Horace Mimms interview recording, 1994 June 07
-
Download
- Rights
- Files (3)
-
MP3
Part 1
-
MP3
Part 2
-
MP3
Part 3
- Please be patient with media downloads. They are often large files.
- Document
- Share
Loading the media player...
Transcript
- Download transcript as:
-
Text
-
PDF
-
WebVTT (includes timecodes)
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
| Gregory Hunter | Yeah, hold on one second. Let just make sure. Why don't you say your name first? | 0:10 |
| Horace Mims | My name is Horace Mims, Durham, North Carolina. And I began working at the American Tobacco Company in 1942, in August of 1942 up until April of '81. And during the time, when I first started, began working there. See, it was very segregated at that time. And the salary, I don't care who you was or what education you had or whatever, you still start at the bottom. Now, just like for instance, me and a White guy we hired the same day. Neither one of us had never had our foot inside the plant. Now they going to start him off a nickel more for hours than they did me. So, these are some of the things that we had to contend with. And down through the years— | 0:19 |
| Gregory Hunter | What salary did you start out with? | 1:20 |
| Horace Mims | Well, at the time when we started out, it was 25 cents an hour. And so. That lasted for quite a few years. You got to raise every three months, two or three cents per hour. And just like I said, during the war, our wage were froze. We couldn't make over 60 cents an hour. That was the limit, 60 cents an hour. It was a job though, that's the main thing, it was a job. And a lot of people said, began to talk about what we had to go through, a lot of them young people like you and a lot of people, [indistinct 00:02:06], I wouldn't have did that. But we didn't have no other choice. We had to fight, we had to fight for this. And we had a union. We had two unions, a White union or a Black union working for the same company. | 1:22 |
| Gregory Hunter | What were the names of those unions? | 2:23 |
| Horace Mims | We had [indistinct 00:02:26] and CIO. And so, when we got ready to negotiate a contract, now the White union, they would go in first and negotiate, then we'd have to come behind and take what was left. And I think you can get an idea what I'm seeing in disrespect, and that went on for quite a few years, but we started the fighting in '40. Well, in '43 we had to go out on strike. And they couldn't strike without the Black people. As I said, at that time we had two unions. So, they could not strike unless we went along with them. | 2:29 |
| Gregory Hunter | What were some of the things that started that strike? | 3:13 |
| Horace Mims | Well, for wages, to increase our wages and working conditions and whatever. And so, finally we agreed that we would all go out together. And this was on the beginning of us merging the union. So, that went on, I believe it was somehow around about 50 or somewhere along there from the merged union, put all union together. Just one union, AFL and CIO. And we were represented by the AFL and CIO, see that's the big union that [indistinct 00:04:00] is in that union. | 3:15 |
| Horace Mims | And this is one way that we made some progress. And it might seem funny to some people and a lot of it, I have to go back sometime to because see this been years and years ago. 'Cause I've been retired for 13 years. And during that time, just to let you know, some of the things we had to go through in order to achieve what we have today, we had segregated cafeteria. One side over him was White and one side was Black. And this is some of the things that we had to fight for. | 4:02 |
| Gregory Hunter | Was this at work or at school? | 4:40 |
| Horace Mims | At work, at school. At work, at the factory where I worked. I'm just filling in from the factory. See from where I worked at American, what we had to go through. And see, we had a White cafeteria side, it was in the same building on the same floor but this side and that side. And so, we fought for that, to correct that. And what I heard about some of our Black people at that time, we see the same thing now. They were still, they all still would come to right together. And we had the whole big area cafeteria. But you find a whole bunch of all them Black guys that most of them, they'd be right over here in this one little group. And we tried to get just to mingle around because they were still segregating themselves. And as I say, we fought for that and everything and we began to get a little more raise and everything. The jobs were classified, we had to go to school, Black people had to go to school if you wanted to be a plumber, whatever, mechanic or whatever the case might be. And this is one way we got as classified the job. | 4:42 |
| Horace Mims | And that gave the Black people, gave us a chance to go to school on the job there. They had training right on the job there. And so this is some of the ways that we closed the gaps on them. And at one time, we couldn't go in the same door. You have to have a—That this is the way we got some progress and everything. And it might sound funny just like I say, but we had to go in this door. Now, the White could come in the same door we went in but I couldn't go in that door where they went in. And we fought, we fought for that. And so, we went on another strike in '68. And at that time things began to shape up pretty good. | 6:10 |
| Gregory Hunter | How so? | 7:12 |
| Horace Mims | Anyway, that was all the job was classified. They couldn't take a White person and just put him on this job, electrician, mechanic, machinist, or whatever. And so, everything began to kind of fall in place in that way. And it's one thing now I cannot, it was a livelihood and everything. And now when I first went to work there, you didn't have no insurance, no retirement, no kind of benefit. I've seen people work there were 80-years-old and they had to quit because they worked until you got so you couldn't work. But in the end we came out, we got the insurance, couple of years later, we got retirement. | 7:13 |
| Horace Mims | A percentage for whatever your salary was, that's what your retirement percentage was. And in 1960, you started profit sharing whatever your salary was for that year, whatever they profit they made from your salary, that's what your profit sharing was. And you could draw it every year. Either you could wait and just draw whenever you know wanted to. Cause I choose to draw mine when I retired. And the most of them choose to draw it when they retired. Cause at that time were, our salary had increased, our lot was so, but in the end everything worked out all right but as I say, we had a struggle. And that is the way life is, you have to fight. There's nothing going to be handed to you. I had some guys that coming out and young fellas coming in the selling this, they thought that you were just supposed to give, you know, You supposed to give me this, give me a chance. | 8:09 |
| Horace Mims | And this is what I tell all the young people now. Give me a chance. You take a man that if he like fish, you give him a fish every day. He won't never learn how to fish. You give him a pole, he can learn how to fish. Ain't nobody going continue to give you something, give me a chance. And that was what we had to work for down there, was a chance. So, when I left there, we had electricians, mechanics, machine operators, fixers, all of this. You might not understand from we said by fixers, mechanics, and all this. People had a lot of machines, wherever cigarettes were made. And you have a fixer over here to fix this and a mechanic for certain different things. And plumbers and electricians or Black people and even the foreman and supervisors. See, we didn't have that when I first went there. For the first 15 years, we didn't have any of that. | 9:23 |
| Gregory Hunter | Could you describe what the factory was like during that time, the early years when you were there. Actually, how old were you when you started working there? | 10:20 |
| Horace Mims | I was 23 when I started there. | 10:28 |
| Gregory Hunter | And what kind of a description of the factory could you give and the kind of work that you did? | 10:32 |
| Horace Mims | Well, when I went there, the work that I did, I was supplying tobacco for the machine. See, we had machines, cigarette machines that make the cigarette. And we supposed to come up in the basement. See, all of this stuff was processed in the basement and we supplied the machine. And the last 20 years I worked my job was some of everything. I worked as a watchman and it just consists of everything, the whole entire plant I worked with the whole entire plant of different things. Just the watchman and seeing a parking attendance and just a variety of things that I was responsible for. | 10:38 |
| Horace Mims | At the time, the last year that I worked and I thought I got rid of them when I quit work, but I had more keys than this. See, all these keys. Now, still having a lot of keys. And I had a key to every gate building or whatever. I worked to maintain it, what they might have said, maintain it. 'Cause all of those jobs I was coming as a watchman and looking after the parking lots attendants, and it's just almost anything that comes up in that at the whole entire factory. There's one reason so many people in the factory, 'cause when I first went to there we had about eight or 900 people, maybe a thousand, at times. 'Cause we used to have what you call a season for about— | 11:24 |
| Gregory Hunter | What was that? | 12:09 |
| Horace Mims | That was when our people at tobacco, see this is tobacco country here, and this tobacco would come in from the fields and whatever so be it had to be processed in different little plants. We had a lot of them but we don't even have them now. And this where the season workers came in, they would work about six or seven months out of a year. And this is where the season workers come in at. So, I think you followed me when I said after we harvest tobacco, see you had a plant, two or three different plants where you process this tobacco at. | 12:10 |
| Horace Mims | And then they would come to the American, at warehouses and things. See, we had buy for the American Tobacco Company. They would buy this and they would come to process and plant as the people would bring it into the market. And this is what we call season workers. 'Cause they just worked six or seven months out of a year. And this is one livelihood. They had a lot of people, they just depend on this season work of five or six months and then they would be unemployed to draw compensation until the clean season come around again. | 12:46 |
| Gregory Hunter | Was work difficult, especially in the earlier days? | 13:23 |
| Horace Mims | Well, I don't say it was so much difficult but it was hard work. | 13:23 |
| Gregory Hunter | How so? | 13:24 |
| Horace Mims | Well, because it was labor, hard labor work. You didn't have machines or whatever it was labor. See, and these processing plants, stuff was very dirty and all that. It was a labor, it wasn't no classified or nothing. You just worked. It was just labor processing 'cause they had to run it through a processing of cleaning it and stripping stems from it, whatever, go in to that. And it was just hard labor work. And even at the American, we had a season plant within the manufacturing place. See I worked in the manufacturing and we had seasoned different departments and that was season work. | 13:25 |
| Gregory Hunter | Where was the American Tobacco Company located? | 14:14 |
| Horace Mims | You can almost see it from here. You see where they're building this ballpark? Right up the street here. But that was American Tobacco Company. All of that was American. See they left him with the Reidsville. See we had a plant in Reidsville. And so, they closed this plant here and down and went to Reidsville. | 14:18 |
| Gregory Hunter | And what's the name of that place? | 14:35 |
| Horace Mims | Reidsville, North Carolina. | 14:35 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh, okay. Where's that? | 14:39 |
| Horace Mims | That's about 60 miles going north. So, it's been gone about seven, eight years, something like that. | 14:39 |
| Gregory Hunter | Were there more Black people in that company or more White people? What was the makeup? | 14:54 |
| Horace Mims | Well, it was more White than it was Black. That's all, in a manufacturer thing like that, you're going to find it more, percentage—wise, more White than you would Black. Excuse me. Because as I said at the time those machines. See you didn't get dirty sitting around operating a machine. They wore white uniforms. They could wear them a whole week and you couldn't tell ever, because a cigarette, it had to be clean. And I just wish you would've had the experience sometime, going through, if we had the factory here now I could carry you up there. You could tour the plant. Because we used to have, I used to look after that too. And maybe sometime if you get chance, Reidsville is about 60 miles from here, something like 50, 60 miles. And maybe sometime you might get a chance, during this that you have a chance to go through there as a tourist just to see how a real cigarette is made. | 14:58 |
