Ernestine Clemmons (primary interviewee) and Grace George interview recording, 1993 July 30
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| Karen Ferguson | Maybe we could begin by you telling me a little bit about the community in which you grew up and about the people you grew up with. | 0:01 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, I grew up here in James City, and I'm not too far from where I was born. | 0:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 0:37 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | The community is the same, but the older people that I remember, majority of them is dead. | 0:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 0:37 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But the few still living, but not—It's just a few. All I can remember that I grew up here and my father and mother, they had a grocery store. | 0:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, they did? Okay. | 0:44 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My daddy truck farmed right down here. | 0:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 0:51 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | He and my uncle, they had a truck farm and had a grocery store here in James City, the one in New Bern. | 0:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 0:55 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | For a while, till he got sick, after the banks and everything closed and he stopped taxing. He taxied years ago. | 1:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Taxied? Oh, okay. | 1:17 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | He had a taxi, taxied from New Bern to James City, and he had a grocery store. The one in New Bern, my mother and him, in fact she was the one that run it in New Bern, and in James City, my uncle runs it right up the road here. | 1:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 1:37 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | He run that one. They truck farmed and sold vegetables here in New Bern to the grocery stores. | 1:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 1:43 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | When I was young, I used to go to, I'd sell the vegetables, go around the street, a little pull wagon. | 1:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 1:57 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Pull it from over here to New Bern and I would set it around the street from house to house. After that, we took orders from Ricks store and different stores in New Bern and all, and we delivered. Gather and go out in the morning, first thing in the morning and wash string beans and stuff like that. We would take it and deliver it. | 1:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 2:26 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | In the wintertime, in the fall of year, raised collards. | 2:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 2:28 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Collards and fall vegetables. I used to, still after a year, I used to go to school right out here. | 2:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 2:48 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | First, we went to up in Brownsville, they had something like a hall, and the children used to go had a private, you call it your private old man, Mr. Sawyer. He used to teach us. That was before I was old enough to go to public school. | 2:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 3:06 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | When the public school, they built this school down here. That was the first school, public school James City had. | 3:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. Before that, people were going to school, there was somebody who was teaching privately here? | 3:20 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. | 3:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 3:27 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Was an older man, he used to be Sawyer. | 3:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 3:29 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | When it comes to the public school, this was the first public school that James City had that I know. They said they had one years ago back before I was born, but anyway. This was the first school that I ever, when I was six years old or seven, this was the first school. | 3:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 3:54 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Public school. I think I went in first grade to this school right here, out here in James City. It ain't too much. My mother, she used to, in the old James City, this ain't the—Old James City's over there. | 3:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 4:12 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | The community there, my mother, I always lived in this community over here where they got the bypass. | 4:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 4:20 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That was our home set right there in the middle of that. | 4:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. That was considered old James City? | 4:24 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | This to Scotts Creek Bridge. | 4:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 4:30 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | From the New Bern Bridge to Scotts Creek Bridge, that was supposed to be James City. | 4:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 4:35 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | All that area was James City, and when you cross Scott Creek Bridge coming over this side, this was Brownsville. Over here was Meadowville. | 4:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 4:47 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Over there was—That was Meadowville. This is Graysville. | 4:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 4:52 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | The little community, this wasn't James City. | 4:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 5:00 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | This wasn't county, James City. James City was supposed to be over there from New Bern Bridge to Scotts Creek. | 5:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. But it was still on this side of the river. | 5:08 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | James City was on Neuse and Trent. | 5:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Oh, okay. Along— | 5:16 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | On both sides. | 5:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. | 5:22 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | On Neuse and Trent. | 5:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | It was right along the water? | 5:22 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | The what? | 5:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right along the water, along the river? | 5:23 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. The whole place, it was the whole community. The old James City, clean out to Madame Lane, wherever call that. | 5:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 5:33 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | From there, the old mill and mill on the side, the men work to the mill and the women mostly work out in service for two-three dollars. | 5:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 5:50 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | A week. As I growed older, my father lost his health. He still, up until he died his truck farmed and taxied until he died in 1940. | 5:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 6:06 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My mother, in the old James City, she had a cow and she would take the milk and sell it to the people in James City. | 6:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 6:26 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Take it, and I'd go with her to around these different people's houses and sell the milk. | 6:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. | 6:32 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | All in all, the whole thing James City and Brownsville. Now they say this is James City, but this is always been Brownsville Meadowville, and Grayville. | 6:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, when you talk about these different places, what were they like? Were they small communities or? | 6:50 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Just like it is now. | 6:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Okay. | 6:57 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Only it was more people. The people that was back then, the majority of them is dead. | 6:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 7:04 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | These are their grandchildren and great grands just living here now. | 7:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 7:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But this place has always been just like it is now. | 7:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Quite thickly populated? | 7:14 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. | 7:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 7:14 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | James City was populated thicker than over here because over here, the people, they was buying a lot, leaving. They would treating them like they had to leave James City, and a lot of people was trying to buy lots and houses— | 7:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Over here? | 7:36 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Out over here in Brownsville. | 7:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 7:38 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | The biggest majority was in Old James City. | 7:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 7:43 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Most of the people, till they started building, buying these lots from Meadows and building their own house. | 7:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | When did that change come? When did people start doing that? | 7:53 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, when was it? About the late '30s. | 7:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 8:00 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It was in the '30s I think, because they built the school in, I think it was in '29 or something like that. Wasn't it? | 8:07 |
| Grace Green George | [indistinct 00:08:13]. | 8:11 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | James City was thickly populated in the '30s. | 8:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Why were people having to leave? | 8:16 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, why they was having to leave because the people said they didn't—See, the way I understood it from old people years ago, James City and the Civil War, that the federal government give James City to the Black people, the Black soldiers because they fought with the federal. | 8:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 8:46 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They was supposed, if they come to James City, they were free slaves. People that could make it from the other parts of the state and other places, they would come to James City. | 8:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 9:02 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well when they come to James City, they were supposed to be free. | 9:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 9:06 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, they build their homes with what material they had, and as the people come, they build up their home. But why they had to move is because the White people said that the property didn't belong to them. First, they started wanting to charge them rent, and the people filed against paying rent because they figured it was their own home. | 9:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. | 9:37 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Then they couldn't get them out that way, so what they did, they wouldn't let them fix up the home. You stay there, but the homes would go down, go down. | 9:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 9:49 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But you actually, and at the time you had to move. They forced them out like that. | 9:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. Now was it because did people not have a deed to the land? Can you remember? | 9:56 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, I don't know. | 10:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 10:03 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I'm just getting it from the old people. | 10:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 10:08 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | People that come here, some of their parents, some of them was born right in slavery. | 10:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 10:12 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I used to talk when I was young, I used to love to go sit and talk with people, old people like that, talk about slavery and what they had to do. But the majority of the people, they had to try to build what they could. When they started to force out, a lot of people said that, now Grace's grandmama said that she was some of the last one to leave James City. | 10:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Really? Okay. | 10:37 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | A lot of people just didn't believe that they had a right to take it from them. | 10:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. | 10:46 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | All this new stuff about it belong to somebody else, I don't know nothing about that. I just got all my information from old slave people. | 10:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. Now how about the communities like Brownsville? Were those communities founded by Civil War soldiers as well? Black soldiers? | 10:57 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | What? | 11:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | You lived in Brownsville? Is that right? | 11:13 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | This is Brownsville. What they did, Meadows, I think Meadows, far as I know, they bought the property from Meadows. The Meadows, they had a fertilizer factory down there in the county. But all this land, most of all this land was owned by Meadows. | 11:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 11:33 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | The people, they sold it in lots. | 11:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 11:37 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | The people, I think they sold it about $100, $200 a lot. Whatever they paid for the lot, they would construct, the mill was out there. People would get lumber from the mill and Black cobblers or whoever and build a house. That's how these people bought these lots and built these houses. | 11:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, did Brownsville exist as a town before those people started to buy those lots, the people pushed out from James City? | 12:03 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I don't think. Far as I can remember, it was just a few houses. | 12:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 12:16 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Now, my family, my father come from Leesville up here, and lot of people bought the lots and stayed there for they forced people out of James City. | 12:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. | 12:33 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | There was a little community, a few people that bought a lots. Then after they started putting the pressure on them in the old James City, then the people started to find a lot. Yeah. | 12:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, were they all Black people who lived here originally? | 12:45 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. | 12:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Okay. And all these other people? | 12:48 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Only White people that live in Old James City was the people near the mill. | 12:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 12:59 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Surrounding the mill, and the rest of the people was all Black. | 12:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. That was a lumber mill, right? | 13:02 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. It was two of them. | 13:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 13:05 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Two mills. | 13:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 13:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Then they had another mill, three mills all together on the Neuse. Is that the Neuse over there, ain't it? | 13:09 |
| Grace Green George | That's the Trent. | 13:15 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It was two mills on that side. On the Trent, it was one. | 13:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 13:19 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | One mill. | 13:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 13:21 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That's where Black people worked to these mills. | 13:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 13:25 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They worked, a lot of them bought the property over here and built the houses. | 13:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. | 13:33 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That's where this generated from. | 13:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now what do you know about your own family? Do you remember your grandparents? | 13:36 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No. I remember, see my grandfather, he was from Wilmington, North Carolina. He never lived here. | 13:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 13:50 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My mother's, and my grandmother and grandfather on my father's side, they were dead before I was born. | 13:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. Now, and they came from Leesville, is that right? | 14:02 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My father's family from Leesville. | 14:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 14:06 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Right down here. | 14:07 |
| Grace Green George | Where was grandma from? | 14:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | [indistinct 00:14:12] Huh? | 14:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Where are your grandmother's people from? | 14:15 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | All right here. | 14:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right here. Right, right where we are? | 14:20 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My grandmother's family right in James City. | 14:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 14:23 |
| Grace Green George | Halifax County. | 14:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | In Halifax County? | 14:25 |
| Grace Green George | Can I speak? | 14:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, sure. Sure. | 14:27 |
| Grace Green George | You remember you talk about grandma's people in Halifax County? | 14:28 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, see my mother, that's what I was getting to. | 14:32 |
| Grace Green George | Okay. | 14:34 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My mother's family come from Halifax County, and my grandmother on my mother's side was an English White lady. | 14:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, your grandmother? | 14:47 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My mother's, my great-grandma. | 14:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 14:53 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My mama's grandmama, and her father's grandfather was a Indian chief. | 14:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 15:03 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My mother's people that wasn't here in New Bern. They were in Halifax County, and her father's people in Wilmington, North Carolina. That's where she was born, in Wilmington. | 15:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, did you ever hear stories about this great-grandmother or the Indian grandfather? | 15:19 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. I went up there. My mother took me up there. | 15:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 15:25 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I know a lot of them, my relatives on my mother's side. | 15:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, were they Haliwa Indians? | 15:31 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Huh? | 15:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were they Haliwa Indians? | 15:33 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | What was? | 15:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Cherokee? | 15:37 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Cherokee. | 15:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Okay. | 15:40 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Up in Halifax County. All her people was half White, half Indian, and then they married Black people and mixed it up. But the background of my mother, her mother was half Indian, half White, and she was some of the first missionaries to come. My grandmama was a missionaries to come to James City with, what is the? | 15:41 |
| Grace Green George | Catherine? | 16:17 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Rena and Ms. Carrie. | 16:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 16:20 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They was the White missionaries that come here, and shortly after they come, my grandmama come. | 16:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 16:27 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | She brought Mama. Mama was two years old when they brought her here. | 16:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now what? | 16:34 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My mother died when she was two years old with malaria. Okay. She didn't believe in doctor, so she wouldn't take medicine and stuff. | 16:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 16:47 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | She died. | 16:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 16:49 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Miss, what is the lady's name? | 16:49 |
| Grace Green George | Catherine. | 16:52 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It's Catherine [indistinct 00:16:55] She was the cook for their people, and so she took Mama and adopted her. | 16:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 17:04 |
| Grace Green George | This was a Black lady. | 17:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Now this was your mother's mother. | 17:06 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That died. | 17:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. She brought your mother here from Halifax County? | 17:11 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Here, when she was two, yeah. | 17:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 17:14 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | From Wilmington. | 17:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | From Wilmington, okay. | 17:16 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | She was two years old. | 17:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 17:18 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My grandfather was a preacher. He was in Wilmington. | 17:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | All right. | 17:22 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | She was a missionary. | 17:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Now back to Halifax County for a minute, you said your great-grandmother was a White woman? Is that right? | 17:27 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | She was an Englishman. | 17:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Now, did they ever? she was White, your great-grandmother? | 17:35 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. | 17:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Did people ever talk about that, because usually you hear about people having grandfathers who are White slave owners. | 17:41 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Up in Halifax County, the old people, they all dead now. But my aunt, my mother's, grandmama's aunt, sisters and things, I met them and she looked just like an Indian chief. The nose and dressed like that. All of them had long, straight hair. All of them wasn't looked like Indian. They looked like they had hair White. | 17:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 18:10 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They were White. They had a really light complexion. | 18:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Now that English woman she married the Indian, is that right? | 18:16 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | She married the Indian. | 18:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. Okay. | 18:19 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Indian chief. | 18:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 18:24 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | He was the chief. | 18:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | All right. | 18:24 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That's all I could hear when I was in Halifax, when Mama took me up there and I was real small and I met all of my relatives. I was the darkest person in the whole family there. Everybody. Right now you go up there and meet them, they all mixed up right. | 18:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 18:50 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | A lot of them in Halifax is still there, but my great-aunts, and I met all them, my great uncle. | 18:52 |
| Grace Green George | Tell them their names. Do you remember their names? | 19:02 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Melissa was one of my great-aunts. Melissa Silver. Where was my— | 19:06 |
| Grace Green George | Your uncle? Uncle [indistinct 00:19:21]. | 19:19 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I can't think of his name. | 19:19 |
| Grace Green George | Uncle Lemon? | 19:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Uncle Lemon? | 19:19 |
| Grace Green George | Lemon? Was it Uncle Lemon? | 19:19 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Uncle Lemon. | 19:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 19:19 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That was my great-uncle, and Queenie, Aunt Queenie. | 19:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 19:28 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That was my great aunt. I had another uncle, a great uncle. I can't call his name, but he was the one that just like a Indian hisself. | 19:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 19:44 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | There was two brothers and my mother, grandmama, and two more sisters. | 19:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 19:53 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | All in all, I think it was five of the children. | 19:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 19:57 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My mother's great, my great. | 19:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now you said your grandmother came here as a missionary? | 20:04 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yes. Yeah. Here in James City. | 20:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kind of mission work was she doing here? Do you know? | 20:10 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, far as I know, she was teaching the Bible and teaching the school. The place where they had up in James City, it was in James City where the missionary had the school. | 20:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 20:26 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They would teach children, little children the alphabets and stuff and teaching the Bible and stuff, far as I know. | 20:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 20:38 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That was years ago, but it was still was Francis Dudley, Reverend Dudley's wife. She still, when I grow up in all them years, she still, the place had the little chairs, some of the little chairs they used way back there for the chairs. | 20:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now on your mother's side of the family back in Halifax County, were they slaves? I know there were a lot of free people up there. | 20:57 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I never heard tell no slaves. They owned their own land and everything up there. | 21:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Okay. | 21:08 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I don't think they were never slaves. | 21:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 21:15 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Up to the day I went there, they own oodles of land. | 21:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Really? | 21:18 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Their children is still on it now. | 21:20 |
| Grace Green George | They mostly had Indians and Whites in that area, so I think that might have made— | 21:23 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Don't forget now, Halifax was wealthy. | 21:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 21:30 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | About one of the wealthiest places been. | 21:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | I was just up there. Okay. Now your father's people, what do you know about them? | 21:35 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, all I know is my father's mother, all her family was up here in James City. They were in Old James City, and then they moved from Old James City. All I can remember, my great uncle, Josh Odin. That was my grandmother's, on my father's side, brother. They were down here, but down in Leesville was all my grandfather before I got to know they said he lived there, and the Fords is still down there. | 21:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 22:21 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It's frustrating with Fords all over here. | 22:21 |
| Grace Green George | Could I say something? | 22:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Sure. | 22:29 |
| Grace Green George | I don't know if you're aware of the sections, Leesville is on the other side of this mall. | 22:30 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Where the shopping mall is. | 22:37 |
| Grace Green George | The shopping mall. | 22:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. I see. | 22:38 |
| Grace Green George | That would've been Leesville area, going from the shopping mall on down. | 22:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 22:43 |
