Childs, William Thomas interview recording, 1993 July 12
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Rhonda Mawhood | Always lived in Wilmington? | 0:01 |
William Thomas Childs | I am a Wilmington native. I was born right here, and I still own the house that I was born in. | 0:03 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Where is that house there? | 0:13 |
William Thomas Childs | That house is located at 10th and Grace Streets. | 0:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Were the street names the same when you were born there? | 0:18 |
William Thomas Childs | Same streets. Wilmington is laid out so that the first front street is the front street, second, third, fourth, and all the way out, going from west to east. And of course the streets going north and south in downtown Wilmington have always had the same name. Very few name changes have been. That has been 10th and Grace for a long time. | 0:19 |
William Thomas Childs | Sometimes the streets will run into another name. As for instance, I live on 10th and Grace, where I live, it is 10th Street. Where it used to be, after it crossed a couple of blocks north, it used to be Dickerson Street. 9th Street was 9th Street until it got to about Red Cross Street and then it became—Or Walnut Street until it got to maybe Chestnut Street or Gray Street, and then it became Anderson Street. | 1:01 |
William Thomas Childs | But by and large, they're 9th and 10th street, we always knew them as that. | 1:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And were your parents from Wilmington too? | 1:50 |
William Thomas Childs | My mother's family is from Wilmington. They are natives. My father was a South Carolinian. He came to Wilmington working on the Atlantic Coastline Railroad. And he worked for many years on the railroad. And he retired from the railroad, but shortly before he retired, he went into the ministry. So he became a preacher. He became a minister, a preacher I think while I was away in college. I think that's when he really became—But he had been reading and thinking and that kind of thing and been a church person all of his life. And I think that that was just a natural direction for him to go. | 1:53 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And what about your mother? | 3:03 |
William Thomas Childs | She came from a family of Hendersons, and they are natives. I have a niece who is in New York and she is really in the theater, but she's done a lot of research, and she sent me an excerpt from, I can't remember now what library it was, but it had a little story that related to my grandmother here, who I think had indicated she was a slave, and some of her recollections about her living on a property near what is now 3rd and Market. I have that excerpt at home, I didn't bring it, but I don't know what it's doing in the library where she was, to find that research, but— | 3:05 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And was her name Henderson? | 4:17 |
William Thomas Childs | Her name was Isabella Henderson. | 4:19 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And did you know your grandfather growing up? | 4:23 |
William Thomas Childs | Oh, yeah. I knew my grandmother. I did not know my grandfather. I knew my grandmother, and she had four daughters. | 4:25 |
William Thomas Childs | My natural mother died early. She died around 1926 or 1927 or somewhere in that—Somewhere between '25 and '27. And my father later married her sister, so my aunt became my mother. | 4:46 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How old were you when your mother died? | 5:22 |
William Thomas Childs | I must have been about five or six. | 5:26 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When you were a child and you knew your grandmother, did your grandmother talk to you about the past and her life? | 5:42 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, she talked—It was a close family. They all around and that kind of thing. Yeah, they talked about occurrences. They did not really want to talk too much about the riot of 1898. They did not like to talk too much about that. Of course they knew, had a lot of information about that, but they did not like to talk about it. | 5:48 |
William Thomas Childs | Back then, when I was coming along, there was what they called grown folks talk and children's talk. And there were certain things that grown folks talked about that they didn't want the children to be hearing and talking about. Do you understand what I'm talking about? | 6:39 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Yes, sir. | 7:02 |
William Thomas Childs | So we got some of those things by possibly accident, overhearing and that kind of thing. And of course they were, shall I say, positive people. They looked forward rather than back. And very little about 1898, very little did I ever get from my grandparents or anything like that. They did not talk to us about those things. | 7:04 |
William Thomas Childs | I do know that on the street where she lived, lived also about in the middle of the block a man who held a pretty important position in the city. I'm not too sure whether he was a police officer. I think he must've been prior to the riots. | 7:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | This is a Black man? | 8:17 |
William Thomas Childs | Oh, yes. | 8:17 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you remember when you first started knowing that the riot had occurred in 1898? | 8:22 |
William Thomas Childs | I did not really know until I started going to school. As I later learned, it was a real traumatic kind of thing. And many Blacks who lived through that era were quieted. They were not expected to talk too much about it. | 8:28 |
William Thomas Childs | As you probably have read, a lot of Blacks were driven out of the town. A lot of them during the riots hid. And when they thought things were a little calm, then they came back to where they were and didn't want to raise any further problems, so they didn't do a whole lot of talking about it. | 9:00 |
William Thomas Childs | But someone did. Someone wrote about it and somebody talked about it. I later talked with a person who was living during that time, and he was an interesting person. He was an old minstrel man. He played the trumpet. And he used to talk about what happened, some of the things that happened on, for instance, 4th Street, and some of the things that some of the people were doing. But he talked about it pretty freely. | 9:31 |
William Thomas Childs | Like I say, he was an old minstrel man. I believe he played, he was with the Silas Queen Show. And of course he had a far different perspective than my folks. | 10:21 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Why was that? | 10:38 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, his lifestyle was different. He was an entertainer, for instance. They told stories and they were more open and more—My folks, my grandmother—If she was, and I don't think that this article indicated she was a slave, and she talked about those days, and her daughters had children, but they washed clothes. They were laundresses. Very few of them worked out in people's houses. I don't know of any of them that worked in people's houses. I don't know of any. But they all did laundry for people. And a lot of times, I had to go and deliver that laundry. Had a little cart, and I'd go and deliver that laundry. | 10:39 |
William Thomas Childs | I had an uncle who was an accomplished brick mason. I had an uncle who was a fisherman. He knew how to fish real well. | 11:49 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Was that his job? Did he do that for money? | 12:15 |
William Thomas Childs | I really don't know of any other job that he had. I know that he did leave Wilmington at a time and go to work in the steel mills, I think in Duquesne, Pennsylvania. He went in that area because that was the opportunity at that time. Later on, people went from here to New York, but this was prior to that kind of migration. He went to Duquesne, Pennsylvania, worked in the steel mills. | 12:20 |
William Thomas Childs | But the difference between them and Archie, called him Archie, Archie Blue, Archie was a jovial, jolly fellow and he took a lot of pride in working with young folks. He worked at a boys club and he liked to teach the youngsters how to blow the trumpet. And we played checkers all the time. He liked to play checkers, not only with me, but with a lot of us who were over at the club. And his perspective on life was just different. | 13:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What did your parents think of Archie telling you these stories? | 13:53 |
William Thomas Childs | They didn't mind. They figured that it's kind of like people teaching their children about sex. They don't know how to do it. And if somebody else that they feel is responsible can do it or will do it, that's all right. So they didn't have really any objection. They probably didn't know how to talk about it. They didn't know how to talk about it. | 13:58 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, my father wasn't even here at that time. See, he wasn't even here at that time. And my mother's family just didn't know how to talk about those things. But Archie did, and I guess other males knew more about how to talk about it and that kind of thing, as opposed to females. There were things that females didn't talk about, if you can understand that. | 14:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So how did Archie talk about the riot to you? | 15:18 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, his memory was about the relations that were supposedly forbidden, the relations between Whites and Blacks, the social, sexual relations that occurred. And he just recounted it, just talked about it. How, of course, that could and did lead to serious problems, but it was natural. And I guess out of what Archie told me, sometime later on in my own life, I devised the philosophy that one cannot successfully legislate human morals. One can try, but one cannot. Whatever is natural, that is where we are. And if it is natural for people to be attracted to each other, that is what's going to happen. And I don't care how many laws you enact, just enough of law to be broken. | 15:23 |
Rhonda Mawhood | If Archie talked about sexual relations between Blacks and Whites, did he talk about the dangers of those relations? | 17:28 |
William Thomas Childs | Oh, yeah. He talked about the fact that possibly they knew about the dangers, but they always are the adventurous and the carefree people, and let the devil take the hindmost the most. And there always have been those people, and there always will be. "Today, we eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow, you die," and that's an ancient philosophy. | 17:34 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I just find it interesting because it was so dangerous for Black men to have any kind of contact with White women, and here's this man at a boys club talking about presumably sexual or other relationship— | 18:15 |
William Thomas Childs | He was just relating what was going on. It was going on, he observed it, and that's the way he was. He didn't necessarily endorse it. More or less, he was recounting. He was recounting what was going on. I don't know of any time in his life that he had been or was attracted to anything like that, but he was an observer and was just relating what was going on, and some of the things went on, some of the conflicts. | 18:30 |
William Thomas Childs | He talked about an incident over on North 4th Street. I can't remember, but the incident resulted in a confrontation. And I'm not too sure that it grew out of any kind of relationship between the White women and Black men, but whatever it was, developed into a confrontation and a conflict over on North 4th Street. I think I later read something about an incident that occurred over on North 4th Street leading up to and during that riot period. But he remembered. He was a storyteller and he was an interesting storyteller. | 18:47 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did he use the Wilmington riot as any kind of dividing point in the history of the city? | 20:19 |
William Thomas Childs | What Archie told me about that was like a historian would say. He did not put any significant—I remember this now, he thought of both the men and the women who engaged in that kind of behavior as trashy. I remember him saying that. He saw both of them as trashy. That was his words. | 20:27 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Would they have been called trashy if they both were Black or both were White? | 21:15 |
William Thomas Childs | In his head, probably. While he was a minstrel man and entertainer, that kind of thing, he had pretty high standards for himself, how people should act. And those things that Archie was telling me was just a recollection of what just went on. He wasn't a moralist, if you understand what I'm saying. He was just a relator of the facts. | 21:18 |
Rhonda Mawhood | But he was moralizing in the sense that he told you that these people were trashy? | 22:01 |
William Thomas Childs | He told me and others, some others. He was just recalling. He is one of the last people that I know of who had a real recollection, living people who had a real recollection of what was going on, and who would talk about it real. | 22:06 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What was his last name? | 22:33 |
William Thomas Childs | His name was Archie Blue. | 22:38 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Blue, okay. | 22:40 |
William Thomas Childs | Archie Blue. And Archie has a living daughter, I believe, here, now. | 22:40 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So Archie was married? | 22:50 |
William Thomas Childs | Archie was married, and he had—I think he has a living daughter. Yeah, he was married. He was a family man and he was a really, really interesting person. He certainly was with his background and his experiences and his outlook, and he had quaint little sayings that were real catchy. He was an interesting person. | 22:57 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you remember any of his sayings? I know it was a while ago. | 23:31 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah, it was a while ago. But I told you, we play checkers together, and he scored a point on the checkerboard. And one of his favorite sayings was, "Don't you see? Now, don't you see?" That's one of his favorite little things. And, "Don't you see?" | 23:39 |
Rhonda Mawhood | As he jumped? | 24:00 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah. "Don't you see?" | 24:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. Would you say that Archie taught you things about being a man? | 24:10 |
William Thomas Childs | I think that I was out of college at this time. I was out of college at the time that I had my contact with Archie, but I was over at the boys club and I was some kind of a volunteer and got to talking with the staff people and that kind of thing. That's the very same. Archie had some influence on Meadowlark Lemon. Archie was over there at that club when Meadowlark Lemon was a member of that club and most likely had some influence on Meadowlark Lemon and other athletes that came through and went on. | 24:20 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So, I wanted to ask you about your parents. Now, your mother died when you were very small and your father was working on the railroad. So who took care of you before your father married again? | 25:21 |
William Thomas Childs | My grandmother and my aunts. And I told you, my aunt became my stepmother. It wasn't really all that long after. I think possibly she may have done it in order to help take care of us, I think. But we were cared for by aunts and grandparents and close family. Our family was pretty close at that time, but most of them now are dead. | 25:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How many brothers and sisters did you have? | 26:23 |
William Thomas Childs | There were three of us who were natural brothers and sisters. My father had been married prior to the time that he came to Wilmington, and there were three children from that marriage. They were born in, I think Savannah, Georgia. And of course they went to school down there. He was a stickler for keeping his kids in school. And all of them went to, while there may not have been public schools where they came from in South Carolina and Georgia. They were sent to private schools, or boarding schools as they were called, boarding schools, until they left and went north. They left and went north, but they all were in school. And all of my natural brothers graduated from high school and from college and earned degrees. All of them except me. I mean, I worked on a master's degree, but I never really got a master's degree. The other two did, and I was the oldest one. | 26:35 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What happened to your father's first marriage? | 28:23 |
William Thomas Childs | She died. She died also. She died probably before he came to Wilmington. | 28:26 |
Rhonda Mawhood | But he came to Wilmington and the children stayed— | 28:38 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, he brought them with him. The ones who had not grown up and gone north. My oldest brother was named Lester, and he was in school. He left. He was in the service in World War I, I suspect. He was a veteran. The one next to him, I don't think he went into the armed service, but he was in the Merchant Marines for quite a while. | 28:43 |
William Thomas Childs | And my sister grew up, went to a boarding school there, and she was sent to an aunt of hers in Chicago. She lived in Evanston, Illinois. She went to school there briefly. I'm not too sure that she completed any education there, but she stayed there for a while, and then she went over and lived with some relatives in New York and then came back here. She's been here ever since. She is 83, I believe, or 84. | 29:33 |
William Thomas Childs | Let me tell you something, last week, this is Monday, last week, a friend of mine who's a doctor asked me to—Well, his daughter was visiting him from California, and he wanted me to bring some friends down to see his daughter and have dinner, and I did. One of his neighbors who lives across the street has had his 80th birthday about a couple years ago. The other one says that if he lives till December, he will be 90. And he is up and around and acting and that kind of thing. | 30:17 |
William Thomas Childs | Then on Friday I got invited to a surprise birthday party for a friend of mine who was, on that day, 80 years old. And then on Saturday, I was invited to a party for a friend of mine who was 100 years old on July the 8th. | 31:27 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Wow. | 31:57 |
William Thomas Childs | She was 100 years old on July 8th. And an interesting thing happened. She was there, and she sees poorly, but her hearing is really impaired. So that if you want to talk to her, you have to write it down, but she can read it and that kind of thing. But an interesting thing happened, her grandchildren or great-grandchildren presented her with some flowers. And she accepted them and that kind of thing. And when they were closing out the program, she said, "I'm going to say something." And they gave her a microphone and then she said, "These flowers that had been given to me, I want someone to give them to someone who is sick in the bed." I thought that was nice, actually. | 32:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Sure was nice. She's thinking of other people. | 33:06 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah. Well, during a part of her life, she was the housemother at the school of nursing here, so she was pretty well known. She was a housemother for students in the nursing school. | 33:07 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So you're just a baby among friends? | 33:25 |
William Thomas Childs | That's right. | 33:30 |
Rhonda Mawhood | That's great. | 33:30 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah. But this past week, I've attended some functions with some folks who are a year or two older than I am, and I've been around a while. | 33:38 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You were talking about your father, what was that like growing up with your father working on the railroad? Was he away a lot? | 33:56 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, he was a cook for the chief engineer of the railroad. And the chief engineer traveled the whole system to check on the brick, wood itself, the railroad beds and the district offices and that kind of thing. And he was away when the chief engineer was away. He had to do all the provision, buy all the provisions and that kind of thing, and stock the cars and that kind of thing. And they were away. See, the chief engineer lived here too, in Wilmington. So yes, they were away, but not for extended periods of time. Probably two or three days, a week, that kind of thing. | 34:05 |
Rhonda Mawhood | In the area, in the neighborhood where you lived, in the community where you lived, can you tell me about your neighbors? Who were your neighbors? What kinds of things did they do in life? | 35:06 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, neighborhoods were far different then than they are now. They were far different then. And there was very little crime, deviant behavior, that kind of thing. | 35:15 |
William Thomas Childs | And parents knew where their children were and with whom, they knew. And parents had your neighbors coming to their house and you went to their house, but there were not kids who got into trouble. They didn't get into trouble. And later on you're hear of probably a lot of this from older people, where it was accepted that if you saw a neighbor's kid misbehaving, that you could correct them, you see? So that the neighborhood was kind of sort of coordinated and together. And not only did they correct them, but they told your parents. And chances are that was just the beginning, when they told them. So it was that kind of neighborhood. | 35:43 |
William Thomas Childs | And if you went several blocks away and you did something, like for instance, if I went 10 blocks away from home and somebody—The town was so small that everybody knew everybody. And suppose I elected to smoke a cigarette. Before I got back home, that was a known fact, because the words—And they had no telephones either. They had no telephone. But it was that kind of community. It's a far different community now, but it was that kind of thing. | 37:02 |
William Thomas Childs | And even though the economic level might not have been the same, the communion of governing or whatever, watching or controlling children's behavior was the same. So that children played together, they probably fought together, and all those kinds of things, but it was a far different kind of community than we now have. | 38:00 |
William Thomas Childs | And in a sense, you had a lot of guardians, in a sense. Plus the fact that, and this you'll probably hear from a lot of old timers, at night you went home. You went home probably because there was nowhere else to go, but you were expected to be at home when the streetlights came on. | 38:47 |
William Thomas Childs | We had probably kids who were adventurous and that kind of thing. And if they got too adventurous, they got reported. The kids played together and then some families might've had some differences and that kind of thing, but the community was so small, that just about everybody—Let me put it this way, on one side of town there was—In Wilmington, there was a north side of town and there was a south side of town. Everybody on the north side of town knew everybody on the north side of town. Everybody on the south side of town knew everybody on the south side. | 39:23 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So the Black people knew the Black people and White people knew the White people? | 40:12 |
William Thomas Childs | Huh? | 40:14 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So the Black people knew the Black people and White people knew the White people? | 40:14 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah. | 40:14 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. | 40:14 |
William Thomas Childs | Oh, yes. | 40:14 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you know any White children or White grownups when you were growing up? | 40:17 |
William Thomas Childs | Lived right next door to a White kid. They were from Greece and his father ran a store on the corner. And we grew up. Nick was always over there, in our house. We didn't go over, in his house, but we played together all the time. We lived right next door. And we lived in a neighborhood where there were some other White folks who lived around the corner. Now, we did not have a lot of contact with them, but we did with Nick because he was right next door. And a lot of smaller neighborhoods in Wilmington were, shall we say, integrated, because Whites and Blacks lived very closely to each other. And there are a lot of Whites who live in this town now who will say, "Well, I grew up with—" They call them Colored children. | 40:21 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you remain friends with Nick and with the other White children as you got older? | 41:31 |
William Thomas Childs | Sure. Nick, his father eventually opened a dry cleaning place. He called it The New York Cleaners, down on Grace Street, in downtown Wilmington. And when his father died, Nick took over the establishment. And even now, if I were to see him— | 41:39 |
William Thomas Childs | Matter of fact, I went into a bank the other day and I didn't recognize Nick's wife, but she recognized me right away, and we talked. She said that Nick is retired. Of course, he sold the business. He retired. And she said he's doing a little bookkeeping for her. And I asked her about his mother and she said, "Well, she died." She was 90 some years old, I think, when she died. But up until the last time that I ever saw her in the street, she recognized me and I recognized her. I mean, we knew each other. | 42:05 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How were you taught to address adults when you were growing up, White and Black? | 42:45 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, like I said, my father was a stickler for good behavior. And we addressed everybody as Mr., White and Black. There was no problems about that. And that was basic. Everybody, White and Black for that matter. And he got along very well with White folks. He had to, I guess. | 42:54 |
William Thomas Childs | There was a man, he was a White man, and I don't even know what his position was, but he used to always tell me when he saw me about his having worked with the coastline and having to go into the service, I believe he said. And when he came back from the service, he said he was walking downtown, near the post office he said, and he saw my father, and my father grabbed him and lifted him up and turned him around, and he always told me about that story. Well, he got along very well with—And he taught us to get along. | 43:33 |
Rhonda Mawhood | He taught you to get along all with White people, but did he talk to you about White people being racist or White people treating people badly? | 44:25 |
William Thomas Childs | No, he never did that. All the lessons that I learned about that I had to learn them myself. Like for instance, he never told me not to get on the trolley car and sit in the back, and it was law. I had to find that out myself. I had to get on. I'll never forget, I got on the trolley car down at the post office one time, got on it, and not knowing any different, sat right in the front. And the motorman told me I had to go to the back, but nope. | 44:39 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So your father didn't tell you to be sure to sit in the back? | 45:11 |
William Thomas Childs | No. | 45:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | He just didn't mention anything? | 45:16 |
William Thomas Childs | No. I guess, he would figure that you will learn that kind of thing. He did not approve of it, but he didn't dwell on it. His thing was he wanted us to be in church and Sunday school and that kind of thing. And in school. In church and Sunday school, and in school, and in the library. And those are the kinds of things that he emphasized. | 45:17 |
William Thomas Childs | I will never forget the time that I was small, very small, and we went downtown to the fabritician store and there was some music playing, some music that would make you want to dance, and I started doing a little dance. And without saying a lot about it, he just put your hand on you and said, "We don't do that." | 46:02 |
William Thomas Childs | You are expected to be a clown. You are expected to cut up and dance and be a clown, and we aren't going to do that. But he trained us well to be at home, and he emphasized this business about reading. I stayed in the library. The library wasn't too far away, and we stayed in the library. And he liked to sing, and he had us in singing groups—Church, that is. And school—He stayed in touch with all the school teachers. He knew all of them, every one of them. And that was his emphasis. His emphasis was that very little did he ever say negative about anybody, White or Black. Very little did he say that was negative about anybody. I can't remember. He liked to discuss and debate with other folks, that kind of thing. But very little, very little that was negative did he ever say about anybody. I guess what, that's probably what made him a preacher, I guess. | 0:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When it happened to you that you got onto the trolley and were told to sit at the back, how old were you? | 1:59 |
William Thomas Childs | I had to be somewhere like 10 or 12, I guess. I was old enough, just old enough, to go away from home downtown alone. And had enough money, must've been a nickel or whatever, to get on a trolley to ride back home. | 2:13 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you talk to your father or to your stepmother about this? | 2:35 |
William Thomas Childs | I might have, but they didn't make an issue of it. I probably did, but I don't ever remember any response to it. But I think they possibly figured, "Well, now you know." And being, well, obeying grown folks. Grown folks told you to do something, you do it. They figured that, "Now you know." Now they didn't say that. I don't ever remember them saying that, but I think that that was the way. If there had been some altercations, a refusal on my part, which never entered my head because you do what you're told to do, just never entered my head at all. | 2:38 |
William Thomas Childs | It never entered my head in the first place that I was doing something wrong to sit up there. But having done that, my guess is I probably did go back and say something about it. I cannot remember what their response was. I think they must have figured that, "You will learn these things and if they become real great problems, we'll work them out." And that might be a pretty good way to do it. I don't know. But anyway, that's the way we did it. Yeah. | 3:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You were talking about your father and school also. Where did you first go to school, Mr. Jones? | 4:22 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, I started the school here in the primary grades at a school called Peabody. Peabody here. And like I say, my parents knew, I guess, all of the teachers. Some of them probably were distantly related, but we were expected to do what all of them said without any kind of question. Then of course, I went to this Peabody Elementary School until about the fifth or sixth grade. Went to Williston School, which was a junior high school at that time. Well, it was a junior/senior high school. It was probably sixth, seventh, and eighth. I graduated from when they had, 11th grade was the graduating grade, so that must have been six and seventh grades. | 4:31 |
William Thomas Childs | Sixth and seventh grades were the middle grades. And then the eighth, ninth, and 10th and 11th grade must've been a high school grades there. But then of course, we walked to school. School was about six blocks away, six to eight blocks away. We walked to school all the time. But where I was living, it really wasn't a problem. Because it was just about six to eight blocks from one school to the other. There were people who were in my class who had to walk much, much further than I did. But like I say, they kept up with us in school. They saw that we did chores at home and homework at home. | 5:51 |
William Thomas Childs | And then again, I say he had this thing about reading. I bet you I must've read more Tom Swift and Horatio Alger and all those kinds of books when I was coming up. I bet I must have read the whole gamut. | 6:54 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did your father read to you before you started school? | 7:16 |
William Thomas Childs | No. No, he didn't. He read to himself. He was not that much formally educated. I'm not too sure how far he went into school, but he didn't go that far. But he had this thing about reading and learning. I'm sure he was not a high school graduate, because high school graduates were not that many. But he had this thing about reading principally the Bible. He read the Bible all the time, and I did not read the Bible all that much. I've not read the Bible that much, but I did do a lot of this other reading. I still do when I can, reading. I take more periodicals now than I can ever read. | 7:19 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you like school? | 8:20 |
William Thomas Childs | Oh, yes. I liked school. I enjoyed school. It was—I guess maybe I liked school because I had to like school, I guess. But there was just, like I say, most of the teachers there knew me and my family and that kind of thing, and I never remember having any unpleasant experiences in school. Never. I don't ever remember having any unpleasant experiences. That doesn't mean that I didn't get into any trouble. That means I don't remember having any real unpleasant—It was just understood that you will go to school, and you will try to achieve. At one time, at one time, I told you there were three of us who were natural brothers? All three of us were in college at the same time. | 8:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Which college did you go to, sir? | 9:39 |
William Thomas Childs | I went to Greensboro A&T. I had a brother who went to Shaw University. And at that time there was another, the youngest brother who was in Elizabeth City. It wasn't a state university. It was Elizabeth City State. I mean Elizabeth City Teachers College, I think that's what it was. He later left there, went on over to A&T and graduated from A&T. But that was the kind, school was very acceptable experience for all of us really. We had no real problem about school. I had not given very much thought in graduating from high school that I would be going to college. But I didn't have to make that decision, because the decision was already made. Yeah. | 9:46 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How did you get the money together to go to college? Did you and the parents give it to you, or did they work? | 10:56 |
William Thomas Childs | They got me into school. They arranged for what at that time was an NYE scholarship. Back in Franklin Roosevelt Days. | 11:10 |
Rhonda Mawhood | The National Administration? | 11:23 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah. NYE scholarship. So I had a scholarship that I had during the whole time that I was there. And that meant that I had to work. You had to clean the buildings. And generally that's what I did all the time anyway. There was an administration building. We had to clean the halls and that kind of thing, and a science building I believe we had to work with. But that scholarship, and remember now that the total amount, I believe it cost something like $18 a month to go to school when I was going. And that scholarship did do something about it. And then of course in the summers, you came home and you worked. | 11:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Where did you work in the summers? | 12:21 |
William Thomas Childs | Down on the beach. Down at Wrightsville Beach. | 12:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And what were you doing at Wrightsville Beach? | 12:29 |
William Thomas Childs | I was a waiter. The dining room [indistinct 00:12:38]. | 12:31 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What was that like, working in the dining room there? | 12:40 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, it was also an experience. Because the people who were waiters were either students in school or teachers, Black men who on a summer vacation couldn't find other jobs. That was the job that they could find, that they could earn money. So the dining rooms at that time were full of waiters who were either school teachers or principals or possibly students. And most of them, I guess all of them, were Black. All of them. And we had a head waiter who was very precise. I mean, he took that business, that art, whatever, to heart. And he demanded that his waiters do the job. And one other thing he demanded, believe this or not, he demanded not only his waiters do the job correctly, but they be in Sunday school in the dining room on Sunday morning. That's right. Regardless of where you came from or what your job was, he had them in Sunday school and on Sunday morning in his dining room. | 12:45 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And did everyone participate at those? | 14:34 |
William Thomas Childs | If they wanted to work down there, they did. Yes, sir. If they wanted to be his waiter, you did. | 14:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did people know that when they took the job? | 14:44 |
William Thomas Childs | I'm not too sure that I knew it when I took the job, but it didn't take me long to find out. And a job was a job. I mean, if you want to work, you will do what you have to do. | 14:47 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you think that the customers in the restaurant had any idea that the waiters were educated men? | 15:00 |
William Thomas Childs | I think so. I think that the people who were there, they knew that there were very few other places they could get a job. And a lot of times they may have asked, they may have asked. But remember now, that's the time that certain jobs were relegated to certain people. And waiting tables and hopping bells were part of it. That's for the temporary jobs, shoemaking, and brick masonry and that kind of thing. Most of those folks were Black. | 15:07 |
William Thomas Childs | There were not that many electricians, but there were carpenters. And like I say, shoemakers and brick masons, movers, haulers, dray people and that kind of thing. But see, in other jobs that you might have been able to learn, your level of achievement was limited. It was limited. And any employer who disregarded that, he would not be in business very long. If he elected to elevate a Black person beyond that level, he probably would not be. So Jim Crow laws, while they limited Black people, they limited White folks, too. | 16:01 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How is that [indistinct 00:17:23]? | 17:20 |
William Thomas Childs | If I got a business and I got a person that I would like to elevate into a job that he knows that he can do, I can't do it because I'm limited. Do you understand what I'm saying? | 17:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | White people, too? | 17:35 |
William Thomas Childs | That's what I'm saying. White people, too. If the law says that I, a Black person, cannot socialize with you, a White person, that means that you, a White person cannot socialize with me. The law was just as limiting to the White people as it was to the Black people. They didn't know it. They didn't realize that. They didn't think about that. But it was, except for the fact that there were a few White people of an elevated economic level, who could afford to disregard the law. But they didn't do it openly, if you understand what I'm saying. Do you understand what I'm saying? | 17:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | In what ways would they disregard? | 18:48 |
William Thomas Childs | They could say, "I want you to come to my house to have dinner." You could have dinner in the dining room, but they could not make that really widely known, if you understand what I'm saying. "I want you to come to my house and I want you to sit down here to my table and I want you to eat." | 18:50 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you know of any cases of this kind of socializing? | 19:10 |
William Thomas Childs | Oh, sure. There were isolated cases. And there were people who had Black people come to their house and almost do everything that they could do or would. But that was in a limited circle. And they did not really want that kind of relationship to get, to spread out too widely, no. Which again means that they were limited, even though they were the elevated economic level. | 19:14 |
William Thomas Childs | I mean you don't do certain things, you didn't do certain things publicly. You could do privately what you couldn't do publicly. For instance, I had a friend who later worked for the chief engineer. Now this was after my father was gone. And he insisted on taking him everywhere he went and he went into restaurants that didn't permit Black people to go in there, but he took him anyway. He could do it because he was the President of the Coastline Railroad and had a lot of money. Now probably, most people didn't like it but 2 cents. But he could do it and did it. What guess I'm saying is that, when you make laws like that to limit one person, you are limiting more than one person. If you say that, "I can't go with you to the restaurant," that means that you can't go with me to the restaurant. However much you may want to. | 19:53 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When you were working as a waiter, so you were a young man at the time in college, what kinds of things did you do for fun when you had time off? | 21:41 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, after working hours down in what they call the quarters, there were card playing and just general socializing, like college kids do bull sessions and that kind of thing, music that they heard and that kind of thing. But generally, what a college kid would do, have bull sessions. And then the older guys, the guys who were the teachers and the principals and that kind of thing, the bell captains had some gambling games going on and they could play gamble. They wouldn't permit me to do it. They drew a line as to who could do it, but they had games of poker and blackjack and that kind of stuff going on. But the rest of us, what we did was to sat around, sit around. And we could go to town if you want to, and that kind of thing. | 21:52 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What about going out with women? | 23:03 |
William Thomas Childs | There weren't that many women on the beach. You remember now, you on the beach, and the women who were down there were maids. And they were not that—They were limited too about what they could do and where they could go after they got off from work. And even though there might be some maids working at a place on the beach, your movement on the beach was restricted. You didn't get out there and walk down the beach. What in the hell you doing out here on this beach? So your movement was restricted. Because what you were down there for is to work as a servant, really. That's what you were there for. | 23:06 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Are you married, Mr. Jones? | 24:04 |
William Thomas Childs | I am divorced. I was married, for about 20 years I did it. And I'm divorced. My brothers, did I tell you both of my brothers are now dead? | 24:04 |
Rhonda Mawhood | No. | 24:30 |
William Thomas Childs | Both of them are now dead. Both of my natural brothers are now dead. And two of my half-brothers are dead. And my sister, my sister and I are the only, she was my half-sister and older one. She's the one who was 80-what? 83? She's about 83. Really the only one living. Both of them died of cancer. One of them, as I said before, he was really, the youngest one died first. The youngest one died first. He achieved quite a bit. He became the director, the director of the library in the small Georgia town called Carrollton. He was the President of the Kiwanis Club. He was active in the, what he called the ALA, the American Library Association and did a lot of traveling to a lot of places and that kind of work. | 24:31 |
William Thomas Childs | And the next one was a high school, what do you call, dinner man? Maybe in the high school system? Junior high school system or something? Out in California. And he retired from education and he became the head of a bridge association. A bridge association. He traveled quite a bit and he traveled over the country in that bridge association. He was a bridge enthusiast. | 26:07 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did your parents play cards when you were growing up? | 27:02 |
William Thomas Childs | I had an uncle who used to teach us card games, and he used to teach us. My parents didn't play any cards. Oh, they played bingo and all that kind of thing, but they didn't mind our playing. And I had an uncle who taught us all kinds of little games. I knew, matter of fact, I know how to play most card games. I know how to play and how to play gin rummy and bridge and whist and pinochle and the rest of it. I don't find the time to do it, now. | 27:05 |
William Thomas Childs | I am not too sure that I'm right about this, but I think that anything that you do for recreation that you do, that you like to do, it will take about three hours to do it. About three hours. It'll take about three hours to play about two rubbers of bridge, I guess. It'll take about three hours to play about two or three sets of tennis. It'll take about three hours to play 18 holes of golf if you can get on and get off. It'll take about three hours, a little more, to do anything that's recreational that you really like to do. | 27:45 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And you don't have three hours, though? | 28:27 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, I enjoyed bridge, but how do I put this? If you're going to play bridge, if you aren't going to be talking about a whole lot of other things, if you're really going to be playing bridge, all right. But if you're going to be sitting up there talking about a thousand other things, then—I played bridge with some men who didn't go into this. They don't play the same kind of game that women play. Women like to talk about everything in the world. I hate to say that because you know what it sounds like. But men sit at a bridge table, and they play bridge. They do. I don't know how that sounds, but that's what happens. | 28:29 |
Rhonda Mawhood | That's okay. We can play [indistinct 00:29:40]. | 29:33 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So I wanted to ask you about college. Because we started, you talked about it a little bit, but we got onto work. What did you study in college? | 29:40 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, I went from here to college in 19—I didn't say anything about any dates, did I? | 29:51 |
Rhonda Mawhood | No, I was picturing when you went. | 29:56 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, I graduated from high school in '37, and I went to A&T in '37, and I graduated from A&T in 1941. And I enjoyed it. I was there. I was a member of the college newspaper, the A&T Register. I was sports editor for that. And I for a little bit was a member of the choral group or the Glee Club. And had a real enjoyable kind of, like I said, my major was social sciences and history and English. Social sciences and history and English. And an interesting thing about, that I will remember. Where I went to school, we were required to write a thesis. And being a history major, you're supposed to write about a subject that there isn't a lot. And I selected the topping, the growth and development of the Ku Klux Klan. And my advisor said, "That is not a subject that you can get very much done in." So I had to change my subject, but there was a natural interest for me to find out. | 30:04 |
William Thomas Childs | But he says that you'll not be able to get the information that you want or need to write a thesis on this. So my thesis was on the Negro in major American wars. That was my thesis. | 32:16 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And your brother had fought in the First World War. | 32:42 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, yeah, but I didn't. Yeah, but I guess maybe I was impressed by the fact that where I went to school, it was mandatory, you must take ROTC, two years of ROTC. And I was interested in wars. History's full of wars, and of course I had an interest in trying to find out what Black people did in the wars. So I did that. I did the authentic research. I had, what do you call it, a guidance person. And he knew that I was doing the research and that kind of thing. And I got it in and got it accepted. And do you know that not too much later than that a, should I say a story? Was published in the newspaper, in a Black newspaper on the very same subject. It covered quite a bit of what I had covered. I'm not suggesting at all that—All I'm saying is, it was incidental. But my advisor had, matter of fact, I got some of the notes from him now, were in handwriting and were approved. And you had to check with him at different points. | 32:45 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Who was your advisor? Do you remember the person's name, sir? | 34:33 |
William Thomas Childs | Probably the dean. The dean. The man who became dean later on. He incidentally recently died at the age of 100. At the age of 100 he died, either in the last year or the last couple of years. He was my advisor. | 34:41 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Where did you find the materials to research for? | 34:58 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, there were—There's some information in the libraries. There were some interviews with the captain of the ROTC. There was—Most of it came I guess from the library and the interviews with the captain. | 35:06 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And did you go into the military yourself? | 35:32 |
William Thomas Childs | No, I did not. I got out of school and I came back here. And remember now, it was 1941. And do you know what happened December 1941? Okay. I'm here, now. Because I graduated in June. And I'm here and I'm working in the ship building industry. There was a ship building industry here, and I go to work there with a degree, as a messenger. | 35:39 |
William Thomas Childs | Remember now, this is a time where you could go and the kind of jobs that you could get were limited. And there I had also a friend who went to A&T, graduated from there a year before I did. And we were both in the same department. We were messengers. And an interesting thing about that was, they were required to post, in the main entry, President Roosevelt's Executive Order 8802. Right in the main entrance. And there were a group of young fellows working in the shipyard who were either students or graduates of MIT. And they talked with us, and we talked with them. And one of them said, "You are a graduate, and you are a messenger?" "Yeah." He said, "Well, I'm going to see if we can't—" He said, "You took some chemistry, didn't you?" I said, "Yes." He said, "I don't know a lot about you." He said, "Do you know if you stick the litmus paper in the acid that it turns?" "Yeah, I know that." | 36:15 |
William Thomas Childs | He said, "Well, I'm going to try to see if we can't get you into my department." Couldn't be done. Could not be done. Having done that, I got of course a call to come to the Army. I went to Fort Bragg. And I went through all of the tests and passed them all, really. And the last test, I guess was the part that, I guess the psychological part. They ask you certain things. "You ever had dizzy spells?" And first one thing or another. I have had some dizzy spells, really, but I never fallen out. But I came out rejected. | 37:50 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How did you feel about that? | 38:53 |
William Thomas Childs | All right. I felt all right about it. Yeah. I wasn't physically or mentally unable, and I wasn't all that eager really, to go to war. I thought that there were whole lots of things that needed to be squared away. I wasn't an activist or anything like that, but I thought that there were a whole lot of problems that really needed to be squared away. I had, my roommate in college went into the service, and he lives here now. He lives in Wilmington now. He came out a major. | 38:53 |
William Thomas Childs | He lives right near where we are. He's married to a White girl from France, very good friends of mine, both of them now. And they live right where we are, right near here. And an interesting thing about that—His name is Johnny. And before he married, well, he was overseas and he came back home on leave. And at that time I was in Philadelphia. And we used to sit up late at night with a bottle, talking about, discussing his plans about the practicality of his marrying this girl. And where would he live, and what would he be looking at, and that kind of thing. | 39:48 |
William Thomas Childs | And we did that, oh, quite some time. He went back. And out of those discussions, I guess he made his mind up that that's what he was going to do. And he did. He married her. And they lived in New York for a long, long time. And that's another interesting kind of thing while, and they were living in New York. Somebody died in his family. I don't know whether it was his mother, probably—Or his sister. His sister died, and of course he had to come to the funeral and she of course wanted to come. And they came. But it was a real tense kind of situation. | 41:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | This was in the 1950s. | 41:59 |
William Thomas Childs | This was, yes, this was in the fifties. Real tense kind of situation, but we worked through it. I mean, wherever they were, I was too. And it was kind of sort of tense kind of thing. But now they live here and no problem. They bought a nice place, a house, and he has been sick. But he and she are into gardening. And they have, I took a picture recently of his rose garden. It is one fantastic—He grew some beautiful roses. His degree was in agriculture. But then of course he came out and he worked in agriculture for a little while until he went back into the service. And he went to officer candidate school and finally came out of the army as a major. And now, the time on his hand and all this kind of stuff, he's gone back out to the agricultural extension place and gotten involved in horticulture and that kind of stuff. And he spends a lot of time out there working in his job. | 41:59 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When you say that you felt that there were a lot of things that needed to be squared away when you were thinking you might possibly have to go into the service, what kinds of things did you mean? | 43:27 |
William Thomas Childs | Executive Order 8802. Plus the fact that when I came back and before I went to the shipyard, I made application to be become a postal clerk. | 43:35 |
William Thomas Childs | In Wilmington, there was no such thing as a Black postal clerk. There were many postal carriers. And I'll never forget the interview I had with the postmaster at that time, and we were talking about my application. And he said something to the effect that you would not enjoy being a clerk, more or less. And of course, those kinds of conversations. And I said, "Well, maybe not, but if my application is approved I'd find out." Yeah. It never was approved, though. And so when you talk about some things that need to be squared away, that's the kind of thing you talk about. Back during those times—I came across recently some kinds of fussing up around thoughts that I put down on paper. And I just came across it. Matter of fact, I got here. That, yeah, you see how old that paper is? | 44:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How to Train the Southern White Gentleman, in quotes. Given the Southern White gentleman with average training and intelligence to prove he can be trained [indistinct 00:45:58] or below central capacity [indistinct 00:46:00] should be treated as a child. | 45:41 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You wrote this at the time that you were applying for the postal clerk? | 46:04 |
William Thomas Childs | I can't exactly remember, but it was a long time ago. It was a real long time ago. Those were just some of the thoughts and the kind of attitude that I had about what was going on in the treatment and that kind of thing. | 46:08 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Would you mind if I made a copy of this, sir? I would have to borrow it to make the, or otherwise I could read it into the tape recorder. I could read it. | 46:23 |
William Thomas Childs | You do whatever you want to. I'd just like to get that back. But whatever you want to do. | 46:35 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah, I'm a pack rat and I keep a lot of stuff there. In doing this thing, I came across one or two things that I thought might need and so that was part of it. | 0:01 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Thank you very much. I look forward to reading it. I'll keep talking with you now. | 0:18 |
William Thomas Childs | Okay. All right. | 0:22 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So you were working in the shipyard and you wanted to work in the post office. So what did you do then? | 0:26 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, what I wanted was security in a job. I wanted a job with some security and the post office appeared to be that place of security. Matter of fact, at one time, most of the carriers in the postal system here were Black. And most of them had degrees, college degrees, most of them. It was just one of those places that you could go and get honorable employment. And talking about whether I was enthusiastic about going to the Army, I just wasn't, not really. I just wasn't enthusiastic about it. And of course, what I did then since I did not go to the Army, I decided that this was an opportunity to go and see other parts of the world, another part of the world. So I left and went to Pennsylvania. Went to Philadelphia, and I got a job in a ship building company up there as a time clerk, which I didn't stay long with that. And then I went to work at a place called Baldwin Locomotive Works, and I was what they call a gang leader. | 0:34 |
William Thomas Childs | My job was to ream out piston bores. Do you remember the steam engines? The piston thing goes like that? Yeah. Well, those had piston rods and they fit into bores and that kind of thing. They had to be precise and our job was to ream out those heads so that those rods would fit in there and there would be no loose thing. Everything had to be fitted exactly. And I had a group, they called it a gang. They'd be put on these boys up there. And I had a picture, I don't believe I brought it with me, of the big group of us. There were very, very few. The number of Blacks was about, let's say if there were a hundred people, there were about seven Blacks, I guess. | 2:31 |
William Thomas Childs | And that's how I could speak it to. And I got the job as the leader because I had a college education, I guess. But sooner or later after the war, of course, '45, '46 or something. And then of course, there was not the demand for locomotives because that plant made locomotives for engines all over the world. Made for France and Russia and South Pacific or the Pacific Coast, and they just made locomotive for everybody. And of course, business was booming during the war, but right after that, there was not the demand so there was a big lay off. And I stayed in Pennsylvania for a while and I did some substitute teaching up there. And then I came back to North Carolina and I worked as a teacher here for a short while. I worked as a teacher, let me see, when did I work as a teacher? I worked as a teacher, 1947, 48. | 3:46 |
William Thomas Childs | And I enjoyed the work, I really did. I enjoyed the work. I organized a group of kids who were very smart and published the school paper. I didn't do it by myself. I had some help and I had the cooperation of the principal and the enthusiasm of the kids and that kind of thing. And the work was great, but I left at the end of that year. And the reason was is that the little town that I was working in was a real small rural town and I just wasn't ready for a real small rural town. | 5:17 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Where was that, Mr. Childs? | 6:12 |
William Thomas Childs | That was in Harnett County in North Carolina. A little place called Lillington. That was the county seat. | 6:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Ellington? | 6:18 |
William Thomas Childs | Lillington. | 6:18 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Lillington, I see. | 6:19 |
William Thomas Childs | It was the county seat of Harnett County. And I really did enjoy working, but like I said, I really wasn't fitted for a small rural—The community expected certain things of you, like being in church on every Sunday and given an account of where your whereabouts and that kind of thing. I just wasn't really ready for that kind of thing. And I came back to Wilmington and for a while there were a bunch of ships stored in the Brunswick River. They were merchant marine ships and there were [indistinct 00:07:22] over there. And I had a panel-body truck and I used to work over there, but I used to carry workers over there also. And I did that until. | 6:22 |
William Thomas Childs | I had a friend who was a school teacher here. He was a band master and a school teacher. And he said to me, he said, "Look, I understand that there's going to be an opening down in the city hall, that the guy who's there is going to leave and go into the school system. He's going to be assistant principal and I think that you ought to take a look into it." And I said, "Okay." And the next time I saw him, he said, "Did you do anything about that?" I said, "No, but I am." And the next time I saw it, finally, he said, "Look, go down there and see about it." And I did, and I suspect I must've been hired right on the spot, almost, really, on the spot. I then became a juvenile court probation officer and the attendance officer for the Board of Education. I had two jobs in one. And I worked those two jobs for about, well, from '48 to '64, to '64. | 7:41 |
William Thomas Childs | And it occurred to me that the White system had a juvenile court probation officer, White, and it also had a county attendance officer, White. And I decided that both of them are full-time jobs and there is a need, just as much need for a full-time person in both of those jobs as there is for the White. So I talked, really, the Board of Education was ready to employ a full-time attendance counselor. | 9:40 |
Rhonda Mawhood | In '64? | 10:50 |
William Thomas Childs | In '64. So I went to work for them in '64 as a full-time, which of course, made it essential for the city to hire a full-time juvenile probation officer, and they did. But I only worked one year as an attendance counselor before the state adult probation system saw me and felt that it was time for them to hire a Black state probation officer. And so I went to work for them and I was one of 11 Black state probation officers in the whole state. There were about 11 of us, I think, in the whole state. And I worked for them until I worked for them until about '73. | 10:51 |
William Thomas Childs | They were under the Department of Corrections, adult probation system was under the Department, and at that time, they were thinking about a new experimental program. They had some grants from the federal government. This was Lyndon Johnson, Great Society thing. And they were looking for ways to improve the criminal justice system and that kind of thing. And they had the idea that what they were going to do was to set up an evaluation system in the criminal justice system. So they devised a program called the Self-Improvement Center, and there were five centers in the state of North Carolina. There was one in Wilmington, there was one in Durham, there was one in Winston-Salem, there was one in Charlotte and there was one in Asheville. And I was the director of the one here in Wilmington. | 12:25 |
William Thomas Childs | And like I say, it was a grant program and as soon as the grant ran out, the state had the option of picking it up and carrying it on or letting it drop. Well, the state says we don't have the money to do it, so it dropped. But I had the option of remaining in the Department of Correction as an adult probation officer where I came from, but I elected to leave that department and go back into juvenile court work. And I became the first Black chief court counselor in the, what do you call it, in the juvenile justice system in the state of North Carolina. I became the first Black chief court counselor, and I kept that job until I retired. | 13:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When did you retire there? | 15:00 |
William Thomas Childs | I retired in 1987. | 15:03 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you enjoy that work there? | 15:11 |
William Thomas Childs | Surely did. I surely did. I enjoyed it because it gave me the opportunity to work with Black people and White folks for that matter too. But the criminal justice system is an intimidating institution and people who come into that system, a lot of them are intimidated. It's an intimidating kind of thing, but it gave me an opportunity to work with Black people to let them find out that all of it isn't negative, that there is something that you can get out of it to help you. You can get some benefits out of the resources that are available. And I learned that from my experience in working with the juvenile court prior to that time. And that was the opportunity to get back into it, to make it work for people that it might not have worked for previously. | 15:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What kinds of things would you say that people could get out of the [indistinct 00:17:02] | 16:58 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, in the juvenile court system, there are no criminals. People are delinquent, they were either delinquent or what do you call it, something else. They have a term for it. And if one got into the system, a lot of time it came out of ignorance. And that was the opportunity to explore the resources that the community naturally has to show what resources there are in the community that can be of benefit. And that's really what our program was about. | 17:03 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Would you say that your clients, in a sense, changed over the years that you were working in the system? | 18:01 |
William Thomas Childs | No system, of course, it's perfect, but we were able to, what I call, redirect the behavior of a lot of people. There are a whole lot of terms like rehabilitation and all that kind of thing. But what I saw was the changing, the redirection of direction that a person was going in and it came about because of ignorance. I didn't know these things were here. I didn't know that this could be done. I didn't know these kinds of things. And we didn't win them all, but we did pretty good. | 18:08 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do any of your clients, I don't mean for you to use names, but do any of them stick out in your mind? | 18:55 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, of course, when you're in a position like that, you see so many. And the way that I do it, I'm pretty well known around the area because I was so visible in that position and people that I don't even know now, tell me about what we were able to do for them. I have people call me now and say, "Look, I need your help." And I said, "Look, I'm out of this thing." But it's like teachers, you never know when you are really impressing somebody. It's like social scientists, you're putting it out there, but you never know when it's taking seed and you're really making an impression. And sometimes in later years, it comes back. You did this or you did that. And teachers get this all the time. Preachers sometimes get it. And counselors and that kind of thing, they get that kind of thing all the time. Because you do, in those kind of positions, make an impact as the way that you're approach it. | 19:02 |
William Thomas Childs | Most people believe, a lot of people believe, that those kinds of positions mean power, and that's the most negative things that can happen to a person when you get this power. People are looking for folks who can have some kind of empathy rather than you got to do this or that. And we did pretty well with it, I think. | 20:34 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Would you say that your relations with police officers changed over time? | 21:14 |
William Thomas Childs | Oh, police officers, when I was working as juvenile probation officer early on, the police officers considered us as one of their arms. For many years in Wilmington, every time the police officer arrested a Black child, they called me. Every time that they arrested a Black child, they called me and it was my decision, usually, as to whether he would go back home or whether he'd be locked up, or that kind of thing. And so really what we were at that time, at that time was an arm of the police department. Whenever police, when they came across a case maybe of a break in or something, and it's more than one kid, and they began questioning them and they said that this person was involved, go and pick up this kid and sometimes they spent all night long getting a bunch of kids. But we felt that it was better to do that way to get all of it cleaned up rather than do it halfway. | 21:19 |
William Thomas Childs | And usually, those kids went back home and the parents were advised of what they were into and all those kinds of things, and you got a whole lot more done. Parents didn't send them out there to do those things, but then of course, they were adventurous and kids got this thing about, if you do it, I'm going to do it too. Or if I do it, I expect you to do it, and that kind of thing. Like I said, parents weren't aware of it, but once they were aware of it, they did something with our help to try to correct it. So yeah, it was really a rewarding kind of thing. Sometimes when kids persisted in getting in trouble, they and their parents knew that they were the problem, not the system, but they understood that. | 22:54 |
William Thomas Childs | One of the interesting things that I did in my mind was enforcing the compulsory school attendance law. And that was really interesting. | 24:16 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How so? | 24:24 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, I have said this in a number of times, but I started out in that job with the conviction that every Black kid needed to be in school whether he wanted to be or not. And if I saw them on the streets, I'd pick them up and I'd carry them to school regardless to what they said that their excuse was. And a lot of times their excuse was, "I didn't have any shoes", but they were out on the streets. And my conviction was that whether you want to be there or not, if I force you in the school that something of value has to fall off on you sometime during the day more than would've fallen off on you had you been out there in the streets. And that's the way I approached it for a long time. And I had a reputation of picking them up and taking them to school. | 24:29 |
William Thomas Childs | But then later on, it occurred to me that if I picked up a child on the streets who did not want to be in school, and I took him there and put him in the school, that I might be robbing some other child of the time that it took that teacher to correct this child. I might be taking that minute or that two minutes or five minutes if he came and distracted that teacher. So it was a dilemma and I'm not sure that I ever resolved it. I'm not sure I ever resolved it. | 25:42 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you remember what it was that made you start seeing that differently? | 26:48 |
William Thomas Childs | Yes. I know that there are kids who go to school to learn and their parents would send them there to learn. And I know that a moment's distraction is a moment's distraction. I was in and out of the schools all the time and it just occurred to me that I might be stealing something from you. I never got it really resolved because I do think that whether you want to be in an environment that something of value will fall off on you, whether you're resistant or not, you will learn something of value if you're put in that environment. I still think that, and I still think that if I force you to go that I'm robbing somebody else. | 26:53 |
Rhonda Mawhood | It's a dilemma. | 28:12 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah, it's a dilemma. It's still, that's the way it is. | 28:13 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I'd like to ask you about just a couple more things before we break. | 28:17 |
William Thomas Childs | Okay. | 28:20 |
Rhonda Mawhood | One is about your writing, How to Train a Southern Black Gentleman. Did you share this with anyone when you wrote it, sir? | 28:22 |
William Thomas Childs | I've never shared it with anybody at all. Never. It's just something that you write and you put down. Well, I'm a pack rat and I go through that stuff every now and then, and I just found it. And that's where it is. | 28:32 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you act this way towards southern White man? That is, what you're saying in this document that you must require them to address you by your last name? | 28:58 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah. Black folk have to learn how to cope, how to get along. They have to learn how to get along and maintain some semblance of dignity. Not everybody does it the same way, but you have to learn how to get along in this world and hold your head up and understand that there are certain things that you will accept and certain things that you won't accept. Sometimes people do things out of ignorance. | 29:09 |
William Thomas Childs | Sometimes they are not aware of, sometimes they are following a pattern that's been set by somebody else who probably was ignorant and sometimes somebody who was intentional. But it is not uncommon now for some White people to see a Black male with a coat and tie on to immediately call him Reverend. Now, right now, immediately, if he has a coat and tie on, he's Reverend. You see? As if possibly only reverends, Black people can record and pass. And I'm not surprised that it might happen any time. Now, it is a relations thing. It is how one race sees the other race. And Black people, and White people too for that matter, have to set a standard of what they will or will not accept. | 30:01 |
William Thomas Childs | And I guess maybe that's what all that came out of. People will treat you the way you permit them to treat you. People will treat you the way you permit them to treat you. And you don't really have to be all that antagonistic, but you can make it pretty clear to me what you will or will not permit me to do. | 32:08 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You had mentioned also, I'm switching a little bit here, but church earlier and your father becoming a preacher and stuff like that. I got the impression maybe you weren't quite as involved. | 32:57 |
William Thomas Childs | You got that right. I go to church. I go to church right now because my mother wanted me to go to church. That's being honest about the thing. One of the worst whippings I've ever got in my life was because of church, and that was because it was an Easter kind of thing. And we were expected to participate in the Easter program. And we were sent to the rehearsals and we fooled around and pay a lot of attention and that kind of thing, and had the nerve on the day that the program was going to be presented. Instead, we went someplace else, went playing someplace else until the absolute deadline. Then we went back home and my people were upset as they could be, but they got me dressed and hustled me up there to that program and I didn't know my lines and that fixed that. | 33:11 |
William Thomas Childs | But that's because, really, I wasn't all that interested in being in that thing. And I had to attend church and Sunday school until I was able to go away from here to college. And when I went to college, I did not go nearly as regular. That doesn't mean I didn't go at all, that means I didn't go as regular. And that means also that I did go to Vesper programs that were interesting and that kind of thing. But it was a kind of relief to not have to go, if you understand what I'm talking about. And again, when I got grown and that kind of thing was on, and I did not go to church and I was here, my mother said to me something about going to church. I said, "Well, it ain't going to hurt." | 34:32 |
Rhonda Mawhood | But do you believe in God? | 35:45 |
William Thomas Childs | Oh, sure. Oh sure. I don't believe in a lot of revolutionary rituals that go on in churches and that kind of thing. And there are any number of them. And how do I say it, today's church is truly revolutionary, from where I'm standing. The whole program has changed. In other words, there is the energetic gospel program going on in the church. Now, I believe that if that's the way you want to express yourself, okay, but I am not quite into that. And while I can tolerate it, I just am not really into it. I can get more out of a philosophical sermon than I can out of a fire and brimstone sermon, if you understand what I'm trying to say. And that is the reason that I don't go quite as often, really. Because again, that is the trend, in my church anyway. The drums and the gospel shouting and all that kind of thing, it is the trend. I never thought I'd live to see the day that they have a gospel choir in the Catholic church. | 35:48 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And you're a Catholic? | 37:49 |
William Thomas Childs | No, no, no. I'm not a Catholic, but they have. | 37:50 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay, yeah. | 37:51 |
William Thomas Childs | But that's the trend. No, I'm an African Methodist Episcopalian, AME. But I go and I tolerate it. That's what I call myself doing and the joining hands and the waving and the hugging and all this kind of business, I guess, they see it, that is the way to salvation, I guess. I'm not quite sure. I see that all of that is the way you get there. And it doesn't make me any less reverent, it just means that I'm slow to catch up with the trend. | 37:52 |
Rhonda Mawhood | If I can ask you this, what would you say would be the way to salvation, as you say, what would you consider that to be? | 38:49 |
William Thomas Childs | I think, again, one of the most impressive services that I remember ever going to was at college, really, a vesper service where the speaker was philosophical. But with his philosophy, he could make you understand that there is a spirit and he could make you open your head and mind and heart up. That was more impressive to me than the one who's waving his arms and stomping his feet and screaming and yelling and all that kind of business. Do you understand what I'm talking about? | 38:58 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Absolutely. | 39:58 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah. | 39:58 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I wanted to ask you one last thing. Sometimes people don't like to talk about this, but you mentioned it earlier, which is, I was wondering, you're talking about your friend Archie talking to you about Wilmington, about race relations and so forth, and you said that it was like people teaching kids about sex, that parents don't necessarily want to do it, but that they want someone who they— | 40:03 |
William Thomas Childs | Most parents walk around it or tried to. | 40:25 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Who taught you about sex as a child? | 40:28 |
William Thomas Childs | I guess, my peers. I guess, my peers, because when I was coming on, it was a taboo subject. It was taboo. Well, let me say this now, my father did, without telling me what he was trying to do, bought a book and put it in my way without comment. But where I really learned what I learned about sex, I guess, was from my peers. I think, again, he wanted to make the effort, but a lot of other parents did not know how to go about it. I really think that's where most youth learn a great deal about what they know about sex from peers. They may not learn the right thing, but that's where they learn what they learn, I think. That's what I think. | 40:30 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How did they talk about it? How did young— | 41:57 |
William Thomas Childs | They talk about what boys expect, what girls expect, and how to go about it. What you, as a male, what is expected of you as a male and what is acceptable, what's not. That boys, probably, are expected to get away with a whole lot more than girls, probably. They don't go as far as that club that we read about over in California somewhere. They don't go quite all that far and that kind of thing, but you learn what their experiences are and have been. That's where I think a lot of youth learn what they know about sex. | 41:59 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you get the impression that many of your friends were having sex without being married? | 43:19 |
William Thomas Childs | At what stage? | 43:27 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, yeah. Sorry. I guess when you were teenagers and then in your early twenties. | 43:29 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, most of my friends at that time, I was 30 years old before I ever got married. | 43:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. | 43:42 |
William Thomas Childs | Most single people considered that a way of living. And as time has gone on, more and more openly, since the sexual revolution. More and more open. Surely there are things that are tolerated by the community today than there were before. I'll tell you exactly what I think. I think that sex is overrated. I think it's a natural function. I think that it's been going on no more now than it ever has. I think that we know a whole lot more about it. I think that people are openly admitting a little bit more than they did before. It's something just like two things. One thing, two things. When I was an attendance counselor here, we had on record more truancy than we had in surrounding counties. That's because we had records of it. They had as much truancy over in Brunswick County, but they had no record of it. Do you see what I'm saying? | 43:43 |
William Thomas Childs | There was some other point that I want to make, but I've forgotten about it, but oh, we have, today, I think no more child abuse and spouse abuse than we've always had. People are reporting it more. I think it's always been there. I think that, especially racist and power hungry people have been guilty of abusing people all the time and what's happening now is more people just are reporting. It doesn't mean that there's any more, it means that more people are now able to say that I was either sexually abused or physically abused. | 45:35 |
William Thomas Childs | I told you that I wanted to study a little bit about the Klan. I really have an idea that a lot of people who were in the Klan are naturally abusive people, really, and I think that they did a lot of abuse right there in their homes. That they beat up on their wives and children and that kind of thing, and they got a common place there to go out and do some more of it. That's what I think. I think that from what little bit I've read or been able to read, that they are pretty abusive people and I think that their victims more than the people that they lynched have been probably right there in their own homes. That's just what I think. They're abusive people. | 0:03 |
William Thomas Childs | And it is a good thing probably that people are now coming out and reporting this abuse because there've been wolves in sheep's clothing. They've been the pious ones. They've been pious ones who have been really abusive people, and they're the first one to jump up and say, "We don't tolerate this kind of thing." I think that some of them are being exposed now. And I think that that's the way it ought to be because innocent people have become victims because of this, I think. They're the ones who screamed that, "We don't tolerate this and something ought to be done about it." | 1:03 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Thank you very much, Mr. Charles. | 2:09 |
William Thomas Childs | Okay. I don't know whether it makes any sense or not. | 2:11 |
Rhonda Mawhood | It does. Definitely. Thank you. People you admired when you were growing up? | 2:13 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah. Joe Lewis. | 2:18 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. | 2:18 |
William Thomas Childs | Jesse Owens. | 2:19 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, yes. | 2:19 |
William Thomas Childs | You know Jesse Owens? | 2:27 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Mm-hmm. | 2:29 |
William Thomas Childs | I guess that's the march. The Nicholas Brothers. | 2:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And you have Cab Calloway. | 2:38 |
William Thomas Childs | The Duke. | 2:38 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And Duke Ellington. | 2:40 |
William Thomas Childs | This is a guy who, one of the first Black aviators. | 2:48 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Hubert Julian. | 2:54 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah. | 2:55 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Right. | 2:56 |
William Thomas Childs | Louis Armstrong. | 2:57 |
Rhonda Mawhood | [indistinct 00:02:59]. | 2:57 |
William Thomas Childs | Haile Selassie. Those were some of our models then. | 3:03 |
William Thomas Childs | Joe Lewis and his mother. | 3:10 |
William Thomas Childs | Caterina Jarboro was an opera star who was a Wilmingtontonian. | 3:20 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Really? | 3:25 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah. | 3:26 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. J-A-R-B-O-R-O. | 3:26 |
William Thomas Childs | He was one of the first Black congressmen, Oscar De Priest. Oscar priest. | 3:30 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oscar De Priest, yes. | 3:34 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah. Is that Joe Lewis? Most of those? | 3:34 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Mm-hmm, and his mother. | 3:41 |
William Thomas Childs | This guy was an actor. | 3:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Richard B. Harrison. | 3:47 |
William Thomas Childs | Richard B. Harrison. | 3:47 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. And angel. | 3:51 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah. I think that's Joe Lewis, I guess, or Richard B. Harrison. | 4:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Richard Harrison's family. | 4:04 |
William Thomas Childs | And that's more his family, his death. | 4:06 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Paul Robeson. | 4:13 |
William Thomas Childs | Paul Robeson. | 4:13 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Caterina Jarboro. | 4:13 |
William Thomas Childs | Caterina Jarboro, and then Adelaide Hall. | 4:23 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Yeah. Wow. | 4:24 |
William Thomas Childs | I started this scrapbook when I was in high school so you know that these folks are old. | 4:28 |
Rhonda Mawhood | John Lewis, yes. | 4:43 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah. | 4:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What was it that you admired about these people, Mr. Charles? | 4:43 |
William Thomas Childs | They had achieved and a world that wasn't easy to achieve. They had achieved in a world again, it wasn't that easy to do it. They had to have something special, extra, in order to do it. | 4:46 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you remember when Joe Lewis won? | 5:05 |
William Thomas Childs | Oh, yes. I really am not a great boxing fan, but yeah, he was the champion. There was no question about it. I mean, you know he was just the champion. And I guess Jesse Owens, for instance, scorned by Hitler and that kind of stuff, and achieved in spite of all of these things. Those are the kind of things that make you use them in some kind of model. | 5:13 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you remember people talking about when Jesse Owens was, when Hitler refused to shake his hand? | 5:45 |
William Thomas Childs | Well, yes. I was reading at that time. That was back in '30? what was it '40? | 5:51 |
Rhonda Mawhood | It's like '36, right. | 5:59 |
William Thomas Childs | Yeah, '36. Yeah. | 6:00 |
William Thomas Childs | See, I was in high school at that time. Yeah, I remember that real well. That was before the war though, wasn't it? | 6:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Yes, sir. | 6:08 |
William Thomas Childs | Yes. Oh, yes. I remember those things and they were impressive events. Well, I know you got to go and you got a lot of things. | 6:09 |
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