| Horace Mims | Because it's amazing if you didn't see how one—I can't tell you exactly how it's made or what the process and there's some things I couldn't tell you anyway 'cause they don't give away the trade secrets or whatever. And I wouldn't want to. Because I'm still living off them because without this retirement I'd be bad shape. They still living off the American Tobacco Company. And this is a good part, it ended up, we had good benefits. In the end we had good benefits. But in the beginning, there was no benefits. That was no benefits. Whenever you went in there, you worked there, you got 80 or 90 years old, you come out with nothing but just a little social security. You know what I mean? 'Cause you didn't have no benefits. Now, we got retirement and you got profit share and your life insurance. | 15:59 |
| Horace Mims | And see right now, this is one reason why I have, as you live your insurance deteriorate and mine is deteriorating now down to $18,000. This will further go down. And so that is, if they don't mess around, you know the way they trying to cut it down and everything. And so, this is mostly the way it was and I'm just thankful that in the end it came out. But in the beginning, as I said, you can see what we had to go through in segregation and everything like that and you have to fight for it. I really enjoyed working there in the later years because the benefits and you could speak out. You didn't have to be afraid to say anything. | 16:58 |
| Gregory Hunter | During the strike, did you say it was in '42 or '43? | 17:53 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah, we had one in '43. | 17:58 |
| Gregory Hunter | In '43. | 17:59 |
| Horace Mims | One in '43 and one in '68. | 18:01 |
| Gregory Hunter | The one in '43 especially, could you describe it more in detail? What kind of a role did you play in it? | 18:02 |
| Horace Mims | Well, you see we just distracted. We just picketed the plant when nobody go in and nobody come out. | 18:08 |
| Gregory Hunter | Did you stay outside? Right outside? | 18:15 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had to stay outside the plant picket. Well, you seen how they picket different places now. Well, that's the same thing the way we was. We picketed the plant and we closed the plant down. Nothing couldn't come out, nothing go in without a struggle. Of course, there's some that got and some we didn't nobody come into work to produce anything. | 18:17 |
| Gregory Hunter | Was there ever a threat of violence? | 18:37 |
| Horace Mims | Well, no. We never had any threat of violence, that's one thing I'm glad of. We never had any threat of violence. When we went out, we said we wanted to go out on peace and everything and we would not—We didn't have no strike breakers come in, so to speak. So, it would've been some strike breakers would come in some of these jobs way you'd have strike breakers would come in. But we were fortunate, out of each strike, we did not have any violence. | 18:39 |
| Gregory Hunter | How long did that first strike last? | 19:13 |
| Horace Mims | The first strike lasted two weeks. And the next one, the one in '68, it lasted something like, oh, about three or four weeks, something like that. | 19:15 |
| Gregory Hunter | When did you first come to Durham? | 19:26 |
| Horace Mims | Well, I've been in Durham practically all my life. My people, most of them from Alamance County in Mebane up here, little place right up near Mebane. I lived my grandfather and them up there. | 19:28 |
| Gregory Hunter | Why did your family first come here? | 19:40 |
| Horace Mims | Well, I guess it was just, we just migrated around the different towns like that. But after him, just like I said, most of all of them left here, went to Connecticut. My mother and all of them died in the past, all of them when they were living in Hartford. | 19:46 |
| Gregory Hunter | Do you remember much at all about your grandparents? | 20:03 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah, I remember a lot about him. He was a farmer and— | 20:05 |
| Gregory Hunter | What was his name? | 20:10 |
| Horace Mims | Oscar Mims. And you see, when I was living with them, if something happened, as we go through life and the way it was then, you hear this phrase a lot of times the way it was then. A lot of things that I did not understand. And this farm where my grandfather lived on, I was an errand boy, small, I was an errand boy. And I'd go to the store to get different things. Coca-Cola, at that time Black people didn't drink Coca-Cola. You might not believe it but it had been a time when you walk in a store, a Black person say give me a Coca-Cola. Uh-huh, you got a grape or orange or Pepsi. It just wasn't for you to buy. | 20:17 |
| Gregory Hunter | Why? | 21:06 |
| Horace Mims | That was a White man drink. Hey, Brother Jonah. (laughs) I mean you could— | 21:08 |
| Percy Jonah | [Indistinct 00:21:16]. | 21:14 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah, that I'm just filling you in on something. You young but this is some of the things that really happened now. | 21:19 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh, yeah. | 21:23 |
| Horace Mims | And you just didn't go around in rural places especially and say, "Give me a Coca-Cola." And they had them, "I don't have it," and have it right there in the box. | 21:24 |
| Percy Jonah | Didn't have to be in a rural area. | 21:34 |
| Horace Mims | No didn't have to be—but I'm saying it, but more frequently in the rural. | 21:40 |
| Percy Jonah | Yeah, yeah, yeah. | 21:43 |
| Horace Mims | So, these are some of the things that you might not believe it, that don't sound true but it's really the truth. | 21:46 |
| Percy Jonah | Sure did. | 21:50 |
| Horace Mims | And so, as I said, when I was living my grandfather, I was an errand boy. | 21:51 |
| Gregory Hunter | Where did your grandfather live? | 21:57 |
| Horace Mims | He lived in Mebane, it's a place right up in Alamance County, about 30 miles from here. And one day this White guy sent me into the store. Well, I was about a half a block sitting and I had four or five different things to get and I didn't make no note of it—So, he wanted some Prince Albert smoking tobacco. You don't know the about the Prince Albert smoking tobacco but that was the popular tobacco at that time. And I came back and I forgot to get the tobacco. And when I told him, I said I forgot it and he cussed me out and talk about kicking me. And my grandfather didn't say anything. I couldn't understand it. And years later on I said if I ever get grown I'm going to—You know what I said? I mean you can imagine what. And that thing stayed with me out till I was about 25 years old. | 21:59 |
| Gregory Hunter | Who was the White man? | 22:58 |
| Horace Mims | His name was Sellers. And so, one day at that time I was, when I was that age, I was doing a little indulgent in alcohol. | 22:59 |
| Gregory Hunter | So, how old were you then? Was this the same time you started working at Tobacco? | 23:10 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah, that was when I started working at Tobacco then that was early. I was about seven, eight years old or 10 years old, something like that when this happened. But it stayed with me all at that time. 'Cause I don't care who you were, you don't kick nobody. | 23:14 |
| Gregory Hunter | Did he ever kick you? | 23:26 |
| Horace Mims | No, but he threatened you. And what I've seen in that time, they would kick you. See, I'm saying that they would kick you and I was just report, that he didn't. So, you might not believe it but that's the first thing a White man would do, raise his foot. And that's one reason why at the factory, that I never want to joke and play with a White guy because he going to tell a joke about Aunt Lucy and Cousin Molly and all of them and you get to playing and next thing you know he going raise his foot. Now Brother, I think I have a witness to that cause Brother— | 23:27 |
| Percy Jonah | 'Cause I don't get into this but I tell you he might be wondering why your grandfather didn't say anything. But the reason he didn't say anything, you had to understand the power the White people had it that day. Had he raised his hand, he going and get the sheriff and said that he tried to kill him. All these people just raised his hand and you had all White jurors. If you had a lawyer it would be a White lawyer and it wouldn't be no good to get a lawyer unless the man you worked for say he's all right. But if the man you worked for, plantation or whatever you going, if this White man didn't shout out, you might as well forget it. | 23:58 |
| Horace Mims | Well, this is what I'm saying, reason why I couldn't understand it. But years later on as I said, I told my grandfather, I said I'm going to see him 'cause I'd had me two or three drinks for that whiskey then, I hope you don't ever drink. And so I said, If I see him I'm going to tell him what he said to me and I'm going to do the same thing to him. What he said he was going do to me. And when I seen him he had got old, his hair was white, whiter than mine now. And he was all bent over and thanked be to God, the Lord would not let me touch him. I turned around and walked away because I could see he had suffered from this. And this is the way it was then. And so, those things happened just like Brother Jonah said there. | 24:50 |
| Horace Mims | When I first started work I was working construction work, helping building bridges. And they would call you, I don't like to use the word, the old White foreman call you nigger just as quick as they could spit and you, nothing you can do but go get on and— | 25:35 |
| Horace Mims | So, but through it all I learned to live and live with it. But now this is one reason why sometimes when this D-day thing, the Black people in the background, you see a lot of times you in the background, you hear music in the back, you don't ever see the, sometimes you don't ever see the person that's playing the music but it sound good to you out there. But the music could come from—Just like Nat King Cole used to sing a lot background music for different things. They never did see it. And some other guy, here the other day, he'd done a lot of speaking and talking in the background. He was Black but you didn't never see it. And who got the credit? So, this is the way I think about sometime in this D-day thing, there's brother on the—Now, they're talking all the stuff they putting up here in front. But who was back there during the dirty work, who was supplying them? | 25:56 |
| Horace Mims | So, this is the way it was with the fact we never was up front. But without us down in the basement they couldn't get up on the top floor. You understand what I mean? 'Cause we had to bring the material up where they could sit down. There wasn't no sit down for us but they could sit down. Because I seen a time when you caught up with some work or something your machine was broke down. The foreman come around, look, get a broom and go to sweeping over down there I'm, I'm supposed to be over here running this machine supply tobacco and it's broke for a few minutes. Get a broom and go over there and sweep up over here. You going to do something, you didn't sit down there and wait for the man to fix the machine. So, you had to do something now. | 26:58 |
| Horace Mims | And see, this is what a lot of those Black guys when they in the southern, like I said, the southern just before I retired, if they were working like that and something happened, they'd sit down there and the man come out, Man I ain't doing nothing, I'm supposed to be doing this. And that's where a lot of them, whenever opportunity come around, they wouldn't include in it because see, you can make it hard for yourself. Sometimes it pays to be humbled. I don't say it pays to be a fool but sometimes you don't—If you want something, you go at it in a way that you don't just take it, just like you right now if you had your say so maybe, going to school with all of this. If you had your say so. Well, I can just sit down there and write up what Mr. Mims or Deacon Mims had said without even talking to him. I can just— | 27:45 |
| Horace Mims | But see it wouldn't work in the long run. It would catch up with you. Just like this lady over here in Chapel Hill right now running for the school board and she told a whole lot of lies and she's good but see, she lied in the beginning. So, this is where it was in the later years, down at the factory when we started hiring. And some of these guys, they come in and now we had one guy, they sent him to England to learn how to put a machine together. See, most machines we had, they come from England, they were German and England. And we had to get some people over here from Germany to come over here to steel wire to show a mechanic how to fix and everything. But they sent this Black boy over there to train him so we don't have to have them now. He can fix them, he can take the machine down and put it back together. | 28:39 |
| Gregory Hunter | When was this? | 29:32 |
| Horace Mims | That was here in the last, they sent them over there right after I retired. So, this been about 12, about 10 years, 11 years ago when they sent him over there. | 29:33 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh. | 29:42 |
