Cornelius Nixon interview recording, 1993 July 19
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| Cornelius Edward Nixon | The community that I live in is located seven hours from Wilmington, old city limit. For years, this community was associated with the Middle Sound community and for years, people called this a portion of Middle Sound, but on the state map it was known as Ogden, North Carolina. And it was later years before the Ogden name became prominent. Our church was always considered to be on Middle Sound, but the true Middle Sound community is going toward the water. At—during the time I came up, not only was this community attached to Middle Sound, but at one time to distinguish it, they used to call it Seven Mile Sound. They even called it [indistinct 00:01:26], named after a railroad station that was near here. Now, we are considered Market Street in Ogden. | 0:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 1:44 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Our community at the time that I was a little boy, along Market Street Road where I lived, there were White families and Black families. Going down the Middle Sound Road, there were some of both, with Black families concentrated in a little area that we call the neck. | 1:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | And was that where you lived? | 2:20 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | No, I live up here. | 2:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 2:23 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And further down on the water, you had a community where the native Whites lived, and there was another section where some of the upper class lived and had big homes. The section that I lived in, people worked on the farms. Some were self-employed. In fact, most of my family was self-employed. They were engaged in farming, working in the water, handling oysters. At that time, some were even doing day work or labor work on other people's farm, it was a mixture. The Whites that lived on Middle Sound were mostly self-employed, and the larger houses or the houses of the richer people, we had a banker or president of a railroad and several of that type living on the water, and they hired mostly from the Black community for their laborers. | 2:24 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | My grandfather was self-employed. He ran a store at one time, he sold vegetable. He even processed hogs and made liver pudding and all of those products at one time. After he quit that, everything along that line ceased following off. When I came along, I worked at Camp Lejeune when they were constructing it. I worked at the shipyard that was in Wilmington. But each time, I was doing a little work on the side for myself. In the early '40s, even before the shipyard closed, I started to selling from a truck, similar to what my grandfather did. For a while, I worked the shipyard and I worked truck on the side. I first started buying oysters from local people that were shucking oysters, and during that time, since they weren't put up on the state supervision, they branded them as bootlegged oysters. | 4:37 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | When the state clamped down on that, I went out looking for something extra to do. During that time, I started to buying fish here in the surrounding counties and working from house to house. In 1946, I bought my first new truck. 1947, I bought another new truck. 1948 and 1949, each year I bought a new truck and kept the old truck. At that time, we were running three trucks, going from house to house selling vegetable and seafood products. We had all but abandoned oysters along at that time. We started it and took an interest back into oysters and we couldn't actually get an oyster plant or shucking house financed. We had tried much earlier, even before fish time. | 7:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why weren't you able to do that? Was it a problem for Black— | 9:18 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | It was problems getting a loan. | 9:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 9:26 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And especially with no credit history. | 9:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you think it had anything to do with you being Black? | 9:32 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, if it wasn't from a prejudice standpoint, it was from probably a lack of business experience. Not only did I try the lending institutions, I even tried a speculator that did help minorities and poor people in ventures. | 9:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 10:00 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And he thought it was risky. So later years, as I became more established, I first rented a place and converted it into a shucking house and I took on a partner. We worked a year or better in that building. Then we went on Wrightsville Sound, what's known as Wrightsville Beach, part of Wrightsville Beach now. We rented an oyster house house from a landowner that had a fish business in the same building. | 10:02 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Prior to that time, I had been approached about buying a former seafood house on Wrightsville Beach, but I was told that I couldn't buy it in my name. They had a covenant that the property at that time couldn't be sold to Blacks, and this gentleman offered to buy it for me, but I turned that down. A year after, two years after renting the place on Wrightsville, what's now known as part of Wrightsville Beach now, I came to Ogden on Market Street Road and started constructing a building of my own which was financed partly by one of the local institutions. | 11:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, what was it, and you said it was a seafood house. What do you mean by that? | 12:35 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | A place for, the one that I rented? | 12:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 12:42 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, this man had a fish market. | 12:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 12:47 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And he had a storage there. He was a commercial fisherman, and he had a retail outlet too, that's why I referred to it as a fish house. And he had a division in that place that he built for an oyster shucking plant. | 12:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 13:07 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And I was the first one that rented it from him. | 13:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you built your own place along—? | 13:09 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Yeah, I built my own place in the latter '50s. Just before building my place, as I first stated, we were running three trucks and a spare truck. We were running out in the rural sections, and with the rural business getting slack during the winter months, and we were looking for something for the workers to do, that's where the oyster business came in because it was mostly a cold month job. In 1954, we bought three new trucks, and so the drivers worked the trucks. Some in fall, well amongst, we were more or less processing oysters. And along in that time, we had a contract with several A&P stores. | 13:17 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Later on in the '60s, the fish business went to slackening. Progress came into effect. The people that used to wait for people to come by the house to deliver fish, those people that got out of jobs, they weren't farming as much. They had their own cars. So it was less business for a truck that went from house to house. During that time, I still worked oysters in the water, and during the middle '60s, I was just running one truck. Oyster business was good, and during that time, I still worked an outside job at part-time. I went on the waterfront and started to workin' extra during 1954, '55. With the demand of my oyster business and fish business, I gave up part-time working on the waterfront until the latter '60s. | 15:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 17:01 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | So with the one truck and with me working part-time on the waterfront, the early '70s, I gave up the fish route or the house to house dealing completely, I concentrated then on working the waterfront during the summer months. Working oyster business during the wet months. We did that until 1988. 1988, I retired from the waterfront. I leased my oyster house to a fish comp, but I still sell oysters in the shell from October through April. I use still a portion of the building that I rented. And as far as shucking oysters or operating the plant, I farmed that out. I get another shucking house to shuck oysters for me, and I hold on to several of my older customers. At present, I work three commissaries for the military, and I work two local chain stores, group stores. That's about it. | 17:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Can I go back a little bit to the beginning and—? | 19:28 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | All right. | 19:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | I wanted to know who you grew up with. | 19:41 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Names? | 19:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | No, just is it your mother and father? | 19:48 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, was my growing up, my early days and I can remember up to about four years old. My parents later moved to Philadelphia. | 19:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. Did you stay here? | 20:13 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I lived with a grandmother. | 20:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 20:14 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Until I was nearly six. My mother came from Philadelphia. My father still lived there. That time, I went to live with my mother and her mother. | 20:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now this was another, different grandmother. | 20:41 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Different grandmother. I lived with my father's mother when they both were out in Philadelphia. When my mother came home, we lived with her mother. | 20:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | And you grew up there? | 21:06 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I grew up there, and on my eight, well before I was 21, that's one thing I can say. I purchased a piece of land in my mother's name at that time. When I became 21, she transferred it back. | 21:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 21:33 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | After starting the fish business, I didn't before mention, I was farming on the side. I always worked several jobs. I farmed along with the fishing oysters. I started to building in a house. During the '50s, start building. During that, just before that time, my father moved back from Philadelphia permanently and we built, or I built, it was in my name, I built this house here. And after moving in his house, my mother and father, and we built rooms for my two grandmothers. | 21:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 22:44 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And my sister was in north. And I had a foster brother that, I don't like to use word picked up, but it was a child that was out in the country and I brought here and my mother took a liking to him so we kept him until he got grown. | 22:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was that a common thing to do? | 23:09 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, here it wasn't, particular. | 23:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 23:15 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I've heard in certain communities that it might have been, but not here. | 23:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now was he an orphan or? | 23:20 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, what happened, he was an outside child and he was living with some older people. His mother was living in Durham and he was in Penland County. And with me selling fish through there, I just got to know the little boy and he wanted to come home with me. | 23:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 23:39 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Brought him home, my mother took a liking to him. So we kept him until he became the age to be drafted. | 23:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 23:55 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | So that's about it, here I am now. | 23:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Now, how did your grandmother, how did the family support itself when you were growing up? You said that they were farming? | 23:55 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | From the support angle, when I can start remembering, because my grandfather died at an earlier age, they did outside work or day work on the farm. And they handled oysters and sold products on the open air farm market. Like I said, they were a lot partly employed themselves. | 24:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 24:46 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | But they did outside work too. | 24:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, but did the family own its own land? | 24:52 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | My grandfather, my daddy's people owned their place. My grandmother was living on heir property. My mother and father didn't actually own any land until after I bought this piece of property. | 24:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So your parents didn't own, now that you think that's part of, why did they move up north? Was that part of it or? | 25:28 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, when they left here, a lot of people were migrating north for better job opportunities. | 25:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | When you say she lived on heir land or heir property, what do you mean by that? | 25:47 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, the property was passed down from her mother on. It was family property. | 25:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And is that any different than owning land or? | 25:56 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | You own land, it's in most likely your name? | 26:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. So this wasn't in her name? | 26:04 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | It wasn't in her name, it was the heirs of. | 26:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, I see. Does that mean you have different rights on the land or? | 26:04 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, it just means as heirs increase, the shares decrease here. | 26:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Now did the farmers, did the people around here mostly homes, land or Black people, did they or? | 26:22 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | During my childhood, most of the Blacks I knew had their little pieces of land. | 26:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | What were they growing on it? | 26:50 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Few of them grew vegetables. Others grew peanuts and corn. Now a portion of the land, they own their own homes, but a portion of the land that they farmed were either rented or tenant farmed. | 26:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now did most of these, so most of these people who owned their own land also did other things? | 27:28 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Did other things, yeah. | 27:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were there any Black landowners who were totally dependent on their crops, who didn't do anything else? Just farm? | 27:38 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I had a grand uncle that did that, but he had a few bad years, and he lost his farm to debt. | 27:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 28:02 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Yeah, he did. But most of the Blacks do in the early time were pretty fair self-supporting. I mean, because they did from one thing to another. One of my first jobs when I was small was picking huckleberries and going out selling them. You made more doing that than you did work with somebody else. | 28:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 28:44 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | First job. And then you had other people during the summer, they would work the water, they would get shrimp or cook them and go sell them. Or you had other groups, now the Whites mostly did this fish and sold fish to the wholesale markets, sold them individuals. The Blacks did more oystering, shrimping, and a little side farming. | 28:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, when they did the oystering or shrimping, did they have boats? | 29:31 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | They had boats, but they were small boats. Small boats. Small. We weren't in sections where one man owned the boat and a lot of people worked for him. | 29:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 29:54 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Just a few miles from us, some of that went on. | 29:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. | 29:56 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | People here were fairly independent. Poor, but independent. And may I add, the relationship between the races was good. | 29:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Better than you think, than in Wilmington? | 30:33 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Better than Wilmington. Better than some surrounding communities. | 30:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. And how is that? | 30:34 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | This is the way I always figured it. We had a poor section of Whites, we did. We had a poor section of Blacks. They weren't competitors for jobs. | 30:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 31:07 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Most of them did their own. Most of them, as I forestated, had their own jobs. And we had a third group that I before mentioned that the affluent White that lived on the water and most of them that needed help, hired from the Black community. So other than from a legal standpoint, I considered, or the most of us considered, we were in gooder shape than the poor Whites were. | 31:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 31:46 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | We didn't have any legal standing along that line. | 31:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 31:54 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And a lot of them that I knew then, I still know. And later years as events changed, I worked some of the children of the Whites that I dealt with earlier or my parents dealt with. I had a friend that moved to New York and he used to tell people up there about the relationship, fellows from Alabama and Mississippi and all them, and they just thought he was fabricating. | 31:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 32:45 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, it wasn't all in north. You could go on eight or 10 miles up there and it would been a whole lot different. | 32:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, what kinds of things made your relationship different? What kinds of things did you do with Whites or how were, that did make it different? Would you sit down at a table with them? | 32:53 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, I was, no, like I said, we didn't work for them. We weren't in competition. | 33:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 33:12 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Now, some of them down in this community I've said that did use White and Black field labor. | 33:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 33:22 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | They sold the products. Some of the products they would sell to White, and my uncle being a top grade farmer, they exchange farming ideas, work together and things of that nature. But as I forestated, neither group was in competition with each other. | 33:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now did your mother and your grandmother work? | 33:55 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Both. | 34:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | What did they do? | 34:06 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | My grandmother, my mother's mother, she worked the water. She was a top grade oyster woman. She gathered oysters, she processed them, and she sold them in Wilmington, which a lot of people did at that time. | 34:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | She sold what? Sorry. | 34:30 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | She sold the oysters in Wilmington. | 34:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 34:31 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | In Wilmington. And along with the selling the oysters, she used to parch peanuts. She would dig certain herbs that was popular, then sell them in Wilmington. And we grew little crops that she would sell well, and my mother followed partly in that footstep. | 34:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 35:02 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | My daddy was still in Philadelphia. My other grandmother was more or less sickly, from my mother's mother, and I never remember her having any job. So my grandfather, until he died, he was very supportive. I never knew my mother's father. And she made it until I became of age like I told you before and moved in with me. Both grandmothers. | 35:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, this community in which you grew up, was it very close-knit? | 35:53 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Not like some other communities. We were in a community that wasn't a lot of trouble. And then you had communities that they had the good time places and they did it, things like that. A few spotted up around here, but they didn't flourish for so much. The people never were all that close-knit that you were asking. Never thought them as being as so. Everybody, if you needed help, they would help you. But they went to church, but they just didn't buddy-buddy and pal around like some other community. | 35:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 36:47 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And we didn't have the fighting or the killing a lot of communities had where we were close and tight-knit because a lot of the problems came from relatives and acquaintances and stuff like that. This community wasn't plagued with that. | 36:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now were you living close by other people? | 37:08 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, then, if you lived a few blocks, it was close. | 37:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So the houses were spread out. | 37:19 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Spread out, but not miles apart. My early days after I left my father's mother—well, where my father's mother lived, there were at least two or three houses within one to three blocks. Then when I moved with my mother's mother, there was one house within a block and there was another house within two blocks. Then you would've had to go a little distances to get a house. | 37:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember any adults in the community besides your immediate family to whom you really looked up or with whom you were close? | 38:06 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | My grand uncle was a farmer, he wasn't, my grand uncle was a farmer. A good farmer, but not a good businessman. I started out with some type of self-employment when I was in my teens. And during that time, I received coaching from Whites as well as Blacks. The first new truck that I got during, it was in '46, the latter '45 or '46. Right after the war, people had to sign up. You had a list, and was my name was way down on the list. And a White friend operated a fish business, let me use his spot so I could get a truck earlier. Oh, because my name was on the list. So I had a lot of that relationship with him. | 38:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So there was a lot of help and encouragement from both Whites and Blacks. | 40:17 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Yeah. No money, but you got. Yeah, we there. | 40:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Can you describe the house where you grew up? The one with your grandmother and your mother? | 40:27 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | The one with my grandmother and my mother. This house was four rooms. There was a kitchen with a outside porch. My grandmother had a room. Early years when I was small, we shared a room, my mother and me. Later years, I said three, as I grew up, we built an addition and I got a room, and we had a little sitting room so that added to it. Outside toilet facilities. We stayed there. Now it started off as three rooms, like I told you, but we added on. | 40:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 42:01 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And we stayed there until after I purchased this place, and started to build it. | 42:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 42:11 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | My father moved back just prior to the time I started building this house. | 42:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | And what was he doing up in Philadelphia? What job did he have? | 42:27 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Some type of laboring, nothing substantial. | 42:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | And your mother, what did she do up there? | 42:36 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | At that stage, I don't even know that she worked or not because when she came back home, that was between my fourth and sixth birthday. So I don't know what she did, but if it was anything, it was probably daily [indistinct 00:42:54] service. I don't know what she did. But my sister left home at 16. She got out of high school, which went through the 11th, and went to New York and lived with her cousin and she worked and went to school at night. | 42:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 43:20 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | She first received a license as a practical nurse. She worked at that and then got a degree in nursing. After then, she went back and got a master's degree in public health nursing. So she worked at that, and she did attend a supervisory job and she did that until she retired. | 43:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now you just have one sister? | 44:10 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | One sister. | 44:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | No brothers? | 44:11 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | No brothers. | 44:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | So was it a common thing in that time for parents to leave their children trying to improve, better themselves? | 44:15 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, it was if they had anybody that they could move into or move with I would say. | 44:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 44:29 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | At that time, you asked about them moving north, starting from my grandfather, and it was 10, 11 or more of them, practically all of that end of the Nixon family went north. | 44:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 44:48 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And I like to mention, I tell the people, I brag about it, my great-grandfather was a landowner, and part of what's landfall now, that land where the Gulf Coasts are, some of that was. | 44:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | That was his? | 45:10 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Part of that was his. | 45:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Now, could you tell me a little bit about what you did as a boy for fun? Did you have time to play, that kind of thing? | 45:21 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Very serious. I associated early, starting early with no brother. I was mostly a loner. | 45:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 45:47 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And when I started growing up with no father home, I had to do the manly chores. We had to get wood where everybody burnt, and long and then being poor, we had to get our own wood, I gathered the wood. And I did more of the outside work. | 45:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 46:12 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I started playing baseball with larger boys. I did that for a while until I got hurt. But the most of my childhood was spent working. | 46:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Did you ever resent having to do that work? | 46:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | You already said you only— | 0:01 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I said, I always liked to get my own money. I can't feel where I had too much resentment. Now, I did have some friends or one in particular didn't have to work as much as I did, but I more or less was proud of the fact that I could do it. And like I said, I started to, we call it hustling or working for myself, picking up extra money at an early age. | 0:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Around what age? | 0:41 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, in my teens, early teens I'd work with his grandmother and we would plant a little crop. And when she went to sell hers, she would sell some of mine. I'm bad with years, but starting somewhere between '20, '21 or something like that was when I started going out doing these other things. | 0:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | When did you sell the huckleberries? You were talking about that. | 1:22 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, long in that. I was probably 13 or 14. The first place I remember selling was on Rifle Beach. An older man took me over there. You could get, I remember about 25 cent a quart. | 1:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | And this would be to people who were on the beach? | 1:52 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | People on the beach, a lot of people coming down for summertime and stuff. You go from house to house there. People were working for 50-something a day. I could get what I could carry. Could get you couples of buckets. In a couple of days you had made more than they made a week. | 1:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. The money you earned, was it yours or did you use it to help your parents? | 2:14 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | When I was coming up, I gave half of my money to my mother to help the house, and the other half I kept to buy clothes. Now, along with the hustling or selling, the first real job to start making money was when I got a job in the shipyard. | 2:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was this during the Second World War? | 3:00 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | During the second World War. I'm saying the second World War was what year now? | 3:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | 1942 to '45. | 3:09 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | It was when I worked the shipyard, had a shipyard in Wilmington. | 3:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | And that was good money? | 3:18 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And I started out, I was small in structure, but I'll always have to say the good Lord had his eyes on there. I told you to start with, I worked, I came up with bigger boys and when I got in the shipyard, they had a system on. Man wanted so many men, he'd come out and pick you out of a crowd. I was picked out of a crowd and I couldn't even believe it with all those men around me. After getting hired, I started to be offered easier jobs, and later one of the supervisors put me in charge over departmental tool room. | 3:19 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And after getting in charge of that departmental tool room, I was allowed to take drinks, sodas in. At first they wanted them taken in for the supervisors. I sold them. Later I broadened that into selling the general workers along with my jobs. Always had a lot of jobs. And before I left the shipyard, the selling that they allowed me to do in the shipyard earned me more money than my wages did. | 4:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, why do you think you were so enterprising? Why were you always hustling and working all these jobs? | 5:06 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, it stemmed from the starting of not having, and I always thought my family was supposed to have. Although the land wasn't where it did many good, I knew that my great-grandfather had previously owned land. I knew that my grandfather had been in business or had done a lot of enterprising things. He died early. I had an uncle to die early that always said that he wanted me to come to New York and we were going to get in business. My father wasn't the business kind. And it's just something that I figured was part of my heritage. Somebody said you had to go ahead and do this. And when I was at the shipyard, I got a leave of absence to try my hand at oysters there. So it was always that urge to be doing something yourself. | 5:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Since your father wasn't around, who was your male role model? Who taught you how to be a man? | 7:14 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Thinking back, all of them was at a distance. I never probably had a direct—Like I said, my uncle, close uncle, he was in the North and he died early. He wasn't up there. I had a grand uncle, which was more or less distant. I worked in and around him some. But it seemed like everything came from association and hard knocks. I just— | 7:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you taught yourself? | 8:10 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | More or less. I don't know any mentors. Now, at the time, there were people that I would go work along with. I was known to save a little money and there was always somebody, older person who'd want to associate with you. I had an older gentleman that I went out on the truck with before I ever owned any trucks, buying stuff or vegetables and stuff, or selling them. And later on, I associated with people part-time farming. If you had a few dollars and somebody else had a little knowhow, and some of them had some equipment, you could always tie into somebody. | 8:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. To form partnerships, to cooperate with. | 9:25 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Yeah. I did that a little bit. Didn't own the land, we just leased it. | 9:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did White people ever try to hold you back? Did you ever feel that they felt you were becoming too enterprising or too successful? | 9:41 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | When I brought my first new truck, you remember I first stated that a friend let me move up the list, which nobody knew at the time. Well, there were White farmers in the area that were on the list that didn't have trucks. | 9:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | So this was the list for the trucks? | 10:19 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | The list for the trucks. That was right after Second World War. After the automobile company were getting back in full production, they were trying to get the orders out. I was told by a White lady that—Her family had been friends of my family for years, before my time. Told me that she heard a lot of the older White farmers wanting to know how could a upstart like me get a new truck. And they had been waiting for years and didn't have a new truck. | 10:23 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | They called me Sonny, which the [indistinct 00:11:16]. She said, "Sonny, I don't think there's nothing for you to worry about, but I just thought I would tell you." And that's the most—nobody ever said anything directly to me. All I do know I bought a new truck in '46. '47 I bought me another new truck. And a lot of those same farmers, I bought products from them. | 11:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you bought from White farmers to sell? | 11:46 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Sell out retail, I did that. And prior to that I associated myself with a White farmer that had a lot of land on him. I rented land from him. It was two methods, you share rented or cash rented. Right. But I always tried to cash rent. | 11:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why was that? | 12:16 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, I always figured it was a better deal when you share rented. I just didn't like the word share. Share crop or share rent, share rent like that. And I did outside things and I was in a little better position, probably than some of the others. And I think the rest of them felt like I was a better risk or something. But I already was—Now, where we couldn't do it, we did it. But most of my rating was cash rent. Now, a lot of them didn't do that at that time. | 12:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | A lot of Black farmers or White? | 12:55 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Neither one did it. I was a little new kid on the block that was buying trucks and doing these other things. | 12:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you were farming while you had the trucks? | 13:06 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Yeah. | 13:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were you working at the shipyard at the same time? | 13:08 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I left the shipyard when I started getting in the trucks full time. I got a leave of absence from the shipyard. In other words, I didn't serve all my connection. I left trying myself. | 13:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | But you said before too that a White man offered to buy the oyster trucking place for you. Now, was that a common thing? Did you have a lot of association with White businessmen? | 13:28 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | This man actually was working for a regulatory agent. | 13:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Is this a federal agent? | 13:55 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | It was state, but now his family knew my family. I think he knew my daddy. And at the time, he was one of my inspectors, knowing that I was operating a seafood plant and he knew of one that had gone out of business and he recommended it to me. But he also told me I couldn't buy it myself. He told me he wasn't going to finance it, but he told me if I decided that I wanted it, he would front for me. | 14:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | And why didn't you do that? | 14:53 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | The plant wasn't what I wanted. I never wanted to move in a hostile environment. I don't know whether it would've been or not, but that was his suggestion. And not only that, he even suggested to me to start oyster farming, but he also told me if I oyster farmed, to get a White fellow, preferably one that worked around the sound or a poor White fellow, I don't use the term that he used, to overlook it, because as I first stated, we didn't have any standing in the coats. | 14:55 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And at that time, without him saying it, if this man had gone down and said somebody was out there tampering with oysters, it would've meant something coat. For me to go down and said somebody was tampering with oysters might've not have been heard. But that was his suggestion. | 15:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | So did you follow up on that? | 16:15 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I didn't go in oyster farming. | 16:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, right. Of course. | 16:17 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I didn't go in oyster farming. | 16:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | And was that part of the reason you didn't do it? | 16:20 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | No. Just because I was suggested that, this area never had or never was the type of area to have a lot of oyster farming. But what I did do, I used to use other people selling property to store my oysters. I did that. And one man, I'd like to mention his name, Robert Foye at Scott's Hill up there, that property, he didn't live too far from there and he let me put oysters on his property for a long time. | 16:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, when you say you put them on his property, I don't understand. | 17:18 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, what I did, this is what it is. After the oysters, you buy them and they were gathered. Well, here the tide rise and fall. When the tide would fall, you would have the land that you could back your truck up to. So we used to put the oysters down to where the water would come over, and then when we would need them and the tide would be out, we'd go down and get them. | 17:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. A way to keep them fresh? | 17:51 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And still keep them growing. | 17:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. I see. | 17:55 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And other people would go there and get them if he didn't have them, a way somebody could see them. | 17:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, I see. Maybe we just backtrack a little bit now. | 18:05 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Yeah, go ahead. | 18:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | I was wondering a little bit about your family life. Who was the boss at home when you were growing up? Who made decisions about discipline, money and where to do the marketing, and that kind of thing? | 18:08 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | My grandmother did her part of it as far as buying, going to market and stuff like that. My mother handled her end of it. I was disciplined primarily by my mother and both grandmothers. When I was coming up, it wasn't an individual's child. | 18:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Could you talk a little bit about that? Who else would take care of you? Is it just those three women or were there other people in the community look out for you as well? | 19:05 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Not from a support angle. No, not—I never, I never had that from—there may have been some that did. I never had that from a support angle. But if anybody is from a disciplinary thing, all anybody had to tell your parents that you had done something. And that was my resentment of some of the older people, because some of those times they made mistakes, or they thought they were right. And you might wind up getting what we call a whipping for it. | 19:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were your grandmothers and your mother very strict? Were they harsh? | 19:58 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | My mother, she was strict, but she didn't deal in a lot of corporal punishment. My father's mother, very, very religious. Would discipline you, not whip you for everything you did then, but had a tremendous memory. When she whip you, she would mention everything she had told you in the past that you had done wrong. She would beat you, tell you about that time and stop, talk to you about something else you had done later, whip you for that and stop. And that's what made it so many. If you had done four things, you got four whippings. She didn't do it every time, but she never forgot what you had done in the past. | 20:03 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | My mother's mother was more impulsive. If you did something, she decided to hit you then. Was all over after then. But mother was more of a easy kind. She would do more talking to me. But all of them was fairly strict. But my daddy, like I said, he would come home, he was gone, something like that. Wasn't no discipline under him. | 21:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Now who were you closest to? Who of these relatives were you closest to? | 21:48 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I was close to my two grandmothers and my mother. Like I said, the first job that I had out of school was a two weeks a month government job. The first paycheck that I got, I went by the grocery store and bought groceries for both grandmothers. I carried my father's mother, I carried my mother's mother. I took my check and bought groceries for both of them. I always remember, that's the first check I got. | 21:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kind of values do you think that those three women instilled in you? What was important for them, for you to learn about being a good person and that kind of thing? | 22:41 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, if I am, my father's mother was the kind that always told you, regardless of what people did to you, to treat them right. She was always against you fighting. She always wanted you to respect everybody. And one reason I could get along interracial, she put stress on you honoring, and then you had to honor Whites. But she put stress on everybody. So that was— | 22:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | So that helped you get along with Whites? | 23:50 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | That helped you get along. And she was one of the ones that was witness to them, just like if she talked to you, because to know her was to love her. We had the head of the highway patrolman. He told me, he said, "Your grandmother had on me today." Or she'd be standing out there, something like that. And he stopped by a time or two. So she didn't care who he was. If you talk with her long, she start talking about the Lord. And to her, people was people. | 23:57 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | My other grandmother did more instilled in working and independence. She got along with people. She didn't do a lot of visiting and socializing, but she felt like she wanted to be self-supporting. Now, that's something I got from all of them, being self-supporting. And like I said, my mother wasn't the tight kind. She wanted me to go to school, even when I didn't lose any time from school until I was up in my teens. It would break her heart for you to want to miss a day to go to work. | 24:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | So education was important to her? | 25:36 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | That was then. She happened or was fortunate enough at that time, she didn't finish high school, but she was fortunate enough to had gone to high school. And she always felt like that was important. But with the family finances and everything, just like it was designated for me to have to do some working. But she never wanted you to get out of school to work, even if that meant she had to work a little more. She didn't want you to do it. | 25:42 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I often remember a lot of time I'd work, get frustrated, she always told me if a task wants to be done, never leave it till it's done. And she always would hammer that into me. Like I said, I never had the real hardship I said that a lot of people claimed they had, because I came up working. Probably I didn't take time to notice. | 26:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | You talked a little bit about your first grandmother helping you to get along with everybody. Did your mother or your grandmothers ever have to sit you down and say, "Now listen, this is how you have to act. You have to stay out of certain situations in order to get along with Whites and not to get in trouble."? Did they ever have to tell you that? | 26:56 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I don't ever remember that being said because you came along during a time that it looked like from a early age on, they used to say staying in your place or doing something. They used to have that. I had a early resentment of that, but I tried to treat people as people. I looked at the better class Blacks just I looked at the better class Whites. And the other Whites that were on the sound at an early age, I had as much as they had or more. So I didn't have that feeling. | 27:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you had no feeling of inferiority? | 28:21 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Uh-uh, not from the personal standpoint. I always was there from the legal standpoint and stuff. And a lot of those that had the privilege of me, they were borrowing from me asking favors of me at a early age. So that gave me another little boost. A lot came to me. I was fortunate enough to not have a whole lot of that. | 28:22 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Now, I could have had it. I had a bad experience. When I worked at Camp Davis when they were constructing that. I still was, like I said, small in structure. I was working a job with no transportation. I had to ride the bus. And I got there late one morning. Nobody had gone to work, but they had loaded on the truck. And the man, the timekeeper said, "You're late." I said, "Yes sir, but the truck has been going, the fellows are right there. All I got to do is go get on." "I said you're late." I said, "Yes sir, but don't sass me." And like I said, I always felt coming from down here that you could say what you wanted as long as you said it respectfully. | 28:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. I see. | 29:55 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | So when I said the second time he left out his office and came at me. And me being small, he's a big fellow. And he hit at me. I threw up my hand to keep him from hitting me. He hit at me. I had my lunch bucket in there. And about that time, the truck and everything was loaded. I looked, everywhere I could see, somebody was running up that way. And I ran. And they carried me to, they weren't considered security guards then, little policemen they had there. And after interviewing me, he said, "You know you could have got killed." I said, "But I hadn't done anything." He said, "You want to work?" Said, "Yes, sir. Well, I came up here." And he sent me to another job. | 29:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | But not Camp Davis, because you couldn't work with this— | 30:58 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Not after running into that. | 31:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | So this was a real shock for you after coming from this area? | 31:05 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Yeah. Yeah. | 31:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was this was the first time that you'd encountered that kind of— | 31:15 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Anything like that. I could have been a terrorist from then on. It really shocked me because I had always been taught to obey the law. And here I was innocent and shameful to admit was no transportation. I walked around Wilmington till I found out where this man parked his car. I don't know why. That just was so much in me. I went to Wilmington and found out where he parked his car. And I had come up in a family that we didn't have guns, we didn't do all those things, but it was my intention to do something to his car or do something to something. But I didn't. But I did find out where he parked. I found out where he did. And that was just how close I either got to being a criminal or a terrorist or something. Because I always felt I was really wronged. | 31:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | I've talked to a lot of people who've had similar experiences. And you say you could have become a terrorist or criminal or something. And people have talked so much about the anger that they felt. How did you deal with that? How did you keep it inside rather than letting it come out? | 32:25 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, I tell you what, I had come up in a family, we had to go church. I was always disciplined if I got in a fight. And like I said, this just wasn't a part of me. Now, if I had been around an area that we hunted or we had guns, or if I'd have come up with a lot of fighting, I don't know how I would've reacted. Because when I was wronged, I always took an attitude, even with my family or these older people that would tell your parents on you. If they told my parents on something that I didn't consider was right, I took up resentment about it. And I hate to say I harbored it a lot. | 32:52 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | But one good thing I can say about work, work is good therapy. When you had to work a lot, you can't stay angry. You just can't stay so angry and you got to carry something home. But I can sympathize with a lot of people not for carrying out their actions because I don't mind telling you I wanted revenge for a lot of things, but I didn't get it. And with my growing up in this area, when I went to sell fish out in other sections, I had White customers that couldn't quite understand me. I had an older couple in particular, they always insisted that White people raised me. | 33:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why was that? | 34:58 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I reckon with the way I acted. I often wondered and I tell them differently. They just kept out on insisting that White people—And I had early, another lady ask me, she said, "You weren't born around here, were you?" | 35:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | So around here, the race relations were that much different than Wilmington even [indistinct 00:35:30]. | 35:23 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And with me being like that, | 35:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 35:37 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I could talk to them. | 35:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 35:37 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And I think that must have been because I remember earlier on in my first fish ride, this lady said, well, we just sit up and talk. Children, everybody just talked. And she said, "You're not from around here. Are you?" Well, she could tell I'm going to talk more. She said, "You're from around here." Said, "I've been around here all my life." So I was wondering, was I supposed to act different or what? She said, "You aren't from around here." | 35:37 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | But we got along. And even some of my Black customers, they always felt like that some of them White customers and I, we talked too much. Or they come out, they were just another customer. | 35:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So it wasn't common for people—These Black customers weren't accustomed to Black people talking to White people? | 36:19 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Not on a equal level probably. It may have been more like that to talk, but not on a— | 36:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | But you generally didn't get in trouble for that here? | 36:37 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | No, no, no. Actually, I was really respected in those areas. I remember one man in particular was a big tenant, was a big farmer. They had White and Black tenants. He would make it his business days that I was coming up there to try to be somewhere where he could stop me. And then he wanted to talk. During the time, colleges has just started to integrate. He would stop and we'd talk about it. But he was frank. He told me he didn't fully agree with franchising all Blacks. And here's the way he put it. | 36:41 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | He said, "Nixon, I don't mind people like you voting." He said, "Let me tell you. If they were to allow 25% of the Blacks that's qualified to vote, 75%," he said, "of the Whites, I would have no objection at all." He said, "But we got 25% of Whites that got no more business voting than a lot of the Blacks." Percentage wise the 25% of the Whites were more than the 75% of the Blacks. But what he was saying, he would disenfranchise both of them groups. And that was his objection to opening up polls and everything to Blacks. | 37:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | In these rural areas, what was the area in which your business operated? Was it New Hanover County or Brunswick County? | 38:40 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | This man I'm telling you about was in Duplin. He was in Duplin. And he took a respect for me. He even offered to give me—He run the store, he offered to give me exclusive rights of working his tenants' strawberry field, days that he had them working and for me to equip the truck with all kind of notions. He offered me that privilege so long then if you worked, you had some that respected what you were doing and really didn't put obstacles in the way. He offered me to come and just work in his farm. | 38:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you worked in Duplin County? | 39:40 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Worked in Duplin, Pender. | 39:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Pender. | 39:49 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | A small portion of Sampson, and just a few houses in Onslo. | 39:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | And then around here too? | 40:09 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | We were working New Hanover too. | 40:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, did you have employees, did you have people you'd hired to help you out? | 40:11 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Most of my employees starting out was the family. That's the way they started but I hired others. And later years, we hired a number of Whites. | 40:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | White as well? | 40:31 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Yeah, White and Black employees. Remember I told you earlier that I even worked some of the same people, or either their children that my family dealt with. | 40:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, you could come back just a little bit again. | 40:46 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Oh yeah. Okay. | 40:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | I wanted to ask you a little bit about school. Where did you go to school? | 40:51 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I started off school in a one room building that they called Middletown School, but it was actually off of Market Street Road in Ogden. | 40:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | This is the school in the article, right? | 41:14 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Oh yeah, it's the school in the article. | 41:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | So it was a one room school. And how many— | 41:14 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, actually the school in one time, it had—When I started going, they were just using one room. But prior to that, believe it or not, this was a three room building. | 41:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | But when you went, it was just one room? | 41:31 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | One room. | 41:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | And how many grades did they have in that one room? | 41:32 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Earlier they'd had more because the population down here had 12. Remember I told you a lot of people went north. My last year there was fifth grade. The ones ahead of me went earlier, some of them. It started a few years ahead of me. They went right on through the sixth or seventh. But when I came along it was fifth grade. | 41:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you like school? | 42:02 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I liked school. I didn't hate school because I knew I had to go to school. | 42:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were your teachers good? Was the teacher good that you had? | 42:17 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | We had a real competent teacher my first five years. The sixth grade they first sent the ones from here to a bigger community, but not in Wilmington. Well, it was so much hostility toward them that when I came along, they sent my class to Wilmington. We rode the bus to Wilmington. And being shy and out of the country, I didn't fit in too well. But we got the lessons and we didn't start back behind the children in the city. We had to finish up the sixth and seventh grade to elementary school in Wilmington. | 42:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. What school was that? | 43:24 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | If I'm not mistaken they called that Williston Junior High. Junior. And then there we went to Williston Senior. | 43:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you were treated badly by the other students because you were from the country? | 43:42 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Oh, and we wasn't one of them. | 43:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So what happened with the—? | 43:46 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, I wasn't a good mixer anyway, but as time went on, we more or less came to be one of them. | 43:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, did the teachers ever play favorites among the students at school? | 44:02 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | There always was favorites. I'm going to give you a shocker. During my coming up they always felt like the brighter children got the better grades. | 44:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. The ones with lighter skin? | 44:29 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Yeah. But now leaving 11th grade, that's when we finished high school, I was awarded a small scholarship that would've been something that I could have never used. But it was always expected that the upper-class Blacks and especially the brighter Blacks were the ones that wouldn't get the scholarship. It was just a surprise when I was awarded one, but I was no top grade student. | 44:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, the skin color thing, did that that kind of thing happen in other parts of your life too, or was it mainly at school? | 45:17 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, I tell you what happened when I was looking for a job. You remember I said that always had to associate with bigger boys because I had to start out early? | 45:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 45:36 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I had a friend and a cousin that got a job on the beach and I was adamant about getting me a job on the beach. And the lady that they were working for told them that she didn't have anything against me, but she didn't prefer hiring a Black boy. They didn't tell me about it, but I reckon all those things, which I'm glad it happened, pushed me more and more for working for myself. But at the time I didn't know. The only thing I knew I never to get a job over there. But now not to say that Blacks didn't work on there, but this particular lady that they were working for. | 45:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kind of work were they doing over there? | 46:24 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | They were doing, I think either kitchen and dining room work and stuff like that. | 46:28 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | —guy. Being in the country, I didn't play sports. | 0:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 0:08 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Not at school. At one time I was in, we call it a high wire club, that's where supposed to be the better knowledge. | 0:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 0:29 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Boys were in. And I did work with the debating team there for a while. But it was nothing significant about my high school then. | 0:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | What classes did you like? What subjects did you like? | 0:45 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I really liked history. | 0:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | History. | 0:54 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And math wasn't bad with me. I don't know whether I really liked math or something, but I never really hated it that much. And I liked history even till today, I liked a little bit of history. I don't take time to study, but I like it. And geography I was all right with me. | 0:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | So did you take a bus into school? | 1:30 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | We had buses. | 1:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, you did have buses? | 1:33 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | You hear a lot about buses. We came up with buses. | 1:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | And these were provided by the city or by the—? | 1:37 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | The county or state— | 1:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | County? | 1:42 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | —provided buses for us. | 1:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. But the city children, they didn't— | 1:46 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | They weren't bused. | 1:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 1:50 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | But the rules actually weren't. We got hand me down buses, but we did have buses. New Hanover County got us to school. | 1:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. Did you ever think of going to college? | 1:58 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | It was an obsession. | 2:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, really? | 2:06 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Couldn't get the money. This little scholarship. Let me add, I was told by one of my teachers that the school, that they had awarded me the scholarship, was a school in the deep south— | 2:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 2:31 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | —That catered to the Brighter Blacks. | 2:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 2:32 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Or offsprings of some of them. | 2:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 2:36 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | See, 'cause most of them probably coming out slavery were the ones that got the better positions and stuff. And he said that this school catered to them. | 2:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | What school was that? | 2:45 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Talladega at the time. I applied to Hatton for a work scholarship. You had to go five years for four years. Right. But you worked 12 months a year and you had to get $75 to enter. And I couldn't get it out of all my working thing. I couldn't get it. | 2:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now what did you want to become if you'd gone to college? | 3:18 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I wanted to take up business. | 3:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Business. Okay. | 3:20 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And I was told then, I was choosing the wrong subject because if I took business, the only opening for me then was something like an insurance agent. | 3:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 3:40 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And one of my teachers recommended me going into elementary education, 'cause he said that that was a fertile field. | 3:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So when you finished up at school, you went to work. And what was your first job out of school? | 3:55 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | First job I remember was a governmental program. They said that they worked here two months. Two weeks out of the month. | 4:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And what were you doing there? | 4:15 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | They made something like a job car. We did a little carbon tend the heads you going around doing little, if I can remember correctly—Certain jobs or something like that. They had your foreman and somebody you'll go around and fix up those things. Right, I'm looking at some of the places and things that we went not, I can't remember that well or just how the program was setting up. But they had certain projects for you to work on. | 4:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now was this in the '30s? | 5:00 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | No, I finished school in '39. | 5:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | '39. | 5:06 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | So this was right after then. | 5:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 5:11 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Because I started at the base up the Camp Lejeune up there in the early '40s. | 5:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. So it wasn't the WPA or— | 5:17 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | No, no. That worked up. That was more for family men. | 5:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. So now you worked at Camp Lejeune or Camp—? | 5:22 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Camp Lejeune when they were constructing it. | 5:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | And Camp Davis. That was a different— | 5:31 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I said Camp Lejeune. I keep—Camp Davis. | 5:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And where is Camp Davis? | 5:36 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | It's Holly Ridge. | 5:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So could you commute from here to there or did you have to work— | 5:39 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | That's the places I got into trouble too. I was getting the bus— | 5:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | You took the bus, right. That's right. I'm sorry. | 5:46 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Sorry. Took a bus there. The camp no longer exists. Camp Lejeune is just on my mind. But this was called Camp Davis. | 5:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. And then was that a good paying job as well? | 6:00 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, at that time it was a government job. And I can't remember the wages, which I think was less than a dollar. But whatever it was, it was the better wages for that period. | 6:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So government jobs were better paying than any other job? | 6:15 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, I used the word, it was the government through contractors. I don't know exactly how it was operating, but they had to build the barracks and they had to do all the infrastructure work and everything up there in the bays. And that was the first job I remember that I worked on, I can't remember wages, but was the first job that I can remember that I could say we were drawing a paycheck. | 6:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 6:46 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And it was the best thing in the area because people were coming from, I reckon hundreds of miles there to do the work. Buses on top of buses. People go to work. | 6:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, why were people coming so much? Was there anything, what kinds of job opportunities would somebody like you have had right out of high school if there hadn't been some of these government jobs? | 7:00 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Working on the farm. | 7:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | So that would be about it? | 7:15 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | That would be about it. Or getting a job or in the fishing industry or something like nature. Now there were a few fellas that worked in businesses and stuff like that. But with my connection and being a country boy, I can't remember any opportunities I would've had for that. | 7:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, so then you started working at the shipyard after Camp Davis, is that right? | 7:41 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | It wasn't too long after that. | 7:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | And that was the best. That was even better. | 7:49 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | That was better. Best thing to hit Wilmington up until then. | 7:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | What happened in Wilmington? People have talked a lot about the shipyard and the good wages and that kind of thing. How did that change life for Black people in this area? | 7:56 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, they were able to get things they had never had before. One thing it did, it caused a lot of people from South Carolina and other counties of North Carolina to move into Wilmington. Which a whole lot of people now, are people that came up here on the county ship. Y'all never went back. It offered so much better opportunities than the way they were. | 8:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | So did it become crowded in Wilmington? | 8:47 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Wilmington, did—And another thing, you had people that worked the shipyard. They got the permits from service. | 8:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 8:59 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And you had professional class. | 9:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Working in the shipyard? | 9:03 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Oh, yeah. Laboring class. | 9:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 9:03 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | They had a village out there they call Hillcrest that a lot of people rented apartments, they moved down here during that time. And we just had a different caliber of people than I'd ever seen around here. | 9:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | And when you say that the professional people worked in the shipyard as well as the laboring class, would they be working in the same occupations in the shipyards? | 9:28 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | They had to be laborers like anybody else. And I may mention during that time in history, at least the department that I worked in, a Black man couldn't be a foreman. | 9:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 9:53 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Now I worked under a liberal supervisor from Newport News. They brought experienced Black shipyard workers from Newport News to train White fellows to be foremans. Truth. I was telling one of the leading families in Wilmington about my stockbroker. At that time, they called them leadmen. | 9:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 10:31 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | But they were the ones that knew the work. | 10:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Leadman? Yeah. | 10:37 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Lead. | 10:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Right. So were they, 'cause I know a lot of people went up to Newport News to or in some parts of North Carolina. At Newport News, do you know whether Black people could be foreman up there? | 10:40 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I don't know. | 10:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 10:55 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I don't know with Virginia South too, but it was little elevated. | 10:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 11:01 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | But these guys must had little recognition up there. I can't say. But I do know they came down here and helped train them. | 11:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 11:08 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | They helped train them. And then after the training period, these fellows took over as foreman, as head as foreman. | 11:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 11:22 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | The crane operators in the group that I worked in were all White-skinned. | 11:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | So there were certain jobs that Blacks were not hired for? | 11:30 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Like that. Yeah. | 11:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | And in the jobs you did work in, were they all Black crews? Did you only work with other Black people or? | 11:35 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, no. In the department that I worked, the foreman was White. The crane operator was White, supervisor. But a lot of the actual laborers were Black. | 11:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | But were there White laborers as well? | 11:57 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Not—In the whole shipyard. There were plenty of them. | 12:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | But they worked side by side with Black [indistinct 00:12:07]? | 12:05 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, from what I can understand in the other departments, 'cause they had Blacks doing shipping and doing some of those skills and semi-skills, which they got the most unfavorable places to work, and those fellas made money, 'cause a lot of that was peace work. | 12:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 12:30 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I understand a lot of those fellows made plenty of money. But it was peace work. They did it in the other departments. But in the department our worked in, was the department that you had White supervisors, White foremans. I think most departments had White foremans. But there were Blacks doing skilled and semi-skilled work. And other than being the foreman or the crane operator, fellas in the department I worked in had fair jobs. And you remember tenure, they let me be in charge over two them on a shift. Or I was on the second shift, I was the first one ever put in there. They had a light skinned Black on the first shift. And I was offered the second shift and turned it down. And they held it open and told me if I changed my mind within a certain length of time it was still mine. | 12:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why did you turn it down? | 13:43 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I didn't want to work at night. | 13:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 13:45 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I still didn't have transportation. And I for said that I was on the smallest one on the job working. And this foreman that I was working with would let me do some of the lighter things. And I got to learn about the tools that we used, and that's when some of the other supervisors got to seeing me. They would send me around the overhead crane to check them out, see what they needed and what they didn't. I was just blessed. And after doing that and they noticed me and I was offered a job. So when I went back and told supervisor I would take it, I said, "But I got a problem." They said, "What's the problem?" | 13:46 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I said, the ride that I'll have to get, works a hour later. My department worked from 3 to 11. This other department worked from 4 to 12. He said, "Why didn't you tell me that to start with?" Said, "No problem." They said, "I'll give you an hour overtime, every night." Said, "If you can't get home," he said, "You knock off 11, or we pay you to 12." | 14:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 15:00 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And then when they put on a third shift, he said, "You stay from 11 to 12 and show this third shift man what to do." So I got that. So my relationship, I got along good. | 15:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So how long did you stay in the shipyard? Oh, until you took your leave of absence? | 15:19 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I took my leave of absence. I can't remember. Yeah. I took a leave of absence. | 15:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And then you basically were working for yourself? | 15:32 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | For myself. | 15:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Okay. Now, when did you meet your wife? | 15:40 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I met my wife three years later. I married. | 15:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 15:45 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I married a lot later, in fact. I don't say that was starting the relationship, but she packed oysters from [indistinct 00:16:00] wall. | 15:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 16:01 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I was running an oyster plant. | 16:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | And around when did you meet her? In the '50s? | 16:08 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, I knew her as a little girl. | 16:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 16:11 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | In the ;50s. | 16:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 16:11 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | 'Cause I'm just a little bit over 10 years older than she is. | 16:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | And you married in the '60s or? | 16:20 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I married in the '50s. | 16:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | In the '50s. | 16:22 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well actually I just started knowing her, I think in the '40s. They moved in this area from Pender County. I knew her and I knew the family. | 16:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | And what was your courtship like? Did her family approve of the marriage and—? | 16:42 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | At that time, first starting off, her stepdad resented it. But later I, I do not think because although I was older, she was 18 about [indistinct 00:17:10] the time. See, so it wasn't like you were down in the canyon. | 16:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Now. What kinds of things did you do while you were courting? Did you go to the movies or what did you do? | 17:19 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I didn't have a real productive courtship. I'll tell you. I was more in the shy order. I always was overworked. | 17:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 17:37 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | During those times, they had places that uh—they used to call them "joints" and they weren't on the sound. I never got to be a dancer. But sometimes we would go by some of those places. And we did go to the movies. | 17:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now I wanted to ask you a little bit about church. Now, what church was it that your church— | 18:07 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Church I go to is Mount Area, AME. | 18:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And you've gone there all your life? | 18:16 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Practically all my life. | 18:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Have you always been a regular churchgoer? | 18:22 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | No. | 18:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | No. | 18:24 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I've been attending church fairly regular. | 18:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 18:28 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I didn't accept Christ until after I was married. | 18:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. But you went to church? | 18:35 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Oh, back then I was a supporter of the church. | 18:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 18:37 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I didn't consider myself a bad fellow, but that wasn't it. | 18:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Oh, sorry— | 18:45 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | No, I didn't accept Christ and become a member of the church until I was about, I think 31, 32, something like that. Yeah. | 18:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was that unusual? | 19:01 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Well, most of them, the fellows seeing I came up with I accepted Christ early age. | 19:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 19:06 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I never did till I was grown. And I accepted Christ from a Baptist church, not my church. | 19:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So you're a member of a Baptist church? | 19:20 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | No, I'm a member of this church. | 19:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 19:23 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I didn't join this church. But I said I accepted Christ in the Baptist church. See if you went to what we call revivals, you didn't just go 'cause it was at your church. | 19:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. So this was at a revival? | 19:34 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | It was at a revival. I was out. I was in business. In fact, I was in, that was—The night that I accepted Christ, I was working in Duplin County at that time. And I cut my route short just to get home that night to go to church. They had a week service. That was a Friday night. That was the windup night. But I was a married man then with children. | 19:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now. What role did church play in this community when you were growing up? Was it a place for people to meet each other or? | 20:13 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | During my time, earlier, our church was more of a social center. So many of those people got [indistinct 00:20:40] said move and went, "No." | 20:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 20:43 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | During the time I was coming along in my earlier days, there were a very few men and mostly older women that carried on that church. And since a lot of the older people respected me and depended on me, I started out helping and being a supporter of the church from a early age. That may have been one of the reasons why it took me so long to accept Christ to go. I thought as good as everybody else. So I don't know. But anyway, we started out at an early age doing things for the church. | 20:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. And you said your grandmother, one grandmother was extremely religious. | 21:27 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Extremely. | 21:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. So she would take you to church or? | 21:31 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Before my sixth birthday, I remember going there with her there because she had always had the preachers and stuff over. | 21:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Now, and this was at Mount Area. | 21:45 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Still at Mount Area, right. That was most of my attendants. Both grandmothers belonged there. | 21:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 21:54 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And then from then on, my mother, always my mother, from then on, until I got up big enough to, I went sometime and sometime I didn't. But I still was associated with them. | 21:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, since you've been married, what kind of role has—Did Mount Area play any kind of role in the community at large? Helping the ill or that kind of thing? | 22:10 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Never a dominant role. Never a dominant role. The biggest thing was holding onto a presence in the community. Held onto the little church. | 22:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So was some struggle for survival. | 22:37 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Struggle for survival. It's mentioned— | 22:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. It says it [indistinct 00:22:43]. | 22:41 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | In this article. See what it says about giving something to these people that would come. We got this in—Yeah. It there. A big portion of our support comes from former members or the descendants or former members. | 22:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 23:07 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | That's what they say. So we got a lot of that. Yeah. I've got in here too that, she got in here, this was never a very prosperous area, but it was always a nice living area. It was rural, the people were poor, the Blacks and Whites and relations were good. | 23:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 23:38 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Along middle sound. You had an aristocratic class living. Some of the Blacks got employment there, but most of the Whites here farmed or went to war here. | 23:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 23:49 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | There was work at the beach and that LA garden on his rifle, it used to employ a lot of people just keeping it up. So many of the older heads from around here went to Rifle Sound. And that's what happened. A lot of our people went to Rifle because there was more work. Some went north looking for work and still others moved to Wilmington saying that did away with the membership. But I can give you one of these copies. I'm going to give you that one. | 23:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, great. | 24:25 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Yeah. Yeah. Well most everything in here is something that I said. | 24:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. It would be nice to have the copy. | 24:37 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Yeah. Most—No, but what I mean this is something that I said, what I mean, things that you don't have down there. This is another port from me at that time. | 24:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. | 24:49 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | It'll be this here. | 24:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | So I could keep this? | 24:57 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Yeah, go ahead and keep that. | 24:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. That'll be great. Thank you very much. Okay. I think I'm pretty much finished with my questions. The final question I'd like to ask you is, what do you think that the system of segregation has meant to your life? Has it held you back? Did it help you? Do you think about what would've happened if the South hadn't been segregated when you were growing up? | 24:58 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Segregation was something that we came up in. Didn't know anything different. You view things different when you know something different. We didn't know anything different. We didn't like the injustice. But you found out how to survive within the system and it made you more self-reliant. You knew you had to try to be good at what you were doing. As a sideline, one of the middle level Whites in this area told my mother, we worked on a farm occasionally at a early age for her to send me, Noah, because I would never get a break, Ron, he said. | 25:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 26:45 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And after his death, some of his boys, we weren't buddy buddies or play, but, we kept an acquaintanceship. | 26:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 27:01 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | When asking about the segregation, I welcomed integration when it first started. One reason I did, I tried to get active in Parent Teachers Association at school for a short while. And the school that my children were going, we always had to have fundraisers to get things that you needed. The next year when it's Supreme Court mandated integrating anything, the same school that didn't have money for little things went into a major over hauling. Things that we'd asked for, things that we hadn't asked for and all, they upgraded the school. So that made, built up everybody hosted, they were going to have better facilities, better places to go in. But they still did away, in my estimation, with old dedicated teachers [indistinct 00:28:39]. Teachers that we had that knew what they had to equipped you for. | 27:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 28:47 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | My relationship— | 29:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | If you could just maybe bring that [indistinct 00:29:14] that clip came off it. | 29:10 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Did it? | 29:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Just [indistinct 00:29:18]. | 29:17 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | That's alright. | 29:18 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | My children going to school and more or less coming up in an integrated society have more negative feelings about Whites than I do. | 29:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why do you think that is? | 29:48 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | As I first said, I came up with the walls built around you. You knew it. | 30:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 30:08 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | But one advantage that I had, everybody in those walls or even outside the walls, I never looked at Whites as being kings. So, I looked at them as people. I tried to respect authorities, I tried to respect positions, but I also tried to do that with the bikes, and just to sell my feelings. When I went out selling fish, I referred to my bike customs as well as my Whites, Mr. And Mrs. Or something that was unheard of because a lot of us said, "Why you calling me mister? What you calling me mister?" | 30:10 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | That was my way of getting over. You know, you mister too. So that helped me have a different feeling in life. But with them, it's hard for me to answer that. But I think they got to know that there were good Whites and bad Whites or good Blacks, but I just don't know. But like I said, they had a different feeling about it than I did. Now, later on with working with Whites, we worked on a different level than I did earlier, because when I worked on the waterfront, and they mentioned that, this waterfront in Wilmington was dominated by Blacks. | 30:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 31:59 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | The foremans on that were Black. The union in Wilmington, it still is, the president was Black. So the shippers dealt with Black and all the—But the shippers foreman or supervisors were White. But they had to deal with the Black foreman through the union. And then later on, a few Whites came in and went to work in there too. Now you got White foremans and good stuff, but mostly there, it's still in Wilmington is dominated with Blacks. | 32:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | So this is the longshoreman. | 32:45 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Longshoreman. But now Morehead, I understand that they had more of an integrated local, it was started later. So naturally, a whole lot of your supervisors they never White. In Brunswick County, most union officials were White, but they had some White, but the presidents have always been White and the foremans are both Black and White. Over there, the workers, they got more of an equal amount. Being with Brunswick. Here in Wilmington, the big majority still Blacks. | 32:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Now were you were never a longshoreman? | 33:36 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Oh yeah, that's what I'm saying. I worked there part—That's what I'm saying. | 33:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. Oh, okay. | 33:41 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | That was one of my part-time jobs, later. | 33:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So now, were you there when the union was active? | 33:45 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. | 33:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now what was that like then having a in-job situation where Black workers were—had control some control over their working place did that? Were conditions—? | 33:53 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | To say they had control. I'd rather rephrase it. They had more control over the hiring. They would get orders from the company needing so many men. We had what we call headers. Before I told you about leadmen, but they call these guys headers. He headed the list. If they ordered 16 men, he was the number one man and he hired the other 15, he was in charge of the other 15. The work orders were given from the company to their foremans. Their foremans in return would mostly tell the headman what he wanted done. In some instances he would even tell the workers directly, which he wasn't supposed to do it. So when you got on the job, he was more or less the foreman. | 34:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 35:19 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | But now the Blacks, like I said, did the hiring and if he wanted to dismiss the man he had to go through— | 35:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you ever strike? | 35:38 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I wouldn't say that I struck wholly. I never was there when a general stoppage was called. At one time a small company wanted to work the dock and use non-union labor. Each group had a day to picket that company and I participated in that. But did general work was still going on. | 35:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now did you—Excuse me. When was this? | 36:50 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | It was during the '80s. | 36:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So when did the union come into the longshoremen? | 37:00 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I don't have their history, but Wilmington has had a union or, if I'd have known that. I could have got the deal. I got the information. But they started years ago. | 37:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So before the 1960s? | 37:20 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Oh my gosh. Oh, well say this place, when they started Korean War, that was what, in the early '50s, I think. | 37:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | That's right. That's right. | 37:31 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | This local was in existent then. And the other Southport Local is a birth out of this local. Even then the hiring was done through the union. | 37:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 37:49 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Yeah. Fellows were working union in the '40s. I don't know exactly when they started in the '40s. | 37:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 37:59 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | But it was considered way back there. The lowest of the lowest job. | 38:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. Now was it the lowest paying job? | 38:10 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | The job paid fair for time worked. But a boat would come in this month and it might be weeks— | 38:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right before you get back. | 38:28 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | That's right. | 38:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 38:29 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And the class or fellow that mostly worked, it weren't the people that had their own home. | 38:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 38:46 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | That wasn't like that. I think it was the Korean War—When the Korean War started and the military built a port or base near Southport. That's when longshoring work got to be high class work. | 38:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 39:17 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | We had people down there with bachelor degrees. I know one fella had a master degree worked down there. You had fellas leaving other occupations. A friend of mine died several weeks ago. He had even been administrator at a hospital, a small hospital. This man had a master's degree and he worked his way up to be business agent at the local. But he and I used to work side by side. It isn't a job that you get elevated on the kind of, what you know, or it's a political job, but he did have the training and everything. | 39:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So did he go back to his job or did he remain at the longshoreman? | 40:03 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Stayed there longshoreman until he retired and died. | 40:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So all of a sudden it became a more a traffic job. | 40:10 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And that's when the Whites went there. Coming on in and everything. And at the Army post, they paid you double what the going wages was. I mean, what the going longshore wage, which is always much higher than the regular. And they paid you double that for handling ammunition. | 40:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 40:36 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | That was your premium pay. | 40:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So that sort of took over from the shipyard as sort of the best place to work in Wilmington? | 40:40 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | I wouldn't—That was one segment. Later on we got, after the coastline, everything left. That's when most of the Whites in the middle class had a coastline job. But then DuPont or federal—But all those jobs along with the longshoremen, but now during the war— | 40:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | The Korean War. | 41:20 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | That's right. More money could be made there in any other job around. More money. Only hazard with that job, you don't have 40 hour week job, the most of it. And you don't have to work unless you want to work. But when the boats were coming in, plentiful, you could work from group to group to group. And people made a lot of money. Some of them really elevated themselves and others spent a lot of money. See, because those fellas, a lot of them were making more per day than some people were making per week. | 41:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. But some people were able to really better themselves to buy houses— | 42:18 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | But we had so many, it was so easy. And a lot of those fellows that started out in some of the worst were the fellows that had come from when the union was in his infancy and wasn't much work. And they were working every now and then. And then when work all of a sudden came, that you could work all the time. Some of them wouldn't even take full advantage of that. They hadn't been used to that. | 42:25 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | The fellows, in my estimation, they took the fullest advantage, were the fellows that had come from all smaller jobs. They were used to working per week. And so they tried to put in as much time there as they could. And they were guys that had been trying to buy home to try to send you to school or do things like that. And so they actually got a chance of really improving themselves. But that other group, they bought cars, several women, everything that was more on the glamorous side, because if you stayed out the day and didn't work, there was a lot of work tomorrow. | 42:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 43:38 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | It's not like that now on there. But I mean then it was plenty of it. Working day and night, and you had fellows that actually broke their health or never seen that much money and some of them just work, work, work. It made a lot of difference in Wilmington. A lot of difference. Ruined a lot of people, helped a lot of people. The boys got right out of high school, if they had any connection, fathers working down there, somebody would give them a job, as far as coming down there making a few hundred dollars a week, he'd never made $10 a week. And then when they started working over the military, a lot of days made a 100 or $200 and things like that. | 43:40 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | And then when they worked at night, you got time and a half. So if you were making $10 an hour at the state port, you made $20 when you went there on a regular, and if you worked the nights, you got 30, if you worked Saturday and Sundays you got 30. So those kind of things just blew the people mind. In other words, for overtime and those nights and Saturdays and Sundays, you got three times as much as you got working a regular day on a regular shift. So that really pumped a lot of money in the economy around here. A lot of money. | 44:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | All right, Mr. Nixon, I think I've pretty much asked you everything I want to, do you have anything that you wanted to say? | 45:29 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | No, but I, 'cause when you were saying about coming, I didn't know anything interesting I could tell you. No, it's been—No, I really didn't. But like I said, this is a nice little area. The complexion has greatly changed. | 45:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 46:09 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | You don't see the older names and things like that that you came up now. So— | 46:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | I just have a little bit of biographical information as I was wondering if I could get from you. | 46:25 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | What's that? | 46:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Just a few questions about—Just to fill in some of the— | 46:31 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Okay. | 46:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | What's your full name please, sir? | 46:36 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Cornelius. | 46:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 46:42 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | C-O-R-N-E-L-I-U-S. | 46:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Sorry. Sorry, say that again. | 46:45 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | C-O-R. | 46:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | N-E-L. | 46:47 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | N-E-L-I-U-S. | 46:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And do you have a middle name. | 46:50 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Edward. | 46:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 46:52 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | E-D-W-A-R-D. | 46:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Nixon. | 46:56 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | Nixon Jr. That's what I go by. | 46:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | What's your zip code here, please? | 47:00 |
| Cornelius Edward Nixon | 28 4— | 47:01 |
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