Tillery Community Center interview, 1993 June 24
-
Download
- Rights
- Files (2)
-
MP3
Part 1
-
MP3
Part 2
- Please be patient with media downloads. They are often large files.
- Share
Loading the media player...
Transcript
- Download transcript as:
-
Text
-
PDF
-
WebVTT (includes timecodes)
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
| Chris Stewart | And your address and where are you living right now? | 0:01 |
| Chris Stewart | And we can start to my left. | 0:05 |
| Clarence Hedgepeth | Okay. Sit down? | 0:12 |
| Chris Stewart | Just your name. | 0:13 |
| Clarence Hedgepeth | Oh, Clarence Hedgepath is my name and my address is Halifax Route One, Box 162. | 0:14 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay, Mr. Hedgepath. Thank you. | 0:30 |
| Clarence Powell | Clarence Powell. And the address is Route one Box 50 B Halifax 27839. | 0:32 |
| Gary Grant | Gary Grant. (laughs)Now do you want the mailing address or you want the street addresses as they ask us when we write a check around here? | 0:46 |
| Chris Stewart | I want where you want to be from. | 0:56 |
| Gary Grant | I want to be from Tillery. So I'll give you the PO Box Tillery Rural Route. Halifax. | 0:58 |
| Chris Stewart | Thank you. | 1:03 |
| Leslie Brown | I'm Leslie Brown and I'm with the Center for Documentary Studies. (laughs) | 1:05 |
| Kara Miles | I'm Kara Miles and I'm also with the Center for Documentary Studies. | 1:10 |
| Vera Guy Plummer | I'm Vera Plummer, Route 1 160E Halifax, North Carolina 27839. | 1:14 |
| Martha Arrington | I'm Martha Arrington, from Phoenix, AZ. You want my zip code? | 1:24 |
| Leslie Brown | Address? | 1:26 |
| Martha Arrington | 943 South [indistinct 00:01:34] Drive, Phoenix, 85441. | 1:33 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I'm Mildred Whitaker. Route 1, Box 164 Halifax, NC, 27839. | 1:38 |
| Mildred Edmond Moore | My name is Mildred Moore. Rural Route 1, Box 260. Scotland Neck, North Carolina. | 1:48 |
| Detrica Cheryle Hogan Royster | My name is Cheryle Royster, I live at 8414 Winands Road Pikesville, Maryland 21208. | 2:03 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | My name is Dorothy Cannon. My mailing address is post office Box 94 Scotland Neck, North Carolina. And my zip is 27874. And I was born and raised in Tillery. Yes. Okay. | 2:13 |
| Chris Stewart | And my name is Chris Stewart and I know most of the people here at this table and I'm also with the Center for Documentary Studies and I don't have an address yet, but I will, sometime. (others laugh) | 2:34 |
| Chris Stewart | We'd like to start off by asking those people who have come to share their memories with us. What kinds of work your family did when you were growing up in this area? What kinds of work did you family do? | 2:47 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | [indistinct 00:03:09] and vegetables. Sold vegetables. | 3:08 |
| Chris Stewart | Where? | 3:15 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Where? They sold them in Scotland Neck and Enfield, and any place—Rocky Mount, they would go all the way to Rocky Mount and sell on the street to the houses. I remember going up to the back doors of houses. I remember so much. My mom would take us every other child, like every Saturday she would take a different child and who I would hate so bad sometimes to go around house is what I had to do. | 3:21 |
| Chris Stewart | What would you do with the houses? | 3:47 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Sell vegetables to the people. | 3:50 |
| Chris Stewart | Would you knock on their doors? | 3:53 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yes, we sent out and knock on the door. Sometimes she would mostly go door to the door and then we can come back out to the top trouble. And they would come out. | 3:54 |
| Chris Stewart | Who else? | 4:03 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | My father, was a sharecropper, he farmed. He did not own a farm and it wasn't a good experience for me to be on a shared property because always used to wonder why I didn't move. When some of my friends, they owned their own farm, they stayed in their home and I could not understand why if I wasn't able to stay in my home like my friends. So to farm and be on a share crop farm is not a good experience. | 4:12 |
| Susie Nevilles Weathersbee | Sharecropping and farms, they really didn't treat us right. | 4:48 |
| Chris Stewart | What do you mean, Mrs. Weathersbee? | 5:02 |
| Susie Nevilles Weathersbee | When, you farm, you share crop, you have to run them down to get your money. And [indistinct 00:05:17]. | 5:05 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | My family share, we were I guess little works. Oh we were what you call day labor. We worked for everybody and I started working in the field chopping and this summer when I was six years old and we made $2 and 50 cents a day. | 5:26 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | My day started at five o'clock in the morning because I had to get water, get wood. So grandma by the way, my grandmother raised us, who is now still living, she's 104 and we had to be ready to leave the house by six 30, which meant we started work at 7, and we never got off from work until six. At six years old with my grandmother and her sister who is now deceased. Her name's El Clara. I made 2050 cents a day when I graduated from high school in 1955 I was still making 2.50 cents a day. And that sometimes unnerves me to think someone could work all those hours and for whatever, just a little bit. I went to Philadelphia and I have since moved back to Scotland. | 5:49 |