| Horace Mims | 'Cause he was working on the machines here. But they saying he had good quality and they sent him over there to train. So when he made it and now he can take a machine apart and put it back together as good as any Germans. But see they seen something in him. When they got ready for him, he wasn't always absent or wouldn't have to do what they say to do. So, we came a long ways in these factories and things like that. And I can truly say now, now as I say, my retirement and everything and whatever, it's been good to me. But I earned it, it wasn't something they just gave me. We had earn everything. But all of us, we had to earn it. And as I said, my work, when I first started working, I was doing construction was about 13 or 14 years old. Building bridges and highways and all that. | 29:43 |
| Gregory Hunter | Where? | 30:46 |
| Horace Mims | All through there up in Mebane, Burlington, Roxboro, just around all these areas. | 30:47 |
| Gregory Hunter | Did you work for the state? | 30:55 |
| Horace Mims | I worked for contractors. | 30:57 |
| Gregory Hunter | Which contractors? | 30:57 |
| Horace Mims | Well, one of them was out of South Carolina. I can't think of name right now. But all of them I worked for, were different contractors. Now, I never worked with a state, different contractors, you know. Like Nello Teer, of course, you don't know, Nello Teer's one of the biggest contractors here in [indistinct 00:31:00]. It's another big contractor. | 31:00 |
| Gregory Hunter | Names? | 31:19 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah, I can, all of them written out. But those are all of those I worked for. They were contractors. | 31:22 |
| Gregory Hunter | And what was that like? | 31:28 |
| Horace Mims | Huh? | 31:30 |
| Gregory Hunter | Working with the construction companies? | 31:30 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah I was building bridge and highways and things, construction. Building bridges and all of that. And most of the time when I building bridge we had to mix concrete. We didn't have these big plants they have now we had to have a little old mixer. You had to load the mixer with a shovel and everything and your sand and all of that and mix it. But now they just take a dump truck and dump the whole thing down on the container and mix it up and they spread it. See, we had to use a wheel barrow and they used to have a thing you call a Georgia buggy. It had those wheels on it and no wheels stood about like that. And they were iron wheels by that wide and had a kind of bucket down the bottom where it would swing. | 31:33 |
| Horace Mims | That's what you call a Georgia buggy. And you had to push that thing up a ramp to a pour form or whatever. And now, I've never been no side. But those Georgia buggies, if you hit a little pebble or something like about that, brother, it's going to throw you. I'm just sure those Georgia buckets, they was, as I said, the wheeled by that high and they was iron wheeled and had a bucket down there. That bucket swing when you got ready to turn it over to dump the concrete, where that bucket would swing. And they didn't have no mercy. I don't matter, do a job, they didn't have no mercy, care how big or small you was. You want that job. That was it. | 32:18 |
| Gregory Hunter | Did you work with White people or Black people or both? | 33:09 |
| Horace Mims | Well, most of them in construction they were White people, all except carpenters. See building bridges, you had to have carpenters to build little forms and things. The work that we done was with a shovel, the work we done with a shovel. I'd say you have working on a project on a job or project where you got 10 people, mechanic and a carpenter, 90% of them were White. You might have one or two Blacks out of 10. The rest of them were labor. And then when I said labor I want you to give what—There weren't no skill. See, just like you doing now you writing, you didn't have to require no writing. If you could write real good you might even get a job. | 33:12 |
| Horace Mims | See? See that's what I'm saying when I said labor. This is a hard labor. Anybody can get a shovel and go out there and dig a hole. You don't want a man, there wasn't no skill to it, anybody can grab a broom. See, that's what they call labor, hard labor. But if anything else, just like you writing now, you was a secretary or whatever. If you sitting over here that's pushing a button, you qualified for that particular job. But in shoveling dirt and stuff like that, anybody qualified. You could walk up and grab a shoveling, they don't have to train you. They didn't have to train you. And that's what I did. | 33:55 |
| Horace Mims | Wheel barrow, they used to have what you call a waterboard. I kept water around. I worked at Fort Bragg down there when they building the camp down there. And I was the water boy down there. They first started me off with building farms and things. And so, then they started me out carrying water and I had to carry water, I had two buckets. One wrote on there, Black—I mean Colored. They didn't use the word Black. You better not call nobody Black, you was in it. You didn't call nobody Black. | 34:41 |
| Gregory Hunter | That was offensive? | 35:15 |
| Horace Mims | Who? You call somebody Black, brother, you got a fight. But they had on there, Colored. Now, you could get a good vibe. We called each other nigger and they ain't say nothing of that. But if you say Black, and you got a fight. | 35:16 |
| Horace Mims | And carrying this water, see I had a bucket over here said, White and one over here said, Colored. I would take those bucket, I would let half of them drink out it, then I would take that water and change it and put the White dip over here and the Black dip over there. The dipper didn't have no marker on it. He be drinking out a bucket a Black just had drunk out three minutes ago and didn't know the difference. I did it just because I'd take one, I'd run out of a bucket or I'd have more White guys, I'm about to run out there, I'm not going back and drawing no more, I'd take that water out the Black bucket and pour in the White and they drink. | 35:38 |
| Gregory Hunter | And they didn't say anything? | 36:21 |
| Horace Mims | And, "Man, it's good." But if they had known that I wouldn't have had no job and probably got throwed off one them farms up there. | 36:21 |
| Gregory Hunter | This is when you were working at Fort Bragg? | 36:33 |
| Horace Mims | Working at Fort Bragg. | 36:35 |
| Gregory Hunter | When was that? | 36:35 |
| Horace Mims | This was in '40. See, they started building Fort Bragg down there over in '40. I worked down there about six months. Yeah, but I'm just filling in on some of the things and he's witnessed a lot, I call me and him in the same bracket. | 36:36 |
| Percy Jonah | Well, one thing, he's wondering when he's talking about these early ages. At that time nobody asked you for a birth certificate. No. If you wanted to have done a job and the man was out there doing labor work, if he was big enough up to do it, you withdraw, in his eyes. | 37:00 |
| Gregory Hunter | Could you state your name just so I can have it on tape as well. | 37:17 |
| Percy Jonah | Percy Jonah. | 37:20 |
| Gregory Hunter | Sorry? | 37:20 |
| Percy Jonah | Percy Jonah. | 37:20 |
| Horace Mims | Percy Jonah. | 37:20 |
| Gregory Hunter | And where are you from? | 37:20 |
| Percy Jonah | Durham. Yeah, I went in the army at 17 and before I went in the army I had worked at Johnathon's. | 37:31 |
| Gregory Hunter | What was that? | 37:32 |
| Percy Jonah | Johnathon's. So, that was grocery chain was owned by the Bergman that run the Frolic, they used to own the restaurant. And I worked with them before then. And then I worked at Duke University and Imperial Tobacco Company and at the Hillbilly. And I did that before I was 17. When I was 17 I went in Army. | 37:37 |
| Gregory Hunter | What year did you go into the army? | 37:47 |
| Percy Jonah | 1944. Nobody asked for no birth certificate. I wasn't arrested. I told him I was 18. Didn't require the birth certificate. | 38:05 |
| Horace Mims | And as you were saying, since you wanted to kind of cover the whole thing to get away from the American, I think I've given you all about the American that really would be necessary to pass on to somebody to have. But as you were saying, when you was talking about our early age and whatever and different things in the early age. Now, and I was looking at something the other day about this D-day and stuff, they bring back some of the things now back then. When they got ready to advertise a job, to hire a group of people, if they didn't want them they put in there, White owner. | 38:06 |
| Horace Mims | I was looking at something the other day. They put in there White owner and when they got ready to hire a bunch of Black people, they put in there, Black owners. 'Cause wasn't no White people going to go there looking for it to start with 'cause they didn't know what it was. It was a dirty job. And when you talking about Black calling each other Black, Black people calling each other Black or whatever, they would say we need 50 people or how many jobs. And you take 25 women standing out there, they're hiring women, 25 women standing out there, two or three of them women out there all real, real, real light-skinned. "Hey, you." | 38:59 |
| Percy Jonah | First one. | 39:46 |
| Horace Mims | You were the first one that was hired. | 39:48 |
| Gregory Hunter | The light-skinned? | 39:48 |
| Horace Mims | The light-skinned. I'm not trying to put our race down but I'm saying this is the way it was with them then. And so, they two or three, we used to call them, was yellow. And you didn't call them yellow because of course that was another fight. That was degrading because when you call them yellow or something like that, you were referring to them in a sense the way they thought it, as White and they did have a lot of White. But you know what they say, as long you got one drop of blood you Black, don't make no difference how light you are, how White you are. So, that that's the way it was then. Now you said, you wanted something so I'm giving it to you just like it was then. And if somebody here that don't like it, but that's the way it was. | 39:50 |
| Percy Jonah | The reason that was, that was handed down from slavery. Your White, your light-skinned people was the son of the head White boss. And most of them did the housework. And the Black people, most Blacks were out in the field. And they gave them a feeling of superiority 'cause they was doing work that a lot of the Black, they didn't do. A lot of times White man, it's his child or his neighbor's child. So, he wouldn't accept that it's his child but he didn't work him has hard as he would one of those. He might have him around in the house, doing this around yard, something like that. But the ones out there in the field, they would mostly Black. That's why a lot of people didn't like the being called Black. So, they were considered the lower— | 40:50 |
| Horace Mims | Lower, they were considered—So, these things are what we are saying. It might not be what you wanted or whatever, but if you want the truth and I think any Black person that is our age would agree because they have been there. They ain't no need to say they haven't. If he say "No, I don't know," he not telling the truth. We used to have a deacon up there at the church, Deacon Blake, he's from South Carolina and he never say, he or her. He say, "him." "Him ain't telling the truth." (laughs) He never would say—make him do who, he would say, "Him ain't telling the truth." And so, if somebody say, they hear this tape, they say, "No, they're not telling him and not telling the truth." He say he don't know nothing about it. | 41:35 |
| Percy Jonah | Any Black person that come along in this town and said he wasn't mistreated, It's not likely he was telling the truth. White people mistreated most all of Black people. | 42:23 |
| Horace Mims | Oh, yeah. | 42:23 |
| Percy Jonah | In one way or another. If it wasn't them they had, just like I was telling, like his grandfather. And maybe his grandfather might have lived on some land that belonged him or one of his friends, if he didn't do this, didn't do that, he knew the sheriff. Now, they have a instance that, that was down in Wake County. My father, one man wanted him to come there and sell a crop. Well, he started to take the job but then the sheriff just knew him and 'cause he knew his is my granddad, and told him said, "Better don't take that job." Said, "This man passes by every year." And then when time come to harvest tobacco he called the sheriff and say he stole something and then the sheriff would pick him up, put him in jail, he'd get time and all his labor would be free. | 42:39 |
| Percy Jonah | He worked the whole year in the field, wouldn't get nothing. So, when time come to sell tobacco, he'd have him jail. And of what happened, all of the sheriffs knew what he was doing. He knew they hadn't stolen nothing. So, all he had to do was, When they go out in the field, he cursed them down there and put them in the shack place belong to them, call the sheriff. And the sheriff, they come out there and go out there, get in the field, we found it in your—Put the shack belong to him. And all those sheriffs knew what he was doing. One White man wouldn't go against another. | 43:45 |