| Grace Green George | That was mostly the Black people in this area, of Brownsville, Greenville, Leesville. | 22:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 22:48 |
| Grace Green George | That was their farm area. When you hear her mention about Leesville— | 22:50 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Put that window down. It's up | 22:56 |
| Grace Green George | When you mention about Leesville, and Brownsville, and Graysville, Meadowville, those are the sections that is the new James City now. | 22:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Right. | 23:08 |
| Grace Green George | The old James City is the historical part that they settled in. When you hear people talk, they are speaking about these sections that is right in the area. It was owned by all the Blacks over here now and was taken by the highways and byways and separated all that. That's what she's speaking. It's right in the same vicinity. | 23:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 23:26 |
| Grace Green George | But it extends all the way past, way past the mall, all the way down to the car dealerships and all. | 23:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 23:32 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | There's a lot of Black people still there. | 23:32 |
| Grace Green George | They still pushed in the back. | 23:35 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They own their own property. | 23:36 |
| Grace Green George | Own their property, all of that land. | 23:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now when you were growing up, now what did people in Old James City do for a living? Were they farming, doing truck farming as well or were they? | 23:40 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No, most of the people in James City worked in the mill. | 23:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, right. Okay. | 23:54 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Then most of the women that worked, they worked out in White people's houses. | 23:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now did they go over to New Bern to do that, or could they stay? | 24:03 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | What? | 24:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | To work in people's houses? | 24:08 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. | 24:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | They go to New Bern? | 24:11 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | New Bern. | 24:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Now you said when you were growing up that you liked to talk to the old people about slavery. | 24:12 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. | 24:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kinds of things do you remember them telling you? | 24:20 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, all they would tell me about how the family, they had to be sold. When they were little children, they'd take them from the parents and sell them like you sell a horse or things, sell people like that. Then if it didn't do what they say, they whoop them just like they were children. They said it was some people had something good, they call them masters, and some of them had just didn't care what happened to them. All they wanted the money, and they would have to go out there and work and a slave. Then, I hate to say this, but they said when they had young girls, Black young girls, when the girls grow to misses, the master had a son or something, they would make him go with this Black girl. That's why so many different color of children. But they used to tell me all of that, and they said some of them didn't even, some of the children never know their parents. Cause the parents when they were born and that they sell them and they didn't know who were the parents, who the parents was nothing because they were so young they couldn't remember. They said when they come to James City, a lot of them died on the way trying to get here, but when that got here, they made their homes there. | 24:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | People knew about James City, the ex-slaves knew about it to come here. | 26:16 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. | 26:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 26:21 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They would try to get from Southland different places to get here to New Bern. They said they would come and try to get to come here where they could be free. | 26:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 26:35 |
| Grace Green George | Even before Emancipation. | 26:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 26:40 |
| Grace Green George | They had heard about this area because the Civil war was fought in this area. They just took over. They gave up and went away, and so this was the area that the soldier, the Union had settled in. Many of them, from what I understand, would follow the Union into New Bern, and that's how the word spread back behind the lines. | 26:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. Okay. Now on your father's side of the family, were there any people who remembered slavery on his side? Do you know whether on your father's side people were slaves? | 27:02 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well see, the two men in family on my father's side that I know well because when I growed up, it was cousins, but there was younger people. The older people, I never was close to. My father's, while he was living, my uncle was the only one. I was raised up with my father's brother. | 27:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 27:45 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | He lived right in the house with us, and he was younger than my father. | 27:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Was he a bachelor? | 27:52 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | He was a bachelor until he got 50 years old. | 27:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 27:55 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Then he got married after he was 50. | 27:55 |
| Grace Green George | Did you tell him about Papa's stores and everything? | 28:02 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah, I told him about that. | 28:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now how did your family, how did your father and your uncle come to own their land? | 28:08 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, what they did, they got the land I think down to Leesville. They paid little money for it, and then from that they raised vegetables and stuff. Then they bought, just turning the money over how people do. They just used the money to get most stuff. What they would do, Papa would always save his money, and when he wanted to buy something, cars, house, he always saved his money. | 28:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 28:57 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They worked together. The farms, the money come from the farm. They used it, but stuff was cheap. If you count your pennies out right, you could get more you could get right now. That's the way he did. He did it. I never knowed my father know my uncle to work for nobody. | 28:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 29:20 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They always, Papa told me when they first started out, they worked in the mill about a week or two a month or so, until they got a little money and then they start the farming. | 29:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now did he talk about that, about not wanting to talk work for other people? | 29:35 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | He wanted to be his own boss. | 29:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 29:40 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | He and my uncle, they never, they always worked for themselves. Papa was the brain, and they would wait together and everything was half and half. | 29:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 29:57 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | When my uncle got married, then they divided the property. | 29:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 30:03 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But the stores, after a year, the stores, they give up the stores. | 30:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 30:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But Papa kept, both of them truck farmed, and Papa drove taxis till he died. | 30:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. Now the store that he bought, now that was right in this area, right in Brownsville? | 30:24 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | One of them was right up here, not far from where the last street where the bridge, down the end of the street. | 30:28 |
| Grace Green George | Down Old Cherrypoint Road. | 30:39 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That was where one of them, my uncle's house is still there. | 30:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 30:45 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | On the same spot that the store was. Over on Broad Street— | 30:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | In New Bern? | 30:55 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Broad Street, you know where the funeral parlor? [indistinct 00:30:58] But wait, now it comes down. Where that drug store right there. | 30:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. This was in New Bern then? | 31:05 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah, this is in New Bern. | 31:07 |
| Grace Green George | Up by Ramada Inn. | 31:08 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I'm trying to tell her where my father's store was in New Bern. Grocery store. | 31:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Do. | 31:15 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | You know where, what is that Drug store? | 31:16 |
| Grace Green George | I can't think of the name of it. | 31:21 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Where you say y'all go to meet to go shopping? | 31:22 |
| Grace Green George | There's a law office right up in that section. | 31:26 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yes. | 31:28 |
| Grace Green George | [indistinct 00:31:30] Law Office. | 31:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | I think I know where you're talking. | 31:30 |
| Grace Green George | They recently build the building. | 31:30 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It's right beside, I think the lot is still vacant, but it was right there where that church, see where that church is? | 31:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | I think I know what you're talking about. | 31:42 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Between up in there, it was right up in that section. That's where the store was. I remember from a child. | 31:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 31:49 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That's where the grocery store— | 31:49 |
| Grace Green George | Did you used to call it Five Point? | 31:55 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No, it's up from Five Point. | 31:57 |
| Grace Green George | I know it's five Point, but going in that area past Five Point? | 31:59 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No, you're coming up like you're going to Rivers Funeral Parlor. | 32:02 |
| Grace Green George | Okay. | 32:06 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | You know where the church is? It's a church right where the Projects is now. You know where the church is at? The house was sitting, I mean the shop sitting right in that section. I can't put my finger, but it's right, I remember that. The Dixons had a house. That project wasn't there. It was all private homes. | 32:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 32:30 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Papa's store was sitting right in that community, right on Broad Street. | 32:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 32:36 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | The front of it was right on Broad Street, a two story building. I remember it. | 32:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now were there many businesses over on this side of the river, in Brownsville and Old James City? Were there many businesses? | 32:41 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | In Old James City, that was Amos William had a store, and Davis, Old Man Davis. The post office was in James City and down to the foot of the bridge, that old bridge, we come across the bridge, Sawyer Phillips had a store, grocery store. | 32:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. These were all Black-owned businesses? | 33:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Huh? | 33:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | These were all Black-owned businesses? | 33:11 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Everybody owned their own business. | 33:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Okay. | 33:14 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. | 33:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Great. Now, would you say that your family was a little better off than most in this area when you were growing up? | 33:17 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, it was quite a few people, but I think we had a good life. | 33:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Yeah. | 33:31 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | We had a nice home, furnished, and everything when I growed up, I growed up with nice mother than Father. Papa always would try to see that his family was well taken care of. | 33:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 33:50 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Until I got grown, that's before I got grown, he provided for us. | 33:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Okay. | 33:59 |
| Grace Green George | She even had a [indistinct 00:34:02] | 34:00 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Whatever we do with family, like vegetables. He raised butter beans, uncle raised, we helped work it sometimes, and then uncle sell the veggie, we sell the rest. We got so good at it, so he bought us a pony, and we had had a little pony cart. We go around instead of pulling the pull back, we had a little pony to ride. | 34:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | For selling the vegetables? | 34:25 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Huh? | 34:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | For selling the vegetables? | 34:27 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. | 34:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 34:29 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | We had our own little pony cart. | 34:29 |
| Grace Green George | You used to sell them in New Bern, downtown. | 34:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Now, what was the difference between New Bern and James City in those days? | 34:35 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, between me, I never lived in James City. Never. | 34:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | In this area, this Brownsville? | 34:44 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I only lived in this area. | 34:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Well the difference between living over here on this side of the river and living over in New Bern, what was the difference? | 34:49 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | From my part of view, if people over there and if people over there was all the same. | 34:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | They were all the same. | 35:02 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But some people felt different, but to me it's always James. | 35:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 35:10 |
| Grace Green George | But could I say? | 35:10 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | James City. I never— | 35:11 |
| Grace Green George | In my time, I felt that the people in those days lived better over here because they had farm land. Over there, it was almost like a little city that they had to be compensated. You know what I'm saying? | 35:14 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Most of the things— | 35:27 |
| Grace Green George | Were more independent Blacks than over there. I'm sure some of them had stores, but not the way they did in the olden days. | 35:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 35:41 |
| Grace Green George | Because from what I understand, James City used to supply New Bern with their fruits and vegetables. It was an area that they more or less leaned on. They helped them, and like my mom says, they had a truck farm and everything, and she would go out, the parents would go out selling vegetables in New Bern. I'd love her to tell you some of the stories, how she would go around selling the vegetables in New Bern to the people. | 35:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 36:09 |
| Grace Green George | Did you want to tell her anything? How you used to sell the vegetables? | 36:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I care tell you. | 36:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | She wanted to know whether you could tell me some stories about selling vegetables over in New Bern. | 36:13 |
| Grace Green George | When you were child. | 36:17 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, I just told her that. See, we used to sell the vegetables. Papa raised the vegetables, and we would sell it to the stores, wholesale prices by the bushels, bushel basket. We raised white potatoes, everything that they raised vegetables, we raised them. All we didn't sell, we supplied most of the stores in New Bern with vegetables. Then we turn on top of that, we used to sell it just like I say, pull vegetables around the street. We used to get up morning, on Monday morning, we get up and go down the field, pick string beans and gather everything that we had to how the store. By the time the store's open, we'd be ready to put the stuff in the stores. Then up until years ago, we used to raise vegetables. Papa dining in '40, and when he died, we had a big nice crop right down here. | 36:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 37:33 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | We sell vegetables like that. After then, Mama, she used to raise vegetables, we'd sell her vegetables after Papa died and everybody. Then she still would try to keep a little—you know my uncle always would till he died, till he got sick where he couldn't farm. He used to sell vegetables. In fact, our family always was kind of independent on their own. | 37:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. | 38:06 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | We sell, we raised our own stuff, sell it, and whatever happened, it was a family business. | 38:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. | 38:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My uncle and my father. | 38:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, do you remember your father ever having problems getting credit from the bank? | 38:15 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, don't say about the bank. | 38:25 |
| Grace Green George | Tell it. | 38:27 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Papa used to save his money and put it in the bank. | 38:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | He didn't put it, or he did put it in the bank? | 38:30 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah, and he lost it in the bank. | 38:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Was this in the '30s? | 38:36 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. Every penny he had. He had put all his money that he didn't use, all his money in the bank, and they shut the bank up. He didn't get one 5 cents. The majority of all the Black people, this Citizen Bank, I look at it all the time. That's where he put it, in First Citizens. | 38:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 39:01 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | He put his money in there, and a lot of my relatives, older people that I know had their life savings in that bank. They shut the bank up, nobody had a penny. | 39:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 39:15 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | What Papa had to start from scratch. He didn't believe in no more banks. He went and got him one of these old-fashioned banks, on banks. | 39:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, like a safe. | 39:27 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | A safe, and put in his house. From then on, that's where, until he died, he put the money in that bank. Papa said he had so much money because I know when he died, from the time the bank closed up until we know, where he took his money, what he accumulated, he didn't believe in insurance. | 39:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 39:51 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | He said he could save his money as well as the man could save it for him, so he never believe in insurance. When he died, we had to get somebody to open the bank. He had money in there to pay off his bills, had money to bury, I mean a nice burial, and we had enough money to divide up between my uncle, myself, and my sister. He saved that from the time the bank closed up until 1940 when he died. Now you know how much money he had in that Citizens Bank. | 39:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 40:29 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Then they said, "Well if people dead, they go give it to the—" | 40:30 |
| Grace Green George | Heirs. | 40:33 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | To the heirs. I'm 77 years old, and I ain't got a penny this morning. | 40:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Right. Now when Citizens Bank, when people were wiped out, do you think did some people get their money back and not others? | 40:41 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I ain't never heard tell nobody. I know none of the Blacks did. | 40:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Yeah. Do you think some Whites got their money back? | 40:54 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I don't know. Back then, you don't know what's going on, but all you know that the bank, and the bank was right there where they got the library. You know on Middle Street, that big building? | 40:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 41:10 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That's where the bank was. That morning, I remember just as good as anything, the bank and Papa had lost. They thought they were going, the bank was closed, but they thought that after to get things straightened out they would get the money back or do something. This morning they ain't done nothing, and then they got the idea. Then you go to the bank to borrow money, you can't borrow a penny. You can put your money right now. People can holler by Jim Crow. They got a lot of Jim Crow right now because you got collateral. You go to the bank, they won't let you have a dime. But yet, before you go there, you got to have collateral. The collateral ain't worth nothing. | 41:11 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Now this man could go out there, this White man could go out there. He ain't got nothing. He want a car. He go in the bank, let him have anything he want have. But do you think that's fair? | 41:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | No. | 42:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Right now, that's happening right now. You ain't got to go back. Right now, you can go in a store, I watched it. If this is where you got to be waited on, they'll pick every White person, you going to stand there and be last. I've done it so much right here in New Bern here recently. I go to pay a bill, you stand there, they'll reach all over you. Now, what is that but still Jim Crow. People, if you watch it, see a lot of people just overlook and keep going. | 42:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 42:49 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But I'm a sensitive person. I've been through all this years ago. I used to have to, you go to New York or go to anywhere, you got to sit on the back of the bus. Now you come from New York, you get to Richmond, you sit anywhere on the bus. But when you get to Richmond, you got get in the back of the bus. Then when you leave Richmond and come to the south, they have made Black people sitting right to the back of the bus. Made when the White person get up, keep from him standing up, he make the Black people. Don't care how many miles you got to stand, they'll take your seat. You going to come all the way from New York and everywhere else or Washington, DC somewhere, you got to stand up. When I come home after '42, '42, '40, '51, I lived in Wilmington and got married the second time in '50, what is it? 40, 42, 43. 42. Sister died in '41. Papa died in '40, and I got married in '42. We went to move, my husband and I, he worked the shipyard in Wilmington. | 42:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 44:08 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | When we went to Wilmington, you couldn't go. Everything was signs. White, Black, White, Black. That's the way it was in Wilmington. When we left Wilmington, we went to Washington DC. That's the first the children going to integrated school, we've been in '51. But when I come back down south, coming back here to visit Mama, I drive back down there. You stopped. I look at some of the places right on 43. You come from after you get in North Carolina, Roanoke Rapids and they're coming on down, you start from Emporia. You go in Emporia that was a joint in North Carolina, you couldn't get a sandwich. If you go, you go to the back door and you got stand out there the back door to get it like you were a animal or something. | 44:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 45:15 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I had the children in the car, you go, stop. Ain't got no place for you to go to the bathroom. What they got, it's out there and the flies and it's filthy. You don't even want to go in it, but they had nice bathrooms, it had a sign White only. Black. Then you go for a drink of water. Now they're taking money. You go to some station to go get gas, they'll fill your tank up. But you ask for a drink of water, they got a cooler right there. You looking right at the cooler, no water. But they taking money for your gas, and that's the way they did up until when I left Washington and way up, even after they called theirself, some places along the road, they still didn't want it. | 45:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. Now, did you find a big difference then between going from Virginia into North Carolina, or was it the same? | 46:05 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It's the same thing from after you leave Richmond. | 46:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Richmond. Richmond was the border? | 46:17 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That was like the border. | 46:19 |
| Grace Green George | Mason and Dixon. | 46:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. Okay. Right. | 46:21 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | After you leave Richmond, you could take any kind of ferries to come along because they handed it out to you. Don't care how you look or— | 46:26 |
| Grace George | No. | 0:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | No, this is good. | 0:01 |
| Grace George | Love it. | 0:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | I'll just change this here so that we can, all right. Now, just coming back a little bit, you were talking about the way that the banks can control Blacks economically by keeping them from getting loans and that kind of thing. Do you remember that happening to your father? | 0:04 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, I think my father, I never know Papa, he never had no trouble because he dealt with seed stores. | 0:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 0:37 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Jacobs, you know Jacob where he had the seed store? He had a big store down there. And then when he was in grocery, he dealt with the big grocery company and he never had trouble because he always paid and because part-time Papa would pay cash. But he never had, I remember Jacobs, when he used to buy seeds, he had a account that when he died, we paid it, what was balanced that he owed Jacobs. And I think Jacob was about the only place he owed was the seed store, and that wasn't much. But the bank, he never would put his money in the bank like all people did to save it. And used it when he needed it. But he always would keep money above the water on his own. | 0:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | So people would get their credit mainly at stores then. | 1:36 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. You didn't have to go nowhere and ask for credit or nothing. If I own a store and you wanted credit, it was up to me to let you have. If all the stuff about your credit union and something like that. | 1:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, your father sounds like he was quite a prosperous man and independent like you said. Do you think that he ever got in trouble with Whites because he was independent? That they didn't want to see somebody, a Black person succeed in that way? | 1:54 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I never had no one in, I never heard tell him. But Papa always knew how far to go with the people. | 2:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 2:18 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | See, if you knew how to take care of yourself. And he never did things out of the law, against the law. As long as you didn't do things against the law or get your money hard like Papa was from the muscle, you didn't have no problem. But because Papa had a nice home and everything, but they seemed to respect him for it. But for knowing anything like they tried to hurt him or stop him or something like that, I never heard him. | 2:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Were there White people who would help him out? I mean, do you think that smoothed his way in those that way or? | 2:58 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Mm-mm. | 3:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | No? Okay. | 3:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No. What he did proper work for his, and all they helped him for this when they buy his vegetables and stuff like that. | 3:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. So they were just his customers? | 3:16 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah, his customers. | 3:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | All right. | 3:19 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No, I never known him depending on nobody for help. | 3:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now you've talked, you lived in Wilmington and you talked about Halifax County as being rubbish up there. Now, how does New Bern fit into these places? How does New Bern compare to, or James, this area compare to Halifax County or to Wilmington in terms of the way that Black people could live? | 3:27 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That's hard to say. It ain't hard to say because Halifax County, rebels, and then Wilmington, it's the same. | 3:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | What do you mean by that? What makes something? | 4:01 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They didn't let the Black place to go but so far. | 4:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 4:07 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Stop them. You couldn't go. You go to the store, you could spend your money anywhere. But if you had to go to the bathroom or go something like that, they ain't had no place for you. | 4:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. And in New Bern, you could go to the bathroom? | 4:17 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No. | 4:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So they were all the same? | 4:19 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No. They had a sign everywhere. No, New Bern, you wasn't going nowhere. And right now, I think some places they say they ain't got no bathroom but that you can't go in. Right here in New Bern, because I have been to some stores and asked for bathroom. "We don't have one." But you see a sign up there, for people, private. So I'll tell you one thing, you tour the South, from little bit of everywhere I lived in the South, it ain't no difference. | 4:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, so it's all the same but yeah. Okay. | 5:01 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It ain't trying to smooth it over little bit now. But if you know, if you've lived back there and you know what happened back there, you still can feel it and you can see it. But I watch a lot of things, and the courtesy, some people, now everybody ain't like that, all White ain't like that. Some of them act real nice. I don't know how it is, because my grandchildren, the two boys I raised, my grandsons, they had all their friends just about was White and they still got friends in, they went to college over in ECU. And they still got White friends and I don't put them all, a lot of them come here and treat me with respect, younger. | 5:04 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And their parents, when they were growing up, I didn't drive at night most and a lot of the parents, if anything they went to St. Paul. And the parent, the people would come and pick them up and take them back and forth at night where any programs or anything going on. But I don't put everybody in New Bern as rebels, but some of them tried. But if you push them in the corner, you can see it. But long as you. | 5:59 |
