had put the blind over in that—so I had to get them out there. And then when integration happened, I lost 27 teachers, experienced teachers. I had to go out and hire new teachers to come in. It just happened that one of the supervisors and one or two others that hadn't accepted work came back and then we had to hire teachers to go in and start teaching the Deaf which is a terrible thing. They were building schools but they hadn't built them fast enough and had no idea what kind of established little school—I think they were up at 6th Grade, about 6th Grade. I think, I'm not sure. Well, they hired that even shortly after I retired. They were building a middle-school in Greensboro, you know about that?	23:05
Leslie Brown	Yes.	24:11
M.H. Crockett	I don't know what, so after that I—up there. They have a high school now in Wilson. We had one or two community meetings on what would happen to that situation when we're fully integrated. Well, we go nowhere when we mentioned the fact that this ought to be the eastern School for the Deaf. Those in the western part go to Morganton, this ought to be east because you've got every setup out here. You've got 10 dormitories out there, you've got vocational buildings, you've got a lot of training, got all this in there.	24:12
M.H. Crockett	You see what's happened, don't you? Our patrol got it and built—and then took years to build the building, so they have a hospital now. But talk about—	25:05
Annie Valk	[indistinct 00:25:18].	25:18
M.H. Crockett	—money. Money, money and that. That's what I'm saying. We see and we don't see. It worried them when we had just come into being, and then one of our educators told me in this meeting that he didn't want to go out there because Blacks had sat in a chair or something. Some other boy got mad and walked out. Got mad and walked out. I tell the world that I don't care [indistinct 00:26:05].	25:18
M.H. Crockett	We had every activity I'd just set up already, I had a vocational teacher out there that build hearing aids for the Deaf. In fact, he built furniture for the school in his class and then he set up here and aided some Deaf children, that didn't help at all. In this little school, which was well-equipped, beautiful planned, one Mr. Peeler didn't take any fortune with him. The man promised to build a building he wanted, he made it go like that. He was thorough. Thorough. Believed in education, believed in training. We tried to follow the schedule for the high school, at the same schedule so they could qualify to go on and do—read and write.	26:04
M.H. Crockett	I don't know whether I mentioned that, but we extended the school year for a month.	27:06
Annie Valk	Yeah, you said that.	27:17
M.H. Crockett	Yes, and that was my strength in hiring teachers. They had nine months. "Come," I'd say, "for me, I'll pay you for 10 months." That was my selling point.	27:17
Annie Valk	Where did your own children go to school?	27:36
M.H. Crockett	Barbara? Barbara left, she didn't finish Washington School. She just took this Ford Foundation test. It landed her in Fisk, and that was the beginning of my downfall.	27:41
Annie Valk	And Washington School was in Raleigh?	28:01
M.H. Crockett	Yeah, Washington High School. She finished her second year there and got this Ford Foundation scholarship and then that carried her onto Fisk. And knows that scholarship didn't begin to cover one half of what her expenses took to get her over there and get her back. She went on out there. And then my boy, older boy, got ready for college. I sent him to North Carolina Central.	28:04
Leslie Brown	Did he go to Washington also?	28:38
M.H. Crockett	He went to Levine.	28:38
Leslie Brown	He went to Levine.	28:39
M.H. Crockett	He was I think in second class in Levine, graduated. He was in the upper class, upper grades. I was told that he scored high when he took his test. In fact, he got a scholarship to go to Morehouse before he even finished high school. But I couldn't, he was too young. He spent a year at State, and that was in the '50s, mid '50s. I think our governor was either a freshman there or sophomore, our present governor, at the same time. But it wasn't the right time for him, so he went out for track. Three of his professors told him if he put on the red, he couldn't make it. It was four boys that went out there that year. He needed a little bit to make it.	28:43
M.H. Crockett	So I carried him right on over to North Carolina Central right quick and enrolled him. But later in the summer, somewhere, somehow they, somewhat that—I could furnish information for that if I had to. But he could come back to State, but it was too late. He came back to State next year on track, on Leroy Walker's track team. Of course, they know what they want. You're on Walker's team, he was third leg on the—His buddy out at State College, he told me just to—But anyway, that's his story. He went on to North Carolina Central.	30:05
Leslie Brown	Uh-huh, and third boy? And third child was that a boy also?	31:07
M.H. Crockett	Huh? Huh?	31:07
Leslie Brown	Your third child was a boy also?	31:07
M.H. Crockett	Yeah. He graduated from Lincoln and went to University of Minnesota.	31:07
Leslie Brown	He went to Lincoln also and the University of Minnesota?	31:11
M.H. Crockett	Yeah.	31:13
Leslie Brown	Now, how did he decide on Minnesota?	31:13
M.H. Crockett	Football.	31:13
Leslie Brown	Football?	31:13
M.H. Crockett	Football. He got a football scholarship. He did fairly well and went up there and got married sophomore year.	31:13
Annie Valk	That's great.	31:13
M.H. Crockett	But he went on through his last year. He needed two or three courses. So that was—	31:31
Leslie Brown	The one on the right?	31:41
Myrtle Crockett	Which one is it?	31:43
M.H. Crockett	Both of them are back in Raleigh.	31:45
Myrtle Crockett	No, but that's [indistinct 00:31:50] State College.	31:46
M.H. Crockett	He finished Central and they couldn't give up to him without going in the Army. I head to Lincoln, and I couldn't stop him. He had gone in the Army. He's retired from the Army. Went all over the world, married. [indistinct 00:32:30] all over the world, lived over on—He's a veteran, Vietnam. Of course, Barbara's had her trips and that. But anyway, and Bill went to University of Minnesota on a football scholarship. He was well handled and made the team, and married. That was about the end of him. He didn't like a little bit finishing University of Minnesota and wouldn't go back, wouldn't go back to finish first. He's had a job since then.	31:57
Annie Valk	Was their school, when they were younger than high school, was their school out near on Garner Road that they went to?	33:17
M.H. Crockett	I lived on state property when I was at school. The city limits came to the state property, and that put me in the middle. My children were eligible to go to Garner. I wanted to come to Raleigh.	33:27
Annie Valk	So a city school?	33:53
M.H. Crockett	I had to pay Raleigh. I had to pay for them.	33:55
Annie Valk	Was there a bus or how did—	33:56
M.H. Crockett	No, no.	34:01
Annie Valk	Not a bus. How did the get here?	34:02
M.H. Crockett	I'd transport.	34:05
Leslie Brown	You brought them in in the morning and picked them up in the evening?	34:10
M.H. Crockett	Yeah, yeah. Pick them up in the evening, that's right.	34:10
Annie Valk	It seems like the school, in a lot of ways, could have been very isolating, or it was a very self-sufficient community in a lot of ways. How much did you get off campus and interact with people in Raleigh or in Garner or wherever?	34:18
M.H. Crockett	No, all my works were in Raleigh. I was on the board of Tuttle Center. I've never actually been put off the board, to tell you the truth. But continued my activities at that out there. And that led to being chosen to be a board member of the United Fund of Raleigh. I was acting in that for a number of years, a number of years. Then when I went out to the school—In fact I was acting on—even after I went out to school. So all my activities have been in Raleigh.	34:40
Annie Valk	Okay.	35:33
M.H. Crockett	I've seen a lot of waterfalling down here in Raleigh. There were three of us on the board from United Fund, three Blacks. Lawyer, college, school named after him, and A.E. Brown, we were the only Blacks on the board. Then we had a job to do with that for the centers and so forth, trying to get something going, get teachers and get money for them. Then, after that, I stayed on and they put me in charge of the YMCA down here while I was on there to see that things were going for the Blacks down there. But that took up most of my time other than social activities. But it took my time.	35:38
M.H. Crockett	We made a contribution because we built up salaries—salaries weren't equal in the centers for Whites and Blacks. We worked on that, the three of us worked on that, then we worked on getting a larger amount of money for the centers and so forth and so on.	36:46
M.H. Crockett	And then I had another one unique experience, that I was called to do jury duty. The case being tried was two young boys, two boys, Wake Forest students. One had killed another, it was a murder trial, students gambling. So when it came time for the different sides to choose do you want this one for to go on the jury, and so on, you know how it works. Anyway, when they came up, they asked me about how would I feel about death sentence. I said, "Well, it depends on the case." I virtually knew I'd be off then. But the defense, yes. They put me in. They locked us up and they hadn't made provisions for a Black to be on a jury like that.	37:04
Annie Valk	What year was this, do you remember?	38:34
M.H. Crockett	In the mid '50s. In the mid '50s. I went down and there was one man on it from State College. They saw him put it together and they made some kind of provision for him, where he'd stay there. It came time for the foreman of the jury to come and take us for a walk in the afternoons. He took us up to the corner there where the—What's on the corner there? Do you know? Anyway, it was a drug store and a general store and ice cream, one of the Walgreens.	38:43
Annie Valk	Uh-huh.	39:23
M.H. Crockett	Walgreens, was it? Was I right? Am I right? On the corner. So he got us in that jury and we sat down. He looked said, "We can't serve him." Of course, I wasn't the same color, you know? They carried us right on out of there and took us right back down in that Salisbury Street to the jail and locked us up. And after that, we didn't see daylight or no for a week. But they brought us our stuff in. It was hard. But I was the first Black to ever serve on that kind of a jury in Wake County.	39:24
M.H. Crockett	So many experiences I've seen grow.	40:04
Annie Valk	And did you continue to be involved with your Hampton alumni club also?	40:14
M.H. Crockett	Yes, yes. Yeah. And I was active when I first moved out here. Moved out here in '71, bought this house. I was the first Black to move on this street.	40:22
Annie Valk	That's so interesting. Was this a fairly new development at that time?	40:41
M.H. Crockett	It was, middle class folks. Working downtown in business, they were middle class folks. But they found it convenient to go to the area. So, that was it. We have two or three families who are still there.	40:49
M.H. Crockett	Myrt, have a good time, hear?	41:24
M.H. Crockett	Excuse me.	41:27
Myrtle Crockett	Good meeting you, ladies.	41:28
Annie Valk	Good meeting you too.	41:28
Leslie Brown	Nice meeting you.	41:28
Annie Valk	Thank you for—	41:28
Myrtle Crockett	Stay as long as it takes.	41:30
Annie Valk	Actually, we were going to ask if it would be—	41:33
Leslie Brown	It was just a real pleasure meeting you. We were going to ask if it would be okay for us to come back and spend a little bit more time.	41:36
Annie Valk	We want to talk.	41:47
Leslie Brown	Now, we want to talk with you and you have to run off. We have a form to fill out that's a genealogy, family genealogy, so we have all the names. We'll put that in the file also. And we have a lot of other questions that we'd like to ask, so [indistinct 00:42:11]?	41:47
Myrtle Crockett	It's okay by me.	42:10
M.H. Crockett	Well I don't—if it's for—this is not on?	42:10
Annie Valk	No.	42:10

Leslie Brown	Okay. And your address here?	0:04
M.H. Crockett	711 St. George Road.	0:08
Leslie Brown	Okay. And your ZIP code here.	0:11
M.H. Crockett	27610.	0:16
Leslie Brown	Okay. And if we write it, when we put all this information together and we put it in the file, the name you would like to be known as, as would be Manuel Houston Crockett, or M.H. Crockett?	0:22
M.H. Crockett	I prefer M.H., and I have a reason for that.	0:40
Leslie Brown	And could you tell me what that reason is?	0:44
M.H. Crockett	Don't put it down though.	0:44
Leslie Brown	Okay, I won't put it down.	0:44
M.H. Crockett	Well, the reason is when I first came to Raleigh—See, I'm a grown man, and you go in some of these places here, and it was just an ordinary fact that if you were White you would call me by my first name.	0:49
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	1:05
M.H. Crockett	And I didn't like it.	1:07
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	1:08
M.H. Crockett	I didn't like it.	1:08
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	1:13
M.H. Crockett	So I made them call me M.H. I put my name, Manuel, in my business stuff, but otherwise, M.H. And I don't mind anybody calling me my name. I wouldn't let the principal over yonder—Mr. Peel always called me Mr. Crockett or Crockett. We got along [indistinct 00:01:38] Crockett, but I never addressed him Peel, always—	1:14
Annie Valk	Mister.	1:41
M.H. Crockett	Always respect to that extent. But yeah, he come calling me professor. I said, "I'm no professor. Don't call me professor." I wouldn't have it. I'm speaking the truth.	1:41
Annie Valk	Yep.	1:50
M.H. Crockett	To get away from calling you mister.	1:50
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	1:50
M.H. Crockett	To call your first name. And then if you wanted something. And I never gave them my first name, unless it was absolutely necessary. And in the business when I'd give my first name it was M.H. And I didn't mind anybody calling me M.H. That's my reason for it. It was just a common thing with Whites that they called you Manuel.	2:03
Leslie Brown	That's right.	2:27
M.H. Crockett	Or whatever your first name was. Manuel, blah, blah. [indistinct 00:02:35] anywhere. [indistinct 00:02:38] anybody.	2:32
M.H. Crockett	You see, when I came to North Carolina [indistinct 00:03:00]. This goes back to my childhood. Now, in this little community where I was born, known as Sunrise, we lived [indistinct 00:03:06] a White family lived here, a Black family lived there, and on and on, White. And my daddy worked in [indistinct 00:03:14] mines with a White man. And in the afternoons they walked over two miles together, three miles, two-and-a-half miles together and come back. And half the time he'd sit down and he'd eat dinner with us, play checkers. Eat dinner with us and then go on home. And so they were just—	2:45
M.H. Crockett	And a lot of times, the Whites would come to our school activities. Go to the school activities. Or even come to our church on Sunday evening service, go in the evening. Just a little community there, we lived together like people. Like people.	3:34
M.H. Crockett	And it just sort of jarred me really when I voted, when you'd go to Knoxville. Knoxville had one of the biggest Black policemen you ever saw in your life, and that was back when I was about 15 years old. I'm 88 years old now. Sure. So you know how it was like. Also had Black policemen back there then. And had a great big Black one and a little one. Right down on Vine Street and Central Avenue, all big [indistinct 00:04:31]. That's true, see? Black policemen.	3:54
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	4:37
M.H. Crockett	So it was [indistinct 00:04:40]. When it came down to voting, my daddy would go and vote. When he'd come back he had a roll of money that big. I don't know where he got it. I didn't care. We had [indistinct 00:04:54]. You see what I mean?	4:37
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	4:55
M.H. Crockett	We voted. And then while I was college, I went back to visit, went back home. [indistinct 00:05:06] "You voted?"	4:56
M.H. Crockett	I said, "Yes. Voted Democratic."	5:07
M.H. Crockett	"Lord have mercy. Your granddaddy would turn on his grave seeing you voted Democratic ticket."	5:08
M.H. Crockett	Everybody Republican.	5:19
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	5:21
M.H. Crockett	[indistinct 00:05:22]	5:21
Annie Valk	Right.	5:23
M.H. Crockett	So we were brought up together in this community, Whites and Black. We had our activities on the school ground there. They have a holiday, we'd play ball together. Mix up like that.	5:25
Annie Valk	[indistinct 00:05:37]	5:37
M.H. Crockett	[indistinct 00:05:37]	5:37
Annie Valk	So you were voting when you were in college?	5:37
M.H. Crockett	No.	5:48
Annie Valk	No?	5:54
M.H. Crockett	I never voted until I got out of college and came back here. No, I never established anything there, until I got back here.	5:54
Annie Valk	Okay.	6:04
Leslie Brown	When was the first time you were—When was the first year that you voted? Remember the first election that you voted in?	6:04
M.H. Crockett	My first year was—I never voted in [indistinct 00:06:14]. It had to be '36.	6:11
Leslie Brown	1936? Do you remember who you voted for? Let's see, it was Roosevelt or—	6:19
Annie Valk	Roosevelt.	6:19
M.H. Crockett	No. Let's see. No, I—But it was Democratic.	6:28
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	6:31
M.H. Crockett	[indistinct 00:06:39] Seems to me it was—No, [indistinct 00:06:43]. Not sure. The governorship [indistinct 00:06:49].	6:47
Leslie Brown	Okay.	6:47
M.H. Crockett	They had one [indistinct 00:06:51] city at one time.	6:47
Leslie Brown	Uh-huh.	6:47
M.H. Crockett	Seems to me it was he. I'm not sure. But anyway, that was about the first time.	6:50
Leslie Brown	[indistinct 00:06:59]	6:54
M.H. Crockett	I had to go to Garner.	6:54
Leslie Brown	Uh-huh.	6:54
M.H. Crockett	Couldn't vote here in Raleigh.	6:54
Leslie Brown	Oh.	7:05
M.H. Crockett	We didn't have [indistinct 00:07:10] school. I had to go to Garner.	7:10
Leslie Brown	So you could vote in Garner but you couldn't vote in Raleigh?	7:10
M.H. Crockett	No. In [indistinct 00:07:15].	7:10
Leslie Brown	[indistinct 00:07:15]	7:10
M.H. Crockett	[indistinct 00:07:18]	7:10
Leslie Brown	What's the reason?	7:10
M.H. Crockett	No.	7:10
Leslie Brown	Uh-huh.	7:10
M.H. Crockett	We had a big tank out. We didn't have city water.	7:10
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	7:10
M.H. Crockett	So we [indistinct 00:07:30] and tank couldn't furnish sufficient water for the plant. City water would come in then. That was [indistinct 00:07:51]. See, the property, you can see it now, where it ends, where the city and the county, city and highway patrol [indistinct 00:07:54]. But they have kept the place up.	7:31
Annie Valk	I'll have to go out there. Drive by sometime.	8:00
M.H. Crockett	Drive by and see it.	8:00
Leslie Brown	[indistinct 00:08:06]	8:00
M.H. Crockett	Yeah. Another experience that—You want to go? You have time?	8:11
Annie Valk	What do you think?	8:11
Leslie Brown	We need to get back to the office.	8:11
Annie Valk	Okay.	8:11
Leslie Brown	Finish this. But since we'd like to [indistinct 00:08:19] back, we'd love to go and do that.	8:16
M.H. Crockett	Yeah? Go whenever you get ready. When I retired in '71, '70 and '71, and the man sent me—They kept the senior Deaf children so they would graduate.	8:27
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	8:45
M.H. Crockett	Then I had to make room for these 100 children to come back, those Deaf children to come back. But I had one year between that. And that gave me 3rd grade blind up through the 8th grade. Three through eight that one year.	8:48
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	9:15
M.H. Crockett	Then I had these seniors. Deaf children. And the older Deaf children were gone. But anyway, that's what happened.	9:21
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	9:22
M.H. Crockett	Finally integrated. See, cut me down and—So it was convenient. I was old enough. I was old enough to retire, and hadn't even thought about [indistinct 00:09:39]. That was that.	9:23
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	9:37
M.H. Crockett	Then when I [indistinct 00:09:39] when I went back up, I retired, the man from [indistinct 00:09:39] called me, asked me to come up and help them out, so I went back for four years.	9:38
Annie Valk	Just can't stop, huh?	10:01
M.H. Crockett	And the four most beautiful years I ever had. And the difference was, one of the differences was that here, when I'd go down to the merchants [indistinct 00:10:26], this yearbook annual that we have up here. See when you come back some time. You won't find an ad in it. I couldn't get an ad from anybody downtown.	10:07
Annie Valk	Really?	10:40
M.H. Crockett	They would tell me, "We give them to the [indistinct 00:10:46] Avenue School for the Blind." That's the report I got. Got nothing. You can't find an ad in one of them. I had 12 of them, annual reports that we did on the campus ourselves, paid for them from what these kids raised. And they had printing on the campus. And formed a committee to get the book together, get stuff together, and then the printer ran on [indistinct 00:11:16]. So all this was done on the campus. So that was the reaction I would get from the community.	10:41
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	11:23
M.H. Crockett	Nothing. No response from—financially for anything. All attention was over there. So that was one of the hard things that we had to discover. Then we discovered also that the kids over there, some of the kids were getting $5 a month, $10 a month, which is big money for a kid to get. They didn't do a thing about [indistinct 00:11:57] children. [indistinct 00:12:00] over here came up to us and then they would send some kids from over there [indistinct 00:12:08] $5, $10 and I'd give it to the hospital. Our kids got nothing.	11:24
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	12:05
M.H. Crockett	We didn't have a [indistinct 00:12:20].	12:37
M.H. Crockett	I took the bull by the horn and eliminated study hour, because I knew it was useless after I had gone through it for five, six years. I knew it was a useless thing. I'd come in there and try to have study hour and [indistinct 00:12:49] right there in the [indistinct 00:12:51]. Supervisor. [indistinct 00:12:56] teachers come back to work. And so when I stopped it, that's one thing I didn't reveal, but they eventually found it out [indistinct 00:13:11]. Mr. Peel stopped the [indistinct 00:13:18] I found out they were useless. [indistinct 00:13:25] useless.	12:37
M.H. Crockett	Our wage hadn't gone up or anything, at the time, because [indistinct 00:13:29] study hour [indistinct 00:13:30]. So I just stopped teaching some of it. They didn't want to come back doing a day's work.	13:28
Annie Valk	Right. Right.	13:41
M.H. Crockett	And had no right to come back. [indistinct 00:13:44] gone to the court, they'd lost full night. See, so—	13:41
Annie Valk	Right.	13:49
M.H. Crockett	Lost full night. You put in a full day, and it's a full day. It was a full day as far to teach Deaf children.	13:53
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	13:58
M.H. Crockett	And our classes were small. But you'd get tired.	14:01
Annie Valk	Sure.	14:02
M.H. Crockett	But those were some of the little [indistinct 00:14:10] had to deal with.	14:05
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm. Do you want to go on to your questions, Leslie?	14:05
Leslie Brown	Sure. May I ask your date of birth?	14:09
M.H. Crockett	February 24, 1905. Did you ever hear of that figure anywhere?	14:34
Leslie Brown	Well, yes.	14:35
M.H. Crockett	You know what I tell some folk? "How old are you?" I say, "24th of this month I was a five or six months old bouncing boy, 88 years ago. Now, how old am I?" What year was I born?	14:48
Annie Valk	1905.	14:55
Leslie Brown	And you were born in Sunrise?	14:55
M.H. Crockett	I was born in a little community called Sunrise.	15:05
Leslie Brown	Tennessee? Do you know what county it was?	15:10
M.H. Crockett	It didn't have a post office.	15:12
Leslie Brown	Didn't have a post office.	15:13
M.H. Crockett	Mascot was my post office.	15:14
Leslie Brown	I'm sorry?	15:17
M.H. Crockett	Mascot, M-A-S-C-O-T. Mascot, Tennessee was the post office. We had no post office.	15:18
Annie Valk	Do you know what the county was?	15:27
M.H. Crockett	Huh?	15:27
Annie Valk	Do you know what county Sunrise was in?	15:28
M.H. Crockett	Wake. No. Uh-huh. Knox County.	15:31
Annie Valk	Knox County. Okay.	15:32
M.H. Crockett	Knox County, Tennessee.	15:35
Leslie Brown	And Mrs. Crockett's first name, she spells it M-Y-R-T-L-E?	15:39
M.H. Crockett	Correct.	15:43
Leslie Brown	And her middle name?	15:44
M.H. Crockett	Myrtle what? Middle name was what?	15:47
Leslie Brown	C?	15:48
M.H. Crockett	No, she [indistinct 00:15:50].	15:49
Leslie Brown	Is is a C?	15:50
M.H. Crockett	Myrtle—She goes by Myrtle C. Crockett really.	15:54
Leslie Brown	Okay. And the C is for Creecy.	15:58
M.H. Crockett	Her middle name is Rose, and I don't know if she—I don't think it's [indistinct 00:16:05].	15:58
Leslie Brown	We'll ask her. And her maiden name?	16:07
M.H. Crockett	Creecy, C-R-E-E-C-Y.	16:08
Leslie Brown	Okay. We'll ask her when we talk to her again. And her date of birth? Can you give that information?	16:15
M.H. Crockett	You've got to ask her when you come, if I gave it to you. You have the 28th in August?	16:23
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	16:23
Leslie Brown	Yes.	16:23
M.H. Crockett	28th 1911.	16:23
Annie Valk	It's right here, actually.	16:23
M.H. Crockett	August 28th, 1911?	16:23
Annie Valk	Yep. Yeah, it's right there, actually.	16:24
Leslie Brown	So it's already public.	16:30
Annie Valk	That's right.	16:45
Leslie Brown	It's already public information.	16:46
M.H. Crockett	So, I found that out.	16:47
Leslie Brown	And she was born in Rich Square?	16:58
M.H. Crockett	No, she was born in Edenton.	16:59
Leslie Brown	Oh, born in Edenton. We probably have this information in the book, right?	17:03
Annie Valk	Yeah, that's in here.	17:05
M.H. Crockett	She was born in Edenton.	17:06
Leslie Brown	Okay.	17:06
M.H. Crockett	I think I'm correct.	17:06
Leslie Brown	And we'll take a look which county that was in.	17:13
M.H. Crockett	Then her daddy came to Rich Square and established the school, and built it up to the point where—So that's where she lived, and that's where I found her.	17:15
Leslie Brown	That's a lovely story.	17:23
M.H. Crockett	At the well.	17:23
Leslie Brown	At the well.	17:23
M.H. Crockett	She was out there pumping water. I kid her about it. "I had to get you on the [indistinct 00:17:34]." They had a pump. Had to pump water for their home. [indistinct 00:17:43]	17:31
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	17:44
Leslie Brown	[indistinct 00:17:45] turn the tape over?	17:45
Annie Valk	No, I turned it over right before we started this.	17:46
M.H. Crockett	So that's about the story. And of course she's told you about her family.	17:48
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	17:50
M.H. Crockett	Her baby brother was the first Black legislator to ever come to Raleigh.	17:56
Leslie Brown	Oh, really?	18:03
M.H. Crockett	He was here under the other Hunt regime.	18:10
Annie Valk	Uh-huh.	18:14
M.H. Crockett	He was over five counties down there in—But she'll give you that. Because he was the first Black legislator there to ever represent these counties. He was up here six years, I believe. Something like that. He was under the Hunt—	18:19
Annie Valk	So in the early '80s.	18:34
M.H. Crockett	Huh?	18:36
Annie Valk	In the early '80s. Is that when he was—	18:36
M.H. Crockett	The early '80s.	18:36
Leslie Brown	We can find that out. That's okay.	18:43
Annie Valk	What was your mother's name?	18:47
M.H. Crockett	Hassie.	18:48
Leslie Brown	H-A-S-S-I-E?	18:48
M.H. Crockett	H-A-S-S-I-E. Miss M., she was a Miller. Hassie Miller Crockett.	18:51
Leslie Brown	And do you remember her date of birth?	18:59
M.H. Crockett	Oh, I don't know.	19:10
Leslie Brown	Or year?	19:14
M.H. Crockett	She was 92 when she died. That was in the '70s. I'll have to give [indistinct 00:19:23] when you come back. I'm afraid I couldn't give it to you.	19:17
Leslie Brown	Okay. And do you know where she was born?	19:23
M.H. Crockett	She was born in—She was this county or district. Southeast. I don't know what town it was. I'll have to find—I'll have to give [indistinct 00:19:45]. She was Tennessean.	19:23
Leslie Brown	She was a Tennessean?	19:45
M.H. Crockett	Right out of Knoxville.	19:54
Leslie Brown	Okay. And your father's first name?	20:02
M.H. Crockett	Charles.	20:03
Leslie Brown	Do you remember his middle name?	20:05
M.H. Crockett	S. Simmon. They called it Simmon. I don't know. S. I just said Charles S. Crockett.	20:06
Leslie Brown	Okay.	20:11
M.H. Crockett	And he was born in Hawkins County, Tennessee. I had a lot of fun out there.	20:17
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	20:23
M.H. Crockett	And the [indistinct 00:20:25] that song, Davy Crockett.	20:25
Annie Valk	Uh-huh.	20:27
M.H. Crockett	Davy Crockett. I was in Pittsburgh School for the Blind and [indistinct 00:20:37], kids were coming in and the man was introducing me. They were singing that same song and everything, "Davy Crockett, Davy Crockett." And so [indistinct 00:20:50] you could see [indistinct 00:20:51] beautiful to me. We used to have a lot of fun visiting. Our visiting was a marvelous thing. It was a marvelous thing. That's how we built our school.	20:45
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm. By visiting others.	20:52
M.H. Crockett	I sent teachers to other schools, which were superior to schools in the South. And they would send us out to Pittsburgh, Connecticut, New York, upstate New York, Columbia. [indistinct 00:21:30]	21:06
Annie Valk	[indistinct 00:21:34]	21:09
Leslie Brown	Yeah.	21:09
M.H. Crockett	[indistinct 00:21:36]	21:09
Annie Valk	[indistinct 00:21:40]	21:09
M.H. Crockett	Couldn't get any money. Incidentally, he was Black. He was the man that took Dr. Shepard's place over at North Carolina Central. He told me, he handled all the money.	21:44
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	21:47
M.H. Crockett	All the monies. And you know I was mad [indistinct 00:22:00].	21:47
Leslie Brown	What was his name?	22:01
M.H. Crockett	[indistinct 00:22:03]	22:02
Annie Valk	We should find that.	22:02
M.H. Crockett	He took Jim Shepard's place. If Jim Shepard had been in, I'd have got all the money that they had.	22:10
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	22:17
M.H. Crockett	Because he was too glad to get [indistinct 00:22:20].	22:18
Leslie Brown	Because he worked on—	22:18
M.H. Crockett	Folks. To see folks building up the education. Elder.	22:18
Leslie Brown	Yes, Bob Elder.	22:18
M.H. Crockett	Elder's his name.	22:18
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	22:18
M.H. Crockett	[indistinct 00:22:34] Got so mad with him I couldn't see him. The second time I went there he told me he [indistinct 00:22:43] because Whites don't care about it. Got no place here in North Carolina Central. He didn't stay that long either.	22:48
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm. That's true.	22:54
M.H. Crockett	Didn't stay that long.	22:58
M.H. Crockett	Those were some of the things [indistinct 00:23:00] face. And those were some of the things that hurt us. I mean, teachers having to pay their own money, when the money was available. Just because North Carolina hadn't set up a special school for this thing, that thing, for the Whites. See?	23:00
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	23:15
M.H. Crockett	That's what hurt.	23:18
Annie Valk	Yeah.	23:22
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	23:22
M.H. Crockett	That's still true today, some of it.	23:23
Leslie Brown	Some of it?	23:24
M.H. Crockett	I'm still antagonistic.	23:24
Leslie Brown	So much.	23:24
M.H. Crockett	But it's true. Of course, we had educators back there then, and we, as Blacks, had straightaway, like I'm telling you, our Blacks, when integration came, the state of North Carolina had more eligible Black teachers with degrees, master's degrees and regular degrees, to go into public schools, but this legislature lowered the bar so that some Whites could get in the classrooms to a B, for a B certificate, not [indistinct 00:24:16].	23:41
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	24:18
M.H. Crockett	They sure did that so that some of the White teachers could get—Because they wouldn't have to hire Blacks. I don't care, I'd tell them [indistinct 00:24:33] right now. [indistinct 00:24:33]	24:19
Leslie Brown	Crazy.	24:32
M.H. Crockett	So those were some of the stumbling blocks. And we had a whole lot of—Our folks would go to summer school, set up Central, various other, Hampton, Virginia State and various other places. Summer school. And the teachers would go there and renew their—	24:34
Leslie Brown	Their training?	24:56
M.H. Crockett	The things that they ought to do. And had speakers to come in to them and chitchat with each other. See, I attended every summer school. There was summer school at A&T, Central. Went to State one year. Well, that's about all in North Carolina. [indistinct 00:25:19] Gallaudet College. So we had a lot of qualified. And we have strayed away from that.	24:58
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	25:29
M.H. Crockett	Lot of them. We Blacks have strayed away from it. Because of the fact of the job market has opened up. And they're not interested because they make more money otherwise. [indistinct 00:25:44] of course [indistinct 00:25:49] Black organization. State Teachers Association. [indistinct 00:26:03]	25:32
Leslie Brown	No, I don't remember, but I know about it. Yeah, I know about that.	26:05
M.H. Crockett	[indistinct 00:26:10] But they dissolved it. They said that they would—the white would be president this year and then Black would be president the next year and so forth and so on. That thing has never [indistinct 00:26:29].	26:17
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	26:27
M.H. Crockett	The Black man that was supposed to take over lives right over here in front of the post office right now. [indistinct 00:26:43] But I don't know, I'm glad the jobs have opened up, other jobs for [indistinct 00:26:50].	26:32
Leslie Brown	You bet.	26:50
M.H. Crockett	Because actually, when I came up here, if you couldn't wear a white shirt you weren't going to go nowhere. You had a colored shirt on.	26:53
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	27:04
M.H. Crockett	Of course as teachers, there's very few business folks. That was about it. Kahns was the only Black lawyer you had around here for a long time, until Todd came along, out of Winston-Salem.	27:04
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	27:19
M.H. Crockett	Todd. And he came in [indistinct 00:27:30]. Long time before [indistinct 00:27:32] get in the courts, you [indistinct 00:27:34] looked up deeds and everything else.	27:28
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	27:40
M.H. Crockett	Struggled, so on and so on. There was United Fund. We had to fight like I don't know what on the United Fund, to keep the White Y from taking all the money. They always managed to have a fundraising just before the United Fund got to them, and they cleaned Raleigh.	27:48
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	28:08
M.H. Crockett	Cleaned Raleigh. Black [indistinct 00:28:14] on Hillsborough Street. And didn't leave much for United Fund. So we finally got—Give them just about what they wanted from the United Fund and to not have a fundraising before we had United Fund. That's one of the things that we did. We conquered. We gave in, but we had to give them just about all that they wanted.	28:14
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	28:41
M.H. Crockett	The rest would go here.	28:44
Leslie Brown	Yeah.	28:45
Annie Valk	[indistinct 00:28:51]	28:45
Leslie Brown	You don't happen to remember your father's date of birth or his date of death? The year he was born and the year he died?	28:50
M.H. Crockett	I'll have to give it to you. I've got it around the house. I'll have to look it up.	29:12
Leslie Brown	You said there were 10 children in the family?	29:13
M.H. Crockett	Mm-hmm.	29:20
Leslie Brown	And you were the fourth.	29:20
M.H. Crockett	Fourth child.	29:21
Leslie Brown	You were the fourth. And would you mind giving us your brothers' and sisters' names?	29:23
M.H. Crockett	First one was Ernest.	29:29
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	29:30
M.H. Crockett	Virgie Lee.	29:31
Leslie Brown	Could you spell that?	29:35
M.H. Crockett	Huh?	29:37
Leslie Brown	Could you spell that for me?	29:37
M.H. Crockett	V-I-R-G-I-E L-E-E.	29:39
Leslie Brown	Okay.	29:39
M.H. Crockett	Bernice.	29:39
Leslie Brown	Okay.	29:39
M.H. Crockett	Manuel. I think there was an E on that, but I eliminated that E. I didn't feel that close. I wasn't that close to be called Emmanuel. Next one. What did I say? [indistinct 00:29:47]	29:39
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	29:39
M.H. Crockett	No, he's one of the pre—There's one above me. I'm sorry. Bernice is above me.	29:39
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm. We have Bernice.	29:39
M.H. Crockett	Did I give you that?	29:39
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm. Ernest, Virgie Lee, Bernice.	29:39
M.H. Crockett	Bernice. Manuel.	29:46
Leslie Brown	And then you—	29:50
M.H. Crockett	That's four of them.	29:50
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	29:50
M.H. Crockett	And the fifth one is Virginia, Conrad. How many does that make?	29:50
Annie Valk	I got six.	29:50
Leslie Brown	That's six.	29:50
M.H. Crockett	Huh?	29:50
Leslie Brown	That's six.	29:50
M.H. Crockett	Four, two, six. There are four more somewhere. Netty.	29:50
Leslie Brown	Uh-huh.	29:50
M.H. Crockett	Conrad. Netty. Maddie. Maddie's under me.	31:02
Leslie Brown	Okay.	31:05
M.H. Crockett	Bernice, me, Maddie, Netty, Virginia.	31:12
Leslie Brown	Got Virginia.	31:19
M.H. Crockett	Jack or Conrad and Ceretha. That make 10?	31:23
Leslie Brown	I'm sorry, who was the last one?	31:30
M.H. Crockett	Ceretha.	31:30
Leslie Brown	Ceretha.	31:30
M.H. Crockett	C-E-R-E-T-H-A.	31:30
Leslie Brown	That's 10.	31:30
M.H. Crockett	That's 10?	31:30
Leslie Brown	Is that 10? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. That's nine. Did you say there was one named Jack?	31:37
M.H. Crockett	No, he's Conrad.	31:43
Leslie Brown	Oh, that's Conrad. He's known as Jack.	31:44
M.H. Crockett	Who did I miss? Ernest, Virgie Lee, Bernice, M.H., Maddie, Virginia, Netty, Conrad, Ceretha. Is that all of them?	31:57
Leslie Brown	That's all. That's nine.	32:20
M.H. Crockett	What in the world is the other one?	32:24
Annie Valk	[indistinct 00:32:28]	32:25
M.H. Crockett	Let's see it.	32:25
Leslie Brown	Were they all born in Sunrise?	32:31
M.H. Crockett	Netty, sister, and Bernice, and [indistinct 00:32:44], then Annie.	32:35
Leslie Brown	Annie.	32:37
M.H. Crockett	Anne. Annie.	32:37
Leslie Brown	See, forgettable Annie.	32:37
M.H. Crockett	Annie's in there. Annie is after Netty.	32:53
Leslie Brown	Are they all still living?	32:58
M.H. Crockett	No. I'm the oldest. All down to me. I told them, [indistinct 00:33:05]. In our meeting after.	33:00
Leslie Brown	Do you remember any of the—	33:04
M.H. Crockett	No, I'm the oldest now.	33:04
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	33:04
Leslie Brown	Do you remember the birth year or death of any of them? Do you remember what year any of them were born, or that any of them died?	33:21
M.H. Crockett	No.	33:24
Leslie Brown	We can find that out.	33:29
M.H. Crockett	I'll have to get that for you.	33:30
Leslie Brown	Okay.	33:30
M.H. Crockett	I'll have to get it. I can get [indistinct 00:33:31].	33:30
Leslie Brown	[indistinct 00:33:31], we'll have the whole family genealogy [indistinct 00:33:37].	33:31
Leslie Brown	You have three children. Is Barbara the oldest?	33:38
M.H. Crockett	Yes.	33:40
Leslie Brown	And what year was she born?	33:42
M.H. Crockett	Oh, Lord. When was that, '36, '37?	34:02
Leslie Brown	And she would be—	34:02
M.H. Crockett	She was born here.	34:02
Leslie Brown	In Raleigh?	34:03
M.H. Crockett	Uh-huh. All of them born here in Raleigh. Brother was next.	34:03
Leslie Brown	I'm sorry, which one was next?	34:04
M.H. Crockett	Manuel Junior. M.H. Junior. And then Bill, William.	34:08
Leslie Brown	Okay. And Manuel was born—	34:29
M.H. Crockett	He was '39. Was that '37? '39, I believe. '39.	34:29
Leslie Brown	And William was born in?	34:29
M.H. Crockett	He'll be 50 this year. What does that make him?	34:29
Leslie Brown	So '43.	34:31
Annie Valk	'43.	34:31
M.H. Crockett	'43. He was born in '43.	34:31
Annie Valk	Do you have any grandchildren?	34:38
M.H. Crockett	Yeah.	34:39
Annie Valk	We count, one, two, three—	34:41
M.H. Crockett	Three—Let's see. Barbara has one. Brother has two, three. Bill has three.	34:45
Annie Valk	That's seven.	34:54
M.H. Crockett	Whatever that is.	34:55
Leslie Brown	I don't need to know their names.	34:57
Annie Valk	They're all in here.	34:59
Leslie Brown	They're all in there too?	35:00
Annie Valk	Yep.	35:02
Leslie Brown	Now, let's see, you lived in Sunrise, and from Sunrise you went to—	35:03
Annie Valk	Sedalia.	35:10
M.H. Crockett	Sedalia.	35:13
Leslie Brown	Sedalia. And from Sedalia—	35:13
M.H. Crockett	Went to Hampton.	35:13
Leslie Brown	Hampton. And from Hampton—	35:13
M.H. Crockett	Back to Rich Square to work.	35:13
Leslie Brown	Back to Rich Square. And then from Rich Square-	35:27
M.H. Crockett	Raleigh.	35:29
Leslie Brown	To Raleigh. [indistinct 00:35:34] You remember the name of the school that you went to before you went to Sedalia?	35:38
M.H. Crockett	Palmer. Palmer [indistinct 00:35:43] Institute.	35:40
Leslie Brown	Before you went to Palmer, do you remember the name of the school that you went to?	35:44
M.H. Crockett	No, the little old school they had on the hill over there. Sunrise. Don't know as it had a name.	35:46
Leslie Brown	Yeah, it may not have had a name.	35:53
M.H. Crockett	[indistinct 00:35:56] the name.	35:54
Annie Valk	What was your first job? The first job you ever had?	36:08
M.H. Crockett	Smith Square.	36:11
Annie Valk	You said you worked while you were still in school in Tennessee before you went to Sedalia?	36:16
M.H. Crockett	Oh, I was just working wherever I could. Those years that I lost. I was just working wherever I could.	36:20
Annie Valk	What kind of work did you do then?	36:27
M.H. Crockett	Farm on a little farm. On a farm.	36:30
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	36:33
M.H. Crockett	And tried a rock quarry.	36:33
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	36:37
M.H. Crockett	Always little old something. That's all I [indistinct 00:36:45]. I just kept busy doing something, because I—But hanging around the school is what lit a light for me. And not a lot hanging around at the little store, at the store, and my church, going to church. Those are the things that led to the interest of [indistinct 00:37:17] and getting [indistinct 00:37:20]. But I lost [indistinct 00:37:25].	36:43
M.H. Crockett	Back there then, when I was in college, many old folks there [indistinct 00:37:31] coming back getting their degrees and so forth, so on, so I wasn't by myself.	37:26
Annie Valk	That's true.	37:49
M.H. Crockett	Wasn't by myself. So it wasn't embarrassing. It actually wasn't. Palmer. Because Palmer, they [indistinct 00:37:51] had select students coming from all over the country. Rich folks, Black folks.	37:53
Leslie Brown	May we ask, where do you go to church now?	38:04
M.H. Crockett	First Baptist, downtown, Wilmington Street.	38:07
Leslie Brown	Have you ever belonged to any other churches?	38:13
M.H. Crockett	Hmm?	38:15
Leslie Brown	Have you ever belonged—	38:16
M.H. Crockett	Yes.	38:17
Leslie Brown	—any other churches?	38:18
M.H. Crockett	I was big—I was in Methodist country at home.	38:18
Leslie Brown	Do you remember any of the names of the churches that you went to?	38:26
M.H. Crockett	Just Sunrise Church. Sunrise Methodist Church. A small one. And I'm not sure if that's correct, but it was a community, and of course they had a circuit, [indistinct 00:38:40] come out.	38:32
Leslie Brown	And why did you switch to a Baptist church?	38:48
M.H. Crockett	I was in Baptist country. We'd go down in [indistinct 00:38:58] home.	38:57
Leslie Brown	That was Baptist country.	38:57
M.H. Crockett	Baptist preacher. You'll find out. That's [indistinct 00:39:06].	38:58
Annie Valk	One of the conditions on marrying her was that you had to—	39:07
Leslie Brown	Become a Baptist.	39:09
M.H. Crockett	Yeah, so no problem there. No problem. In fact, when you're going to a school like—well, boarding school, like Central or Hampton, or something, you kind of forget your denomination really.	39:18
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	39:30
M.H. Crockett	We had no denomination at Hampton. We had a local minister there. And so that was all, just go to church and come back. Everybody cut church as possibly could.	39:30
Leslie Brown	Mm-hmm.	39:49
M.H. Crockett	I don't know whether you know anything about that or not.	39:49
Annie Valk	Oh, I don't know anything about that. Uh-uh.	39:49
M.H. Crockett	But anyway, that was about all adversarial that you had around there. Guest speakers coming in.	39:59
Annie Valk	Right. Mm-hmm.	40:09
M.H. Crockett	You could tell when it was more suitable for us than others because we had man that come over from [indistinct 00:40:19], every time anybody come over to speak to him, church would be full of students. Other than that one [indistinct 00:40:26]. Denomination didn't matter there.	40:13
Annie Valk	Mm-hmm.	40:31
Leslie Brown	You told us about some of the organizations that you belong to. You belong to the Tuttle—You worked for the people at the Tuttle Community Center.	40:36
M.H. Crockett	Yes.	40:45
Leslie Brown	And you were a member of the Hampton Alumni Association.	40:45
M.H. Crockett	Yes.	40:45
Leslie Brown	And you worked on the United—	40:49
M.H. Crockett	On the United Fund.	40:52
Leslie Brown	—Fund.	40:52
M.H. Crockett	Of Raleigh. At that time. It's a different name.	40:53
Leslie Brown	Yeah. Is that the United Way now?	40:56
M.H. Crockett	Yes.	40:59
Leslie Brown	And what other kinds of things did you do [indistinct 00:41:05]?	41:02
M.H. Crockett	Well, I belonged Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. And I was a Shriner. Of course, I belonged to these education [indistinct 00:41:27] education groups. That's about it. I couldn't stand all that. So that's the reason I had to bring Barbara back from Fisk, when my brother went to school in Durham. I could just—And the Ford Foundation extended her longer than they usually did. Her scholarship at Fisk. But when brother went to North Carolina Central-	41:04

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Title:

M. H. Crockett and Myrtle Crockett interview recording, 1993 May 29

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May 29, 1993

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Name: Manuel Houston Crockett; Date of birth: 1905-02-24; Place of birth: Sunrise, TN; Occupation(s): educator; agriculture; Residence: Raleigh, NC
Informant ID: 334; Interviewed by: Leslie Brown and Annie Valk.

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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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Interview number: 313
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M. H. Crockett and Myrtle Crockett interview recording, 1993 May 29

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1. M. H. Crockett and Myrtle Crockett administrative file, 1993

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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M. H. Crockett and Myrtle Crockett interview recording, 1993 May 29

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