| Horace Mims | I don't care what happened, they would not go against the other. And this is something today I wish that we would realize. Back in those days a White man would pit a Black man, just like with me and Brother Jonah, now if he like me better than he did Brother Jonah, he going to have me to do something to Brother Jonah. Beat him upside the head or do something, anything he could to get even with them. And I had this experience and I working at factory and working at the A&P store, we used to have a store before we call it, Hayti. You hear it about hay time. The Black community used to be here. Now I'm working at the store, I working at the factory too. And so, now he tells me we had about five Black guys working there. Now he tells me, now look, you watch them and I'm going to pay you a little bit more. | 44:07 |
| Horace Mims | If you see them taking something you let me know 'cause I'm going to pay you a little bit more. But I didn't fall for it because see I had learnt but it's so many that would. And this is how it seem like we are getting back now because it seem like we don't have sense enough to know this. We fight each other but we never fight a White man. Now we kill—I mean we didn't kill like we do now, but we knocked in head with a brick or whatever because that's the way they train us to fight each other. And he sitting back laughing, he don't have to fight and just like he said, the man, he was going pay me, say I'm going to go. He was going to pay me a little bit more to snitch on them. | 44:58 |
| Horace Mims | And it seemed like this the way most of the young people are today, they are killing each other. Most of everything, all this, the drugs and guns. Who manufacturing no guns. Who shipping all that drugs in here? Who the head of it. We got some—Somebody might be just like bootlegging. Back in the days of the bootlegging and those days it was White people that were furnishing that White whiskey. You here tell about the bootleg whiskey, back in the probation day. Brother who was sending all that whiskey in? Who making all the whiskey? The White man was making it and giving it to the Black people to sell it for them and the Black people drinking and get drunk and raised hands with each other and it seemed like the same thing going around there. You could find some big kingpin here, someone would say, just like we did this, some bootlegger with Black. | 45:45 |
| Horace Mims | But the head of it, the root was coming from the White man. All up here in these mountains where they make whiskey and just bring it here. And it's the way it was all way back in the Prohibition, that Prohibitions days when they weren't allowed to sell whiskey. The White man was furnish from whiskey and just the way it is was all these drugs coming in here. You might have one or two big shots, so to speak, just like we did. Then we had some big shots we call bootleggers, but the head, the root was a White man. I'm not hating him or nothing like that, but this is where it coming from. Right today, how many Black people do you see that you can count got all this booze? Just like right here in Durham, this man down here had all this down here and he supposed to have been in jail right now spending two or three life. | 46:37 |
| Horace Mims | We worked together in the church and everything. And belonged to another church, but have this—We go around to a rest home. We look out for sick people and all. | 0:01 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh. | 0:13 |
| Horace Mims | So that's the reason he was by here. He brought a check to put into this fund that we have. Yeah. All of those things in here, same them just like we said. All of those things. They might not sound good or whatever, but this is the way it was then, but I just thank God it's better now. We have a choice, we have a voice. And what we have to do now is to use it in the right way and as we're Black people. We have got to stop everything that we're saying, putting the blame on somebody else. | 0:14 |
| Horace Mims | Just like President Truman, he once said, "The buck stops here." Don't shift it off on somebody else, it stops here. And to stop within us, is where we have to do something. And we have done something, just like at the factories and different places. The first sit-in we had in Greensboro, you've heard about that, the Black sit-in Greensboro, in the five and dime store. That's history. I'm quite sure you've heard about it. | 0:56 |
| Gregory Hunter | When was that? | 1:30 |
| Horace Mims | That was in '60, I think it was, when they first started to sit-in. Now, you going to have to catch up on some of this history because this is history. This reminds me, I'm quite sure you, a lot of times the Black History Month. And this is when a lot of this is brought out, just like this D-day and different months that we have. | 1:30 |
| Gregory Hunter | Were you involved, at all, in that sit-in? | 1:50 |
| Horace Mims | No. See, I was working there. This were young people. These were students, the started the sit-in. | 1:54 |
| Gregory Hunter | Yeah. | 2:02 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. These was college students going to A&T in Greensboro, when they had these sit-ins. They—Woolworths. Now, I'm quite sure you— | 2:02 |
| Gregory Hunter | Yeah. | 2:11 |
| Horace Mims | —And see, at the same time, we had a Woolworths, which is closed now, but not on that account, they was starting to sit-in. Woolworths, Walgreens, and all those places, the lunch counters because you couldn't sit at a lunch counter. If you go in there to buy a drink or something, you got to buy it, and then you got to come outdoors to drink it. Come outside to drink it. | 2:12 |
| Horace Mims | And as I said, at that time, I had my children. I had a daughter, she was in Fayetteville, at Fayetteville State. And she was doing them, all of them were doing them, my nieces and nephews, see all them was in there in '60. And they were doing all these sit-ins and we was in supporting them. So a lot of them, they'd go to jail. They didn't mind going to jail. They didn't mind going to jail. They'd have a busload of them out here, on this Chapel Hill Boulevard, right here. They had a place out there were they didn't allow Blacks, one of the Ramada Inns, I think, or one of them. And they went out there, so they had about 30 of them, I mean a whole busload. And they brought them back and locked them up. | 2:36 |
| Horace Mims | And one of the jailers up there, he said, "If I could get another job, I'd quit, because these people about the worst—" Because, I mean, they didn't fight or nothing, but they just sang and they just kept something going. They weren't using bad language. At that time, in the '60s, you didn't find the young people cursing and going on, like they do now. And, "Kiss my—" this and all that. Those people there acted with respect, but they would sing and they would just—Things and that, just to keep you awake because they didn't worry about sleeping. | 3:30 |
| Horace Mims | But those people up there, see, they wanted some rest and some sleep, but they had to stay up all night long. And those children, all of them, most of them, was in their teens. And I would say from 18 and back to their teens. And they just kept something going, one would sleep awhile. And the others, they'd be up singing and just clapping and going on. And so my daughter, she was down Fayetteville, she was in school down to Fayetteville, Fayetteville College, out a [indistinct 00:04:30]. And she was spit on. You know? How they was spit on and everything, when you was picketing and going on, they'd spit on you. | 4:03 |
| Horace Mims | But the most of them, they would accept it. This is the reason why Martin Luther King, he didn't want no violence. If you felt like you was going out there with a chip on your shoulder, it wasn't only you going out there because you wasn't going to accomplish nothing. | 4:48 |
| Gregory Hunter | I wondered if you could talk a little bit about your own family, your own family history, from the past? How was life in the past, like at home? | 5:03 |
| Horace Mims | Well— | 5:19 |
| Gregory Hunter | During the earlier parts of— | 5:22 |
| Horace Mims | —during that time everybody, they didn't have much resources or whatever, as I said. My grandfather and them, they farmed. And during that time, as I say, I started working construction work, very early, just doing different things. | 5:22 |
| Gregory Hunter | What did your grandfather do? What farm—what did he farm? | 5:39 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. He farmed tobacco and stuff like that. | 5:40 |
| Gregory Hunter | —Oh, in his own land? | 5:45 |
| Horace Mims | No. And the later years, though, he just quit. Working different jobs, like people work the railroads, and sawmills, and all that stuff. But you never hear that mentioned now. And my mother and them, most of the time they worked at—Were like maids. See, that was a Black woman thing at that time, back in the '20s and all that. That was Black people, women, is working as maids and nursing people's children, and the White children, and all that. And this was what their work was mostly about. | 5:46 |
| Horace Mims | And most of the other, the men, their work was in labor, building different things, sawmills, railroads. Because at that time, back in the '20s and all that, there was a lot of construction going on with railroads and building. A lot of building. Because at that time, things had began to pick up. And during the 1932 everything fell out, that was when The Depression. I'm quite sure you've heard about The Depression in '32. And during that time, they'd come up something. You had a lot of soup lines and things in New York and all different places like that. | 6:26 |
| Gregory Hunter | A lot of what? | 7:10 |
| Horace Mims | Soup lines. People just standing in line, they couldn't get a job. And they'd just stand in line, just like these homeless people now. You know? Like these homeless people, how they be placed. They got someplace for them now, but at that time they didn't have nowhere for them. They just a what they called a place, where they called it a soup kitchen because the most thing they would get is soup. | 7:11 |
| Gregory Hunter | Hmm? | 7:33 |
| Horace Mims | This is beyond you, but they could take what they used to call a beef bone or call it a soup bone and make a whole pot of soup. There wasn't much meat there. It's just like a lot people say, "The chicken broth, but where the chicken?" (laughs) Wasn't no chicken in it, you just eat that broth, that's what they call it. And that's the way it was then, they'd just take stuff like that and make a pot of soup. And it was something, nourishment, to keep you going. | 7:33 |
| Gregory Hunter | What was The Depression like for you and your family? | 8:04 |
| Horace Mims | Well, just like I said, I was working construction work and different things. And some of the people, they got by on farms and things like that, where they could raise their own, grow their own stuff, their own meat, their beef and the hogs or whatever. And the people would share with each other. If something you need and they would share. But now, see, nobody, anytime, somebody, they don't want to give you nothing now. They don't share no more like that. But they used, when people, if you found out a family was hungry, didn't have nothing to eat, they'd scrap up a little bit here and a little bit there and they would give it to them, but you don't find that now. | 8:06 |
| Horace Mims | And then people used to, what they call in your community, your church, they would call what they call pounding. And you take—Well, it didn't have to be a pound, but that's what they called it. But they take a little bit of flour, over here, a couple of cups of flour. Somebody else take a couple of cups, but it in a bag. Or do beans. Or a little piece of fatback meat. They call it salt pork now, they don't call it fatback no more. And they would carry it to the church and would distribute it to these families, but they don't do that now. | 8:55 |
| Horace Mims | Most of the time we have somebody coming to church, "I need $100.00 to pay my bills." You don't care now. So now we have, we gather food for Thanksgiving, the missionary, to distribute among people, but they don't have the stuff for family now. The family now, "I'm going to need $50.00 to pay our gas bill," or, "$100.00 to pay rent," or whatever. But during those years, didn't nobody have no cash money to give like that. | 9:23 |
| Horace Mims | They'd just take a little bit of whatever they had out of their cupboard or whatever. And you'd put a little bit here, and a little bit there, and a little bit here, from each one. And one, you might start off with this cup for now, he said, "I got just enough to fill up, right along here, with water. Somebody else can fill it up right there. And somebody else," and next thing you know, you got a whole cup of water, they will fill me up. | 9:59 |
| Horace Mims | So I'm just saying that in the problem like that. That's the way with people back in the '20s and the '30s and during The Hoover Days. That's why we called it The Depression, that's when President Hoover was the president. So after Roosevelt became president, that's when they started a lot of this WPA and the welfare system. See, they had places during that time, where you would go to warehouses and things. And you would go and you was on that this, the welfare, you'd go pick up potatoes, or beans, or whatever. | 10:22 |