| Grace George | Keep your space. | 6:38 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Attend to your business and they attend to theirs, you can get along with them. But step out of line for one minute, they're on your back. But now they got to the fact and most everybody they think that nowadays has got to be in drugs or something, Black people. But they still catching. But they put the Black people all over there, the television. Now yesterday, day before yesterday, in Pitt County they caught this man. Got a home, everything, come to find out everything he had was. He was the one, the big drug dealer. They put him on the screen a little bit and they shut him up. | 6:40 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | See, that ain't fair. It's just many criminals in one race as the other. But why would you put all Black in there? Just to make the younger generation that think that the Black people is evil. They're mean, they'll kill you. Black people ain't like that. It's bad people in every race. I don't care how you figure it. Now they talk about TV, all these crimes. What about back there when the gangster, way back there in them years when I was a child? They shoot, they didn't have no television to see. But you see it in the movie and you see it, hear it on the radio. But now, the drugs and back there I was 17 or 18 years old the first time I went in New York and they had reefers. People were smoking reefers. That was drugs. And one of the man I know smoking weed got walked off the L station. I said to myself, what in the world is people talking about? It's like this drug stuff had just started. | 7:21 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | These people way back when I was, they drink. People get drunk. Kill each other—way back then. And what is this, what's happening now? Because the children see it on TV. Maybe some children don't understand. They think you can get away with killing like that. I say they should take a lot of that off because this young generation ain't like the old generation. In a way of speaking, a lot of children think that you can do this stuff and get away with it. I agree they'll need to take some of this stuff off. But some children think it's for real, this fun and stuff is for real. | 8:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, what about crime? How about when you were growing up? How did the police treat Black people when you were growing up? | 9:33 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, one thing about policemen, didn't come over James City much. They didn't fool around over here. | 9:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why do you think that was? | 9:49 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Most of the kids, them young men in James, you couldn't even come over James City to see a girlfriend if you lived in New Bern. So the policeman, they wasn't too hot about James City coming over, because back then, them young men was protective of James City. | 9:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. | 10:13 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And they felt like whatever they do, they sell their own. | 10:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, all right. | 10:20 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Whatever they did. | 10:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was there ever a time when you felt you needed some protection and the police wouldn't come over or? | 10:21 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I ain't never. If it was left up to me, they wouldn't even have no police because I never mess with the law, the law never mess with me. I never had no trouble with nothing all my days. I never had no trouble. So I ain't had to call the police for nothing. Only time is when somebody broke in here and took was a radio, that's all they took, my television out that room. And my daughter, the other daughter called the police. I didn't even call them then because I never got the television back. So I never had no trouble. | 10:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. Now, how is it different do you think then, people growing up in James City and in New Bern? Considering growing up in an all-Black community, and then over in New Bern, living in a segregated community where there were a lot more White people, do you think that made a difference in the kind of person you became or in your attitudes? | 11:10 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, I don't know. For me, I growed up not being prejudiced and all that. I growed up just like a family thing. And I never had, until I got grown, had any dealings much with people, all that stuff. So I always got along with people, I never had no trouble about it. But it was out here, a lot of people had a lot of trouble. But I never had none. | 11:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kind of trouble would people have? | 12:11 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, you go out here and they'd take your stuff and sell it, you know what I mean? Just like they're doing right now. Whatever they want, they take it. Don't care how hard you work for it or another, it's progress. But you ain't got no progress. You worked all your life, just like people way back there coming out of James City, coming here, buying these lots, building these, they ain't the finest of homes, but it's they home. And they paid for it. | 12:14 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Now they taking it. Now over there. My house was sitting right, they took my house over there right in the middle of the fire pass. I had a house right there. They went to Leesville. My daddy had land from the highway back to the railroad. They cut right through that. Left that. Now what land they left was from this highway, the second highway. And the rest of it come clean out, they would reinstall us. We had names clean out, they were reinstalled. You know where that service station, that shopping place right over there. | 12:47 |
| Grace George | This highway here all the way back to the road. | 13:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 13:31 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That whole place up there. And it's a patch of land right there. That vacant land right between Williams and the Black community, that's supposed to be my property. Right there. They got it so messed up so I don't know what happened. My husband, what I had left where the roads took, I had a piece left in there. But I don't know that the tax people, he wouldn't pay his income. But he was a self, he worked in Washington DC subcontracting. The governor, now this land was mine. He didn't have nothing to do with it. My father left it to me when he died. That he, because he was better than me, they took my property and sold it. Auctioned off. I didn't even know nothing about it. My daughter, she called me from Washington, told me I didn't even know what was going on. And I don't think they had a right to take my land and not tell me nothing and sell it. But I never had, if I could get a lawyer, but they're so expensive and they wanted a show of money. | 13:33 |
| Grace George | It wouldn't take [indistinct 00:14:52]. | 14:52 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | If I could get a lawyer, I could check it out. But they took my land and it's still taking most. That was way back then. When they put the first, now they got how many highways? | 14:52 |
| Grace George | About five. | 15:04 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | One, two. There's two, one on that side and two on this side. That's three lanes. | 15:05 |
| Grace George | Plus. | 15:15 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They took Black people land for them three roads right there. | 15:15 |
| Grace George | Plus the full lane, five full lane. | 15:18 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And they come back and took the rest of it, the bypass. Now they coming back to take the rest of it, now you think that's fair? | 15:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | No. | 15:30 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Progress. Well, why can't progress be somewhere else? You go ride through North Carolina, you see nothing but open fields, they don't touch that. They come here where people sweating and their grandparents and great-grandparents sweated to get these little pieces of land. It ain't no hub but it's home, and it's paid for. They going to take all that for the airport. Take all this for the bridge. Why can't you go somewhere else? Why they got to come through the Black community? Every time, it's the Black people got the sacrifice and they get less than anybody they give them. I be fighting the judges. When they took that land over there, I don't know, that house over there, I don't know what I got for it. It's such a little bit. A few hundred dollars. They said they paid to buy here the property. They had in the coat house for— | 15:32 |
| Grace George | Because they come down. | 16:29 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That's all they give you for that. | 16:31 |
| Grace George | And then give it to you. | 16:31 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And you going to work your lifetime for it. And that's fair? Call that fair? No, it ain't fair. But one day, they going to find out somebody going to take theirs the same way they took somebody else and it won't feel so good. Because these people is old now. They can't go out there and buy land and take care of land. They give them enough down. You pay a lot. A lot is around still $8,000. That's a clean piece of land. They just right. I don't know how— | 16:33 |
| Grace George | You're lucky if you get it that much. | 17:10 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But they don't give them enough to buy land. How you going to build a house? A house, 50, you can't get a $50,000 house no more. It's up in the hundreds. Now, how do you get them, take their house? It ain't as fine as a house, but you would get them a decent place to live. Find, see that they got a home that live. If you go take it, if it's progress, let them be progress. Let them gain in it. You take my home and leave me. I'm 70 years old. 100, 75, average people that lived in these places if in nobody any age. Now how are they are going, they go buy another home? What can they do? It just don't make sense. Well, there's progress. Let them tell it. Or how much progress do they have to have? Do they have to take from? How many years it's been taking people's land from— | 17:15 |
| Grace George | From the Civil War, they run them out of one part of James City. | 18:14 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | East people scuffle— | 18:17 |
| Grace George | Every 25, 30 years, progress. | 18:19 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They took James City and put them out of there. The people scrambled and bought over here and tried to make a home for the sale. Now, they got a little comfort. Now they got take the, they took the house and put them behind the graveyard. That's the only place they could go. Now they're done, they want that back. Some of them is back there right on, some of them is. | 18:21 |
| Grace George | That's the last piece of land they had. The ones that moved back that didn't want to go. So now they're going to run them off of that. | 18:46 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But that's the bypass, they pushed them from the bypass back over there. Now the airport wants that. | 18:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, I saw that map. | 18:57 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No way to go in now. | 18:59 |
| Grace George | Plus the bridge. | 19:01 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And then the bridge going to take the rest of it. All these people and grandparents and great-grandparents got to have home for their children and grandchildren. Now they ain't going to have nothing. And most of the people that's living now, own this land is in the 70s and 80s and some of them are older than I is. I'm 77. And some of them, 80, 90. Now where'd they go? What can they do? Nothing but old folks homes. And die, because a lot of people used to have their own stuff. They ain't got no nowhere to, nothing to hope for, but to die. That ain't fair. | 19:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | No. | 19:44 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It's not fair. I don't care who it is or who do it and they ain't God. But if the God up there and if the Bible ain't wrong, such as a man sow, so shall he reap. And if they don't reap, they children and children going to reap because it goes back to the third and the fourth generation, them that do wrong. So if you do wrong, they feel it's progress. What is progress when life depends on it? You take a person's life for progress. That ain't fair. But God is above us all. Man's mighty but God's almighty. And when he gets to stop him, they will reap just what they sowed. Some other nations will come and do them the same way they doing us. And it may not be in Monday, but somewhere down the line. You will pay for what you do. | 19:45 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And the Bible said you offend the least of my little one, you do it to me. So if you don't know who you offend, you don't know who God's people, you see? And people go in and take over, but they forgot they ain't God. There's a man up there, whether you believe in him or not, he's there because the breath you breathe, he's giving it to you. And when he gets ready to stop it, the richest brother before is going. So you do man's mighty but God's almighty. And when you go, you can go back to the Biblical time when God suffer the water to take over because his children, Pharoah, way back in Biblical times, they was mighty. But when God stopped them, they stopped. | 21:02 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And same thing of the day, people got their place, a dollar, a dollar, a dollar. They don't care. They take the grandmama for a dollar, sell out, and they going to sell out and sell out and sell out till one of these days, the dollar ain't going to be, it's going to be just like Confederate money. The Confederate money, they took Confederate money. When the war was over, it wasn't no good. They going to keep right on messing with the foreigners selling house, selling. You don't know to say how much foreigners on here in the United States, and one of these days it's going to be a reckoning, and they going to take us to get, we going to have yens and everything else, you watch. I may be dead and gone, because these people, it's just like the Bible said, money is the food of all evil. | 22:01 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And these people is going crazy. A dollar, a dollar, a dollar. They get every dollar they can rake and scrape, any kind of way they can get it. Then when they get all the money, then they wants the power. They tell you who can live and who can die. They take over God's business. They get you out the way when they want to. You don't do what they want to put you away. But see, they do that to a state machine, but one day, all this is coming to a head. And when they come to a head they can't have no control over it because God is out there just like the water right up here in the west. They ain't got no control over because God didn't it. Man put the sandbag in and God see if it goes right up again. People got stopped and think about God and not they selves all the time because God is this world and this might, you can forget him. They took him out the schools. | 22:58 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | All right. What does the children in school got to look forward to? They talking about the drugs in the school. Pistols in school. When I was a child, they didn't have all that in school. Children, anything about it. Children played and had fun. Now they got guns. Now they're selling drugs. Where's God? When we would going to school, they had never, you'll never go to your class that all the come in auditorium. All the kids come in, teachers, and have prayer and singing, then march to your class. That was the beginning of the day. They don't do that no more. Where does the children got to look forward to? | 24:11 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Their mother's working. Their father's working. The children on their own, they go to school. All they can care about drugs and pistols and fighting where's God? When they had prayer in the school, the children, there was some bad children then, all of them wasn't good. But the majority of children had something to look forward to. They had a future of God and what they want out of life. But now, they ain't got it. That's really 15, 16 year old children. Selling drugs, on dope. Why you think they're out there doing it? Because they don't have nothing to look forward to. | 24:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, when you were a girl, now you said you had prayer in school. What else was different in school back then? | 25:40 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | The children would, you'd have homework and you'd get that homework. Now my teacher used to get a switch in school setting up there. And if you do wrong, they get you. They whip you and then you go home and get a whip because the parents will work with the teacher. Because if I do something, if you do something in school, which I was always scared or whipping, but if children do something in school. The teacher didn't have no telephone number. They get the message. And when you get home, you have switch waiting for you there. And the teachers, if you fight, the principal would, if you fight on the way going to school or come from school, he call you in your office. And if you were, he was just like your parents. And children was afraid to do wrong because they know to go get punished at home and at school. Right. But now what happens? They ain't got no punishment at home. They ain't got nothing at school. | 25:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now did the teachers in James City, did they live in James City? | 26:54 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Mm-hmm. | 26:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh they did. So they lived, they were your neighbors? | 26:59 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. Growed up together. And then finally they thought that taking the children from Foys, sitting down in little schools in Foys and then. | 27:01 |
| Grace George | Riverdale. | 27:14 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | In Riverdale, and all of them had, put them on the bus and bring up here. Then after that stopped, then there's a grade school and they shut this school and everybody went to Brinson, the grammar, and then New Bern. | 27:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now when you were growing up, did you like school? | 27:31 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No. | 27:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | You did not? | 27:35 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No, I could walk to school. | 27:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | No, but did you like it? Did you going to school? | 27:38 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Oh, I loved to go to school. | 27:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. What did you like about it? | 27:42 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Huh? | 27:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | What did you like? | 27:45 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, when you go to school, you're free. You can play, you can study. And it was just a lot of fun. I enjoyed going to school. I couldn't wait for school over. | 27:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 27:59 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. | 28:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now until what grade did the school over here go to? | 28:01 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It went to ninth, do you think? | 28:04 |
| Grace George | Eighth. | 28:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Eighth grade, then you had to go to New Bern. | 28:10 |
| Grace George | But before then, tell her until about your little school that you went to before they opened this school here. | 28:13 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I did tell you. | 28:19 |
| Grace George | I'm sorry. | 28:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | So then, and this was a man, he tutored children or he gave private lessons to them? | 28:22 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Who? | 28:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | This private school or the school that you'd gone to before the school opened here? | 28:29 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | He was an old man. Back then, they didn't have all this about you got to have a diploma and all that. If you know how to read and write, you could teach. People would send the children there, learn the ABCs and everything else. So this old man taught me, when I went to public school, I could know my ABCs, I could read and everything. | 28:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now when you say that the school wasn't open in New Bern then, at that time you were one of the first students to go into the school? | 29:01 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, see. | 29:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Or in James City? | 29:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | The few children that went to school was Catholic. | 29:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 29:19 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | A few Catholic children, we went to New Bern, to a Catholic school. But the rest of the majority of the people, they had a little place up there. They had a hall upstairs, it was a dance hall and downstairs. And so the people come start teaching in there. | 29:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 29:36 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | After they left James City, then that probably was in the place of the 1900s. Then it started to have this old man started, used to teach children. | 29:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. But then you said, so when did the public school open then in James City? | 29:51 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That one there, the first public school was in, what is, '20? | 29:58 |
| Grace George | '29 I think. | 30:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 30:01 |
| Grace George | Well, they bought the private in '29. | 30:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. And you were one of the first students to go to that school? | 30:07 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | All the children. | 30:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 30:10 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | From this little place where this little, see after the year, then they started teaching. They had one or two public teachers to the teach in this little hallway. | 30:11 |
| Grace George | Were you some of the first children to go to that school? | 30:22 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah, when they opened the school. | 30:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. So when you started going to that school, it had just opened? | 30:27 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Mm-hmm. | 30:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. | 30:32 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Brand new. Most of the children from that old place where you was going to school, to this school. This is a great school, public school James City ever had. | 30:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, how much education had your parents been able to get? | 30:42 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, my mother, she got, oh, mama got to high school. Up in high school. | 30:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | So did she finish high school? | 30:56 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I don't know. | 30:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 31:00 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But I know she could read and write. | 31:00 |
| Grace George | Self-taught. | 31:02 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | [indistinct 00:31:03] back here. | 31:02 |
| Grace George | She was self-taught. | 31:02 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And my daddy, he was educated to a, but mostly the children that didn't go to school, the parents taught them. | 31:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 31:15 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | At home. A lot of children taught before they even got home because my mama used to teach me years before I was even old enough to go to school. | 31:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, did all children go to school? Did all children go to school? | 31:31 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They didn't make them go. | 31:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 31:36 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Some children didn't want to go, parents wouldn't send them, let them work with them, but the majority of people wanted children to go to school. But some children didn't go. But the majority of people sent the children to school. | 31:36 |
| Grace George | Would that be because most of the people in James City wasn't farming like there was in the outer area? I'd say I remember when I was going to school, a lot of the kids had to stay in taking the crops in other areas. But James City never had a big farm. So farming areas. | 31:53 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They never had no farm that they had to stop school. And Halifax County children couldn't go to school till after to get the cotton and stuff in. Yeah. They didn't have about six months schooling. But down here, they had nine months. | 32:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | So it was always a full term, school term? | 32:27 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Every nine months. | 32:30 |
| Grace George | And let me say, we speaking about James City, the surrounding area like Brice Creek and Riverdale, they had farms so their children would sometimes have to stay out to do the crops. | 32:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. Now was education important to your parents? | 32:41 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Mm-hmm. | 32:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah? | 32:50 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | To me too. All of us. | 32:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, did you go to high school then? | 32:53 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No, I got to go to high school when I went blind. Down there on that same farm, I got some kind of poison bug. One morning we was down there taking very, getting berries out the farm and some kind of bug flew in my eye. I mashed them like that. And before I could get from Leesville to New Bern, I couldn't see out of one eye. And it was about a couple hours I couldn't see nothing. And so Papa took me to the doctor and he couldn't understand it. And all I know this poison insect, this insect that I mashed in my eye, what they call it. So he couldn't do nothing about it. He couldn't understand why he put stuff in my eyes and nothing looked like thing to do. I been getting dark and dark all the time. So I stayed like that about couple months where I couldn't see daylight. So old man Aidan Benjamin, at that time, they had a horse and cart, and he told mama to get some alum, you know where? | 32:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 34:20 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And burn it on the stove. They had old cook stoves, iron cook stoves then. They put on the stove, let it melt on the top of the stove, and then take it off. And when it gets hard, crumble it up. It would, before crumbling up a little bit, put a little bit in each one of my eyes and take the white of an egg, like you would for a cake, and beat that up and put a little alum in there. Then make it like a polish. And at night, put it on my eyes. And in a week time I could relearn daylight. And in the morning you take hot water and just get the stuff out. But mama did it for about a week or two weeks and I could see just like I see now. | 34:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now this— | 35:13 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But I never could see up until now. I can't read for so long because the words go mixed up. And so I tried to go back to school and tried and tried and I just couldn't see. | 35:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 35:26 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I couldn't study so I ended up at the stop. | 35:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, were your brothers and sisters able to finish high school? Any of them? | 35:32 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My sister did. | 35:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. All right. | 35:38 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Sister went to high school. Where did? | 35:43 |