| Chris Stewart | Where did you farm? Where did you do the day labor? | 7:07 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | Okay. We worked for, I don't think we worked for your family. Did we? | 7:09 |
| Gary Grant | Yes you did. | 7:13 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | Okay. We worked for— | 7:14 |
| Gary Grant | —With. With. (laughter) | 7:14 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | With? As far as I'm concerned it was for. | 7:14 |
| Gary Grant | No, it was with. (laughter) | 7:14 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | Mr. Grant's family. We had a man, we worked with Mr. Grant's family, the Marrows. We also worked for a lot of White families in the area. I can remember one was a Mr. Madrick, Mr. Martin. | 7:22 |
| Gary Grant | HH Jones. | 7:42 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | Yes. With Mr. Jones. Okay. I didn't remember specifically but I think that's all. These are the only ones I can remember | 7:42 |
| Gary Grant | So that we can have some understanding of the difference of working with and working for. Tillery also has what's known as a resettlement community out of which I come and I think you are also, there are three sections to the resettlement community where African Americans were actually buying their own land and people have come to resettle from as far away as Florida and as far north as Virginia. So we also worked on the farm because that's what our parents were doing. But there was a difference in the work because we worked for ourselves. And the reason that I say that, Dot, stop calling me Mr. Grant, that Dot worked with us was because we were in the field as well. My brothers and sisters, we were in the fields as well. | 7:51 |
| Gary Grant | Whereas with the White families, the White children were not in the field. So you were literally working for, and there were some 350 families who settled in what's known as the New Deal resettlement community here. And my experience was we were able to be educated because my parents had a scheme. You go to school three days this week and two days next week. Whereas some people sitting at this table, if they were on sharecroppers and somebody can pick this up, that you stayed home two weeks if that's what it took. Three weeks. | 8:48 |
| Mildred Edmond Moore | Three weeks. I stayed home three weeks as long as three weeks straight. And by the time I got to school I was there one week and then had to stay out the next three weeks. I was way behind everybody so far and had the one that could go to school. They were so far and it was hard to catch up if you were a child that could not catch up fast. It was very, very difficult. You'd all said that Sting because she was so far behind and it's just put a lot of stress. I mean stress, very discomfort, very unhappy. You just stay unhappy because you want to be there. You want to learn but you couldn't because you couldn't eat it and it is very hard. And my father stayed, they had to work further very hard. The second of the family and worked very hard was mostly girls so it was only two walls in the family. So the girls had to stay there to help my father. | 9:27 |
| Chris Stewart | Mr. Hedgepath, you're nodding. Do you remember this? | 10:29 |
| Clarence Hedgepeth | Yes ma'am. I really do. | 10:32 |
| Chris Stewart | What can you tell me? | 10:34 |
| Clarence Hedgepeth | Well, see, when I came along, we worked on the farm sharecropping. And we worked there for our own part that we had for ourselves. We worked, we finished that then we helped some of the other neighbors in the neighborhood, we know where I needed from help and we'd go out and help them and they wasn't paying a dollar a day at the time. A dollar a day, a child didn't get about 75 cents and the grown people, you got the dollar, okay, they go and help one, they finish them, they go help somebody else. And sometimes we had to get somebody to help us come rain. We couldn't chop over our, we had to have somebody to help us get over our crop and after could get over about time to go back over the fresh again and we chopped all through July and chopping over about three times and we plowed over every week we went over everything. We had every week plowed. Now its just a different time. | 10:38 |
| Chris Stewart | Do you remember— | 12:00 |
| Clarence Hedgepeth | Family don't never go in there to plow. | 12:00 |
| Chris Stewart | Do you also remember school, Ms. Moore was talking about school? | 12:01 |
| Clarence Hedgepeth | Oh yes. The children, we went to school more than the rest of the children in the neighborhood cause my mama didn't care what the man said. She just said my child going school. | 12:10 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | Sure did. | 12:18 |