| Horace Mims | Now, there's something else that—Now, you had a lot of White people on that too. But now, the day that they were going to do the distributing, the White people would go the day, on Monday, and you go on Tuesday, and you'd get what they left. See? I'm just saying, you don't know nothing about that. And of course, as young as you are and whatever, but this is the way it was then. If you go to—Just like they said, "Now, we're going to make this distributing." Like these people get these food stamps and them things now, the same time they get them. And during that time they'd distribute the food, you didn't have no food stamps. White potatoes. | 10:57 |
| Gregory Hunter | Where would they distribute it? | 11:39 |
| Horace Mims | They had a warehouse, where you'd have to go get it. | 11:40 |
| Gregory Hunter | A what? Like a YMCA, you mean? | 11:43 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. Well, just a warehouse, where they store stuff or whatever. | 11:45 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh. I see. | 11:48 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. Where they had a place, you would have to go carry your card or whatever you had to identify yourself. And they would give you what your family called for. | 11:48 |
| Gregory Hunter | Hmm? | 11:58 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. Just like I said, the White people, they would go and say, "We're going to do it on a Monday," they'd go Monday. And you didn't go until Tuesday. See, you'd have to take whatever they left. And so, but I'm just saying this, since you wanted to know what. And all of that just leads up to it, just like it is today. See, we was old people, we didn't know who was on the welfare. You couldn't tell they was on welfare. | 12:00 |
| Horace Mims | Just like today, you got—They talking about Black people, and you got more White people on welfare, right today, and getting food stamps, than you have Black, but it's done in a way that you don't know it. I mean, you know more now, than you did then. But right now, when it comes down to food stamps and welfare, see most of their fingers are pointed at the Blacks because of their community. Because all those White people, they live in a clean community or whatever, but they're on that system and everything. But to mostly Black people on the system, it's their community. | 12:35 |
| Horace Mims | I mean, you can see that, but that's why they point them to. Because a lot of them don't live in a dilapidated community, but this is where they point that, it's the first thing they focus on. | 13:14 |
| Gregory Hunter | What are some of your early childhood memories? Other than, you mentioned the story about the White man, [indistinct 00:13:33]. Do you have any other stories about your childhood or even your early adulthood? | 13:29 |
| Horace Mims | Well, just that all of those things, so many of them favored all of this, what I was saying here, about this. You just didn't have the—And as he was saying, we just didn't have the voice and everything. And even, if you would speak out, you're subject to lose your job, if you had a job. And once you were black-balled—It's just like, I don't know whether you ever tried to ever go in a different kind of club or something like the Masons or some thing like that, they had what they called a black-ball. And if somebody's in there that you try to join the Masonic, or if there's somebody in there that don't like you, they have a thing. You put a ball in there. You don't never know who it is, they're like voting. But they got a little black ball. And then whoever put that black ball in there, they're against you. You don't know who it is because it's done secret. | 13:40 |
| Gregory Hunter | Were of you a member of— | 14:48 |
| Horace Mims | I was a member of the Elks. Mm-hmm. | 14:48 |
| Gregory Hunter | Of the Elks? | 14:51 |
| Horace Mims | Mm-hmm. | 14:51 |
| Gregory Hunter | How long have you been? | 14:51 |
| Horace Mims | I joined the Elks in '52, I believe it was. '51 or '52, somewhere around there. But I'm just saying, these things, this is the way it all adds up, coming down to that. If you would speak out, you'd got to get another job or something, or the man, he could fire you for most anything. He didn't have to have an excuse. Somebody been done to him and told him, "Look. You fire that nigger because of [indistinct 00:15:25]," you were fired. And it might not sound—But this is Black history, this is the way it was. If somebody was in my head, they'd see. | 14:53 |
| Horace Mims | But as I said, my early childhood, these were things that we had to go through. We didn't have much to say or—But there's one thing at that time, Black people were more together in those days, so to speak. I mean, the population wasn't what it is now, but you could get a favor, more so than you can now, from your own people. Because when you do something now, people are looking for payback. But in those days, in The Depression days, and in my early bring up, we would share. Whatever you had, we would share. And nobody didn't look for no payback. Or they're coming up and saying, "You see him over there? I gave him such and such a thing." | 15:35 |
| Horace Mims | Right today, I'm quite sure, if you do somebody—Somebody you know might do somebody a favor. And when they get asked by somebody they, "Yeah. I let him have $10.00 over there and that joker ain't paid me yet." I'm quite—You might've been through that, it seems. But that's the way it is now. But during that time—Because it wasn't no $10.00. $10.00 was $100.00 at that time. If you had $10.00 you could buy enough groceries to last two weeks. Now, you can't even hardly buy a meal for $10.00. At that time, if you had $10.00, you could buy enough groceries. Man, you groceries—Buy you—We used to have what they called, they're these stores, they call them drayboys. | 16:31 |
| Gregory Hunter | Drayboys? | 17:16 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. They had a little wagon. And people would go to the store and buy their groceries. And these little drayboys, they would carry it home for them for 15 cents, or 20 cents, or whatever. | 17:17 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh. Drayboys? | 17:28 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. | 17:28 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh. Okay. | 17:29 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. See, they would be at the store. They'd be lined up, just like cabs. And don't go get in front of one, now, you going to have a fight on your hands. Because they line them up. That was in order to keep them—Let everybody make—Give everybody had a chance. If you had a special boy, now, it would differ, but you just get your wagon and come up and say, "I want a dray today," especially on a Friday and Saturday, you got to get in line. If you had somebody special you know, that you want, that was yours. | 17:30 |
| Horace Mims | But just to, you just get your wagon and come up and say, "I'm going to work today." Or come from some other store or something, you would come over there and work over here in this store, you got to fall in line. Because if you didn't, you could have somebody standing there. They been standing probably for an hour and hadn't had a trip. And here you come and get right in front of them. And the time you get in there and somebody come out and want a dray, and this man been standing there an hour, I mean, this boy been standing there an hour, and you going to walk in front of him and take it? Uh-uh. I guess, you can see where I'm coming from in that? | 18:03 |
| Gregory Hunter | Yeah. | 18:38 |
| Horace Mims | And I don't blame them, that was a good thing. I mean, that was a good thing. Because just like the cabs now, but they got so now—But it used to be that the cabs line up, but they got so now they run. But used to, cabs, they would line up, you make a trip. When you come back, you got to fall back in line. See, this one up here, he make a trip. When he come back, he got to fall back in, you know to go around. But now, most the cabs they drive—Most of the time they drive anywhere. | 18:38 |
| Gregory Hunter | Yeah. | 19:07 |
| Horace Mims | They would change it some. But it used to be, you had to get in line with a cab, unless somebody had a special. But just somebody parting on a cab, shoot, you had to be in line. Just like if you had some relative driving a cab or something, then he could go ahead on and take that trip. But just anybody calls, "I want a cab," the man in front of that, he's the one that got the trip. | 19:09 |
| Gregory Hunter | How long did you go to school? | 19:40 |
| Horace Mims | I quit school in the 9th grade. That's when I came out and went to work. | 19:42 |
| Gregory Hunter | What school did you go to? | 19:46 |
| Horace Mims | I went to a school up in Alamance County, Byrd School. | 19:47 |
| Gregory Hunter | Grade school? | 19:50 |
| Horace Mims | Byrd. Byrd School, that was the name of it. | 19:51 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh. Byrd School? And what was school like? | 20:00 |
| Horace Mims | Well, when I was in school, we had a lot of—It was discipline. And it was so much different than it is now. And to me, school was, just like I said, school was all right. I wanted to stay in school, but I didn't during that time. Because all that was during The Depression and everything, you had to take whatever you could get, to go to work. People, they'd say, "You go to work," they didn't care what age you was, as long as you could do the work. And so, but school, it was good. I made good grades in school and everything. And I never had to repeat a grade the whole time I was in school. | 20:00 |
| Gregory Hunter | Was it an all Black school? | 20:38 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was an all Black school. | 20:39 |
| Gregory Hunter | With Black teachers? | 20:41 |
| Horace Mims | Black teachers. And two, now, just like what we're talking about now, busing. White people been bused all their life. You could live—Now, if I live right there and there was a White school right up there on the corner, I'm going to walk. You know where Central down there? You know where the Central University College? | 20:43 |
| Gregory Hunter | Mm-hmm. | 21:04 |
| Horace Mims | If I live right here and the White school right there, I got to walk all the way down there. Now, here's the White school right down there. The bus, wherever they lived at, the bus—But we didn't have a bus. See, now we had a bus for—Once they got bus, once you started high school. And but, right in your neighborhood, if a White school in your neighborhood, you had to walk. | 21:08 |
| Horace Mims | Children, from down here to East Durham. Well, I can say, from—I'm trying to get some place where you would—You know where Hillside School is, down there next to the college down there? | 21:34 |
| Gregory Hunter | Is it next to what school? | 21:47 |
| Horace Mims | Hillside High School. | 21:52 |
| Gregory Hunter | No. | 21:53 |
| Horace Mims | Well, it's right there next to Central North Carolina Central. | 21:54 |
| Gregory Hunter | Okay. I know where that is. | 21:54 |
| Horace Mims | And the people that lived back on this side of town, about five miles, they had to walk. And the White kids, they didn't live nowhere out, they were bused. So when it come down to busing, White children bused all their life, Black children never. | 22:01 |
| Gregory Hunter | They'd walk? | 22:16 |
| Horace Mims | They had to walk. They'd walk because they didn't have the money to ride the city bus. These city bus run would be—Of course, it wasn't but a dime, but who had the dime? | 22:17 |
| Gregory Hunter | Hmm? What kind of things did you learn in school? What kinds of things did they teach? | 22:26 |
| Horace Mims | Well, math. And just the regular. At that time we didn't have all these fancy names. We had arithmetic, and division, times tables, and multiplication, and geography. And we didn't have too much, we were more in geography than it seemed like history. | 22:31 |
| Gregory Hunter | They didn't have any history? | 22:57 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. We had history, but we focused more on—If something southern that you figured was going to benefit you, like geography, and multiplication, division, adding and multiplying, and all that stuff. See, that meant a lot to us because every dime or nickel you get, you wanted to know how to multiply it, or how to subtract from it, or what you're going to have left, and things like that. | 22:58 |
| Horace Mims | And as far as history, that pertained more to being a professional or something, at that time. At that time, it seemed more like something that—You know? Because when I came out of school and went back in the '20s and the early '30s, the only thing that you would get when you came out of school mostly—You would've been a school teacher. We had just a few Black doctors or professors. I mean, that was all in the educational. But other than that, all these other things, what you get when you come out of school, you study science and all this and everything of that nature. And secretarial work and all that. | 23:29 |
| Horace Mims | See, it wasn't even no future in looking at a Black person in the '20s and the '30s being a secretary. You know? As they have now, everybody now got to have a secretary. Yeah. And especially a Black. So this is why we focus more on reading, writing, and what we called arithmetic then and things. It was just so much different than it is today. Because now you've got science and everything. And just a lot of stuff now that we can see more into. Oh. There was very few graduates. I mean, we had a lot of graduates in the later years. But in the early years, even if you graduated from high school, just like I said, the only thing probably you could find was a teaching job, that's about the only thing. | 24:17 |