| Grace George | Barber, this was Barber school then. | 35:44 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Where? On West Street? | 35:47 |
| Grace George | It later was West Street. | 35:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. | 35:50 |
| Grace George | But it was the Barber school. | 35:50 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I didn't. | 35:51 |
| Grace George | JT Barber was the principal. I have— | 35:51 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I had one sister, she went to high school. But I never didn't make it on account of my eyes. So after that, I couldn't go to school no more so I just went to work. | 36:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now this Mr. Benjamin who made this the alum berries and this Mr. Benjamin who fixed your eyes? | 36:12 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | He's just an old man. Used to live right down here in Leesville. | 36:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, did he make other kinds of medicines? | 36:25 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No, he just. | 36:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | He just— | 36:28 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It's just like old people. Years ago they didn't have no doctors and medicines. They used old remedies. And sometimes I do, what mama used to tell me, I ain't went to the doctor in 19 years. Is it when mama died? I went to the doctor then for just to have a test and then I go for checkup. But I ain't had no drugs or nothing. I use old stuff like mama does, just like I told you the other day for that cough medicine. | 36:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you still make medicines up? | 37:05 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No, I still use. It is a few stores in New Bern. Drugstore, keep that old medicine. And I still know the name of it. When mama used to use it on her. So now and then I just, I told my daughter the other day, I saw some medicine that I used to take for cold and it was like a luxury. And for the first time I had seen in years it was in the grocery store. So always the old people used to do things that was a lot of putting, they used the herbs, stuff out the yard. They raised stuff right in the yard just like when you had high fever. They used to say collard green leaves. | 37:07 |
| Grace George | Palmer Christian leaves. | 37:57 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Palmer Christian leaves and put them on your head and tie it up. And then things would cripple up and when you know a thing, your fever gone. | 37:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 38:06 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And doctor, getting your shots, everything elsewhere. So I mean, medicine is right, but sometimes old people stuff, a lot of people say it wasn't no good. I don't say they could do surgical and stuff like that. But I'm talking about little headaches and good stuff like that, little odd remedies. | 38:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now when your mother had her children, did she have a midwife? | 38:30 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | When she had children. | 38:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | And what kinds of, would the midwife prepare any kinds of herbal remedies either? | 38:35 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, back then they wouldn't let children see nothing. You didn't even, I used to, they had me so crazy. So I used to, they say babies come out tree stub and I used to be silly enough to go look at the tree stub, pick at a tree stub. Children didn't know about, like they do now. You didn't know where no baby come from nothing. They didn't even tell you that. | 38:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, I wanted to go back a little bit because I wanted to learn about what happened after you went to school and after you finished school. But I just wanted to know a little more about the community that you grew up in here. What— | 39:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, the community, they're church going people. It was really with James City and Brownsville people, the church used to be full. And they used to have Sunday evenings. We have Sunday morning, they go to Sunday School, and Sunday evening, 11 o'clock church Sunday evening they would have some kind of program or something. But then five o'clock Sunday evening they have BYPU. | 39:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Okay. | 39:54 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And then Sunday nights they have programs, one church or the other. And people used to take the children in, you got an older person to go, which you couldn't go in after dark without some older person taking you. So we used to have an old lady, single lady. And all the children used to go to her to take us to church or Sunday. Except the parents didn't go. | 39:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now this single lady who did this, was she, was that common for single women to be— | 40:29 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No. She was just a friend. She had nieces and we were friends of the niece. | 40:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. | 40:41 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And she was just a outgoing person. | 40:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 40:46 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And she had a boyfriend, but we didn't, when Sunday evening comes, he come visit her, we'd get mad because we couldn't get to her and tell her about we want to go church Sunday night. And so we just wouldn't like the boyfriend. If we want to go somewhere, because we could always depend on her to take us. | 40:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you loved to go to church then? | 41:07 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Huh? | 41:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | You loved to go to church? | 41:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. That's good. But I'm still old now and heat come, I can't do too much about going. I had to take care of my health. But I used to go to church, Sunday school, 11 o'clock church, then go to Jones Chapel, have evening Sunday school, go to the Sunday school and go sit with the old people and talk to them. The old slavery people, talk to them till time for BYPU. | 41:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, did you go to Pilgrim? Did you belong to Pilgrim Chapel? Or how did you go to. | 41:38 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No, I was Mount Shiloh. | 41:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 41:42 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Mount Shiloh. | 41:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | All right. Now, what were some of the gathering places in your neighborhood? Where did people at— | 41:44 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Up to the railroad crossing. | 41:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | The railroad, and people would just stand there and talk? | 41:53 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | At OJ City. | 41:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And what would— | 41:59 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And down to the beach. They had a place down there that young people used to go call the beach. | 41:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Right. And what did people do at the railroad crossing and at the beach? | 42:07 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, the train come. Every Sunday morning people would get on the train and go to Morehead, down to the beach, down Morehead. | 42:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 42:21 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And so Sunday evening, wasn't nowhere to go. So the children went in the boyfriends and little girls come up to the rail to see who went down to Morehead that Sunday morning. It was just a little ordinary thing. But we enjoyed it. We walked from Brownwood to the railroad crossing and that's the way we used to do. | 42:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were there places where men gathered, and then other places where women gathered to talk among themselves? | 42:46 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, the only thing people would do, go to church. | 42:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Go to church. | 42:56 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | People go to church a lot. The older people would go to church and just anything they had to discuss. And they have a night like Tuesday night or Monday night, all the members and people come together and they talk over what business and everything like that. That's how they used to. And they had largest, people from to largest. And they had a place where they go. The men. So it was just ordinary thing looked like people enjoyed it. | 42:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now did people, were there any burial societies or other mutual help societies? I've heard something about a pound society or a pound? | 43:38 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah, that was a society. People joined and when they died, people died. They had so much money they give because burial then wasn't so much, wasn't even hundred dollars a hole. So people used to put money in this little society. But that was years ago. Before the burials, the thing was because they didn't have nobody but Whitley was the main funeral parlor for Black. And another. | 43:48 |
| Grace George | Hatch. Was it Hatch? | 44:19 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Huh? | 44:25 |
| Grace George | Did you have Hatch then? | 44:25 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Hatch was one. | 44:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now were these— | 44:29 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And then they had another one. Oh, I can't call the name. It's right there where they got the place, I was telling you to put the island. Huh? I can't in New Bern. But anyhow, it was three undertaker parlors. | 44:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. And were they all over in New Bern? | 44:49 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. Ain't none of them was in James City, all of them was in New Bern. | 44:51 |
| Grace George | So did you tell her how they used to lay them out when they died way back? Did you explain how the people were bear it and how they carried on the ceremony when they died here? They would keep them in the house. | 44:59 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, when people died, they didn't take them out there. They would embalm them and put them back in the house in your living room. And you stayed, they'd let them stay until the time of the burial. And the people would come to the house nights and sing until the burial. Recent years, they start taking them out the house. But most of the time the people would start and if you take them to the funeral party, they bring them back to the house. And the body stay in the house to the time they bury them. And the body be in the front room, you'd be in just the other part. All people in that eating and singing and doing. | 45:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, was that frightening to you as a child? Do you remember? | 46:03 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. | 46:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | It was? | 46:05 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I was scared of all it. | 46:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 46:10 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Somebody could die in New York, and I know I was scared of. I was even scared when my daddy died and that was in the '40s. So I had to convince myself that dead people wasn't going to hurt you. So what I did, I just went out, turned all lights in the house, went out in his car. When he died, he still had his car. We sat in there and I ain't seen nothing, I ain't heard nothing. And I did that. After that, I wasn't scared no more. So my sister died, I stayed right now by myself after they bury her. So I never, I ain't scared, I'm going to stay right here by myself. But back there, I was scared if somebody died in New York. And I know them. | 46:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 47:00 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But it wasn't nothing just from mind. People used to scare you to death talking about spirits come this and if you die, you in the mind, then you back. Oh, boy. | 47:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 47:11 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Everybody. | 47:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | —lost everything in the bank that he started a taxi service? | 0:01 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No, he was doing it before. | 0:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, he was doing it before? Okay. | 0:07 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Everything he was doing, he did it. That's the same thing. He never stopped. | 0:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. Did he take people over to the school? I heard something about that. | 0:13 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No, he would take them, people had to go to work. Work out in service, he'd take them. And then people going away on the train, was running, we had the train station there. People would take the train. Like they take the bus now, they had trains. And he'd take them to the train station. Anywhere they had to go from New Bern to Texas. | 0:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 0:43 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Same as the taxis do now, where people had to go. | 0:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Were there other taxi services? | 0:58 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Huh? | 1:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were there others? | 1:01 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. Mr. Dunson had one, Sam Dunson, at that time. Just a couple of them. Dunson and Papa. And they were the only, because Papa, he was some of the first that had a car when we started having cars. He was one of the first to have an old Ford, one of them Ford cars. | 1:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, did he just have one car in his taxi service? Did he just have one car in his taxi service? | 1:26 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, he had one and then finally my uncle, he got a car. But my uncle didn't do too much. Papa was the one that really taxied. Uncle Bud would take them if somebody wanted and if Papa wasn't around, something like that. But he never did. She say you want some water? | 1:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | No, I'm fine. | 1:59 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | So Papa was the man. Most of the thing Uncle Bud did was working in the, he was sturdy to the farm, truck farm. Became a truck farmer. And then, that's what Papa stuck with the farm and the taxi. And when they stopped paying, come out grocery store, everybody want trust and nobody pay the bills. They finally got to the place, it wasn't nothing losing money. So they come out the grocery. And this place over here, they had a poolroom up the store downstairs in the poolroom up upstairs. The guys used to go in and shoot pool. | 2:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So this is in the grocery store or in the, this was in the grocery store? | 2:48 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It was upstairs. | 3:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. So they— | 3:01 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Two story. They had a back entrance to go up in the back. | 3:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So your father owned the pool hall as well? | 3:10 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. | 3:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Okay. Okay. | 3:13 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah, he was one of those go-getters— | 3:14 |
| Grace George | Everything. | 3:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now what about your mother? You've talked a lot about your father. What kind of person was your mother? | 3:19 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, Mama was a mother. She was a home lady. And she would work with Papa to the stores when he's out, she would take care of the store in New Bern. And come home, she was a mama. She didn't do too much getting around and stuff like that. But she always was there for us until. So she didn't have no way of—Papa was the type, his wife stay home and take care of the family. So she's just mama. | 3:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Were there many women who could stay home all the time or would who didn't have to work? | 4:04 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | The people like the Williams and different people that had their own business, and it's just now, working class of people and one that don't. But most of the time back then, the old men thought didn't have much, but they thought the wife should be home with the children. So it was quite a few people that just join us. And when different people start joining his family and he was a family man took care family, stay home, his wife, they wanted to. So quite a few people. In fact, I think most of the old people believed in the family being home. Not like now people working and the mothers working, the father was working. But the most of the people years ago, way back in my time, old people believed in the family being home. | 4:13 |
| Grace George | And most of the women worked— | 5:18 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Whether they had a lot or didn't have a lot, they figured that they was better off with the children. | 5:20 |
| Grace George | And from what I understand, a lot of the women did work, brought their work home, like doing laundry and everything. That way they could watch—Most of the women that didn't have families that they would stay home with the children. They would bring their work home, do the ironing and washing— | 5:27 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well— | 5:45 |
| Grace George | Watch over the children. | 5:45 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Just a few people did that. It wasn't no majority of people though. It's a few families would take clothes, take in, wash them, and bring them home and wash them and do. But the majority of people, there was a few families did that in a big scale. But most of it, that was later years. That wasn't way back. If I can remember that was when I was more like a teenage maybe, as I remember, maybe as in the side and different people. | 5:47 |
| Grace George | But Mama used to take in laundry. My grandma on my father's side used to take in laundry too. See the old people in old James— | 6:23 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, I don't remember nothing back there when Ms. May Liz and them used to do it. Further back than that, I don't know. But they might have did it, yeah, way back in the 1800s. But I don't know. All I know was in the '30s, last of the '20s and '30s— | 6:31 |
| Grace George | I remember when I was little, Aunt Grace, the one that I was named for, she used to do laundry. They still did that laundry taking in clothes. And Ms. Adedil Lamar, they even opened up a laundry place where the people, and you probably had gone away. Then they would bring the clothes to that laundry. It's a big building. And they would wash and iron and take clothes back— | 6:53 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I wasn't here. | 7:15 |
| Grace George | You weren't here at that time, but I was— | 7:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Yeah. Okay. | 7:15 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I was gone then. Anything happened after the '40s, I wasn't here. I left here in '42? '42. And left here for good. I was in Wilmington and in 1951 I went to Washington, DC, and I stayed there till '60s. Then the '60s, then I went to California. | 7:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Well we can get that to the next— | 7:51 |
| Grace George | Hit some other spots. You can carry all over the country. | 7:54 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. Think I had my day. I can sit home in Chicago, Detroit, California— | 8:00 |
| Grace George | Tell about Mississippi. | 8:07 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Mississippi. Oh God. Yeah. You don't want hear about Mississippi. | 8:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Well, we'll move through— | 8:14 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My husband was from Mississippi. | 8:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh really? Okay. | 8:14 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That was the worst experience, you talking about Jim Crow. I was scared down there. I was scared of Mississippi in the first place, but I left stock a lot. I was [indistinct 00:08:35], but when I got to Mississippi, he drove down there. But I was married the second time in Mississippi. | 8:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | And when was this? | 8:52 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | 1942. | 8:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | 1942. Okay. And so you drove down to Mississippi. And what made you afraid? | 8:52 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, we were driving on down, one of my cousin, because I wouldn't go down there, but just my husband. But my cousin went with her. So we drove all the way and we didn't have nowhere to stay at night. There were motels all the way down the road, but you had to sleep in your car. You could be right past one, and you couldn't. No Blacks. So biggest part of time we had to sleep in the car, went all the way through the mountains. And we went through the mountains, when we got up in the mountains, the roads wasn't like this now. Just one way. You had two and half road there, over that ravine around there. So what we did, we got some little place up in the mountain and they had water mow. We stopped up there. The man told us, was a White man said, "You better be out this mountain before dark, because any Black people up here in dark, they'll kill them." That was the first scary thing I got. So we got out the mountain. | 8:57 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | So when we got to Mississippi down to where my husband's home was, we got to the back. You go out here to this road out here, and you stop and if ain't nothing coming, you go on. So he stopped and he started pulling on off. The police were coming somewhere, I don't know where. When I seen he had the gun right in my husband's face. And he said, "Did you see that stop sign?" He said, "Yeah, we seen the stop sign." He said, "I stopped." "But you didn't stop still." He said, "Well, I'm used to driving there." "This is Mississippi, stop means stop." And he took the pistol out and had it. Now he didn't do it, but going across the stop, took the pistol and had it right in his face, just like that in the car running. So he took him to the police station. | 10:03 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | All us had to go down the police station. And he wanted to put him in jail for just stop slight to the stop sign. He told him he had to—So when my husband told him he had North Carolina tags on the car. So when he told him that he was born and raised in Mississippi, told him who his father was and they was all still there, he to let him go without a penny. But he thought he was like— | 11:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. An outsider. | 11:44 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | —trying to be smart. They say he was trying be smart. | 11:45 |
| Grace George | You know the name they call it, smart Nigga. | 11:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Wow. | 11:52 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That's why, and from then on, I was ready to leave Mississippi. And everywhere you go you can't go nowhere hardly. And if you go in the store, they look at you like you was some kind out of space people. If you halfway look decent, they look at everybody looking at you, you think something's wrong with you. And then they come up and ask you, "Where you from? You ain't from around here." It's scary. And last time I went to Mississippi was when my father-in-law died and it still hadn't gotten much better. Little better but not much. It's not that good that I want to go down there again. | 11:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now you said you left home at 16 then? You left here at 16? | 12:43 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Left here? | 12:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Left Brownsville. | 12:55 |
| Grace George | You left James City— | 12:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | James City— | 13:00 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | About 17, went to New York. | 13:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And you went to— | 13:01 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | See I couldn't go to school and I couldn't work. And I just determined I didn't want my family, my father, to take care of me because I figured I could take care of myself. So I tried to work around here for 25 and 50 something a day. And I couldn't make it on there. So I want little more than that. So I went to New York. I had a cousin in New York, so I asked my father, he didn't want me to go. Nobody wanted me to go, but I just determined to work for myself. So I went to New York and worked till I get tired, and then I come home and rest and go back. And then I wasn't setting the world on fire up there because I wasn't given but $15 a week. And down here you wasn't given but three. $3 week you could work out in service. So I worked a bit till I met my husband and married him. | 13:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, what work were you doing in New York City? | 14:05 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Housework. | 14:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Housework? Okay. | 14:08 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | There wasn't nothing else to do. You couldn't go in nothing else but housework. | 14:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Had you done any domestic service before that? Had you worked in people's houses before that? Okay. | 14:15 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Because all I did was sell vegetables and stuff like that. The first time I worked, I really worked out in [indistinct 00:14:29] when I went to New York. | 14:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Was there anything else that people could do? | 14:31 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | What? | 14:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were there other jobs that a young woman in your position— | 14:36 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | The only thing Black people could do was teach school and preach. That was teach school. | 14:40 |
| Grace George | Teach and preach. | 14:48 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That's all. That was a hard job. | 14:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now your husband was from, he was from James City. | 14:53 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | The first— | 14:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Your first husband. | 14:58 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Huh? | 14:58 |
| Grace George | Your first husband. | 14:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Your first husband? | 15:00 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. James City. | 15:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you met him down here? | 15:03 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | What, my first husband? Yeah. He was young people too. | 15:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, had you known him all your life? | 15:10 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | First one. Went to school with him. | 15:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | And what was your courtship like? | 15:17 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, it wasn't nothing but like children. We go walk up to the railroad crossing with your boyfriend. And it was just ordinary. Was nothing to do but to talk and walk, sit on your front porch and talk. | 15:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Did you like New York City for that reason? What was the big change that you found when you went to the city? | 15:39 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Nothing but work hard. | 15:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 15:52 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No. I know people that they used to have once a year, something like a ball in New York, and they go to that ball once a year. And that's where you meet all the people from here, that live here in New York. You could see them all when you go to this ball once a year. And I try to go to that. And after then they just work and go home and go to movies. I know they were pictures that change in the movie, because you go movie for 10 or 15 cents. In the neighborhood movie, I used to go, every time I come from work, I wasn't too tired, I go to the movies. So that's the way, just ordinary life. | 15:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, where did you and your husband go after you got married? | 16:37 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | What? | 16:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Your first husband? | 16:41 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Nowhere, the same thing. | 16:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | You went to New York again? Or you stayed here? | 16:44 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No, after we separated. | 16:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 16:47 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | We separated. And he was still a boy, and mama's boy. And I didn't want a mama's boy. So we just separated. And then we stayed separated. And after I met my husband in Mississippi, I got a divorce, and then I married him. | 16:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now the first husband is your father, is that right? | 17:11 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 17:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | And you stayed here then, you were brought up here— | 17:15 |
| Grace George | Yeah, I stayed with my grandmother. | 17:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. I see. | 17:19 |
| Grace George | My father's mother. See what happened when I was born, my mother, like she said, they were very young and they separated. And so I was more or less stayed with my father's people. That's why I'm on that side mostly. But my mother and father being young, they went on with their lives. And so they took care of me. But I was with grandma, my father's mother. And so that's where my story begins. | 17:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Begins. Okay. Well we can just talk a little bit more. | 17:53 |
| Grace George | Talk to her. She has more to tell you. No problem. But that's where my story begins. | 17:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. Okay. Where did you go after you got separated, you went back to New York City? Right. Okay. | 18:06 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I go to New York State till I get tired. I work till I get tired and then I come home to mama and rest. And then go back until I met my husband when they started building Cherry Point. That's when I met my husband. He was a cement finisher. He come here to work down to Cherry Point, and that's where I met him. He was living up there with some people, friends I know. And we got acquainted there. | 18:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, I know Cherry Point, the building of Cherry Point was a big turning point for the Black community. | 18:40 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. That's where everybody was around knew it was a turning point, because that's when people could get decent jobs. Because other than that, you working for 50 cents, 25 to anything you could get. $3 a week or anything. But when the Cherry Point comes, people got chance to work down there. My husband, he was making $125 a week. That was big money. That's why he was a cement finisher when they was making Cherry Point and they thought he was the money man. It was a lot of people, strangers come here when they building Cherry Point. So when Cherry Point was 50 years old, I had been married 50 years. But I remember when they first bombed Pearl Harbor, I was scared to death. I was looking for the next minute for the bomb to hit New Bern. I don't know. | 18:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. So your husband had come from Mississippi to Cherry Point? | 19:45 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. When he come from Mississippi and I married him. '42 we got married. | 19:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | And what happened after the base was finished? Were there still a lot of jobs? | 20:00 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I don't know. We left when he got through with cement finishing, he left and went to Wilmington. That's where the shipyard was. And he went to Wilmington. It was the chipper working on the ships. And he made good money down the shipyard. And when that gave out, then he went to Washington DC. | 20:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, how did making more money like this, how did that change your life, your life personally? | 20:29 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I don't see no difference. Things that I wanted, I just got, you know what I mean? I didn't ever get excited. You know what I mean? Like some people. To me, I just living a little better. I didn't have to work. I just had my children. Because I had three more children and I just stay at home and take care. When he went to Washington, after he left the shipyard, he went subcontracting sewage and stuff, like manholes and stuff. He went in there. So he would subcontract from there. He was working for himself, so he subcontracted work from the builders and things. And so he had his own men working for him and everything else up until what? It was me and him, in the '60s. '60s or '70s, middle of the '60s, and he died. When he died, he had subcontracting up until about a year before he died. | 20:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. And then you moved to California after that? | 21:56 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My sister was out there, so me and my daughter went out there. She got married. And so I went for her husband out to California. Stayed out there about how many years? Good while, till the 70s, up in the '70s. Till mama died in '74. | 22:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now throughout this time, were you coming back to James City? | 22:23 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, when I was living in Washington, I come back and forth because my mother was still here. Grace was still here. So I come back and visit so often. I drive from Washington to New Ben myself. And I visit. And then after I went to California, I don't think I come in no more till '74. I lived in Washington about 30 years. | 22:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, what was your favorite place to live? Where did you like living the most? | 22:57 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, for a while I used to love Washington, DC, till all this uproar and stuff started. Then it changed. All this blowing up and fighting and going on. It never looked like, never was the same. | 23:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Well, what did you like about it when you were living there? | 23:21 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Oh, it was just a nice place to live. And you didn't have to worry about people. Just hit that. You just get you a nice home and live there. Raise children, go to school and go to church. It was nice. | 23:24 |
| Grace George | It was clean. | 23:42 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I really enjoyed it. | 23:42 |
| Grace George | Beautiful place. | 23:42 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I really enjoyed Washington. It wasn't all this stuff going on like it is now. It was just a nice place to live, the neighborhoods and everything else. Where I lived, always lived in nice neighborhood. And it was integrated neighborhood. | 23:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. What section did you live in? | 24:06 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I lived in the Northwest. Northwest section. And near right to the border of Silver Spring in the District of Columbia. | 24:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, you said your neighborhood was integrated there? | 24:22 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yes. | 24:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did that mean that you had some White people living right next door to you? Okay. | 24:29 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But we talked if we come out to the front, but we didn't visit each other. It was just like you in your house, I'm in my house. And everybody kept the neighborhood up and kept everything nice. So we all got along because we never had no, and most of the people that live in this neighborhood was professional people. And all the Black people, we used to have block meetings and keep our section nice all the time. So it was really nice. I enjoyed it. And the church was nice and nice, you go to church and enjoy that too. In fact, it was really nice in Washington like that. But now I wouldn't want to live there for nothing. | 24:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. Now were the Black people in your neighborhood as neighborly as they had been in James City? Did people do the same kinds of things for each other in the city as they did in the country or down here? | 25:30 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | People in Washington, mostly big cities like that, you stay in your house, I stay at my house. But we befriend, if we see each other, we know we neighbors. But you never had—Only time you talk to even the Black neighbors is when you have a block meeting and you belong to the meeting, you go there. That's to improve our neighborhood and keep it nice, the houses, and keep your building house up and keep everything. That was what this meeting was for. Seated everybody, kept everything and all. | 25:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you miss that neighborly feeling? Did you miss the people helping each other out in the neighborly feeling of James City? | 26:15 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Did I miss it? | 26:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 26:25 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No. | 26:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | No? | 26:26 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No. | 26:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why not? | 26:27 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Because I wasn't that friendly. I didn't— | 26:29 |
| Grace George | She wasn't that involved— | 26:30 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I wasn't. It wasn't that important. I was like a loaner. No, I didn't. | 26:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Well, that's interesting. Did you ever feel when you were growing up here that you wished people would stay out of your business or anything like that? | 26:39 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, I tell you, I was always God's stepchild. | 26:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | What do you mean by that? | 26:54 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I mean, I don't know. It's some people, people takes to. But I never was the kind that they took to. Always, I don't know where it was going come, my father or the way we lived or what. But up until this day, I don't have friends. I talk to people and be nice to them. But say I'm in their house, they in my house. Never was and never. And still. We are nice people. But you know what I mean? I never been that. I never even growing up, I had one girlfriend, we used to go around together. I never was in a crowd. Now my sister, who is dead, oh man, everybody was her friend. And they come right to me and tell me, "I don't like you. I like your sister. I don't like you." I said, "Well, I don't care." I never really associated with them a lot. | 26:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Now you said that this might have had something to do with your father. | 28:00 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Huh? | 28:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | You said this might have had something to do with your father and what he did— | 28:04 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well see, I don't know. Some people had the attitude to think if a person got something and you don't have to get out there and work for other people, that you don't feel no different, but they feel that you do. And so they draw a line. And I was Westford's daughter. And I never had to, when I was growing up, I had a decent life and everything. And I don't know, they just didn't take to me. | 28:08 |
| Grace George | You can imagine you having the first car, your father had the first car and the horse— | 28:45 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | First car and the— | 28:49 |
| Grace George | All of that. | 28:49 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | 11 roomed house. And it finished off and everything. So | 28:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | You lived in an 11 room house? | 28:57 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | We ran velvet dresses and everything else— | 28:59 |
| Grace George | She lives there, so you know nobody lied to her. | 29:04 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | You can figure it out. | 29:10 |
| Grace George | I'm just sorry they lost all that money in the bank because I'd been a well off person myself today. | 29:12 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | See, she be going and preaching in the church, talking about how— | 29:19 |
| Grace George | Remember how— | 29:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Well that's right. Now, did that affect you? Because your family, you weren't coming up like that either, were you? | 29:24 |
| Grace George | I didn't come up wealthy like that, but I was her daughter. | 29:32 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | My father died when she was little. | 29:37 |
| Grace George | I was her daughter. So even if I lived poor with my other grandmother, I still was her daughter, Westford's granddaughter. So I had to go through a lot more. | 29:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, what kinds of things, so people remembered, they had a long memory of what? | 29:50 |
| Grace George | Well, just like she finished telling, in fact, the people knew more about how they lived than I did. Because what I remember was what my grandma, Martha, which was Washington Spivey's daughter. | 29:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 30:08 |
| Grace George | See, that's how I was around. My mom, as you know, she traveled a lot after she and my father separated. She went her way and he went his, but he remained in New York. So see, I was living with my grandma. So I was a big shock because I had my mom and my dad sending all kinds of little things to me, which the average kid in the area at my time was not getting. So I would play the odd still at that time. My mom would send me and I'd make my dad send me, so I was getting two of everything. So I was the little rich kid living in a raggedy house. Because my grandma in James City was some of the last ones to leave James City. Old James City. And would not leave, so she would stay there until she dies— | 30:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Grace let her go outside. | 30:57 |
| Grace George | Let me, okay. Okay. So she said that she would stay there till she died. And as my mom said that the people told them they could not fix the houses. So she said, well, she'll just let it go into the ground because she was not going. And we tried in our own way, my father did, to say, "Well, let's try to fix a house somewhere else." No, she was determined to stay there. Well, at the time I loved her so much because by them being young and leaving me with her, that was my mom. So I said, "Well hey, I have to stay with her." Many times it came up, "Why don't you go with your mother and father?" "No, I want to stay with her." So that's how my life started. When I was very young they bought me to my grandma. She wanted me then because they had separated, which is unusual because most of the mothers leave them children with their mothers. But my grandma, Martha, which was my dad's mom, said she wanted me right then. So that's how it started. | 31:00 |
| Grace George | And I lived in this old town. See that's why it's so close to me, because I grew up in Old James City, which many of the people which live here now is on this side of James City. And they were moving out at the time when I came along. So when I recognized that I was in James City, there was about 20 or 25 families, very old people that was determined that they weren't going to leave. And most of them didn't until, hey, the houses just went in the ground. So growing up there, I remembered the old houses, which was very old and very rundown. And the people were still very close in that particular area of James City. They looked upon this area over here in Brownsville as the uppity Black folks. | 32:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh really? Okay. | 32:57 |
| Grace George | Because they were able to build their nice little houses because they left James City. But they stayed in those old houses and they're proud to be in James City. So I grew up with that saying that, "Hey, they think they're a little better than we are over there because they got nicer houses." So I remember there was three other girls at my age— | 32:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | In Old James City? | 33:22 |
| Grace George | In Old James City. The rest of them all lived over this side. So the three of us became very good friends. And that was when we started to be able to socialize and go different little places. We were always together like sisters. But before then, I remember that my grandma, I couldn't leave the yard unless somebody took me. So I would look through the fence at the people passing and everybody knew me. Whether I knew them or not, they knew me because that was Ms. Martha Green's granddaughter. And that was Washington Spivey's daughter. So the people from Brice's Creek, because we lived on, which was then called the Old Airport Road, which is now the Howard Road, leaving from the Ramada. If you come over the new New Bern bridge, you see the Ramada, then you have Howard Road going out to Brice's Creek area. Madam Moores Lane. Then you're going on out to Brice's Creek. That was the area I lived in. | 33:23 |
| Grace George | So the people would pass, that was the main highway, main road. And they would all know me. And anywhere around here you would ask, they called me Little Grace, because I was named after my father's sister, Grace. So at the time— | 34:27 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Could you take this off me a minute? | 34:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | Sure, that's going to be fine. Oh, pause this. So they all saw you as Little Martha? | 34:46 |
| Grace George | Little Grace. | 34:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Little Grace. I'm sorry. Little Grace. Of course. | 34:55 |
| Grace George | And the whole little town was the Old James City that I lived in. They looked up to me as, I don't know, I never understood, but I got so much love and felt so secure in the area, that I think that I just grew up to feel that I was really somebody very special. And seeing the people, they were always so friendly to each other. If one had anything, it was like everybody, they shared it. And so I think that had made quite an impact on me that I feel like I have to share or I want to do something to help the people. So I lived there until I was 20. Well, I went away to college and my grandma was still there refusing to move and getting very old. And so when I came back, she was so ill. That was when she moved about the end of the '50s. And that's when I went to New York. But I liked to go back to James City some more. | 35:00 |
| Grace George | During the Jim Crow era, we lived in that little house still. And there were some Whites on the outskirts because the people had stopped farming when I came along. They were more or less just living there. And they were very old. | 36:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | So the White people were very old as well? | 36:26 |
| Grace George | Well, some of their descendants had come along. They were very old, but they had young children just like, I suppose my age, their grands or whatever. And we would have people coming through the area, Whites during that Jim Crow area, because that's when I lived in there, throwing stones at the houses. And I remember people were moving out of there, but every night or every twice a week, they would come through the area and throw stones at the old people houses. | 36:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, why would they do that? | 37:02 |
| Grace George | Well, I guess young people cranked. They just doing things. And everybody knew each other in the area. The Whites knew the Blacks, but you knew where you stood. You weren't socializing, but you knew each other. So they would go and tell the Whites parents about it, White children that were doing that. And they claimed they would stop them, but they would come and throw bottles and stones. And many times most of those old houses had shutters. So that's what I remember so well. And they would have to close them up every night or else they would just throw the stone right through the windows. And the old houses being very old, it didn't take very much. So that was their fun and game. And many people was not aware because most of the people were moving over in this section. So it had a fear that something would happen to my grandma, so I would always stay there with her in that manner. | 37:04 |
| Grace George | Now, also in that little area, and as I said before, there was only a few more older people left. There was a blind man. We used to call him Professor, and he would do everything for himself. In fact, everybody was very independent in that community at that time. And being old, his wife and all of them had passed on. So he was by himself, and he would cook for himself. He would do everything. And I never forget, he would cook and insist that I eat some of his food. And being a young person and loving him, I would eat his food. And I look back now, I can't believe I did that. But he taught me. My grandma could not read or write. And in fact, most of the people in that area, they wanted to learn. But my grandma couldn't read and write. But the professor, before he went blind, he was able to go to school, what little bit they taught them. | 38:02 |
| Grace George | And so he would sit up nights when I was going to school, elementary and all that, and I would spell the words and he would pronounce them, some maybe right, some wrong. But that was how. And then when he would find out what the words are, then he would teach them to me. A blind man taught me— | 38:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | To read. | 39:19 |
| Grace George | —to read and write. Yeah. And then when I went to school, then it happened. Then I was ready for a lot of what academics studies. But my grandma couldn't read and write. But what she would do, she would sit there with me and it was all she wanted to do is she could just spell her name. And I taught her to spell her name. And she was so proud. And she would spell her name every chance she'd get, take her time, Martha. And she would spell it. And so she was very proud of that. But in spite of the fact that she wasn't educated, she was a very bright, intelligent woman because she knew, she stood up to anyone. She wasn't afraid to stand up for right. And so I was proud of her that, and she was a loving lady. She would do favors for anybody. It was just her nature. | 39:20 |
| Grace George | And so I went on and when I attended James City School by living in Old James City, we'd had to walk the trestle, the railroad tracks, to come over here to the school. Now, by the time I was going, they had buses going to Riverdale, Brice's Creek, all different areas, busing them into the James City school. But for some reason, I never understood it, but they said we weren't far enough from the school to be bused in. So my poor little grandma would pay 25 cents, I think, or 15 cents, I can't recall, that a man that would do the taxing throughout the area, he would pick up teachers that lived far. And like I said, we had about three or more young people in the area. And his name was Ed. What was little Bud Hick's name? What was Hick's first name? I think it was Edward. He would drive the cab and he would pick us up and bring us to school and take us back home. So not realizing I had somewhat like private service. I didn't know what was going on. But that's how I came to school every day until I grew up enough that we would walk back and forth. | 40:16 |
| Grace George | And after we grew enough that we could walk back and forth to school from James City to Old James City, we had to cross a trestle. And I think I've had night nightmares of crossing that trestle all my life until later years— | 41:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you'd have to get over fast enough in case the train came— | 41:53 |
| Grace George | Train was coming, and you are watching for a train. Now we, not realizing that trains have different hours to come, but then this was a very active railroad track then because you had different factories that they would haul things, different places. So you could look up and hear a train coming any time. But we had to cross that trestle to get to this part of James City. And so I had many nightmares and also many nightmares are falling into the water. So I outgrew it by myself because I don't know, I think I needed therapy. I would wake up nights jumping like I'm falling even when I went to New York. | 41:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, was anybody ever hurt or killed on the trestle? | 42:40 |
| Grace George | I don't recall anybody ever being killed or hurt on the trestle. But I've heard now then they had a bridge where we have the bypass coming that you could take that coming over here. But it was such a distance that most people would try to get to the school or get to this area over here by the trestle. And a few people have had accidents out there, I heard on the highway trying to get to the bridge, coming to this part of James City. | 42:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | So your father's family had been living in James City for a long, long time, right? How far back could you trace that? Do you know? | 43:18 |
| Grace George | Well, as I said, we go back to the 1800s during the Civil War. Now I can't go. I know that my grandma told me, her mother, which was named Gracie Alice, I think that's what she said. Well, she was a slave. No, her mother was a slave. And just as slavery was ending, she was born. Her mother's mother. So really what happened is that I can only hear what they told me. Then her father, which was Washington Spivey, but that's as far as I can go, which he was one of the leaders of James City that stood up when they finally told them that they lost the court battles. He was in many of the court case battles, the original case and all that. They were telling James City people that they had to get out of there and reconstruction. | 43:27 |
| Grace George | They was prospering very well over there. And so they were all under the impression that this land was given to them, as my mom said. And so on my father's side, they were determined they weren't going to give up. From Washington Spivey to his daughter, Martha Green, my grandma, to my father. Now, as my mother said, my father stayed there for a while, but like I said, he went in the Army, and in between the marriage he went to New York. So he got away from it. But there were their childhood times, that I'm not that familiar of how they lived there. But they did stay in James City until he went away. | 44:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now Washington Spivey, what did he do for a living? Was he— | 45:03 |
| Grace George | Well, from what all I understand, he kept shop. He was also later in life a postmaster of James City. A farmer, and very active in community. Because there was a committee of 12 people that, at that time ran James City. And I'm sure it went all the way back. But I can pick up where he was. And it seems as if they more or less made the rules and regulations for the Old James City. And so it goes as far back on my father's side because they came from slavery on up. On my mom's side, they came on a different level, as you said. Which puts me in the middle of, Hey, I got a lot of rich blood here, strong blood. But yeah, Washington Spivey in the 1800s. | 45:06 |
| Grace George | And the amazing thing is that 100 years, see they lived in James City before they had to move about 30 years. And as I said the other night that I went away after living in James City for 30 years and came back right in that time period of a hundred years that the court battles were going on. So I'm here almost picking up where a hundred years things were happening. And a hundred years later it looked like things were happening to the James City community in between. But this is where the courts and everything had to speak for the people. And so it's amazing that as a descendant of Washington Spivey, when I look back at history, how it has turned around. | 46:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, when the people. | 46:56 |
| Grace George | Mostly people in James City did farm. More or less gardening. She wasn't able to have a lot of land, because the land was taken. But they did a lot of little farming in the surrounding. I think each person had so much land right near the house. So they did their own little farming. She had chickens. Oh, I remember that. Mostly as I was trying to tell, say to my mother after she left, my grandmother and my aunt, they took in laundry and they did a lot of housework. My grandmother would go to New Bern right after they would do the washing and the laundry and ironing, they'd take the clothes back. Certain days she would do housework. So they more or less did housework. | 0:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. Okay. Now when did the people finally stop living in James City? In Old James City. | 0:54 |
| Grace George | Okay. I would say that most of the people left maybe in the 1900s, 1920, maybe 1930s. But that's when they were told in the 1890s that they had to get out. But people gradually left James City. But the last of them is my grandmother, and the last one is my cousin. He's a Spivey. It's called William Spivey, which is Bill. We call him Bill Spivey. He's some of the last ones to leave. And that was in the early 60s I think Bill left from over there, because nobody else was over there. And so he sort of felt that he had to get out of there. But he was some of the last ones. And my grandma, we took her out of there in the late 50s. Because she was very old and there were so few people, we were afraid somebody would come and hurt her, but she was never happy after that. She came over here to live with one of her daughters, which is named Georgie Heidelberg. And she lived with them until she died. But she was a broken-hearted woman because to her, James City was where she wanted to die. And she tried very hard, but we had to take her out of here. It was almost like the house and everything. There was no way we could leave her any longer there. | 1:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, these White people you were talking about before, now had the Black people in James City worked for these White people? Or were they— | 2:41 |
| Grace George | Well, from what I understand, okay, Old James City is the area where the people live. On the outskirts of James City was where the people did their farming. So in other words, the Black people felt that that was their land. And so they did the farming. And then after Reconstruction, they weren't able to buy the seeds or to run the farm land, I think that's where share cropping came in. The Whites came, more or less, "We going to share," and we shared the produce and whatever. So in some form or fashion, it wind up that some of these Whites wind up owning the land. The people didn't know, because Jim Crow came in and everything. See these people, going back, before I get to that, when the people lived in James City, as my mom said, they felt that the land belonged to them. So when time came for the Union to leave here, everything was set up that they were able to take care of themselves by farming or mills and everything. | 2:53 |
| Grace George | So when they wind up leaving and Jim Crow set in and all this with the Ku Klux Klans and everything else, they were afraid to stand up, because before then they were voting, they were doing everything that they were supposed to do as an American citizen. Owning their property, owning their businesses, voting to put who in the political arena that could help them. So when all of this went back, turn turned around during the Jim Crow era, the people got scared away. But James City always stood up. They fought back, but then they got so disillusioned with the grandfather clause and laws and all these things, they just got so confused that I think they got turned off. And so that's what the key was. They didn't follow through on what they were supposed to do. So back to the farmland, they just sort of got away because they couldn't get the grain. They couldn't farm. So they had the sharecroppers, which some people in other areas continued, and they came out all right. But I think James City, with the mills and everything as an industrial area sort of went to the industrial part and sort of let the land lay there. And between the sharecroppers, they sort of some kind of way took it over. So that's what happened, I feel, from my research, that the land was turned back in that manner. | 4:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 5:37 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 5:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, when you went to school here, you had to go to, you went to the James City School, and then you went over to West Street High School? | 5:39 |
| Grace George | West Street High School. Mm-hmm. | 5:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, how were you perceived by the students, the kids who came from this area here? Did they treat you any differently because you were from Old James City or anything? | 5:55 |
| Grace George | Well, yes. In New Bern, when we went to the high school over there, we were bused in. And for some reason I never understood, but the James City kids that came on the bus, you were almost second class citizens. | 6:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Really? | 6:28 |
| Grace George | I'm sure they wouldn't acknowledge it, but we were treated that way. | 6:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. | 6:33 |
| Grace George | And you sort of went to school, did what you had to do, get back on the bus, and come back to James City. So we did feel a little different, even though in James City, our teachers were more or less—We felt close. We felt that they cared more and was concerned about us. Not that the Black teachers at the school in New Bern didn't care, but we did feel, and I speak for most of us, that we were treated a little different than the kids from the inner city. | 6:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. And in what way? How did that manifest itself, do you think? | 7:11 |
| Grace George | Well, to me, I felt that you could make a difference by acknowledging children in different ways. If you were from James City, you were called last for whatever. If you were extremely brilliant, you were a little bit aggressive, you would just jump right in. But then you had children over here that I felt that weren't that way. You'd have to sort of work with them a little bit more. And I felt the children were put down a little bit more than they were over here, than when they were going to school over here. And I don't know. Now that's my feeling of how they were. Then we had the parents over here that was aware of that. And they would go over and let them know what—People are people. And I think in any group they will make a difference. James City has always had that little knock from every direction. | 7:16 |
| Grace George | I don't know if it's because, as my mom said, they started as an independent, they did so well, and so it's always been like, "Okay, we are a little bit better than you. Better off than you." It's almost like you even felt they were a little bit better off, which they weren't, because we had our farm, we had our little gardens. And many times, as my mom said, we would sort of isolate ourselves from the other people. So when you went into their territory, it was like, "Hey, now we can treat you like—" So I think that was—But we got along, but we knew we were the children on the bus. And so you get on the bus and you get out of there. But they taught us. But I still feel like the teachers and all made a little difference in the children that were bused in than they were the children that lived there. | 8:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now do you think that James City was a closed community? How were strangers perceived? | 9:13 |
| Grace George | Well, they were very closed. Like my mom said, even in her day, James City was very close-knit people in their own way. They give it to each other, but they will always keep strangers out. And I can go back as far as what my grandma used to say, "If you come in James City, you better come in here right, or you better be able to drink a lot of water or swim that water out there." Because they would run you out of town. So people sort of didn't fool around over here. So it did make it like people were to themselves, and I guess it started from protecting themselves since the Civil War. It's like, "We're here and we don't want any outsiders coming in here bothering us, because we don't trust anybody." That's the feeling. And to a degree, you sort of got that now. You'll go just so far, but if one sort of back you off, you got a problem getting into them again, you see. So they still got that a little, with the older ones here, you see? And so, yeah, I think they are sort of protective of James City. So when you go other places, people are ready to give it to you because you on their turf now. Not being aware why they are that way. | 9:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah, now were there still these fights going on between boys in James City and New Bern when you were growing up? | 10:47 |
| Grace George | Yes. Yes. | 10:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | So, what would they fight over? | 10:54 |
| Grace George | The girls. | 10:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | The girls. Okay. | 10:57 |
| Grace George | The girls. We always had beautiful young girls. And when they were young and when we started to go to high school. And I guess when my mom, even back then, the boys always liked the girls. And they just did not want anybody to go with anybody outside of James City. Even if you didn't like anybody in James City, they didn't accept anybody outside of James City. So when I was growing up, going to high school, the boys would come over the New Bern Bridge, slip over at night to see the girls. And if the guys in James City knew this, they would run them back. | 10:58 |
| Grace George | And so the same thing happened in my mom's and all the rest of the time. And even when Cherry Point came into being, the Marines were down there. They couldn't come into James City. They would ride through James City, but they were very particular about coming near the girls in James City. And so we had several little night spots in James City, and Marines are going to find those spots. So we had, what my mom mentioned, The Beach, which was a nice building on the water down here. And everybody— | 11:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, so that was a building, it wasn't actually a beach. | 12:16 |
| Grace George | Yeah, it was a building and you could go into the water. Okay? Years and years ago. Now you can't, because they dug it up and done so many rotten things about it that you could drown in there. So most people don't go in there anymore. But we had that place and they would have large bands coming in, okay? And they would have different affairs down at that beach. And then they'd have little night spots, which weren't the greatest, but they were places where you could go and socialize in my time. So what they would do, the Marines, they'd get pigheaded and they would come in anyway. So they could dance and have a good time. But they couldn't bother with the girls. Well naturally, the girls was going to smile at the guys. And sometimes there would be a big fight. So you would wind up, the girls and the guys was some kind of way meet. But if they wanted to survive, they had to get out of town. So they'd run back and you'd hear about a big fight or something that took place. So James City has always had that name of, we don't take any junk. And it still goes on, but it's not necessarily all true. But that's how it was when I was growing up. | 12:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now you said this place, The Beach, they had some big name bands coming in? Who do you remember seeing? | 13:41 |
| Grace George | Ooh, they even had Chubby Checkers. They've had The Drifters. All the old groups in the 50s. Because I used to wonder, and when I tell that to people that how many people, Ruth Brown, and Ray Charles, all these people then was starting out. So what they would do, they would have a, as they call it now a gig or whatever, in another place, like a big place, maybe going to Georgia or somewhere like that. And they would make it that these people would stop off at the beach. So this is how we got so many big name groups coming into this area. And people from all over would come right to hear them. So, I mean, it was right on the main line going wherever they're going. So they would form their tours around that. | 13:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now would White kids ever come to see these shows? | 14:45 |
| Grace George | Well, we had maybe—It's funny you asked that, because I didn't see any Whites, but there was a Mr. Scott that owned Scott's Carpet and Tile in New Bern. And he says that he remember coming over here. And he was one of the White guys that was accepted over here. | 14:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, really? | 15:08 |
| Grace George | So I don't know. And he has a music group that he has promised that he would give us a little concert or something if we get it together. But yeah, mostly over here it was all Black. Now I remember when I was a little, little girl, they used to have minister shows in New Bern. And my Aunt Grace would take me and some other older people would go, and they had a separate side for the Blacks, and a separate for the Whites. I remember that. I didn't understand it, but all I know we had a good time. | 15:09 |
| Grace George | And I go back with that segregation era and Jim Crow era, I really didn't recognize really what was going on, because to me, this was how it was. The Blacks were in their communities and the White was different ones. The only thing that bothered me was when they used to throw stones. I didn't know why, but I thought it was because it was just a old neighborhood, that kids were just having a good time. I didn't know the difference, that that was probably why, because we were Black and they were White, just like kids. Now they'll go and throw stones. And we used to, as children, there was an old man in James City that had an old house that was older looking than ours. And he would go in and close up, called Mose Waston. And they said he had plenty of money. And we as children used to throw stones at his house. | 15:52 |
| Grace George | So to me it was almost like kids just doing things. Okay? But later I found out that these were things that were doing because you were Black or something like that. And back to the ministry show, I thought it was just fantastic, because we were able to see—Most of them were Blacks on the show. So I just thought it was fantastic to see these people performing, because at The Beach then I wasn't old enough to go to anything like that. So to see these different ones performing, putting on costumes and really singing and dancing and all that, I was just fascinated by it. I remember sitting in the stands and the Whites on that side and the Blacks on this side. And I thought nothing of it, just that's the way it is. So that I remember very well too. | 16:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do either of you remember anything called the June German dance? | 17:41 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | What? | 17:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | June German dance? | 17:46 |
| Grace George | You remember the June German dance? | 17:48 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. | 17:50 |
| Grace George | Okay. She knows that. | 17:51 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And used to have it in some warehouses. | 17:52 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:17:58]. | 17:53 |
| Grace George | Oh, I forgot. | 17:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | That's okay. | 17:53 |
| Grace George | Wait, wait, just a minute. [indistinct 00:18:05]. | 17:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. You would go there? | 18:08 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They would have it sometimes in Kinston and they always had it in the warehouse. | 18:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 18:23 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. I remember June German, the dance. One year thing. People from all over, or lived in James City, would go to June Journal. And that would always happen in a warehouse. It was so many people. | 18:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So a tobacco warehouse? | 18:46 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. In Kinston or wherever they had it, would be. And at one time, I think they—I don't know for sure, but I think one time they had in New Bern, years ago in the warehouse where it was in New Bern. But it would always be such a big affair. A lot of people. So the bands and everything would go in these warehouses, and they had orchestras then, like Cab Calloway and all these different orchestras. And the June German would pay these big orchestras to come down. And so it would be sort of a big affair, because I remember when my father died in '40, and I was prepared to go to the June German, and he died at the time. | 18:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, no. | 19:31 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And so I never got to wear the evening dress. So when my sister died in '41, I buried her in it. | 19:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. Okay. | 19:33 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | In the dress. | 19:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 19:33 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | So I never did go to it after that. | 19:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 19:33 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Because I went away. | 19:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now was June German, was he a person or? | 19:34 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | June German was just, I don't know. I don't know why they called it—I think it was cause June, the month of June. | 20:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 20:08 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I think that's why they give it the name, because it always happened in June. | 20:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | And then it was German. Like the cu— | 20:08 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | June Journal. | 20:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Journal. | 20:24 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah, June Journal. | 20:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, so Journal like the newspaper? Like, J-O-U-R-N-A-L? | 20:28 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | June Journal. | 20:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 20:31 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It was because they always had in June. | 20:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 20:38 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And so the name was June Journal. | 20:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 20:43 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | So it wasn't nobody's name special, but I think it was just the month. | 20:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. | 20:46 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | As far as I can understand, it was just the month that they had it in. And the journal just means for everybody that was involved, Black people to have once a year out with some good orchestra. | 20:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, someone told me that White people sometimes went to that dance. | 21:02 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They did. | 21:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | They did? | 21:08 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Mm-hmm. | 21:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now would everybody dance together? | 21:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, I didn't go to that many of them. | 21:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 21:15 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But I think most of the White people went for spectators. | 21:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. So they would sit up and watch? | 21:19 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I think they just wanted to see what was going on. I don't think they really wanted to be included. But I think just you go somewhere and you just go there to see what's going to happen. | 21:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Okay. | 21:35 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | So I think that's mostly when they went, was mostly about spectating. The one I went to, just one or two I ever went to. | 21:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 21:46 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But every year they had them. So I couldn't say whether they danced or didn't. But when I went it was just like spectators. I don't know. | 21:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. When you were growing up, were there any bad places in James City? Places that you weren't allowed to go to? | 21:54 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. | 22:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kind of places were those? | 22:12 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It wasn't bad, but— | 22:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Or just places you weren't supposed to go. | 22:16 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It was places that the parents didn't think you should go. There was older people, and it wasn't just a few one. I remember one, it used to be over here. And you walked by there, but you didn't go in. And it was most young adults go there. | 22:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kind of place was it? | 22:38 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Oh, it was just where people get together and I think they sold drinks and stuff like that. And back then, children wasn't allowed. We'd go to the beach. That was an open place where children and everybody could go and you could buy sandwiches and dance. They had the jukebox and everything. And so that was most of where the kids go. And then they could go out in the water before they dredged the river out down here. You could walk way out and go out to the channel. But now they done dredged the river, you walk right off of there, you right over your head, so. And I wouldn't go out there for all tea in China. | 22:39 |
| Grace George | What about the place near Grandma? | 23:24 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They dredged it out so these big boats could come up. Right. | 23:26 |
| Grace George | What about the story you told me about, there was a place that you and your sister slipped in one time and Grandma caught up with you. | 23:29 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | What? | 23:39 |
| Grace George | That grandma gave you a spanking for going into the place. | 23:40 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Oh, that was when they built a place right up here where the church is, where the Reform Cherry Hill Church is. | 23:42 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 23:55 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That used to be a large hall, the Davis people built it. And it was a large hall upstairs, and downstairs they had it rented out for parties, like dances for the teenagers and the older people. So the older young men, they would have dances there, and children, like my age, a woman, she didn't believe in dancing and all this carrying on. So my sister and I, Mama lived right across the street from it. So we sat out on the porch, tried to wait until mama go sleep so we could go over there. So she fooled us. We thought she was asleep one night. They had a big dance over there. They let us go in for nothing, because they know we ain't got to stay long. So my sister and I, we went over there and thought mama was asleep. And we was in the swing swinging and mama wasn't asleep as we thought she was. So we got over there, we jumped out and runned over, like we going to get a couple of dances. I loved to dance, and my sister too. So we going to get a couple in there before mama, and then get back on the porch. | 23:55 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Time we got in there and started dance, your aunt's husband come to the door. "Your mama said come back." Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord. We got out there. I mean, I cleared around Mama. Mama had a switch. I cleared around mama, sister right behind me. We running back home. And I don't know how mama got home so fast, but she one these old-fashioned China closet, glass and round. And we were coming around, like you coming out that door and that door. I was getting away from Mama. Sister got by her, but I slipped. When I slipped she tore me up. I bet you one thing. When I went to the dance again, I was old enough to go. I didn't have to slip. But I tell you one thing, she really tore me up. Sister got away. I fell down. I was going around the corner but I made a slip. And I was right there for Mama. Woo. | 25:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, so your mother did all the disciplining at home? | 26:26 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. | 26:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah? | 26:29 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I don't never remember my dad ever hit me ever. | 26:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 26:32 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Never. He would talk to us. | 26:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 26:35 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But for laying hand on me, I never, in my whole life, from time I was child up until I was grown. Never did. | 26:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 26:44 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But Mama? Woo. | 26:45 |
| Grace George | Put fire to you, huh? | 26:49 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Ooh, boy. | 26:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now when you were growing up in James City, was there any electricity or sewage over here? | 26:52 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No. | 26:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | And how about you? | 26:59 |
| Grace George | Well, I remember electricity. We didn't have television or anything when I was growing up until later years. But my grandma, she was very poor. But she had a radio. | 27:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 27:13 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well see, most of the people, I don't remember none but one radio in James City, in Brownsville. In Dr. Joyner's shop. They had one when Joe Lewis would fight and things like that. People go out there and people gather up and sit around to hear the radio. And wasn't no electric. And finally the people started down in Jones Chapel, put a light just like I got out here. And for a little while people, different people started to have electric in the house. But people didn't have electrician to do it. People that worked with electricians, some people would watch out, and you pay them then. But it wasn't all this going through connection. They were connected for it. So, finally people got to the place they had lights in the house. | 27:14 |
| Grace George | But most of them had lamps. | 28:11 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But before that, they'd have lamp lights. And before Papa died, he put lights in his house, before he died. And we were able to have lights. And then I got a radio. And so I had my own radio. But before then, nobody had lights. We had lamp lights. Kerosene lamps. And that's what people used to see by. I used squinch my eyes, getting my homework at night, trying to look at the book. | 28:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 28:53 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | So you didn't have. It was way up in the 40s. | 28:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | And did people over in New Bern already have electricity? | 29:01 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They had sewage and lights and stuff over in New Bern. | 29:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 29:07 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I don't know about in the Black communities. I don't know. | 29:08 |
| Grace George | In Black communities, I don't know about that. | 29:11 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | But I know all the White community had lights and sewage and stuff. Bathrooms and stuff. But here we had outdoor up in the 70s. We had outdoor toilets. | 29:12 |
| Grace George | Until they came through here with— | 29:25 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Because when Mama died it was in the 70s, and we still had outdoor toilets. Few people had gotten bathrooms. But you had to have a septic tank. Still didn't have nothing like you got now. And still most of them are septic tanks here. | 29:26 |
| Grace George | Over here. | 29:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 29:47 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Over here. | 29:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | I wanted to ask something. I know we're kind of jumping from one thing to another. | 29:50 |
| Grace George | That's all right. Yeah. | 29:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | I wanted to ask about Cherry Point, and I guess you know probably— | 29:55 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:29:59]. Go ahead. | 29:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Your mother's wearing it. It'll still pick up your— | 30:00 |
| Grace George | All right. No, no. Leave it. No, no, leave it. | 30:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | You talked about the Marines coming over. I've heard so much about the positive things that happened with the opening of the base there. Were there any negative things that happened with Cherry Point? | 30:04 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | With Cherry Point? | 30:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Any conflict between the Marines and then the people, you talked a little bit about that, and the people here? Or maybe down in Havelock or things like that. Do you know of any kind of more negative things that have come with the base? | 30:18 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, I don't know much about Cherry Point, but I guess the important, '40, when they first built Cherry Point, there wasn't that many Marines and things down there when I was out there. | 30:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | But how about you? | 30:42 |
| Grace George | Well, I didn't hear that much negative things about Cherry Point because the people were so poor, that they were so happy to get a decent job, most people. It just helped this community. Those who worked to get to prosper. And those who were too old really, they just continued the way they were. | 30:49 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Mama used to wait down there when it first—my mother used to work down there. But all I know she had a job working down there, cleaning offices. And mama used to come home when I come from washing and she would tell me about working down there. In fact, she was working down there when I lived in Wilmington. And she signed out in '50. | 31:17 |
| Grace George | Tell her about the people were doing so well here that they didn't even have to work. They just worked if they wanted to work. | 31:40 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Oh, well— | 31:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Really? | 31:46 |
| Grace George | When it got to that point. | 31:46 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Most of the people, a lot of people were glad to worked and was working in Cherry Point. And then it's always some people that are lazy, they ain't going to work, and live off of any kind of way. But people that want something, they going to work for it. But most of these people would sit on the shop bench out there, Mr. Phillips', and talk and gossip all day long. Men, not women. And a lot of them used to fish and do things. Odd jobs for theirself, that never did want to work a job. Steady job. So word got so plentiful, after people started working at Cherry Point, when they were building Cherry Point anybody willing to work, could work. So some of these guys would sit out there under the shop bench all day long. And so some people wanted harm to work right here in New Bern. Work almost everywhere. They told if they could bring the job and take it down to them, they'd work. But they wasn't going nowhere. If they bring the job to them, right under the shop, they would do it. | 31:49 |
| Grace George | And I think that could have been they're so used to doing their own thing and staying in James City they were afraid to leave. | 33:12 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | There were people that any kind of way they want to live, they want to live. They didn't want know nobody to tell them how to live or what they do for a living. They do what they want to. They kind of free people. | 33:20 |
| Grace George | Free spirit. | 33:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 33:34 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. Don't care about nothing but what they want. It wasn't the majority of people, it was just them few. But the majority of people glad to work and try to have a job to earn money and stuff. Everybody that could work was down there. And when I left here and when I come back, everybody was working. I come to visit Mama and everybody was working that want to work. So it was kind of like a boom. So I just come in and go out for the Marines. But I didn't know anything. This one's daughter had married a Marine, the other one's daughter, but I didn't know too much about it. After I got married and left here, I didn't know no much more about what was going on. But all I know when I come home, women and men who want to work was down there working. But I don't know no more. Don't know too much about it. My sister even married a Marine. | 33:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh she did? Okay. | 34:49 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Mm-hmm. She still living in New Bern. Just moved from California. She and her husband. He's retired. She married him from Cherry Point. He was a Marine down there. | 34:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. Now both of you migrated from here. You left here. And I wanted to talk a little bit about that. Was that something that was expected that people would do? That people would leave this town? | 35:04 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, a lot of people would leave here and go away because they, just like I did. People didn't want to work for nothing. And these people in New Bern would not pay you but 50 cents, a dollar. They couldn't live off, but they'd expect you to live off. And that's the way. The older people did it. But when the young people my age and younger, when they growed up, they left home. That's why. Because they had to go, or else live with these 50 cent and dollar. Go out there from sun to sun, pick tomatoes, then you get 50 cents. Now and younger people just didn't want that. So they just left home. | 35:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. Was it hard? Was it hard though to leave home? | 36:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, with me, I would explore. If I had my way, I'd have been in the Navy. Because I always wanted to travel. So me, it was just I wanted to see what was going on. And I didn't want to say I lived here in James City and died in James City. So when I got married, I started traveling then. And I went from New York. I was in New York when I was younger, but from New York to the Southern states. Then went to West and to Chicago and just different place. I went all that. Travel. And when I got to the place I wasn't scared to ride a plane, I did travel. Airplane. | 36:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | But while you were doing all this traveling, did you always consider James City home to you? | 37:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It was home, but I could have did without coming back here if Mama hadn't been here. | 37:16 |
| Grace George | Well see, that's the difference with her. See now, no matter— | 37:22 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It's my home. It's true. But I would never be in the position that I say, "I never want to leave here." I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. I never did die to just stay here, and I never died to come back here. But it was just another place. | 37:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now but it was different for you? | 37:47 |
| Grace George | Yeah. I don't know if it's because of the close ties I had with my grandparent over there. | 37:49 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well, she was here— | 37:54 |
| Grace George | You grew up here too, but it's almost like I really lived it. And then you can hear her life experience that she really had a different type of life here in James City than the average one. Now don't get me wrong, I had a good life, but I didn't live in the big house. Only when I went to New York or went to visit my mom or my dad that I lived in the big house. I had everything else, but I had to live in that old little house that my grandma would not leave, and they wanted to take me out of there, but I said I wanted to be with her. So I think there's something of my experience here in James City that I never left. I felt that I had to come back. But how I was going to come back I didn't know, because I know there's no wages here. And I knew that I had to make a decent life for myself. | 37:58 |
| Grace George | So it was the only way to make a decent life for yourself was to go north. You struggled there, don't get me wrong. It wasn't bread and honey, but you were able, like my mama said, that if you know how to save your dollars and put them in the right place, you can go forward. So that was my idea. To go to New York, try to make a life, so that when I could come back here, I could do something to help the people. Because for me, when I lived here, all of that rubbed off that, "Why should I live in an old house and live under the conditions that I was living under, happy because I got plenty of love, but why, when I look at other people of other color, why should they live so much better than I?" | 39:00 |
| Grace George | So for me, I always had that question mark. People worked hard, but they still could not live decent. And so even when I went away, I said I wanted to explore that reason. And so I had to go away to prepare myself that I could come back here. And that meant retiring. And still I did always talked about James City. Always considered that there's something had to be done. And so while away, in between making my living and raising my family, I felt that I would do as much research about James City and what the old people told me and go from there. So it just happened, not even aware of how these things were connected, that I was able to come back home and had made my living, that I would be able to take care of myself and do some of the things, at least find out why. | 39:54 |
| Grace George | And so I feel that in that way I could be a complete person, because I never could understand all my life why Blacks had to live right in substandard places and be treated whatever way. Because to me, people are people. And I guess I was like that even in the north. I always looked for the underdog. Anywhere that something was going on, I had to some kind of way, get involved to try to show some kind of support. And so doing all of that, and I survived New York, which was very hard. I says, "Well, if I survived New York, I can survive anything. So I'm going back home now, and let's see what we can do to say, enhance our community or preserve that history," because it was too beautiful and too powerful to just say that was that. And another thing, in New York and other places, Black history was so great up that way. | 41:02 |
| Grace George | People were really into it. And I'm saying, "Well my God, if they're talking about it in these areas of the north, it really happened in James City. It really happened." So that made me focus more that if it did happen, and we're talking about history here in New Bern, the historical town and all of that, what happened to the history if you're talking about Civil War? So I got more into it and I couldn't wait to get back here. So that's why living it—See, I didn't have to read about it. I lived it. I saw the old houses, I lived in them. You could look up and you could almost look through the ceiling, you could see the boards lifting up. All of that. And I still was able to go visit my mom and pop and live very well. But I still wanted to come back to grandma. So I had the best of both worlds. So, not rich or anything like that, but very comfortable to the point that I was able to be with a good side that knew how to live, and a side that just tried to survive. | 42:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now were you always planning on coming back here? | 43:17 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 43:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 43:22 |
| Grace George | From day one. | 43:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Really? Okay. | 43:24 |
| Grace George | I left here with the idea, I really didn't want to go. Because I went to college and I came back here and it was still something I didn't think I, as my mom said, we still was treated a little different, no matter what. Now the people in Old James City, they treated me like I was a flower, a great, beautiful rosebud. But people, for some reason, I always had that little difference. And I says, "Well, if I'm going to make it, I have to leave here." | 43:24 |
| Grace George | So I think I always knew there was something different. I wasn't accepted exactly. Not angry or treated badly. But like my mom said, there are certain people in the area that will always—And I guess that's a clique. You find that everywhere. Some people are a part of the clique. Some of them is always outside looking in. Why? We never know. But as she said, they will put you on a pedestal and won't let you be a part. And then they try to knock you down. They put you up there constantly. So that's with every group of people. And so I think that because we don't know we never really had time to analyze, but we analyze it ourselves that—now I'm not as self away from the people that—She doesn't really mingle that much at all. But I do go into the groups. But you can still feel that little distant in between. So I have to really mellow into them to be accepted, which I don't necessarily appreciate sometimes, but it's more to it than trying to figure out why you don't care that much for me as you care for the other person. Because I'm an independent person. | 44:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now this difference, is that because of your family or is that because you're from James City? | 45:15 |
| Grace George | I really don't know. We have never been able—It's a family thing, I say. Just like she was saying, I don't know if it started with grandpa, that he had plenty and raised his children a little different. And it's like I'm a part of that. Now, on my father's side, they were very, very poor people, I consider. From the slave on up. And they will accept me, but not the way that they accept, I say, other people. Now, nobody better touch me. | 45:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 45:56 |
| Grace George | Okay? That's how they are. But they will do their own little standoffish stuff with me. And I have learned to accept that, because otherwise I wouldn't be here trying to do what I think they need one. | 45:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 46:08 |
| Grace George | Because I have proved myself and I've done what I had to do for myself. So now, I think with some of the blessings that I have been able to get, I like to share them. And I think that's why I keep on getting my blessings, because no matter what you do, I don't do it back to you. I think you need more than I who I am. So that's why I am—My mom sometimes get pretty upset with me that I do so much giving to the community and trying to make them understand what they have. But it's something that I have experienced that she doesn't understand totally. And no matter how much I try to tell others, because there's a lot of people here in this area here that have not experienced James City the way I have. Even the adults. They grew up and then they moved out and they put it behind them. | 46:08 |
| Grace George | Some of them don't even want to remember. I've had some of them say, "Hey, leave that history alone. Let's go on." I says, "How do you go on if you don't know where you came from, or you're going to blot it out?" So I think that I am determined to make them acknowledge. Stop the, what is it? They're in denial. Many of us. And I think once they stop the denial and go forward, just like this project you're doing. I think it's a magnificent project. And I think that we're going to be able to connect from the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation, to where we are now. And once that you are complete— | 47:02 |
| Grace George | —it'd be why most Black communities, poor and no kind of political clout or nothing, that they could understand that there is help. You don't have to go in your pocket all the time. You have to know how to reach out to other areas to bring in the type of help that other people get that never share that knowledge with us. That's what I think I'm committed, because I've had it from birth. I saw the people, how they suffered in Old James City, how they tried to make it, and how I had to go away and come back, and they still don't realize how far behind they are. Many of them, they come from so far that they are so appreciative of where they are. They don't realize I look at this area and I go right on the other street over here where there's Whites living. The highway, the roads and everything, the streets are totally different. Why? We worked hard all our lives. Why should one group prosper so much? | 0:00 |
| Grace George | I know you work hard and some get a little bit more than others, but why should one community in the same section—When you ride through my community, you know it's a Black community because of how it look. As I say, you got people in every area that don't know how to take care of nice—keep things up. At the same time, if the county, the city, or whatever don't come in that other Black area and keep it up the way you're keeping the other area up, naturally it's going to go down because one, two people can't keep a whole place up. That is what I always saw. I always look at the neighborhood and compare. When I compare, I don't like what I see. If you're a tax-paying people, and we all work very hard, why am I still living in a substandard neighborhood? | 1:11 |
| Grace George | Some of the people that worked at Cherry Point, White and Blacks. They come back, yeah they got a better house than they had, but why is their neighborhood haven't improved? The same thing about the airport and the bridge. I'm not against progress, but when you continue to come to my community and leave it less prosperous than what it was, which wasn't the greatest, and you have taken everything for progress, I say progress should go on, but at the same time this community should progress. Not strip it, as you have continued to take away everything. You've taken away a man's dignity and everything else, really leaving him with nothing. | 2:08 |
| Grace George | If you want this prosperity, let us all sit down and make sure we all get a piece of it. Maybe you didn't do it before, but time has come. If you're going to get the millions of dollars for progress, I think you need to consider the progress where it's coming through. Let these people have some of that. So, that's where I'm coming from. I find that every day I'm learning more and more why we don't have anything. We never been treated fairly, and it's time now that if you're going to get it—Now see, after reconstruction, we had it all just like everybody else did. | 2:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 3:49 |
| Grace George | We could vote. You put in office who could help you. You had your land. You were able to make your living. You had your little home. It wasn't the greatest, but it was home. And you had enough land to do what you had to do. After all that change, I've noticed it's almost like it has continued, if you know history. It's been carried on that way and nothing went no further than the South because Jim Crow just knocked everything. The federal government never paid any more attention because it never reached the level. 100 years, it never reached the level. You could get funding, you'd get what was left. | 3:49 |
| Grace George | I know that we were included in these fundings coming through here, or coming wherever. But because nobody knew anything, it was given to whatever area they wanted to give it to, and you continue to deteriorate. Over there up and told you, you couldn't fix your house. And so people, they had to go in the ground. These people own property over here. As my say, you go to the bank. They'll find a way whether you got collateral or if you give people a hard enough time you're going to find some credit rating problems. | 4:28 |
| Grace George | So, you still have collateral and everything. You still can't get anything. What's going to happen? You got to botch up your little house, or do whatever you can to maintain it. So you're losing value. What is the difference of telling me I can't fix it over there in the 18 and early 1900s? You're telling me in the 1990s that "You don't have enough ratings, credits, and the land we're condemn it and give you a couple of dollars so that you can go somewhere else." Can you go find a home for 10, 20, $15,000.00? You can't find nothing. You can't even find a piece of property. Now, you get that, you go and say okay, "I'm going to buy a piece of property." | 5:01 |
| Grace George | Will the bank stand for me to get a place, even if I'm not too old to pay? No. So, where do you go? To some rental or somewhere where you just live the rest of your life. | 5:45 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Trying to get ready to move you again. | 5:57 |
| Grace George | Trying to get ready to move you again. So, for James City, for some reason it is the progress of the county. Since reconstruction, James City has carried the load on it's back and it continues because history seems to repeat itself over and over. You're not against progress. I'm not, and I don't think anybody, because if it hadn't been for progress we wouldn't be able to retire and get things that we have. | 6:00 |
| Grace George | But now that we have done by the sweat of our brows, it's time that they let these old people live a little bit, enjoy what they have tried, because every generation they come through again. They strip you, then you have to, and your children's children, have to start again. All what was taken, my had acres and acres of land. She had her home where the highway's running now. That was moved in the 50s. Then in the 70s, they took that part. They like coming from every direction. "We just don't want you people to have anything." Because you can't stop progress. We got to change that. | 6:31 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | See, the problem is, the law is bad but it's not—The White people make the law. They do what they want with the law, but we, we got to live by the law. Now when they took my home up there, they didn't give me nothing. Just as well say nothing, a couple hundred dollars, and moved me down here on a half a lot, when I had a whole house sitting up on a hill with all the land. That's all I got, a half a lot. They moved the house. The half a lot wasn't even large enough to put the house on. Then the house was never no more good because when they moved it, they just— | 7:16 |
| Grace George | Just threw it there. | 8:01 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | —threw it to pieces. | 8:02 |
| Grace George | That's what happened to our place. | 8:03 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | All right, they took that, I don't even know. I only think I got a couple hundred dollars. I said, 'Well, why would you—" way back then, I said, "Well, why would you take—" "Well, you get the value of your property. Go up there to the courthouse." They buy your property, but you're paying taxes on it every year. You got to pay taxes. Really, it's any good or no. They tell me the value of your property. | 8:04 |
| Grace George | They condemn it. | 8:30 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Just like Grace say, how can you keep your property up when you don't make enough money to keep it up? If you can't go to the bank and borrow a few thousand dollars so you can fix your house, they won't lend it to you. All right, if you can't do better to your house, your house deteriorates. It goes down. Every year, you're losing the value, the value. Then they come along want a bridge. They want a highway. Your property is condemned. Take it. For nothing. You done worked your whole life, your grandparents, like my father, worked his whole life to leave something to his children and grandchildren. What'd they do? Come along and took it. | 8:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. The highway. | 9:23 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Then down the road where Williams Store is, they didn't need all that money. They took it. All between them roads they got houses, got businesses. That was our land. They didn't give you nothing for that. It just ain't no good, but it's good enough now for people to have business on. But it wasn't no good when we had it. | 9:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Well, I'm hoping— | 9:46 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They're right there where that squad— What it is? That— | 9:46 |
| Grace George | The Rescue Squad. | 9:50 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Rescue Squad? My uncle's property. That's our property, the Foy family. Clean on down to—You see where they got all those monuments they built? | 9:51 |
| Grace George | She told me down this road. | 10:09 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | [indistinct 00:10:11] down here? | 10:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | I think I know, yeah. | 10:11 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Our property went from where that squad is, clean on to that where my sister and my aunt-in-law, her family had that part. From that part to that, and all the way to the back to the railroad, all the way up there where you see that service station, Williams Place, that was our property. What do we got now? Backed up to the railroad just about. Then all they didn't take, here come the Internal Revenue for my husband to show taxes. Took my property. I don't even know nothing about it until it's gone. Ain't nothing I can do about it. | 10:12 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I went to the A. Washington's up there to the—where your tax people—They asked me what happened. I said, "I ain't signed for nobody to sell my property. We didn't accumulate that property together. That was my family's property." "Well, he was married to you and his name was on the—" I said, "I ain't never told him to put his name on the deed." "Well, he did." My husband just slipped down here and had a lawyer, a White one, put his name on my deed. Then when he wouldn't pay his taxes, they took it. And I didn't know nothing about it. Still don't know what happened. All I know, they put my property up for sale. All the road done took the income taxes off it. All of that, my family worked for for their life. | 10:58 |
| Grace George | You see, that's a case that has happened to all the people, the Black people, from James City, Old James City right on over here. Now, they've even come to the point where they just disregard the cemeteries. Anything that is Black, it's almost like you're nothing because you respect the dead if nothing else. They've displaced cemetery. The airport fenced that in. My mom say she has people that were families that were buried right up here on US-70 where they go into New Bern. | 11:48 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | [indistinct 00:12:27]. | 12:26 |
| Grace George | Just went through that. | 12:26 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Now they're getting ready to take his house. Right down here where I tell you about they had the store. Now they say they're going to take that for the bridge. That's the last of the Foy property. | 12:28 |
| Grace George | So the whole thing is, why are you upset? Why are you angry? As I told you tonight, they stick knives into your body and you're supposed to stand and just flinch? That's how it's supposed to be. You've got to holler. | 12:38 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | What I can't stand, they got all this community, everywhere around here is built up. They got it all sold. Why did they want to dig—They can keep all this other property where the White people all are, Righteous Creek, everywhere. They got buildings. | 12:52 |
| Grace George | Fine homes. | 13:16 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Building houses, building things. This little community right here, they've been digging at this community for years. Why? Old James City, all this land, why are they so pressured? But yet, it's condemned. And they book us condemned property, but why do they keep it? Look at that shopping center out there. All that property, all the way down, was Black people. Now look at it. | 13:17 |
| Grace George | It's not condemned anymore. | 13:45 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | And they pushing and pushing. Now, all my family, my father's family, lives right down between where they done took—and over there. They got a little bit of space by that—That Rescue Squad. | 13:46 |
| Grace George | That's considered Leesville. | 14:04 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They then going to have that— | 14:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | [indistinct 00:14:07]. | 14:06 |
| Grace George | Old Leesburg. | 14:06 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Now Thomas Foy, all that land that they'd taken for the airport, that's the Foy. Some of the Foy. Old man promised Foy and his family. He used to live down here on this old Cherry Point Road, and bought this place up here behind the river. Now they're taking that for the airport. He dead and gone, but his grandchildren and great-grandchildren— | 14:07 |
| Grace George | Got to leave over the night. | 14:30 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | —they're taking it from them. They worked all their life for their great-grandchildren and grandchildren all to have a place. Now they walked in. What do they want? Why? You got all the land from the water all around everywhere. They still ain't got enough. But God can stop them. One of these days they're going to wake up and they're going to find they ain't got nothing in their hand but air because God do not love ugly. The way they treating these people, these Black people, it's like what is the Black people doing to them? Nothing, but work the slaves and got them where they at. No. Black people ain't never been an enemy to White people. Why? | 14:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | That is something I would like to know. | 15:22 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I can't understand it. Why? | 15:23 |
| Grace George | They did it to us. | 15:23 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They didn't ask to come over here. They went to Africa and got them in brought them over here. We aint ask them—Our folks didn't ask to come over here. Didn't ask them. | 15:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. | 15:39 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | We ain't want to come over here. What did they do? Go over there and pay some of them unforgotten people a few pennies to sell them, bring them over here like animals, changed. Sometimes when I think they said they shouldn't show all these pictures. They shouldn't. Just like me, it makes me feel terrible to see how they treated us, and we ain't done nothing. The Black people ain't like the White people. What have they done to them? Worked for slaves, working for nothing. Sell them like they was animals. You'd take their babies, raising them up. Look in their mouth like they good teeth like a horse or something. They still ain't got enough. I think right now if you could go and get a bunch of White people together and ask them why they don't like Black people [indistinct 00:16:47]— | 15:39 |
| Grace George | They have to address it. That's it. It has to be healing. It has to be brought up why. I don't think that has never, never come to light. Sometimes, like I say, it's education. But they have distorted education about the Blacks so much that the young, they don't understand. So as you say, the story has to be told. They have to teach it. It's going to be hard. I don't think it'll ever be healed. I really don't think so. | 16:49 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I think what happened, when you're a child, when you have a child, you teach that child before it can talk. Even before it was born, they say you teach your child. | 17:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 17:43 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | When they grow up, get in the world, get taught, the first thing he found, "You dirty little nigger," or better enough, Black person. That goes up in the child. Why? Why? What did the Black man done to them? | 17:43 |
| Grace George | Let's say just for the sake of argument, let's just say why. They have always taught us that they were better than we are. So, our people feel that "Okay, you are better than I am." So now, I have to find somebody who I am better than, so he starts to divide ourselves because we were taught certain groups is better than—It just keeps on growing that it's out of control. I don't know what we're going to do. What's the solution? | 17:55 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I think the main thing about it is that they want somebody to be inferior over. | 18:31 |
| Grace George | Everybody does. | 18:37 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Somebody they can be inferior over. So, they makes the Black people feel inferior, that they ain't good enough. | 18:38 |
| Grace George | You're never going to be good enough. | 18:47 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They bring it up and teach it, and make you think that you ain't nothing. | 18:48 |
| Grace George | I'll tell you something, even today as we said, during the Jim Crow and the segregation era, we knew where we stood. We knew we were Black people. We knew our Black community. We knew our Black school. We knew everything that we were associated with was Black. So in another way, as we said before, now they'll pick a token. If you notice, even on television you'll see one of us. Just let them know that Black America, there is a few of us out here. So what we feel now is that even if you joined their clubs, their organizations, one or two of us, you still know, they don't let you forget that you are Black. When you have people say it's a "Black thing", you don't understand. | 18:57 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It's taught. | 19:52 |
| Grace George | Only you, no matter how many stories is told and how they experienced it, or different ones—The story is that you will always have that that you are not equal. Even though we can go to college. We can come out as polished as ever. You get with the group, you got some that are extremely nice to you, and you've got those that just because of Black. Get me right, because there are all people that you don't like. Some people you just don't like, and some people just, they will not let you like them. But it's a Black thing that you cannot describe, except sounding that "Oh, that's all in your mind." You can be with a group and no matter what they do, you still know, they let you know somewhere along the way that, "That's as far as you go. Now you wait." It's something that makes you wonder, and they say "Why you want to act?—" Its strange. You cannot put your hand on it. | 19:54 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I really have wondered in my mind years, and years, and years what is it? Why? We're human. God made us all. We all got the same features. Only think that's different in the people, mostly color. Two things, most of the Blacks never had, and Blacks. The other features is the same. We got the same 10 fingers, 10 toes, two eyes, nose, everything just like everybody else. But why is it they want you to be under them? Regardless of how poor or how rich, "You stay under me." Don't care if you own— That's the reason my daddy could get along, which he never bothered. | 20:59 |
| Grace George | Don't bother. That's the only way. | 21:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right? | 21:53 |
| Grace George | Don't bother. | 21:53 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | —associated, or never been around. All he did was when he'd do his business like buy stuff from them, that was it. It was nothing, no transactions like loans or nothing. He didn't have that [indistinct 00:22:08]. | 21:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did he say things to you like, "This is the way to get along, just stay away from White people." | 22:08 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Sometimes they won't let you stay away. Right now, we're all in this neighborhood together. What are they doing to us? Taking this land. We ain't bothering y'all. We ain't doing nothing to them. The community is trying to survive. They bothered—What are they doing? Taking properties. They can't find properties nowhere but right around the Black community. I read the paper, up in Durham, different places, taking the property. Right here in New Bern, they put a— James City displaced. They won't even let you go across there. You got to come all around. A whole lot of people live up there. | 22:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 22:55 |
| Grace George | Got them closed in. | 22:55 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Nowadays, you got to go to the doctor, you got to go up there and come all the way around here to go to the doctor. They shut the street up. Before they put a light there, they put that thing there. They got lights all the way thrown in the road everywhere. Right down here, people signed a petition for a light up there. When the light come, it was down here. We never did get the light. Then turn around and said they wasn't going to give you the light. | 22:56 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Now, all this is Black community. They shut it off. Everybody that live over there is Black, churches and everything else. They done shut the street up. You got to go one way or the other way. The same thing, I read in the paper yesterday, the same thing they're doing up here on Pollock Street. All them people coming out there was Blacks. That whole section, three or four corners was Black. Now they got to go all the way around another place to get to where they're going. You see, it ain't fair. | 23:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. Right. | 23:59 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It's not fair. Something has got to stop these people. It ain't but one man, Heavenly Father, is going to stop them because they're doing too much. And for what? Why? The Black people ain't doing nothing to them. | 24:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | You've talked a lot about God and about— | 24:21 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah, I believe in God. | 24:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah, no. I understand that. | 24:26 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I believe it. | 24:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | No, I didn't—I know you do. | 24:28 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I believe it. | 24:30 |
| Grace George | No offense. | 24:30 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I believe that God—I believe in the Bible. | 24:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. | 24:34 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I believe especially in the Revelations, what is happening today? We're living in the last days. Right now, people is killing each other. They don't know where they're going. They're leaving this world all kind of ways. God is in the plan. You can do, and do, and do but it's a stopping point. Man think they got it all. They got it all planned. They don't say if God's real. I heard, I listened at a election, every time they vote "We gonna do that. We gonna do that," it ain't never said God's will. Don't put him in it. He ain't considered. But yet, he's causing the breath they breathe. He can stop it just like that. But yet, it ain't him. They're God, but it's the Almighty God up there. | 24:35 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | When he gets ready, it's going to be wars, and rumors of wars right now. Everywhere you look there's a war overseas. They warring over here with each other. They warring right now. They ain't satisfied. Don't care what they do or is anyone left. It's still grabbing. Because time is limited. When God gets ready to stop you, I don't care who you is, he going to stop you. I don't care how rich are you, or how poor are you. When he gets ready and it's his time, you can go, and go, and go. When God gets ready to stop you, you going to stop. I don't care who you is. I believe that. I believe in God, and I believe that he is over everybody, and the Bible and the Commandments said "Thou shalt have no other god before me. I am God. And beside me, there's none other." | 25:38 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | You can take way in the biblical times. They made statutes. Idol gods. Right now, he said, the Bible speaks of preaching false pretenders leading people. What about these preachers who are taking money from the people? You got one in court right now. How about the one that took all these people's money? They ain't for God. They for themselves. Get people to believe in them. That's false prophets. | 26:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. What role do you think the church has played in your life? | 27:18 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Huh? | 27:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | The church? | 27:24 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I'll tell you who played the most in my life. My mother and my grandfather. Mama's father. Because mama, we used to sit down and read the Bible. My grandfather, he was a preacher, mama's father. We always believed—Mama believed in going to church, teaching you right from wrong. My uncle, he didn't belong to no church, going to church with my father's brother. He was just a Christian. He used to tell us, my sister and I, "Regardless of what you do, try to do a little right because right is always gonna win. Regardless to how rough it is, stick to right and you will come through all that." Just like if somebody had hurt me, I ain't going to fight back at them. | 27:24 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They hardly even know that I know. I don't even let them know that I know what I know because I got one man. I don't pay. I can't pay you back because I'm just as guilty as you is if I get out there and start fighting. I give up in the hands of God. May his will be done. His will, when his time comes, he'll protect you. When them other people start to go, they'll get paid too. I don't try to pay nobody back because I got somebody to fight my battles, and I don't have to fight it. People, sometimes we go, and go, and go and look like you just can't go no further. Always believe in this, God will not put no more on that you can bear. For you can bear, he will take it from you. | 28:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. | 29:18 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I believe that. | 29:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 29:18 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I believe in God. As I said, I believe in God the Father. I do. I believe in—They said, "How can you believe somebody when you ain't never seen them?" I believe I got it in here. I believe in my heart. That's what I believe. I may don't get out there and shout, and going all over everywhere, "I'm a Christian. I'm a Christian," Well, I live it everyday because I know right from wrong. I never in my life had no trouble with the law and nothing else. I'm 77 years old. I've been traveling and I ain't never had no trouble. I could have been anything. I started out young. Young people most of the time get into all kinds of trouble. | 29:23 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I always believe in the right, the right and the wrong. If you stick to the right, sometimes it's rough, sometimes it's rough, but you get out there and try to do the right thing. The Devil is out there pulling from end of the rope, but you hold your hold and put your faith in God. You'll come through all that. I ain't your time, but it's his time. He'll stop whatever it is. I believe that, because I've been through a lot of hard trials and tribulations, and I'm here to tell you. A lot of people that give me that hard time is gone. I'm still here. God suffered me to have my health and strength. I don't have to go to the doctor. I don't take medication. The only problem I got, I can't hear good. I've got that going. | 30:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | How about the church? What role did the church play in the community here? | 31:08 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I think the church played the biggest role, don't you, Grace? | 31:15 |
| Grace George | Yeah. Yeah. | 31:17 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I think people settle in church more than they do anything else. I think the church takes the biggest role. | 31:18 |
| Grace George | All the activities was centered around the churches. Anything that went on. | 31:27 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Whatever happened in church, the activities and the things that goes on, it all went back to the church. I think most of this community is built up around the churches. | 31:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | What role did the ministers play in this community? | 31:47 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I think they played—In some churches, I think they played [indistinct 00:31:55]. | 31:51 |
| Grace George | Yeah, and even [indistinct 00:31:58] believe in their ministers. | 31:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 31:59 |
| Grace George | They play a very important role. | 32:00 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Very important part. | 32:02 |
| Grace George | However, today things have changed in compared to how it used to be years ago. | 32:04 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It's like a leader. | 32:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | How would the minister be able to lead people? In what way would he influence them? | 32:12 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I think people wants to hear—Most of the people want to hear about the Bible. But see, only for I think the preachers preach, but they don't move themself in the community. Mostly every preacher around here is in James City. | 32:18 |
| Grace George | Yeah, from outside. | 32:41 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | [indistinct 00:32:45] all the time. | 32:45 |
| Grace George | Today. Today. | 32:46 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They come here to preach. | 32:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 32:48 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Well naturally, they don't have the best interest of the community. I think what happened to people in the community, goes to the preacher more and what they should be about it, take on their own selves. They go to the preacher, well see. They can't realize that these preachers, this ain't their home. They don't even live here. Until the community gets—they need to take over a lot themselves. | 32:49 |
| Grace George | See, I think that years ago they always could go to the minister and he was a part of the community. Just like the teachers and everybody once. But now, things have changed. They have so many other places that come from other places, they're involved in so many things outside of the community that they are not given to the community the way they used to. So the people have not forgotten how the ministers used to be, and it's passed on generation after generation, and they're not receiving the interest or the help that they got years ago from ministers. | 33:23 |
| Grace George | The community still don't recognize that. They know it, but they're still saying one day it's going to be like it used to be. Until they really find themselves, I think that has taken place—What has taken place in James City, the leadership is not like it used to be with the ministers because you had four churches, four or five churches, four churches that left James City. Old James City. They marched them over here like a bondage. It wasn't just like okay, the church over there—No, they came with the minister in those times, and it was a bonding. So the community and the church was like whatever the church said, the community knew that was how it's supposed to be. | 34:01 |
| Grace George | But now, it's like they're still out there reaching for something that's not there. It's coming, because some of these things that are happening right now, I think it's going to bring the people a little closer to what it used to be. It'll never be because it's too many outside interests now. I think that it will come in very, very near future that the people will have to take charge again and see that the ministers take charge. They highly respect their ministers, even if they're not doing all they feel they should. They look up to their ministers and their church. As mama said, you see them on radio and television, sometimes the ministers deceive them but they still look up to those ministers. | 34:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Can you remember an issue in the past when you were both living here when you were younger, where the minister really was able to—Or a minister was really able to mobilize the community, or helped people through a rough time, or was very influential in changing things here, or helping people out? | 35:36 |
| Grace George | Maybe my mom. Now, her church is Mt. Shiloh. Like I say, we are not the type of people that idolize the ministers. We see them as God's people, but they're human beings. I can only speak from what some of the older people said like, some of them helped form unions. When it was time for them, they had to do their own crops and everything, and they were left independent. They had to go work for other people, and they weren't given wages and everything. So the ministers took leadership in that way of showing them that "Hey, we have to try to find a way to get better wages and find different ways how to live better in the community." Don't get me wrong, there are still some ministers in the community that is doing what they can to help, but they're not given as much as I feel they should. | 36:03 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | They ain't getting the support they need. | 37:05 |
| Grace George | They need. | 37:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. | 37:05 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | The support ain't there. | 37:05 |
| Grace George | So what they're into, they're into it. They're very into what they're into, and the people far as that—But community-oriented, I don't think this group of ministers is as strong in the community as they should be. I can't recall, because like I say, we've been in and out of here and there's been so many years. As a child, I sort of just walked with the old people. They went to church and you heard the sermon. I can't just put my hand right now on what's special, but I know way back I have a list of all the ministers from 1898 up until 19— | 37:09 |
| Grace George | I don't want to say recently, that were ministers that grew up and became ministers right here in the area. What we have now are ministers from other areas that sometimes have three and four churches in other places that they cannot give too much to you as they should. I think I feel that the community— We'll have community services more now, and I think that change is going to come somewhere that it would go back to the way it used to be. | 37:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | You talked a little bit about them starting unions. | 38:32 |
| Grace George | This was going back. Mt. Shiloh, I think his name was—It's in the James City book. | 38:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Right, okay. | 38:41 |
| Grace George | In those days, the ministers sort of stood up. They were the community. They carried out. They lived in the area. | 38:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Is this in the 19th century? | 38:52 |
| Grace George | Yeah, 19th century. My research is like they were more less weren't able to form the way they were before, and so they to go out and maybe work for other farmers, or whatever work they had to do. As a result, they were paid hardly no money. If you don't have no means of getting money but what people pay you, as my mom say, they pay you hardly nothing. So they tried to form a union that the people of James City would not work until they paid them the right salaries. I don't think it went too far because you had people that said, "Hey, I need the dollar," whatever, 50 cents or whatever. | 38:55 |
| Grace George | They were just that active enough to stand up. Even going back, most of the ministers during the time when reconstruction [indistinct 00:39:53], they did stand up for the people and lead the people. When we first started, and I will be fair, when the airport and all them first started out talking about taking the land, well they didn't tell you in the beginning it was already taken, or they had already made their plans when they came to James City people. We did have our ministers in several meetings and they did speak up. | 39:42 |
| Grace George | Maybe because I'm from the North, I don't think they spoke up enough. But they did speak. I have that recorded. Personally, I don't think it went far enough, but they did speak. I must give them that. All four of them did speak in reference to what they were doing to the James City community. | 40:23 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Is it that late? | 40:44 |
| Grace George | God, we really talking, right? | 40:46 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | The mail man. | 40:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | I didn't really have much more that I wanted to ask you. | 40:51 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | You ready? | 40:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | There were some things that I wanted just to flush out your life a little bit more, but I have some biographical information I have to take anyway. | 40:55 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Okay. Okay. | 41:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | I have to get another packet from my car because I just had one, and I need to do one for both. | 41:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | All right, Ernestine Foyer-Odel. Should I put— | 41:11 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Ernestine Odel-Foy. | 41:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | O-D- | 41:20 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | E-L. | 41:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. O-D-E-L. | 41:23 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Odel. | 41:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 41:24 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Foy-Clemmons. Maiden name Foy. | 41:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | What's your zip code? | 41:36 |
| Grace George | 228— | 41:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | 650? | 41:42 |
| Grace George | —650. | 41:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 41:42 |
| Grace George | I went blank. | 41:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | I know, I'm [indistinct 00:41:48]. How do you like to be known? Do you like Ernestine Foy-Clemmons, or how do you like your name to appear on your checks, or if something comes out written from the project? How would you like your name to appear? | 41:47 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Foy-Clemmons. | 42:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. Okay. | 42:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | What's your date of birth, please? | 42:24 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | March 28, 1915. | 42:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | You were born right here in James City, right? | 42:31 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah. | 42:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Or should I put Brownsville? | 42:34 |
| Grace George | James City because it's— | 42:35 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | [indistinct 00:42:37] Township. | 42:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, all right. Now you were divorced from your first husband, and then your second husband has passed. Is that right? Your second husband has passed, is that right? | 42:44 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yes. | 42:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | What was your first husband's name? | 42:58 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | He was Eli. | 43:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Eli, E-L-I? | 43:01 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | E-L-I Edmundson. | 43:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Sorry, Edmundson? | 43:08 |
| Grace George | Edmundson. | 43:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Edmundson? | 43:08 |
| Grace George | Edmundson. | 43:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | That's E-D-M-U-N-D-S-O-N? | 43:12 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Mm-hmm. Edmundson. | 43:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Your second husband? | 43:18 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Charlie Clemmons. | 43:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Charlie? | 43:21 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Charlie C. Clemmons. | 43:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember when your first husband was born? Or do you know his birthday? | 43:29 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | He was born in 1919. | 43:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | 1919. Okay. Is he still living? | 43:38 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | June 20th. | 43:42 |
| Grace George | No, he's dead. He's deceased. | 43:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, June 20th. When did he pass? | 43:43 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | August 18, 1992. | 43:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mr. Clemmons, when was he born? | 43:56 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Mississippi. | 43:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | No, when? When was he born? | 44:01 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I said 1919. | 44:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, he was born—But how about your first husband? | 44:04 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I don't know. [indistinct 00:44:07]. | 44:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. Do you know? | 44:06 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I don't know. | 44:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, all right. So, we'll just— | 44:10 |
| Grace George | It's probably the same time you were—What was your birth year? Was he about your same age? Your first husband? | 44:11 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | No, he was born—He was about a couple years older than I was. | 44:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, so around 1913 or so? | 44:29 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Mm-hmm. | 44:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 44:30 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | [indistinct 00:44:31] 18 months. | 44:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | All right. All right. Do you know when he passed? | 44:34 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | He ain't passed. | 44:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | He isn't? He's still living? Okay. | 44:41 |
| Grace George | Oh, he's still alive? | 44:42 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Mm-hmm. | 44:43 |
| Grace George | Oh, I didn't know he was alive. I had told you he died. | 44:44 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I don't know whether he passed or anything. | 44:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. | 44:49 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Let's put it I don't know. | 44:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. Okay. Now your second husband—Your first husband was born right here in James City. Okay. | 44:49 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Leesville, somewhere down the road. | 45:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | And your second husband, where was he born in Mississippi? | 45:08 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | What is the name of the little town? Oh, boy. | 45:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you know what county— | 45:20 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | It's near Jackson, Mississippi, but it ain't Jackson. | 45:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you know what county it was? | 45:21 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Huh? | 45:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you know what county it was? Maybe Jackson County? | 45:23 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I don't know much about none of it. | 45:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right, I'll just put near Jackson. | 45:28 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Near Jackson's fine. | 45:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | What was your first husband's occupation? | 45:34 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Bricklayer. | 45:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Bricklayer. The second? Your second husband? He was a construction subcontractor, or— | 45:38 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | That's a subcontractor, the bricklayer. | 45:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. Okay. | 45:49 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | [indistinct 00:45:51]. | 45:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 45:50 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Second husband. | 45:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Your first husband, what did he do for a living? | 45:55 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | He just worked. [indistinct 00:45:58]. He just worked for everybody. | 45:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, mill worker. Okay. | 45:57 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Yeah, he was just a public worker. | 46:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Your mother's name, please? | 46:08 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Rebecca Beatrice Ellis Foy. | 46:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Ellis— | 46:19 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | She had a second husband too. | 46:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, what was [indistinct 00:46:24]— | 46:21 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | We all got the second [indistinct 00:46:25]. We call them "The Seconds". | 46:22 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:46:29] Hollywood [indistinct 00:46:31]. | 46:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | We should have talked a little more about men. [indistinct 00:46:35]. Okay, Ellis was your mother's maiden name. | 46:31 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | Rebecca Ellis. Rebecca Beatrice Ellis. | 46:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, and that's E-L-L-I-S? | 46:42 |
| Ernestine Clemmons | I— | 46:44 |
| Grace George | And I have to show you pictures. | 0:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. I'll be happy to look at that. Okay, now you were born in James City, and when did you leave here? | 0:04 |
| Grace George | I left here the— Well, I was in and out. My mother used to travel. | 0:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 0:18 |
| Grace George | So I say I officially left here about '59. | 0:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | 1959. | 0:24 |
| Grace George | But I had gone and come back, gone and come back, but say about '59. | 0:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. And then you went to New York City in '59? And how long were you there? | 0:31 |
| Grace George | More than 30 years. | 0:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So 1959 to '89 or 'til— | 0:37 |
| Grace George | Well, longer than that then, because I just came back in '91, to say I'm officially here in '91, so longer than 30 years. | 0:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And you're back in New Bern now. Okay. | 0:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | All right. Now you went to James City School? | 0:51 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 1:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | And that was til to the eighth grade. And then you went to— | 1:01 |
| Grace George | West Street. | 1:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | West Street High School. | 1:11 |
| Grace George | Right. For four years. | 1:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And when did you graduate from high school? | 1:17 |
| Grace George | 1954. | 1:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And then where did you go to college? | 1:20 |
| Grace George | I went to college in Winston-Salem, teacher's college. | 1:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And you got what degree? | 1:29 |
| Grace George | BA. | 1:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | BA, okay. And when did you get that? | 1:39 |
| Grace George | Well, when my son was born, I went on to New York, so I got that at Brooklyn College. | 1:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Okay. All right, so, let's see. | 1:51 |
| Grace George | So I got that [indistinct 00:01:54]. | 1:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Brooklyn College. Okay. | 1:54 |
| Grace George | I went on and completed it by '57. | 1:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Now, when did you start at Winston-Salem? | 1:56 |
| Grace George | '54. | 2:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | 1954. Okay. | 2:02 |
| Grace George | My son was born in '56. | 2:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 2:06 |
| Grace George | One son. | 2:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. 1957. Okay. Now, did you ever think of teaching here? | 2:08 |
| Grace George | Well, I had considered it, but I didn't like it to stay here. I wanted to go and explore what was outside. After having a child, I wanted to go away from here and see how it would be someplace else. | 2:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 2:33 |
| Grace George | That's why. | 2:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Now, where did you work when you were in New York City? What was— | 2:36 |
| Grace George | I worked in a daycare setting, preschoolers and kindergarten. | 2:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So where was that? | 2:49 |
| Grace George | In Bay Ridge. | 2:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 2:53 |
| Grace George | Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York. I worked there close to 30 years. | 2:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And what was the place that you were working? What was the name of the place? | 3:02 |
| Grace George | Bay Ridge. | 3:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. I know, but the daycare, the center or whatever it was, did it have a name? | 3:08 |
| Grace George | That's it. It was in the area of Bay Ridge and it was called Bay Ridge Nursery School. | 3:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And that was from 1959 or 1957? | 3:28 |
| Grace George | 19— Okay. 19— When did I start there? 1962, '63. | 3:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 3:50 |
| Grace George | Before then I had worked in welfare department working with abandoned children. | 3:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Okay. | 4:01 |
| Grace George | Abandoned children and neglect children. Neglected children. | 4:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 4:06 |
| Grace George | That was in Manhattan, New York. | 4:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Okay. | 4:11 |
| Grace George | It's called Children's Center. | 4:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 4:21 |
| Grace George | She's in there with those soap operas. Is your tape on? Do you want me to tell her to cut it down? | 4:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | No, no. It's fine. | 4:31 |
| Grace George | Usually it's so loud you can't even hear. That's her daytime stories. | 4:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Have you received any awards or honors or held any offices? You're on the board of the James City Historical Society. | 4:42 |
| Grace George | Well, I'm the founder. | 4:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | The founder, okay. | 4:49 |
| Grace George | The founder. | 4:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | I didn't realize that. | 4:51 |
| Grace George | I'm the founder and— presently the president— Which means I'm cover many hats. Administrative, board of director, everything. At this point, let's just leave it at those two. | 4:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Should I just— And is there anything else you'd like me to put down here? | 5:16 |
| Grace George | What in reference to? | 5:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Holding offices or awards or anything like that? | 5:20 |
| Grace George | Well, I've had awards for the James City Society. And, well, on my job, I've gotten accommodations for the job that I've done. | 5:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. | 5:37 |
| Grace George | I can't think of anything else, but anyway. | 5:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So I put job accommodations and awards in reference to work with James City. | 5:47 |
| Grace George | James City Society. | 5:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 5:52 |
| Grace George | Historical Society. I've gotten some awards from the New Bern Historical Society, and I was nominated for Commissioner of the Tryon Palace. I was put in the nomination for [indistinct 00:06:18] So if that's going to make any difference, I don't know. Make me look good. [indistinct 00:06:26] was nominated, but it didn't go no further than that. Go on now. You're laughing. Let me see, can I think of some more? | 5:52 |
Item Info
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