| Clarence Hedgepeth | And so that's the way he met. We made good properties connections and she kept us in school most of the time. But me and my older brother, the one older than I and we had to do the farm plow. Daddy, he got his back got out of shape when he was young and he wasn't able to do no plow. He plowed it wouldn't be over half hour, hour he would have to stop. So one of us had to stay out in school every day. If I didn't stay out, my brother stays out. I would caught up plowing. We go to school every day. Most of them went to school. My sister's brother, all of them finished high school. Two I believe, yeah, two all of them finished high school. | 12:20 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | Out of 12 two. | 13:12 |
| Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, out of 12 two and all that went to college was two. | 13:16 |
| Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, all but two that didn't go to college. And all of them behind the home. All of them behind the home. | 13:21 |
| Gary Grant | I think it's important that we understand that when we say we stayed three days or we stayed two days, that you're not talking two consecutive, you're saying this week I go to school Monday, Wednesday and Friday next week I go Tuesday. | 13:47 |
| Clarence Hedgepeth | That's right. | 13:58 |
| Gary Grant | And you would rotate with your brothers and sisters so that the crop and the farm could keep going. | 13:59 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | Just to touch base on what Mr said, we were blessed as Gary, my grandmother, even though she was elderly, always believe in education and she always told the story. The White man said to me, Patty, where are your boys? She said, I would say in school like yours because kids were supposed to work on the farm. I mean until last month she told this story. So I'm really grateful that she had the insight and she raised my nephew when she was 70 some years old. And because I think of course she had some help with Mr. Grant and played an important role in this young man's life. Consequently today he, it's just about nearing his PhD studies and I contributed to the fact that my grandmother, that's right, who knew, who had no education at all was able to see beyond far as innocence. | 14:05 |
| Chris Stewart | Ms. Vera, when we were talking a few days ago, you were telling me about how different it was before you went to the resettlement farm. Can you talk a little bit about that for me? | 15:22 |
| Vera Guy Plummer | Before we went to the resettlement farm in the early years of my life, my father had a very good job and when the depression came, everything went down and he lost the job and that's when he started farming. And I think it was 1927, I'm not sure if it was 27 or 28. And then we had a big family. We had eight children in the family and we started farming and fortunately we started farming in Enfield North Carolina and we farmed but we did share cropping from 1928 through 1937. | 15:35 |
| Vera Guy Plummer | And during those years we sharecropped with about four different farmers, big farmers. And of course by us having a big family and a lot of boys, we had a four horse farm, we had four horse, real big farm. And my brothers being older than I, they caught the brunt of the word. And it was fortunate that after the cotton was picked and the peanuts were shipped, then I could go to school and then the boys took care of the best stuff. And so it was fortunate we moved to the resettlement farm in 1938. I think the resettlement farm opened in 1937 because we moved in December of 37. But the actual farming began, the first year of farming was 1938 and that was the year that I graduated from high school. And I was the first one in my family to graduate, simply because I had more time to go to school than my brothers. My brothers were older than me and they did like most of the farm. | 16:13 |
| Chris Stewart | How was the resettlement farm different from the kind of work that you were doing before? | 17:21 |
| Vera Guy Plummer | The thing that I could see different about the resettlement farm, it was a program set up by President Roosevelt and like he said, it was a new deal program and it gave the share crop farmer a chance to own his own farm. And the government set these farms up, but they say 40 acres, acres of unit. But you really got your land, your house, your chicken house, your stables, your cow, your mules, your plows, your pigs, everything you needed to get a start. And you signed a lease to pay the government. And I think they had at the beginning they had a 30 year plan, you had to pay for this in 30 years. And some went through with the program and some did not. Unfortunately my father gave his up because all the boys left home and there was nobody to run the farm. | 17:27 |
| Vera Guy Plummer | My sister and a younger sister even I left home. So it was just two girls to run the farm and he gave his up. But it made you have a sense of well we are going to do something, we are going to have something. Because as long as we were sharecropping, I can always remember my father saying at the end of the year, well we went in the hole again this year and then the last two years that he farmed, the farmer was so angry he said "Mr. Guy, you got to move." And so that's when we moved. We moved from that farm to another farm for one year. And when we left that farm, then we moved into the resettlement farm. And so that was different because you weren't working for the man, you were working for yourself and for what you would have in the future. | 18:19 |
| Detrica Cheryle Hogan Royster | The upper hand was to the sharecropper, I mean to the resettlement farm, my grandfather who was Peggy Johnson, he was known as Pony, was what you would call the overseer of the resettlement farm. And he was one of the first farmers to participate in the program. I would say though that the program for Blacks was still set up for them to fail. And the reason why was because of the record keeping. At the end of the year, the government, what he was in charge of was the government would give you all the grain and everything that you would need to work the farm for that year. But you also had to keep records as to exactly how much you received because you had to pay it back at the end of the year. | 19:10 |
| Detrica Cheryle Hogan Royster | And the reason why I said that the system was set up for Blacks to fail is because they were not equipped to keep the rackets. My grandfather turned his farm back in when my grandmother was an educated woman. So she was the records for him and she died in 1939. So he kept the farm for about another eight years or so. But he also, sold the farm or turned it back over to the government because he was not equipped to keep the necessary records to do the record keeping that it called for. | 20:08 |
| Leslie Brown | Tillery Farms. Tillery Farms was established for Blacks and there was another farm called Roanoke Farms which was established for Whites. Could you talk about the difference between the two of them? | 20:52 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | I don't know the difference. Gary knew but unfortunately he is gone. | 21:03 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I don't know really the difference, but I know what I can remember that for the Whites they usually got the things that we always asked for. | 21:09 |
| Mildred Edmond Moore | Didn't they have bathrooms. And we didn't? | 21:21 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yes. And think oh they had bathrooms and we would ask for these things and they never came. | 21:23 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | I think we had a spot in the house for a bathroom. We were discussing this during the retreat and that was one of the things Gary pointed out as we were touring. | 21:28 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I remember by a place called Darlington about that way they were mostly Whites and we had, I mean mud, these roads were terrible. Those people got roads, I bet you 20 years before we got in roads. 15 at least of 20. And they would tell us that we couldn't get them. That there wasn't enough families around and just anything they could just throw us off all the time. And then I learned that they got roads, they got paved roads, all their roads were paved. So that was a big difference. | 21:40 |
| Vera Guy Plummer | Well I can't tell too much about the difference in the farm because we moved in 38, well we started farming in 38 and I left home in 41 and I think it was like 43. My father gave up the farm and went back to Enfield to live. But I can remember during the time we lived in Enfield we lived on this farm and when we moved in there the man told my father was very smart, he was a genius at math. Plus he got his educated himself. He never went to school after he was 12 years old and he told him he was going to plow with him. But at the end of the year my father could see by us having a big family that he had used most of the stuff 'cause he had his own record. But then when things started coming out and he started gaining something like the man says, I don't give people flour, you can eat potatoes for bread. | 22:18 |
| Vera Guy Plummer | This is the way they said it to the farmers. And a lot of the farmers were eating potatoes for bread. We got what we wanted from the commissary and that's why it took more to take care of our family. We had eight children and another child was born during that time, so it was nine of us and my mother and father, and we had a big farm but it took a lot to take care of the children. | 23:09 |
| Vera Guy Plummer | And so I can remember some of those things. And then the last two years that we farmed, I think with this particular man, my father cleared out of a whole year's work a hundred and some dollars and he was dissatisfied. Then the next year he cleared more. He cleared almost a thousand dollars and that's when he told him you got to move because my father kept saying, he knew what he was doing and he could put his figures against the farmer figures and all that's very clear to me. And of course and when we moved in the resettlement farm, the main thing I can't remember is what we didn't have enough room and they had to build an extra room and we didn't have electric lights, we used kerosene lamps. | 23:32 |
| Clarence Powell | I sit here, I'm a little different. I was a little different. I never lived on a farm, always lived in the city. But I used to pick beans when I was 15, 14, 15 years old in Florida. But we never, where I came from, the town I came from, the Blacks never had nothing to do with the Whites. But I mean to go to them for anything to, go to their store or go to their market or go mostly anywhere to their theaters or entertainment. We had all of that in West Palm Beach where I was born. | 24:14 |
| Clarence Powell | But as you say, I worked on a farm, I picked beans for about three years. When I got 16 years old, I went to what they call the CC camp and my father left my mother with four children and I was the oldest so I had to get out and I went to the CC camp. My mother came to New York City and I stayed. I stayed in the CC camps 18 months. But I came back to Florida and I left Florida in 1936, 36 or 37 and I went to New York and I stayed here all my life and since I moved then I came back here to stay and been back here for about eight years now. | 25:04 |
| Kara Miles | Well we've talked a little bit about working for Whites. What kind of contact as a child did you all have with Whites and what did you think of White people growing up? | 25:55 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | Excuse me. That's okay. In my childhood we were kind of a sheltered family. You mind your own business. We knew if we go to this place, here's a door over here for color, here's a door over here for White. We didn't dare go to that door if you wanted to stay out trouble also, here's a water fountain you drink out of this fountain, the White person drink out this. We knew all of that. My mother and father taught us to respect all of that. But they also taught us, you are no less than any human being on earth. | 26:09 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | And I want you to always remember that you are just as good as anybody that goes on the face of the earth but you mind your own business and you'll stay out of trouble. And we got along very well. And the biggest thing we had to do with the Whites was just working with them on the farm. Because even the, what you call him, the man that owns the farm, the farm owners, his children would work when they felt like working. They would work right along the side if they felt like it. But they were taught that I'm inferior, we treat them as inferior. And of course we never got into a lot of trouble because we just kind of stayed out of trouble. You taught to stay out of trouble. | 26:43 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | Well I was going to say basically the same thing that she said that our mother and father taught us to respect them but they also taught us that we wasn't much as good as they would. And so we got along fine cause my mother used to do housework, she used to do some washing and ironing for them. And they seem to respect them. They always respect our family. Seemingly they did and we respected them but we knew distance to go, you know where to go Cause they taught us everything. | 27:23 |
| Chris Stewart | Mrs Weathersbee, you're nodding your head. Do you have anything to say about this question? | 28:07 |
| Susie Nevilles Weathersbee | [indistinct 00:28:26] And all did and I got my old good ever since I was this every morning just like the how was talk. The only thing I like about child want you to call him nothing. He called you by your name? | 28:29 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | Yeah, they were honest. | 28:56 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Aunts. And so I got no good. | 28:56 |
| Chris Stewart | Did you ever not call by anyone, by Mister? Did you ever not call by Mister? | 29:05 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I called him Mister. I called all Mister. | 29:17 |
| Clarence Powell | You know in Florida where I came from. It was a little different too. I'll tell you why. Because the section that I came from, west Palm Beach and across the rate across the lake was Palm Beach. During that period of time, the Kennedys, I remember where the Kennedys lived, I remember where the Dodgers lived, all the big, the Rockefellers, I know where all those people lived. They didn't live far from where I lived at. Only all separated us was the lake and they had all the property there. But the reason why we didn't have too much conflict with the White because that was tourism and all the tourists came down there in the winter times and they didn't want no conflict down there while they was there. And the people down, the White people down there treated us very well. Never had no problem down in especially West Palm Beach. But I can't say that about Miami. | 29:17 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | I think primarily we didn't have problems Cause there everybody said we knew our place and we all know if we didn't know our place. We had problems and we still had problems. And we down here have a story to tell that Philadelphia and it definitely is not only Philadelphia most communities, but I think primarily the reason we didn't have problems because we did what we were supposed to do or we were taught. My grandmother was different. She had problems all her life. She was determined as Susan say, she was determined. If you said to her to call a kid Mr., she would tell you pointblank, "I ain't calling him Mr. Nothing." Yes, she has always been outspoken. A nonconformist. | 30:16 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I always resented that Mr. while they used to say yes sir, yes no. And I resented that total. That's one the time I remember my father scolded at me because I did not say yes sir, yeah or no. And I said yes and no. I would refuse to say it because I said he wasn't saying it to him. Why do I have to say it to him? When it was small children on the farm, they was honoring them. And my father was much older than they were, nobody wasn't on him. So I resent now we didn't see it that I could not deal with. But as a whole getting along with them, we didn't have any problems because we knew our place. | 31:29 |
| Detrica Cheryle Hogan Royster | Like to interject something. Now I was born in Maryland and as a child I learned the hard way that you didn't talk back to White people. When my grandfather was sharecropping on Mr. Wells farm, I, but I'm on Mr. Wells farm over there in Whitakers. Told my grandfather Polly, send that boy here. I was about seven or eight and I told Mr. Wells, thank you all that child is not yours. You can't well tell my grandfather, send his child to he like that. I got a whooping for it. My mother said let get the strap back. So consequently I learned what she was supposed to do. But of course I was like my cousin, I have not changed to this day. I just learned how do it a little bit more dignified. But I still get my message across. | 32:27 |
| Clarence Powell | I considered during that period of time in 1936 when I went to New York, when I got to New York City, I considered New York City as 10 times worse segregationist than the north because I never but never, you can believe me, running into no conflicts in Florida with the White people by segregation. First time I ran into it, when I went to New York City, I ran into some terrible things in New York City and I thought it wouldn't be there. But I found it there. | 33:37 |
| Leslie Brown | Do you remember what some of the segregation laws were? | 34:19 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | I remember one. But Black and White could not sleep under the same roof. Now I don't know to what extent that was, but I give you an example cause I'm sure who was a minister and who had relocated Philadelphia. He came down with White, a White part of the White congregation of course Black people too and pitched his tent and he had 24 hours to get out of town. That was one of the laws. Of course, as it said, you did not go in certain waiting rooms. Restaurants. Now I guess there were laws, I don't know, but it's the way it was. Restaurants, you always went to the back. You were not allowed to take a seat. You took your food out as I recall. And some of the time they didn't serve you. Some places like if you go to movie you had, we had to go upstairs. They sat downstairs. You couldn't go to the restaurant, you couldn't go any place where they was Whites. You could not participate in anything as long as Whites was there. But now I don't know if these were the laws. | 34:25 |
| Kara Miles | Listen, the thing I think, I don't think necessarily that we thought of as laws versus you knew your place and the key word is you knew your place. And for our ancestors to survive under the time, say his mother went, and this is what they taught us, how to make it in a White mans society and be successful without letting him know that you are being successful. | 35:45 |
| Kara Miles | What happened to Blacks who didn't know that place here, Ms. Arrington? | 36:19 |
| Martha Arrington | They were lynched, [in indistinct 00:36:30] they were lynched, they were shot and nothing happened to the person who did it. Am I correct? | 36:28 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | Well I guess it me the severity of not knowing your place, that kind of thing. For example, my grandmother did not know her place but they lured her for some reason. | 36:37 |
| Martha Arrington | Yeah, but they got her son. You say see you have to look. | 36:52 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | They did kill her son. | 36:56 |
| Martha Arrington | They killed her son. And nothing happened to the person who did it. | 36:56 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Right. | 37:00 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | But I don't know if that was a result of her outspokenness. | 37:04 |
| Martha Arrington | Outspokenness? Yeah. Yes it had, it played a part in it. | 37:08 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | That was before my time. | 37:08 |
| Chris Stewart | What do you think Mrs. Weathersbee? | 37:08 |
| Susie Nevilles Weathersbee | He shouldn't have shot him. Shot him on [indistinct 00:37:26] from where I stand, he shot him one night and then find people were hauling home in the field and they found him the state. And he had made that all that nightand drug him from Cherry down Spring Hill where I stayed in. | 37:19 |
| Martha Arrington | That's four miles. | 37:41 |
| Susie Nevilles Weathersbee | They didn't do nothing about. | 37:42 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | I think that was part of the reason my grandmother stepped out of character because of that situation. | 37:47 |
| Chris Stewart | Now, do you think the reason why her son was killed was because she [indistinct 00:38:10]. | 38:10 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | I don't know what she had to do though. [indistinct 00:38:15] I don't know what it was, but he run all last day and he got here and down behind the White folk house [indistinct 00:38:30] and Mr. know right behind they. | 38:22 |
| Chris Stewart | How did Black people react and what happened when that happened? | 38:33 |
| Susie Nevilles Weathersbee | How'd we act? | 38:33 |
| Chris Stewart | How did you react? | 38:34 |
| Susie Nevilles Weathersbee | We didn't like it but told us there was nothing we could do. He had this man had a stove, I called his name Mr. Mark this Eddie Mark that's what we put. | 38:47 |
| Gary Grant | That wasn't his real name. | 38:48 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Huh? That's what the name we put on him. | 38:48 |
| Gary Grant | Ain't nobody. You'd have to search. This man, you would have to really search records, find his true name. I know his real name but I'm not going to say it. | 38:48 |
| Chris Stewart | The reason why I asked that question about how did Blacks react to it is obviously it was really painful. | 39:20 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yes it was, yes it was. | 39:29 |
| Chris Stewart | How did you heal? | 39:31 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I felt bad that night. | 39:32 |
| Mildred Edmond Moore | I think one of the things that happened back then is people were told this is right and this is wrong. And it was the White man's rule and what the White men said you do or you get in trouble. And I think the people, if they had anything, they were afraid to do anything or afraid to speak out. And a lot of the punishment was done to the Blacks because they did speak out. | 39:33 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | That's right. | 40:02 |
| Mildred Edmond Moore | And I can remember but even as late as the fifties when they first started talking about the segregation and I came home and my father was so against desegregating in school, he was so happy. And I said, well I don't want to see it. I said, because it's always going to be discrimination in the school. They had all the schools in this area when I was a child were for Blacks were labeled as color graded schools. And the White schools didn't have an adage in front. They were just school, but we were colored graded school and all the colored or Black, what they calling them now went to the colored graded school. You didn't dare set your foot into the White schools, which were much better equipped than the schools that we had. And I don't know exactly when they stopped puting color graded on the Black schools. | 40:04 |
| Mildred Edmond Moore | I think I was away from here then. But I knew it was a thing in North Carolina. Everywhere the Blacks went to school, it was a colored school or a colored hospital that it was labeled at just like the restroom. This was for the colors. That one felt White. And so I can remember all of that and I was very unhappy when they started talking about it because it was still a lot of lynching and burning people, what they call it, burning that state when they make the big long fire and throw them on there alive and just burn them up and all that kind of stuff. | 40:56 |
| Mildred Edmond Moore | And I often tell my kids, they say, mother, you never watched Roots. I said, I grew up with Roots. I saw Roots when I was growing up. The only thing about it, we didn't go out much. We didn't have as much direct contact with White people as a lot of people did. But I seen Roots. I saw Roots when I was growing up and I didn't need to sit down and watch it over again on the movie because a lot of the things that they portrayed, it just makes you angry to know that all of these things went on and it makes you angrier when you know have witnessed some of it. You have seen some of them when you were. | 41:29 |
| Clarence Powell | Asked us to question how do we feel about our brother today? Do you understand what I said? I say ask the group, which we are talking here, ask us the question, how do we feel today about what happened to us through the White folks? That's what I want. | 42:10 |
| Dorothy White Cannon | I was going to comment on the healing as far as I'm concerned, there has been no healing process. It has just been a way of life. And it's in some areas saying, speaking about my grandma, she has never healed. About a month ago she was telling me a story and she becomes very emotional and came alive when we talk about it, how her grandmother was enslaved and the monsters knew, stomp her foot and they said, you better not cry. And of course she still tell the story and then she'll say, but you know what, this ain't no slavery time now. And if anybody step on my foot, not only anybody not going to cry, I ain't crying. I'm going be, but she, she's still has that anger and she will tell you point blank, I hate White people. It's just as simple as, I mean that's her opinion how she feels. And apparently she has her feelings but me, there has been no healing process. Grandma, I'm sure there has been a healing process. I don't know. | 42:37 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I don't, there's no hate there for me. I do not hate you because my mother always taught us not to hate regardless of what color, who you are. Because we all God's children, oh, this is what my mother always taught us. So I don't have hate, she always said love do not have any color. And she wanted us to love. She wanted us to know who we were but not have hate because she couldn't. Can you have so much hate? I think it takes control over. And she did not want anything of hate to take the control, to take the place of love. She was very loving person. She taught us love. | 44:12 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | So that's why I do not hate, I do not hate anyone like White, whatever they may be, as long as they're not mistreating me. I deal with a person according to how they treat me. And I try to forget about those days. I can't forget about it that it happened. I cannot forget about it. But I do not let it stay in my heart that I deal hate up from. So I try to just go my life daily without thinking about those days and try to make today better than yesterday. | 45:00 |
| Susie Nevilles Weathersbee | And love will come all the days. And when you love, if you don't love, you don't love God. You love God, you love, I love everybody. White color or what, I love 'em. I can't hate what the Lord gave me, I cannot hate. And I cannot do the same wrong to no one. If speak to somebody and think I hurt their feelings, I can't rest that night. And if I see them again, I'm about to beg them pardon. She told me that love will carry you for money. Me. | 45:32 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well, I remember, going back to this farm thing— | 46:32 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | It would just be our nerves. So if you do that and things were going downhill, well we start going downhill. So then he decided that, well, I'm going to have to go into work. After we farm, we decided we could sell our farm. And he was going off to work because he could get a loan, because he was a veteran. | 0:01 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | So he decided we would just sell our farm. And guess what we got for our farm, how much money, and we were so happy, at that time, $500. And the man paid us one day before, December 25th, he paid us the 26th. And we had to go, I had five children, and then we had to go and buy the Christmas for the children. And I was waiting all that time for him to sell with us about the money. And we got $500. And we stayed then and turned around and started renting from him. | 0:24 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | But my husband died in February, and I always knew he had a heart attack. I always knew that it was depression that he gave it to him, of having to sell that farm and all of that. So he went to Newport News, and he was working with helping with the brick mason. He wasn't a brick mason, but he was helping. And he was helping. | 1:05 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And I remember I got the letter right then, that he said, "I hate so bad to be home from my children. And you all. I got a job. I'm making $1.25 cents per hour. That's what he was making. And he came home in February and he died. One night after he came home, he had a heart attack, a massive heart attack. And we had $500, and we had cleared that farm. | 1:27 |
| Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | You remember Clarence? That nice farm. So that's just the way it went. But then I was smart enough to get me a house. So I went, and after he died, I saved up for five years and just rented the house. Then I bought me a house, in the W, right across on the other side. I bought me a house and added to our family of six. | 1:55 |
| Chris Stewart | I want to thank you all for spending some time with us today. This has just been really wonderful. And I think Jennifer's going to want to talk to some people directly for—And we'd also like to introduce the rest of the team. I don't know if everybody's gotten a chance to meet the rest of the team, but also introduce the rest of the team too. In the green in the back? | 2:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | I'm Karen Ferguson and I'm one of the researchers on the team. | 2:55 |
| Chris Stewart | And well, let's just introduce all these people back here, shall we? | 3:01 |
| Darlene Arnoth | I'm Darlene Arnoth, and I work at the Center for Documentary Studies. And we're sponsoring the project that this team is doing. | 3:06 |
Item Info
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