| Horace Mims | And at that time, White teachers made more than Black teachers. Black teachers just ain't been—Seven years ago, they got on the same level. But White teachers used to make—Shoot. If a White teacher made $100.00, a Black teacher about $60.00, a month. I'm just saying, it wasn't that much then, I'm just putting it at that figure. So Black teachers didn't get the same pay a White teacher got. Now, you can talk with some old Black teacher, way back then, 60 or 70 years ago, and they'll tell you, they didn't get the same. | 25:10 |
| Horace Mims | It's just like, that was just like school. They said, at one time, they didn't want to integrate, but they wanted to make all schools equal with different things. There's no way they could make it equal because, just like I said, at the time when I was going to school, we got hand-me-down books. | 25:53 |
| Gregory Hunter | From the White school? | 26:13 |
| Horace Mims | From the White—Or either from where you get the books, from the White grades, when they would turn in their books, whenever they made—But that's where we got our books from. We never got a new book. | 26:17 |
| Gregory Hunter | Hmm? | 26:29 |
| Horace Mims | It was always a used one. See, they had libraries where they turn in books. Where if they was in pretty good shape, they'd turn them in. And see, that's where we would go. If you had to buy it, you still would get the discount. You wasn't able to buy the book, it would cost 75 cents. People back then didn't have no— | 26:29 |
| Horace Mims | What I'm saying, 75 cents at that time, where you could buy three people almost—You go to the store with 75 cents, it'll buy almost a good meal for three people. So see, you'd get beans, they're about three or four cents a pound, or five cents a pound. And a chicken, that wasn't about 10 cents a pound. Things like that. And as I said, 75 cents, you could buy a whole lot with 75 cents, especially in that type of food. Because you didn't go buy a steak and all that, now. Of course, steak was cheap, but still, you didn't have the 20 cents to pay for a pound of steak. See, you can get a whole pound of salt pork or fatback, whatever you want to call it, for 10 cents. And a whole pound's going to feed three or four people. | 26:50 |
| Gregory Hunter | Hmm? | 27:44 |
| Horace Mims | So if that was the case. If a book cost 75 cents, most the Black people just didn't have that to pay it for a brand new book. But as I said, most of the books we got was hand-me-downs. And this is where I went to school. Most of the schools and everything, it was cheaper, they just wouldn't put the work into it that they would a White school. | 27:46 |
| Gregory Hunter | Did you do a lot of traveling? | 28:09 |
| Horace Mims | Well, no, at that time. Most the traveling I done was after I was—I did—Well, after I was grown and everything, that's when I was doing a lot of—Well, not a lot of. Just going to Washington, Connecticut, or somewhere like that, then places like that. But as far as going overseas and everything, I did not make the—I didn't go in the service. I was turned down, I had a [indistinct 00:28:40] cut in my ankle in here. But other than that, I have never done a whole lot of extensive traveling. | 28:12 |
| Horace Mims | See, we used to, we'd have ushers. We'd have an usher union. And we used to do a lot of traveling, or going to Saint Louis, and Kentucky, and Philadelphia, to the zoo, and all them different things. | 28:50 |
| Gregory Hunter | How did you travel? | 29:04 |
| Horace Mims | We traveled by bus. See, because we'd be gone a whole week. See, we'd have a five-day tour. And we'd go different places like that. New Orleans. | 29:05 |
| Gregory Hunter | What was it like to travel, driving on the road? Where did you— | 29:15 |
| Horace Mims | Well, we'd charter bus. See, we'd be charter bus. | 29:18 |
| Gregory Hunter | —Where would you stop to eat? Where would you sleep? | 29:20 |
| Horace Mims | Well, we stayed in—Well, let me see? We stayed in motels. So many different ones, I can't—But see, we always had to put in a reservation. | 29:24 |
| Gregory Hunter | Ahead of time? | 29:32 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. Mm-hmm. See, because there'd be about 30 of us. See, we chartered a bus and there'd be about 30 of us. And we'd put in—Just like this month, we used to go in this month, but we put in for it the first of the year. | 29:33 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh. Okay. | 29:46 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. We'd put in for the first of the year. And one time, my wife and them, they went to New Orleans. And they stopped at a place to be served and a lady talked—We had a couple of White people to drive the charter bus. And they said the lady talked like she didn't want to serve. You know? So wasn't nobody—Didn't nobody even—They just got back on the bus and left. | 29:46 |
| Gregory Hunter | But you're talking about recently? This is recently? | 30:19 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. Well, this been about—This was just before I retired, on this trip. This been about 14 years ago or something like that. But I have—We have went to some places, they were—We stopped at a place in Tennessee one morning for breakfast. And the lady there, they was very good, they said, "We haven't opened yet. People haven't came in." They hadn't come in. So she said, "But if y'all hungry, if y'all will help, y'all come on in." And so two or three of the people on there, they helped prepare breakfast. And we just had a good time. So she told us, "If y'all want to—I want you to eat. So if y'all want to eat and want to help and get it ready, y'all can come on in," so they went on in. And we had a real—That was the only place that we ever had any—Down in New Orleans. | 30:20 |
| Horace Mims | This was in Alabama, when they stopped in Alabama. And this was in Alabama, where they had the trouble. Because if it was now, they probably would—Recently, probably there'd been something. But they just didn't want to have any problems because they was on the way to New Orleans and they— | 31:16 |
| Gregory Hunter | In a second I want to ask you some questions, like biographical questions of your family history. Before that, I just want to know if there's anything that I haven't asked that you want to add to your interview about life in The Jim Crow South? | 31:40 |
| Horace Mims | Well, I think I've covered just about everything I can cover in there. Because all of these things are back in the early days, of my view. As I say, there's certain places you couldn't go. Just like we were saying about the Coca-Cola, you couldn't go to the same places when I was child. Well, not only a child, but when I actually became grown. But you didn't go in a store, in nowhere, and ask for Coca-Cola. They'd tell you right quick, they'd have a drink box and the Coca-Cola was in there, but, "I don't have one." And some places you go in there and ask, "I got a grape or orange," or something like that. Because back in those days, they'd have grape sodas and orange sodas and things like that. But now, since they come up with all these Pepsi Colas and RC Colas and all these different kind of drinks. But that's what we was to go from there. | 31:58 |
| Horace Mims | And traveling, this is the reason why in back in years and years ago, when people got ready to travel, they would cook a lot of food because they know there wasn't nowhere they could stop and eat. And this the reason why on the bus, I think they've cut it out now, from bring a whole lot of food on, but people used to—They were leaving here and going to New York, or Washington, or wherever, they'd cook them a whole big box of food. Because if you got hungry, you couldn't go nowhere to eat. And if you go off in—Some people travel in automobile, going from here to Washington or New York City, or Connecticut, anywhere, they'd fix a great big box of food. And then when they'd get hungry, they'd stop on the highway somewhere and eat because you just didn't go in those places. | 33:02 |
| Horace Mims | Just like I say, weren't no Blacks. The Black people did not have eating places on the highway, like the—You know? You'd find very few Black place, I mean they're run by Black. You can find all these Wendy's and all these other place, but at that time it was just a few places on the highway and they was operated by White. You didn't find no Black places. You'd have to go to some little town, and probably get lost, and go way down there somewhere and find a little hole in the wall. But on the highway, you didn't find no places. | 33:55 |
| Horace Mims | And I can remember, this was in the '30s, going from here to Raleigh. I used to work with a guy, we did tree service work. You know? Working on trees and different things like that. And they had a couple of places on the highway where you could eat. So one day, me and him was coming from Raleigh and he said, "Let's stop and get something to eat." I said, "Stop? Where you going to stop at?" See, we had quit working, he had had him a couple of drinks. But he said, "We can stop up here, in this place up here." I told him, I said, "Man. You know? I can not go in there and eat. And I'm not—" | 34:32 |
| Gregory Hunter | He was White? | 35:11 |
| Horace Mims | —Yeah. He was White. And I said, "Now, you know I can't go in there and eat." He said, "How come you—" I said, "You know what I'm talking about." Because me and him, we'd talk, because we—And he said, he was about to aim high," he said, "Well, I'll tell you one thing." He said, "If I get up here and I run this car into this bridge and kill both of us," he said, "If we go to Hell, we can eat together." He said, "If we go to Heaven, we can eat together." I said, "No. That's all right. Let's stay right here." | 35:11 |
| Horace Mims | Because I mean, me and him, we'd travel. We'd just travel. Sometimes we'd drive all night, to get to different places to do the work. And every time, we'd eat in his car, whatever. But just like I said, during that time there wasn't no places on the highway to eat, except for White. You could get some, but you got to come back outdoors, to go around to the back to get it. And I wasn't going to do it. I said, "I'll just wait until I get home, before I—" | 35:42 |
| Horace Mims | And so this is what I ran into a lot of times. I know it, one time we was going down to Charlotte, on the other side of Greensboro, down there. And it was late that night, so I had drove all that evening and everything. It was about 2:00 in the morning, so he said, "I know you're tired, because we—" and he said, "I'm going to drive some." And we went to this place. Yeah. I think, as I was saying, we was on our way to Charlotte and about 2:00 in the morning. And so he said, "I'm going to drive some now, so you can get you some sleep," so I gets in the back and lay down and went to sleep. | 36:11 |
| Horace Mims | And we stopped at an all-night service station. And four or five White guys standing out there, so they come out of the car, and they looked, and they seen me laying the back, asleep. And they woke me up, they said, "What that nigger doing back there sleeping and you driving?" So he told them, he said, "Man, we work together." He said, "He been driving all day, so he done got sleepy, so I'm driving." So they looked—But see, now, I'm supposed to be driving and he ain't supposed to be driving. | 36:57 |
| Gregory Hunter | Hmm? | 37:30 |
| Horace Mims | I'm laying in the back in the back all asleep and everything and he up there driving. And they wanted to know what he doing, ain't back there asleep. So he told them, he said, "No. It ain't nothing like that. We work together." But see, that was something that you had to go through with. | 37:31 |
| Gregory Hunter | What year was that? | 37:47 |
| Horace Mims | That was in about '38, somewhere along there. It was in '39, I think it was. But see, that's what I'm saying, it wasn't just up until here, it had been just a few years ago. First time I said. Well, I said, 30 years ago had just been a few years, it was me because my whole—See, at that time, you see, as I was grown at that time. You know what I mean? For work and everything. | 37:52 |
| Horace Mims | But that was some of the things that's coming up in the family. Everybody, all Black people then, most of them, were poor. And we just worked and we shared of things, of whatever we had to share. And it wasn't know little Yous and big Is at that time, until they speak. But now, the people, they've accumulated and some of them have prospered a lot. And some people can't stand prosper. So some people, when they prosper a little something, they get big-headed and they don't want to look back at you. | 38:23 |
| Horace Mims | And see, the White man, he's always been—So I don't care how sorry a White man was, he was the one going to talk against the other one. He didn't want to be with him now, the White man, he hated to be around him, what you call a cracker. But between you and that cracker and you, a Black man, he was going with that cracker. You know what I mean? | 39:08 |
| Gregory Hunter | Yeah. | 39:31 |
| Horace Mims | /He was going on with him. He just don't care how poor he was, but he was not going to turn against him, for you. I don't care how bad he was, he wasn't going to turn against him for you. | 39:32 |
| Gregory Hunter | Yeah. | 39:50 |
| Horace Mims | So this what it is, coming all up through the years, up until now. And we said now that I can see, sometimes now we run into it. It's a lot different. And one thing, see, people always have said—You know? We used to think you go to New York or somewhere, there weren't no—You know? Everything was all right, or whatever. But anywhere that you go, certain places you're going to run into hate. I know, I had an uncle that lived in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. | 39:50 |
| Gregory Hunter | Where in New Jersey? | 40:36 |
| Horace Mims | Perth Amboy. And I'd go up there to see him. And so he was a contractor, he had trucks, things of contracting. And he told me go through some neighborhood. He said, "Don't be caught in this neighborhood when it gets dark." But see, nobody thought that in New Jersey or New York or somewhere. But you see, they're different in that area. In the south, they let you know. But those, some of those places, they cover up. You know what I mean? But you know where you could go. And you know where you could and you couldn't. You know that upfront. But some of those places, they was so—And you didn't know it, until you have lived around there long enough to know it. | 40:39 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. So he told me, he said, "There's some." He took me to some place, because of him being a contractor. He had four or five trucks. You know? He done hauling and contracting jobs, so he know where all the places was because he had been there for so long and everything. And by being in business. He knows all them places, New York, Philadelphia, and—You know? As I say, he was a contractor. | 41:40 |
| Gregory Hunter | Hmm? | 42:02 |
| Horace Mims | And so he finally gave it up. They got that place, when he first went into business. Because he used to be in the clothing business too. And he said he would hire me, a Black guy to drive, to haul for him. And when they weren't making nothing, he said they were ready. I was ready to go to work. And all the time, we had work. But after he started making that good, big money, they work two or three days and they told him, "Man, I can't work today." But when they weren't making nothing, they would work every day. But after they got through, where they making about $100.00 a day, they work two or three days, got them $200.00 or $300.00. And they weren't going to work, until they spent that money. So it got too hard. And by him getting older, he just gave up all the trucks, except one. | 42:04 |
| Gregory Hunter | Who is this man? | 43:01 |
| Horace Mims | Oh. He's dead now. His name was Harvey. | 43:02 |
| Gregory Hunter | White man? | 43:04 |
| Horace Mims | No. He was Black. He was my uncle. | 43:04 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh. Your uncle? | 43:04 |
| Horace Mims | Mm-hmm. | 43:04 |
| Gregory Hunter | What was his first name? | 43:04 |
| Horace Mims | Harvey. | 43:04 |
| Gregory Hunter | Is his last name Mims? | 43:04 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. He's my uncle. That's the reason I say, when I'd go up there, he'd take me to those places. | 43:05 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh. I see. | 43:06 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. He's my uncle. And so I still have a cousin that lives in Perth Amboy. | 43:06 |
| Gregory Hunter | Do you have a middle name? | 43:06 |
| Horace Mims | No. Just Horace. H-O-R-A-C-E M-I-M-S. | 43:06 |
| Gregory Hunter | Sorry. M-I-M-S? | 43:06 |
| Horace Mims | Mm-hmm. | 43:09 |
| Gregory Hunter | What's your date of birth? | 43:09 |
| Horace Mims | April the 12th, 1919. | 43:09 |
| Gregory Hunter | And what city were you born? | 43:09 |
| Horace Mims | Well, I was born in the rural area, up in Mebane. | 43:09 |
| Gregory Hunter | That's M-E-B-E-N? | 43:09 |
| Horace Mims | M-E-B-A-N-E. | 43:09 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh. Okay. And you're married right now? | 43:09 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. Mm-hmm. | 43:11 |
| Gregory Hunter | What's your wife's name? | 43:11 |
| Horace Mims | Leonia, L-E-O-N-I-A. | 43:12 |
| Gregory Hunter | And her middle name? | 43:14 |
| Horace Mims | No. She just—No. She was Crawford. Leonia Crawford Mims, that's the way she put all the time. | 43:28 |
| Gregory Hunter | Crawford is her maiden name? | 43:28 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. Crawford was her name before she married me. | 43:28 |
| Gregory Hunter | And what's her date of birth? | 43:36 |
| Horace Mims | 1924. December the 19th. | 43:39 |
| Gregory Hunter | Okay. And where was she born? | 43:40 |
| Horace Mims | She was born in Durham. | 43:40 |
| Gregory Hunter | What does she do? | 43:45 |
| Horace Mims | Well, she's retired too. She used to work different places. Hospitals, domestic work, and different things like that. | 44:43 |
| Gregory Hunter | What was your mother's name? | 44:54 |
| Horace Mims | Emma. She died in a car accident. | 44:57 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh. Oh. Okay. Do you remember when she died? | 45:04 |
| Horace Mims | I believe it was '62. Or—I got all them here in the—I think it was '62. | 45:05 |
| Gregory Hunter | Do you remember when she was born? | 45:05 |
| Horace Mims | No. I got those things, they're in the Bible, and there's different things around here. Like I don't know the date—Because back in those days they didn't keep birth records. They didn't— | 45:20 |
| Gregory Hunter | When do you think it might be around, 1890? | 45:33 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. 18—Somewhere along there. | 45:34 |
| Gregory Hunter | Yeah. | 45:34 |
| Horace Mims | Because I have one Auntie was born in 1910, but she was older than she was. | 45:47 |
| Gregory Hunter | What was your mother's maiden name? | 45:48 |
| Horace Mims | Dewl. See, she was a Mims. My dad was the name of Mims, but her name was Dewl. | 45:52 |
| Gregory Hunter | What? | 45:57 |
| Horace Mims | D-E-W-L. | 45:59 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh. Okay. And where was she born? | 46:00 |
| Horace Mims | She was born in Chatham County. | 46:05 |
| Gregory Hunter | Chatham County? | 46:06 |
| Horace Mims | Chatham. | 46:08 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh. Oh. Oh. That's North Carolina. | 46:09 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. | 46:13 |
| Gregory Hunter | And what did she do? | 46:15 |
| Horace Mims | Well, she was a domestic—She worked—Just like I said, I was telling about the green season factories and things. Well, that was mostly her work. She worked in the green season thing, but during off-season she worked domestic. See, like I said, back in those days, that's what the people depended on, that season work, whatever, thinking about that, that's what they—But after season work was over, see, anything they could find to do, until that season work started up again. | 46:16 |
| Gregory Hunter | Hmm? | 46:42 |
| Horace Mims | But most of the time, what she done then was domestic work, when the season was over. | 46:42 |
| Gregory Hunter | Hmm? What was your father's name. | 46:47 |
| Horace Mims | Oscar Mims. | 46:49 |
| Gregory Hunter | And what year did he die? | 46:54 |
| Horace Mims | He died in—I had so many people that died right along in there, I didn't—I had about five people, four people, that died in the '60s. It was '60. '60, I believe it was. | 47:01 |
| Gregory Hunter | Hmm? | 47:13 |
| Horace Mims | '59 or '60. I forgot. | 47:16 |
| Gregory Hunter | Okay. | 47:17 |
| Horace Mims | Just like I said, all of those dates, we got them in a book or something over there, but I— | 47:17 |
| Gregory Hunter | Hmm? | 47:21 |
| Leslie Brown (?) | There it is. You got it. | 0:01 |
| Gregory Hunter | Hello. Oh, okay. I once was lost—oh, all of mine are going into the red, huh? Well, son, I tell you—What if your—if it's always going into the red? Every word I say. | 0:08 |
| Karen Ferguson (?) | Turn the record level lower. | 0:23 |
| Leslie Brown (?) | Record level lower. | 0:24 |
| Horace Mims | Because you got to—Back in old days, people didn't keep birth certificates. Most of the people born in those days when I was born, in back then, they wasn't born in the hospital. Either had what they call—these ladies that go around and to deliver babies. In old days people wasn't born in hospitals. Especially Black people. | 0:30 |
| Gregory Hunter | What did they call those ladies? | 1:00 |
| Horace Mims | I can't get it out, no, right now, but—What did they call them ladies that used to go around, what did they call them? What they call those people used to—women used to deliver babies? | 1:03 |
| Speaker 5 | Midwives. | 1:14 |
| Horace Mims | Midwives, midwives, that's right. That what they call them. Midwives. That's what most people, back in the '20s and '30s, and 1800s, back then they had the midwives. They didn't keep no birth certificates. | 1:14 |
| Gregory Hunter | What—where was your father born? | 1:34 |
| Horace Mims | He was born in Chatham County. | 1:38 |
| Gregory Hunter | What did he—he was a farmer. | 1:45 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. | 1:45 |
| Gregory Hunter | What else did he do? | 1:49 |
| Horace Mims | Well, sawmill and different things. People done different things. They didn't have one occupation. They just worked whatever, at that time, farming, sawmill, and railroads, and that was the biggest industry for Black people. | 1:50 |
| Gregory Hunter | Do you have brothers and sisters? | 2:08 |
| Horace Mims | They were, all my brothers, all of them passed. Like I said, all of them passed in Hartford, all of them. | 2:14 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh, okay. What were their names? | 2:19 |
| Horace Mims | One of them, two of them passed. One of them was injured in an automobile accident, but the rest of them—one of my brothers passed in Hartford. His name was Ulsey. | 2:22 |
| Gregory Hunter | How do you spell it? | 2:31 |
| Horace Mims | U-L-S-E-Y. | 2:35 |
| Gregory Hunter | You remember when he was born? | 2:45 |
| Horace Mims | He was born—Well, they had his birth certificate I think. Him and mine were kind of mixed up, but he was born in 1920. | 2:47 |
| Gregory Hunter | Do you remember what year he died? | 3:04 |
| Horace Mims | He died in '90, I'm pretty sure it was. I had too many—all that's in a book in there. We got it in a book, and all of them just passed, started— | 3:10 |
| Gregory Hunter | Was he born in the same place? | 3:18 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. My sisters, all them, they were born—one of them was born here and the other two were born in Chatham. | 3:20 |
| Gregory Hunter | And but your brother was born in Mebane? | 3:30 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. | 3:33 |
| Gregory Hunter | What are your other brothers' and sisters' names? | 3:38 |
| Horace Mims | One of them, Anna B. Adams. Married name. | 3:45 |
| Gregory Hunter | Do you remember when she was born? | 3:53 |
| Horace Mims | All of them birthday back in—you didn't keep no birth certificates, all of them. She was—I'm about four years older than she is, so she was born in somewhere around '24, something like that. | 4:00 |
| Gregory Hunter | And then she died in a— | 4:12 |
| Horace Mims | She died a year before last, in '92. | 4:13 |
| Gregory Hunter | She wasn't born in Mebane? | 4:19 |
| Horace Mims | No. She was born in Chatham County, all of them. | 4:19 |
| Gregory Hunter | How many other brothers and sisters? | 4:19 |
| Horace Mims | Mary Magdalene Stewart, she was born in Durham, and one of them, Ella May Bryant, she was born. | 4:31 |
| Gregory Hunter | Ella May? | 4:39 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. | 4:40 |
| Gregory Hunter | Bryant. | 4:40 |
| Horace Mims | Bryant. | 4:41 |
| Gregory Hunter | They were born around the same time? | 4:46 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. About a year or something like that different. | 4:47 |
| Gregory Hunter | When did they die? | 4:51 |
| Horace Mims | Ella May, she died in '89, I believe it was. And- | 4:53 |
| Gregory Hunter | Mary Magdalene? | 5:02 |
| Horace Mims | —she died in about '85 I believe, somewhere along. All of them just a few years now, all just— | 5:03 |
| Gregory Hunter | They were both born in Chatham? | 5:13 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. | 5:15 |
| Gregory Hunter | So you were—were you the firstborn? | 5:21 |
| Horace Mims | No, I had one got—in an automobile accident. He was the oldest. He was born in 1910. | 5:24 |
| Gregory Hunter | That was— | 5:30 |
| Horace Mims | You don't have his name. His name was Owen Green. | 5:32 |
| Gregory Hunter | Owen Green? | 5:37 |
| Horace Mims | Mm-hmm. | 5:37 |
| Gregory Hunter | And how long ago did he pass? | 5:41 |
| Horace Mims | This was in round about the late '60s, somewhere around there. | 5:42 |
| Gregory Hunter | Was he born in Mebane? | 5:51 |
| Horace Mims | No, he was born in Chatham County, too. See, most of them were born in Chatham County. | 5:52 |
| Gregory Hunter | So you were the second-born. | 6:00 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. | 6:01 |
| Gregory Hunter | You have any children? | 6:04 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah I have three, two girls and a boy. | 6:06 |
| Gregory Hunter | What are their names? | 6:08 |
| Horace Mims | Her name Willie Lee Murphy, she's a— | 6:11 |
| Gregory Hunter | When was she born? | 6:16 |
| Horace Mims | She was born here in Durham. She was born in 1942. | 6:16 |
| Gregory Hunter | And the others? | 6:16 |
| Horace Mims | Doris Mims, she was born in 1943. | 6:18 |
| Gregory Hunter | And the third one? | 6:19 |
| Horace Mims | Horace Junior, he was born in 1952. No, '55. I get all them tangled up. All them birthdays. (laughs) You get old as I am, you won't be thinking like that either. You might think, "Well, he can't hear," but you get 75 years old, especially behind two heart attacks. | 6:35 |
| Gregory Hunter | Wow. Do you have any grandkids? | 6:58 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah, I have one, two, three—five, I have five grandkids. | 7:01 |
| Gregory Hunter | What was the first place you lived in? When you were younger, the first place, in Mebane? | 7:01 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah, Mebane. | 7:01 |
| Gregory Hunter | How long did you live there? Till you were about— | 7:27 |
| Horace Mims | Off and on till around about 15, 16, something like that. That was off and on. | 7:31 |
| Gregory Hunter | That was 1929? | 7:32 |
| Horace Mims | Something like that. '30, something. Off and on, I was from here to there. | 7:42 |
| Gregory Hunter | And where did you live after that? | 7:50 |
| Horace Mims | I lived Washington, different places. But I got married in Portsmouth, Virginia. I was living in Portsmouth, Virginia, time I got married. | 7:54 |
| Gregory Hunter | So you lived in Washington, D.C.— | 8:01 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. | 8:02 |
| Gregory Hunter | How long did you live there? | 8:05 |
| Horace Mims | Good while. During that time I was doing a lot of traveling, going places. | 8:07 |
| Gregory Hunter | And then you lived in Portsmouth. | 8:13 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah, Portsmouth, Virginia. I got married in Portsmouth, Virginia. | 8:23 |
| Gregory Hunter | And then after you left— | 8:23 |
| Horace Mims | Came back down and— | 8:23 |
| Gregory Hunter | How long did you live in Durham? | 8:28 |
| Horace Mims | Off and on about 65, 70 years. About 65 years. Off and on. Because I came back here. I been living here, but I came back in '42 and I been living here ever since. I lived here, but from place to place. | 8:41 |
| Gregory Hunter | What was the name of the school you went to? | 8:53 |
| Horace Mims | Byrd School, B-R-Y. | 8:55 |
| Gregory Hunter | B-Y-R-D? | 8:55 |
| Horace Mims | Yep, B-R-Y-D. Mm-hmm. When I was living in Portsmouth, Virginia, it got—it wasn't no place for lodging. It was just so crowded with service people. At that time, was just so crowded you couldn't find a decent place to live, and so came back here, and when I came back in is when I started work at American. Been here ever since. | 8:57 |
| Gregory Hunter | And that was really—the carpentry work was your first job. | 9:35 |
| Horace Mims | Construction, yes. Doing construction work, yeah. Building bridges and everything, and anything. Highways, whatever it took. | 9:41 |
| Gregory Hunter | That was here. | 9:45 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah, I—all around, Roxboro, Mebane, Burlington, just anywhere. Contract anywhere you can do a job here, and leave and get through it, you finish up and go some other place. | 9:46 |
| Gregory Hunter | And you did that off and on for— | 10:03 |
| Horace Mims | Quite a few years. | 10:04 |
| Gregory Hunter | Starting about 19— | 10:04 |
| Horace Mims | '30. In the '30s. '35, '34, somewhere around there. | 10:04 |
| Gregory Hunter | Then you went to the tobacco. | 10:13 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah I went tobacco in '42. American Tobacco Company, incorporated. | 10:14 |
| Gregory Hunter | And that's in Durham. | 10:14 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah, yeah. That's in—but you seen where they building the ballpark— | 10:30 |
| Gregory Hunter | Right over there. | 10:32 |
| Horace Mims | —right down. That whole entire—all of that belonged to American. | 10:33 |
| Gregory Hunter | When did they tear it down? | 10:37 |
| Horace Mims | The building hadn't been torn down. It was the parking lot where they building that ballpark now. That was the parking lot. Right behind the parking lot is where that big building from one corner to another, that was the factory there. American Tobacco Company. So you ride by there sometime, and just look over there where they building that ballpark, and you'll see the building over there. You have to go round. Used to be you could go straight in front of the building, but they got it blocked off, since they were building that park. But you can go around and you can see the whole thing. Circle round, you can see the whole factory. You just ride by there sometime and just check it out then you can see what of it. | 10:40 |
| Gregory Hunter | And after you retired from tobacco, what— | 11:17 |
| Horace Mims | No, I haven't done nothing. | 11:17 |
| Gregory Hunter | And you're Baptist, right? Have you always been a Baptist? | 11:17 |
| Horace Mims | Yeah. | 11:17 |
| Gregory Hunter | Have you been with Lincoln for a while? | 11:17 |
| Horace Mims | 30 years. | 11:45 |
| Gregory Hunter | Were you with a church before that? | 12:00 |
| Horace Mims | I wasn't a member of the church, but I used to attend different churches. I used to attend Methodist church down on South Alston Avenue. But my membership, where I became a member— | 12:05 |
| Gregory Hunter | You mentioned you were part of the union at your work. AFL-CIO. What other organizations have you belonged to? As far as physical community. | 12:15 |
| Horace Mims | Well, I belonged to that union. I'm a member of the Elks. That's the only other, just like we have a usher union, we have all denominations that usher union, and it's all denominations. We don't exclude nobody. Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Holiness, whatever, because just—That's churches all different part of the state of North Carolina, all over North Carolina. Have some in the union in Virginia. Now a convention comes up in August. We have a convention every year and this year's— I forgot where the lady said—well, last night we had a meeting, but— | 12:53 |
| Gregory Hunter | Oh, okay. | 13:39 |
| Horace Mims | —I forgot where she said we're going to be. | 13:40 |
| Gregory Hunter | Okay. | 13:41 |
| Horace Mims | But I used to attend all of those conventions, but in the late years a lot of us older people, we don't do too much attending, because as I said, by having these two heart attacks, and at times I just don't like to go off two or three days. In other words, because we used to have a three day, and it's only two days. | 13:42 |
| Gregory Hunter | Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Any kind of favorite saying or phrase or quote, or anything you like to say that you would like to let me know, or have people know, that you would like to lead with? | 14:02 |
| Horace Mims | I can't think of any specific thing. Because you got so many different phrases of things, but right now I don't have any. I can't think of anything right now. | 14:21 |
| Gregory Hunter | Uh-huh, uh-huh. I think if you don't have anything more to add, that I'll turn off the tape. | 14:50 |
| Horace Mims | No, I don't have anything more to add. But when you go through this and certain different things I've said, and be in contact with other people, with older people, senior citizens, you will find things—that what I've said you'll probably hear it repeated, because anybody 75 years or older, they have traveled the same roads. We all have traveled that same road. So I hope and pray that you will take heed to this, because you have the chance and the opportunity to go forward to be whatever you want to be. Whereas as I was saying in my coming up, we had to strive for what we could get, and a lot of times we didn't get what we wanted, to be what we wanted to be. | 14:51 |
| Horace Mims | Because when we got the chance—education now—Before I retired, the certain thing that I would want to do, with my educational background I couldn't, because it had passed. And this is the reason why, when I became—they started—whenever you got 60 years old, they would begin to ask you, "When are you going to retire?" Because you can retire at 62. Machinery had advanced so much that they didn't need us, because we didn't have the education or the background to operate different types of machinery. Because machinery is taking over the manpower. | 15:46 |
| Horace Mims | And some machines I had at American Tobacco Company, where they had four people had to look after that one machine, they cut it down to where one person can operate. In other words, they joined two machines together. And one person could operate both of those machines. So therefore they were cutting back on the labor, replace it with machine. So this is the reason why now you need that specific, like they used to say a long time ago, the pigskin. If you don't have that, you ain't get nowhere. That used to be a word they used some years ago, when educating first begin to take over. They'd ask you, if you don't have that pigskin—sheepskin, you don't have it, that was it. If you had the sheepskin, you could get it, but if you didn't. That was advertised in some years ago, called—like you say, how old did you say you was? | 16:33 |
| Gregory Hunter | 23. | 17:29 |
| Horace Mims | This was when you weren't even hardly a thing. Because it been 10 or 15 years ago when this was really coming out. So now I'm glad you learn a lot from talking to older people. And what we are telling you is not something we made up. It ain't no hearsay. I can't tell you just like I use this for nothing. Nobody can tell me—You can't tell me how a drunk man feel if you have never been drunk. You know how he look, you know how he act, you know how he smell, but you don't know how he feel. (laughs) So. | 17:29 |
| Horace Mims | I mean it might sound—that's the truth. If you haven't ever drank any whiskey and never been drunk, how you—look at, he looks like he's drunk, he smell like he's drunk, he act like he's drunk, but you don't know how he feel on the inside. So this is one reason why, and I'm going to let you go, this is one reason why when we talk—several people that we know had heart attacks. And people can say, somebody never had a heart, "Oh I know how you feel." You ain't never had no heart attack. | 18:17 |
| Horace Mims | You can say, "I hate you feel like that," whatever, if your heart ain't never been busted, you don't know how it feel. You can have companionate compassion, but seeing somebody else that had a heart attack, we can talk to each other, because we all had that same big experience of going into certain different things. And that heart attack. You can't, if you never had one, don't say, "Well I want to have one, to see how it feel." Uh-uh! (laughs) Don't you do that—you don't never—with self-respect, you don't never want that feeling, because you know when that thing, I looked at mine, they monitored it, beside the bed, and I could look at it. Said, "You want to see it?" | 18:48 |
| Horace Mims | And I could see how my heart was functioning. And just to think, now if this thing knocks off, it's something that you don't—to look at, I could see my heart, how it function and everything, and but when you look at that in there, and that thing is doing this like a valve or something, without that—You can take off this arm, this hand, finger, I can go ahead on. You can't take that and say, "Well, I'll just go, and you can ahead on," uh-uh (negative). Just something, experience that you'll never forget. You don't never get tired of talking about it. Because everybody who had a heart attack, 9 time out of 10, when they start talking to you, before it's over they going to mention something about it. | 19:33 |
| Horace Mims | Because just something—For many people, they have them, never be able to tell it. So that's the way it is. Like I said, somebody else, when you talk to somebody that's a senior citizen, they might tell you something, but when it come down, it all going to gel right together. It might take a different tone, or different thing, but it all adds up to the same thing. You might work a problem one way, but we're all looking at the same answer. | 20:28 |
| Horace Mims | You might work a problem, five and five are 10, one way, whatever, eight and two are 10, or five and five are 10, or seven and three are 10, but you look for 10, you don't care what, you looking for 10. You might, like I said, you might say, "Five and five are 10, seven and three are 10, eight and two are 10, six and four are 10." That might be the way you write it. I might write it five and five are 10. But you want 10, you looking for that same, regardless of what number you use. Ain't no percent, you got to—it all adds up to 10. | 21:00 |
| Gregory Hunter | I really appreciate it. | 21:33 |
| Horace Mims | I enjoyed doing— | 21:37 |
Item Info
Related Items
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund