Alene Wade interview recording, 1993 July 16

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Alene Wade	Yeah, I believe I had a very fascinating life.	0:03
Speaker 1	[indistinct 00:00:06].	0:05
Alene Wade	That's okay.	0:06
Chris Stewart	Ma'am, you said you always did not live in Wilmington, correct?	0:11
Alene Wade	That's right. Flint, Michigan.	0:15
Chris Stewart	When did you move to Flint, or were you born there?	0:17
Alene Wade	No, I was born on Wright Street.	0:20
Chris Stewart	When did you move to Michigan?	0:24
Alene Wade	Oh, it must have been about 27 or something. No, it had to be earlier than that. I was about four years old.	0:26
Chris Stewart	You were young?	0:40
Alene Wade	Mm-hmm.	0:40
Chris Stewart	Do you know the circumstances under which you left?	0:40
Alene Wade	Yeah. Aunt Lucy didn't have any children. That was Uncle Fred's wife, my daddy's brother's wife. She didn't have any children and mama had so many, so they were going to share me. The best thing in the world ever happened to me. I got a chance to travel and, see, I understood what I was seeing and traveling and like that. And it was wonderful for a young, wide-eyed kid. It really was. And she reared me, I guess, like people rear their children today. She did. I took violin lessons and all of this, but she tried to—I loved the mama, say she never regretted letting Aunt Lucy have me for awhile, see, because she knew that she was good to me because I said she was.	0:43
Chris Stewart	How long were you there?	1:40
Alene Wade	Four years.	1:48
Chris Stewart	Really? You were still very young, but it sounds like you remember it very vividly.	1:48
Alene Wade	Mm-hmm. Four years, I came back, and I came back in '30, from that time to '30, '31.	1:49
Chris Stewart	What do you remember specifically about your childhood in Michigan? What was so special about it?	1:57
Alene Wade	Well, one thing, I've always been selfish, I'll say, because I wanted my things right to be my things, nobody touched, and then nobody touched what was mine. I had my own room and everything, this big yard, back and front, to play in, and I played very nicely by myself.	2:06
Chris Stewart	Did any of your other brothers or sisters go with you or did you—	2:29
Alene Wade	Oh, no. I stayed there until my grandmother, my daddy's mother, came to me. She brought me back to Wilmington.	2:32
Chris Stewart	Why did you come back?	2:40
Alene Wade	I'm not sure about this, but I think Uncle Fred and Aunt Lucy were separating, I believe. I believe that's what happened. And Mal, we called our grandmama Mal, she brought me back to Wilmington. I remember the streetcar was still running then and it used to turn at 7th and Castle. The streetcar turned there and we got off streetcar and went over to a friend of hers, a very close friend, and had dinner. And Daddy picked us up later that day and brought us down here because, while I was away, Mama and those moved, Mama—but she called—moved back home. And so when I came back, I came down here.	2:45
Chris Stewart	And where did you say you lived? Did you say you lived on Wright?	3:35
Alene Wade	Daddy taught that to me when I was about three years old, all of us, 410 Wright Street. I went there a few years ago. A girlfriend of mine, because it was a friend, they still live there, that lived next to us, Beatrice McIntyre. And the name of her house was 18 and they were just one house in between. Anyway, it didn't jive. And I went down and looked at this house that I was born in and asked the man, there wasn't any number on the door, but I asked him the number and he said 410. I said, "Well, I was taught that when I was about four years old and I never forgot it."	3:40
Chris Stewart	So 410 was—	4:21
Alene Wade	Wright Street.	4:22
Chris Stewart	And it was very close to the house that was numbered 810.	4:22
Alene Wade	No, 810. They were 810 and we were 10, but I couldn't see why it was like that. It wasn't that much space in between.	4:28
Chris Stewart	What did the house look like, when you were growing up?	4:40
Alene Wade	It was a green bungalow. Aunt Lucy knows it was a bungalow, a standup bungalow.	4:41
Chris Stewart	What about neighbors? Do you remember the neighbors that you grew up a little?	4:50
Alene Wade	Oh, yeah. Darwin and all of them, I really remember them. I know, oh, 50 years after our 50 year anniversary, Aunt Carolyn came home and with her brother, Emerson. He was much older than she was. He was much older than all of us in the neighborhood, but I remember how kind he was. He was kind to the smaller kids. And that stuck with me all those years. We had him down to our church and I asked him would he please get up and say something because I had admired him so much as a kid and as a grown person, too.	4:54
Chris Stewart	How many children were there in your family?	5:33
Alene Wade	Seven.	5:35
Chris Stewart	Oh, my.	5:36
Alene Wade	Seven.	5:37
Chris Stewart	So there was seven children in this bungalow?	5:37
Alene Wade	Yeah. No, it was seven. It was six then. My brother, Holland, wasn't born. I'm 11 years older than he is. He lives right there. But there were six of us in Wilmington, seven of us when we came down here.	5:39
Chris Stewart	What kind of work did your father do?	5:57
Alene Wade	He was a carpenter.	5:59
Chris Stewart	Okay.	5:59
Alene Wade	And a very good one. He was an architect. He went to college for that. And he wanted all of us to go to college, too, but nobody was interested. And at the time, things were so hard. I didn't know just how hard things were, but they were.	6:00
Chris Stewart	Did your mother work?	6:23
Alene Wade	No, only farmed. She could farm. I remember, one season, she worked the Beams Hotel, but all these were fields down there then, and on this side, too, and she had made everybody work. And I hated the field. And she'd leave me to the house to do the things that had to be done at the house. Then after I got grown, you couldn't keep me out of the field. I keep saying you couldn't keep me out of the sun. I was constantly doing something in the yard. I farmed over there, Pew Farm, to come home from the hospital, pull off my shoes and stockings, and right in the field.	6:25
Chris Stewart	When did your family move down there?	7:11
Alene Wade	They must've moved in—Trying to figure when I went to Flint, Michigan, and then they moved right after that. Daddy's work got very slow. People weren't building houses.	7:14
Chris Stewart	During the depression.	7:28
Alene Wade	Mm-hmm. And he built a lot of houses. He didn't only build houses for Negroes, he built these other houses, but things were very hard and Mama—	7:28
Chris Stewart	So did you live right in this area, then, when you were—	7:41
Alene Wade	Yeah, Mama's over—but Grandmama's right down there. The house was right down there. My brother, other brother, has a house down there. Yeah. In two blocks, all it is—not far, but that's where we lived.	7:43
Chris Stewart	So then your family has been in this area for—	8:02
Alene Wade	Oh, goodness, forever.	8:06
Chris Stewart	—a long time.	8:09
Alene Wade	Forever.	8:09
Chris Stewart	What were the kinds of things that you did as a younger girl for fun? What were your leisure, playtime things?	8:11
Alene Wade	Running up the road and looking for Howard. That's my husband. We call this up the road and this down the road, but we had lots of fun, someplace that we could go and dance, and we loved that, Sunday school. We would follow Daddy like ducks. All of us was behind him, all six of us, going to church, right to the same church that my husband and I belong to now.	8:20
Chris Stewart	What church is that?	8:55
Alene Wade	Mount Pilgrim right down there.	8:57
Chris Stewart	[indistinct 00:09:00].	8:59
Alene Wade	Mm-hmm.	9:00
Chris Stewart	Wow.	9:01
Alene Wade	Church just before the bridge.	9:03
Chris Stewart	Wow. Were there any people in your neighborhood that you really looked up to? You mentioned one person's name. Were there anybody else, any adults that you really looked up to, besides your mother and father?	9:07
Alene Wade	Yeah, there were people that I like. There's a little old lady right there, which is the next house because I don't count all those in there, but on the road there, Lula Anne. I always admired her because she—and she loved me. She looks like a little White woman, but I always admire her. And I liked her sister, but I didn't love her sister the way I loved her, but there were people. Gussie Freeman. I liked Fonza. I really liked Fonza Dess. He's some distant relation to me, but Gussie had so much patience with us in teaching us in Sunday School and like that. That's what she worked with. And she was so glad she got so couldn't when she thought she was turning communion and like that over to me. As my husband told me, I was such a big devil, "Didn't know why she wanted to turn it over to you," but she knew my heart.	9:17
Chris Stewart	Why were you considered such a devil?	10:25
Alene Wade	Because I was one.	10:27
Chris Stewart	What?	10:31
Alene Wade	I was one.	10:31
Chris Stewart	[indistinct 00:10:32]?	10:31
Alene Wade	I had a temper.	10:34
Chris Stewart	Oh, I see.	10:35
Alene Wade	I had a temper and, yeah, I considered myself a devil. I did.	10:40
Chris Stewart	Who made the decisions in your family, your mother or your father, say decisions about disciplining children, or money, or finances and things like that?	10:45
Alene Wade	My daddy made all the decisions in the family until he had a stroke. He had a stroke in—I was a young child. My oldest sister, I don't know how old she was now, but then my mama made the decisions. She did the working and what was going to be done with the money, the children to go to work, and Daddy didn't want us to work. He had that idea. He grew up a different way, that you didn't go out to work, but Mama, soon as he went off to his job, she'd send us to work because she had to see that things got done. I admired her. I really did. I don't think I told her just how much I admired her. I don't think I ever did, but she knew that I trusted her because anything I had to tell, I had to ask about, I told her. I didn't tell other people my business. I always kept things to myself.	10:52
Chris Stewart	Where did you go to school when you first came back?	11:55
Alene Wade	At Oak Hill, right up the road. Oak Hill School. And of course, I graduated from Williston.	11:59
Chris Stewart	How big was Oak Hill?	12:07
Alene Wade	Two rooms. One room had from the—I guess it was from the primal to the fourth grade, I think. And the other one went to the seventh grade. Then we went to Wilmington to high school.	12:09
Chris Stewart	How did you get there?	12:28
Alene Wade	Bus.	12:28
Chris Stewart	It's a long time.	12:28
Alene Wade	Bus. And I remember the year, things were so hard, they gave milk. I can remember this, too. I was very tiny. Mama said I was the most healthy child she'd ever seen, but I was very tiny. But they sent milk down for all of us that was really underweight, but our teacher would give half to those children one day and half to the other children, so all the children in the school got milk.	12:31
Chris Stewart	This was at Williston or Oak Hill?	13:09
Alene Wade	No, this is Oak Hill.	13:09
Chris Stewart	Oak Hill.	13:09
Alene Wade	This was at Oak Hill.	13:10
Chris Stewart	What was it like going from a small two-room school to a big high school?	13:11
Alene Wade	Well, I had gone to a school much larger than that before I left Flint.	13:21
Chris Stewart	Really?	13:25
Alene Wade	So it wasn't as exciting maybe to me as it was to other kids, but it was all right. It was plenty of fun. Getting to ride the bus in the morning and getting to ride it in the evening, it was lots of fun.	13:25
Chris Stewart	How long did it take you to get to school in the morning?	13:41
Alene Wade	I really don't know, but I imagine about an hour. But see, because you had to stop and pick up, as we say, we went around Masonboro, you went, you picked up the kids. So you got a bus load up and you went on into Wilmington.	13:43
Chris Stewart	How was life here in Wilmington different for you from life in Flint?	14:01
Alene Wade	It was a lot different. As I say, some of the things was things they say—I had to be chasting all the time about my mouth because things didn't seem right to me and, things that didn't seem right, I voiced it. And you weren't supposed to do that. You just weren't supposed to be—and especially a child.	14:12
Chris Stewart	What would happen to you if you did?	14:35
Alene Wade	Oh, nothing to a child. Nothing happened, but—	14:37
Chris Stewart	Would your parents tell you that—	14:40
Alene Wade	That some things you can't say. And I wanted to know why. I always wanted to know why. Why? Because I still, until the day, I can't see why the color of your skin makes you different from another human being. I don't see it. I never did see it.	14:42
Chris Stewart	Did your parents ever offer you up any explanations? Did they ever satisfy your questions?	15:06
Alene Wade	That we don't knew the mix because, all along here, they mix. White came in, married Colored and like that. They married, they really were married, but they would say they were Indian, mixed with Indian, but they were White. And there's a family, the little lady I was telling you about, her father was White. So a lot of them were White long in here and they married different races, the Black race, and say they were Indian.	15:13
Chris Stewart	Instead of saying [indistinct 00:15:48].	15:47
Alene Wade	They were White. They would say they were Indian, Indian and White. Well, see, they had that Indian in them, so they were Indian. Io the day, lots of things I don't understand. I can't understand people's hatred toward each other. That just doesn't set with me. I don't think God intended that such things should happen. Well, I guess he intended that they should happen or they wouldn't have happened, but I wonder about that, how a person—I can look at you and, because you're a little different from me, I can treat you horrible. I just don't see that. I don't. But as I say, we have a nice childhood, running through all these woods and things. Like I said, all of them and I knew where everything was, back of the hill onto the river. And we wandered and Mama didn't try to keep us at home.	15:47
Chris Stewart	Who would you play with?	16:53
Alene Wade	There was the Fudge family, the Lacewell family, the Hansleys, The Mitchells. None of this was here. The Mitchells, the McClellans, the Wilsons, the McClellans, all of those. They were families. They were a little farther apart and you had to walk, but we didn't mind that. We had to walk a mile and a half to this grocery store.	16:55
Chris Stewart	Where did your family do its shopping, its marketing and things?	17:22
Alene Wade	Daddy bought groceries home on Saturdays from Wilmington?	17:25
Chris Stewart	He did?	17:28
Alene Wade	Yeah. He was fortunate he had an automobile and he brought everything home on Saturdays. And Evelyn, my oldest sister, he came home, he'd always—that big bag of candy came on Saturdays and it was given to her to dole out to the rest of the children. I know she'd be trying to make us mine. I told you, "Don't make me mine. You're not my mama."	17:31
Chris Stewart	Can you tell me where you think that courage or where you think that that— You said you weren't ever afraid. Can you tell me where you think that came from?	18:05
Alene Wade	My father wasn't. He wasn't. He worked at the post office. And I understand that they remember him, that he was very outspoken. And I guess I got that from that side because Mama knows they didn't have any reason not to be, but my mama was a very—she was a calm—Well, no, I can't say she was calm because she—but she never looked for—I don't know just what I want to say about her, very smart, knew how to take care of her children, as she said, her young ones.	18:19
Chris Stewart	When did your father start working at the post office? You said he was a carpenter.	19:09
Alene Wade	He was. He worked at the post office back, I think, before I was born.	19:12
Chris Stewart	Oh, I see.	19:19
Alene Wade	I think that was before I was born.	19:19
Chris Stewart	And then he worked in carpentry and everything.	19:23
Alene Wade	Uh-huh, built houses. He built one or two houses along 3rd Street. He was known for his good, meticulous work. He was known for that.	19:23
Chris Stewart	What kinds of values, then, do you think your parents gave you to take with you into adulthood, then?	19:36
Alene Wade	Mama gave me the save to try to have something. Daddy wants you to have something, but he didn't know how to save like Mama did. He didn't know how to get it like Mama did. And Mama did know that. She did. But he wanted education and that went a far ways with me. You had to have education. And he would've loved it if all—He wanted all his children to finish school. He'd been proud of my grandchildren finishing college and things of that kind. He certainly would have.	19:43
Chris Stewart	Where did you go get your nurses training?	20:25
Alene Wade	Right in Wilmington.	20:28
Chris Stewart	You did?	20:29
Alene Wade	Mm-hmm. Right in Wilmington.	20:32
Chris Stewart	At which hospital did you do it?	20:40
Alene Wade	Summit Community in Summit James Walker.	20:40
Chris Stewart	[indistinct 00:20:43].	20:42
Alene Wade	Mm-hmm. Summit James Walker.	20:43
Chris Stewart	Was it a two-year nurses training?	20:45
Alene Wade	Mm-hmm. I started when I came out of high school into a full coast, into nurse training, where you had to stay at the hospital and you stayed there, you didn't come home like this. Well, it ended up that I got married. That was the end of that. And I got a chance to go back taking a licensed practical nurses course, and I went back and did that and did very good, the second highest score in my class. But as I say, anything I didn't know that I could get my hands on, I read it. I've always been an avid reader. I'm having some work done on my eyes and it's about to run me crazy. I got books everywhere, but I loved reading. I really did, but life goes one.	20:49
Chris Stewart	Can we talk a little bit about James Walker?	22:00
Alene Wade	Yeah.	22:03
Chris Stewart	Did you work on any specific floor or did you work in different [indistinct 00:22:09]?	22:03
Alene Wade	I worked on what they call women's ward.	22:09
Chris Stewart	Oh, you did?	22:12
Alene Wade	Women, uh-huh, first. Then I went to, well, still the women, and where you took care of a lot of women on this floor. Then I went to maternity. And maternity I loved, but it wasn't enough work for me. I have to have something to keep me busy if I'm doing something. And it wasn't as much work as I would've loved to been doing, to keep busy. As I say, when three of us were left to send the last people, we didn't have more than about two patients that we had to keep in the hospital. They sent over to New Hanover. And we got them out of there and got off early. We thought we were supposed to go home. They said, "Where did you guys go yesterday?" "We went home." But I loved it. I loved nursing.	22:12
Chris Stewart	What did you love about it?	23:17
Alene Wade	Everything. The bad, the good, the all of it. Everything. I loved a challenge. In orthopedics, this is where I ended up. And that was a challenge and that was good for me. That kept you on your toes because you couldn't make a conventional bed most of the time. You had to get it around these ropes and pullies. And when they would send for me, they'd have a orthopedic patient on another floor, if something happened to the traction, they'd page me and I'd go because that traction, I knew it.	23:18
Alene Wade	And the fact of helping somebody, I love that. As I used to tell them, they'd want to talk about, "Well, the patient won't talk to anybody," and I'd tell them, "There is no bad doctors, not far as knowledge is concerned. There are some that are so much better than others, but if you got enough to graduate, you can't be dumb. You can't be dumb, all the things that you have to know." And I'd tell people often, too, "I'm a nurse, I'm not a doctor. I'm not a doctor. So we have to follow your doctor's orders."	23:54
Chris Stewart	Do they treat, in James Walker—They had Black patients, as well as White patients?	24:39
Alene Wade	Yeah.	24:43
Chris Stewart	Did they treat Black patients differently from White patients or were the patients kept in a different part of the hospital?	24:44
Alene Wade	They had what they call the sprunt ward. There wasn't any over to the main part of the hospital. I always say I integrated James Walker with my son. Somebody shot him in the back, right down there, going walking alongside the highway.	24:52
Chris Stewart	When did that happen?	25:10
Alene Wade	Oh, that happened—It was after we moved in the house.	25:11
Chris Stewart	[indistinct 00:25:16].	25:16
Alene Wade	Oh, I'm going to walk off there. I was going to walk right there to the door. And it brought out my training in me because so many things I had to learn different that I didn't know of. So when I was taking care of somebody, it was to here to is what I know, the attitudes and all of this, the attitude. He was paralyzed, but they did give him [indistinct 00:25:48].	25:20
Chris Stewart	You said that you felt like you integrated the hospital when he was —How did you [indistinct 00:25:55]?	25:50
Alene Wade	Oh, he was over in what they call the sprunt ward, but people called it Colored ward, and I wanted him over in the other part of the hospital. His doctor was Dr. [indistinct 00:26:07]. And he went along, we were able to pay for it, he was able to get it. This woman, oh, she did not like it, but I stood there toe to toe with her and told her he would be moved because everything was supposed to be integrated. It was not supposed to be segregated and they were trying to keep it segregated. So Bobby was moved.	25:57
Chris Stewart	From the time that you worked at James Walker, can you talk a little bit about the sprunt ward? Did it look differently from the rest of the hospital? Was the care that Black patients received different from the care that White patients received? Were there as many doctors available for Black patients, say?	26:35
Alene Wade	I would say there was.	27:00
Chris Stewart	There was?	27:01
Alene Wade	I don't think the care—I never worked there, so I really don't know the ins and outs, but they had Black nurses over there. Well, they were just there. You had your own section of the hospital. Me, I didn't. I went to a—but I think everybody knew how I felt about segregation. I thought it was abominable to have such a thing going on. If you carry yourself, and I feel that you're supposed to carry yourself in a certain way, if you carry yourself in an acceptable way, don't have these prejudices and things, the color of skin means nothing to me. A person's skin, I think if we could do away with that, we'd be on the track to a lot of good things.	27:06
Chris Stewart	Where was the maternity ward for Black women? Was it the same?	28:05
Alene Wade	Yeah, they had them right over in the sprunt ward. Somebody told me this. They carried them over to the hospital to have the babies, then brought them back and had a nursery in the sprunt ward because some, I recall somebody saying—The operating room was in the main part of the hospital. Somebody telling me about carrying somebody and it was raining, pouring rain, and they were carrying them over to the other part of the hospital to get treatment, but that was before my time.	28:11
Chris Stewart	Now, the sprunt ward, was it a totally separate building, but it was on the grounds?	28:54
Alene Wade	It was you could go down, when I was there, they could go down a ramp and go to the sprunt ward. It was a separate building from the main part of the hospital.	28:59
Chris Stewart	Was it a two-story or one-story?	29:16
Alene Wade	It was a one-story. It was one story. The hospital was about three stories.	29:17
Chris Stewart	The pregnant women would have their babies in the hospital and then their babies would go back to a nursery in the sprunt ward?	29:22
Alene Wade	That's right.	29:32
Chris Stewart	Then they would recover in the sprunt ward?	29:39
Alene Wade	They seemed to have done. That's where they were.	29:39
Chris Stewart	So they didn't have two maternity rooms or two delivery rooms.	29:39
Alene Wade	I don't think so. I think they delivered them over in the main part of the hospital. This, I'm not quite clear about.	29:41
Chris Stewart	How many Black nurses were working in the main part of the hospital while you were working there?	29:49
Alene Wade	Oh, when I worked at—Who worked in the main part besides me, before we moved? It wasn't many, still, because see, community, when they went to the other hospital, community went and everybody went.	29:54
Chris Stewart	Were you treated—How'd you feel—	30:13
Alene Wade	Treated very nice.	30:17
Chris Stewart	Did they treat you nice?	30:18
Alene Wade	I had a mouth and a temper.	30:19
Chris Stewart	You made sure people treated you [indistinct 00:30:29].	30:24
Alene Wade	That is right.	30:28
Chris Stewart	Can you remember any examples of when you had to make sure people treated you well because they, perhaps, weren't going to unless you—	30:29
Alene Wade	Oh, I can't just pick out any, but everybody knew, as that saying, don't tread on me, they knew that you didn't tread on me. I'm very good, very—Oh, what did I want to say? But anyway, no one walked over me because, as I told one nurse one morning, "I don't care if you don't love me. All I want is your respect because I'm going to respect you and you're going to respect me," and that's the way I felt. We have been so many places that my husband say he actually feared, but I didn't fear. I traveled all to Europe and everything with him. This was a nice experience.	30:36
Chris Stewart	How did you meet your husband?	31:32
Alene Wade	Right here. Right down here. We were going this little White woman.	31:34
Chris Stewart	You said you used to go run off the track.	31:39
Alene Wade	Uh-huh. This little White woman I was telling you about was our great-grandmama, Mamie. Mama had sent some soup to her by my sister. Mamie knew all these woods and things. I didn't know anything about her, just got here. And he was standing in the path as we were going to Mamie's. And he asked me, he said, "You want some grapes?" I said, "Yes, boy, I want some of those grapes." He gave me some grapes and, when we came back along, he was standing in the path and had a big pear and gave me a big pear. I ate the grapes, the pears, and was so sick that night. Mama say, "Fool, didn't you know not to swallow the [indistinct 00:32:19]?" I told him I shouldn't have had anything to do wit me. He tried to kill me the first time he saw me.	31:41
Chris Stewart	You couldn't have been very old, then.	32:25
Alene Wade	No, I was about nine or 10.	32:29
Chris Stewart	So you've known each other for [indistinct 00:32:36]?	32:34
Alene Wade	Forever. We've been married 50 some years.	32:36
Chris Stewart	Oh, my god. Congratulations.	32:38
Alene Wade	Yeah. We had three children. As I say, I have a daughter that works out there.	32:43
Chris Stewart	At what point during your life, ma'am, do you feel like you became an adult, like people treated you like an adult?	32:50
Alene Wade	Very young because, as I said, I was outspoken. I feel very young. I graduated from high school when I was 16. Well, they often talk about that, that I was the youngest one. We meet every month.	33:01
Chris Stewart	The Alumni Association?	33:27
Alene Wade	Huh?	33:28
Chris Stewart	Are you talking about the Alumni Association?	33:28
Alene Wade	No, we meet, our class, just the class from Williston, the class of '39 from Williston.	33:29
Chris Stewart	You meet every month?	33:35
Alene Wade	Every month.	33:36
Chris Stewart	How wonderful.	33:37
Alene Wade	Every month. I used to try taking care of things here, but it got to be too much for me, asking the girls help me and this and that. So I started carrying them to the restaurant. And after I started carrying them to the restaurant, all the classmates started the same thing.	33:38
Chris Stewart	Oh, wow.	33:59
Alene Wade	They found out it wasn't much easier. I say this classmate of ours that passed that was buried yesterday, she was the sweetest thing. She always had such a sweet smile, always.	33:59
Chris Stewart	What was her name?	34:28
Alene Wade	Isadora Buntion. Howard, what's Isadora's last name?	34:29
Speaker 1	[indistinct 00:34:29].	34:29
Alene Wade	Isadora.	34:29
Chris Stewart	Spencer?	34:30
Alene Wade	Spencer. It's Spencer. She was a go-getter, too.	34:31
Chris Stewart	Sounds like that you had a lot of friends who approached life in the way that you approached life, as well, to stand your ground.	34:36
Alene Wade	Mm-hmm. They were. We had educators. We have one of our classmates that's a bishop, but we had some go-getters in my class. We did. It was one of the biggest classes at that time that ever graduated from Williston.	34:48
Chris Stewart	How many people were in the class?	35:02
Alene Wade	140 some.	35:05
Chris Stewart	Wow.	35:07
Alene Wade	And that was considered a big class when they were used to having 50 and 60 and like that.	35:09
Chris Stewart	Did you go to Williston when it burned or [indistinct 00:35:17]?	35:14
Alene Wade	Yeah, burned us out. Yes, I was at Williston when it burned.	35:17
Chris Stewart	Do you remember that day?	35:22
Alene Wade	I don't remember that day so much as I remember after we went to school, over to Little Williston, what we call Little Williston after Big Williston burned. And I don't remember that. I don't recall that day.	35:25
Chris Stewart	What do you remember about going to Little Williston? What do you remember about after?	35:39
Alene Wade	Oh, it was fun. It was just fun to me, going over to school over there.	35:46
Chris Stewart	Do you remember any of your teachers?	35:55
Alene Wade	Oh, do I. Mrs. Williams and Ms. White, Ms. Hooper. I remember so many of my teachers, but right now, the persons that I see is Ms. White and Ms. Williams. They both were leaving.	36:05
Chris Stewart	What were the special things about the teachers?	36:19
Alene Wade	Well, Mrs. Williams would get you told. She'd tell you. I'll never forget, I was in the eighth grade and Maryanne over here, Maryanne, we were in the same grade and I was trying to tell her something. We took English together and she was our teacher, taught us English, too. And she said, Allie Simmons, I'm not going to give you one cent when I get paid this month. So I don't need you to help me teach. That didn't stop me, though. That didn't stop me.	36:24
Chris Stewart	What kinds of extracurricular activities did you have to do at Williston? Was there a club, glee club?	37:06
Alene Wade	Glee club, it was all those things, but so many things we could not participate in because we had to catch the bus and come home. We had to come home.	37:15
Chris Stewart	Were there any things that you could participate in?	37:26
Alene Wade	Well, anything that went on in school. For instance, we had clubs, Scholastic Club, things like that, things that could be participated in during class hours.	37:29
Chris Stewart	When did you get married?	37:43
Alene Wade	In 1941.	37:53
Chris Stewart	Is there any advice that your mother gave you to teach you to be a good wife?	37:54
Alene Wade	One thing that she taught me that I don't believe in, you listen to your husband. That was that. Yeah. You listen to your husband.	38:00
Chris Stewart	Why don't you believe in it?	38:09
Alene Wade	But she always said, she never kicked about my going with Howard or anything because she said she knew me and, with the temperament that I had, somebody else would've killed me, saying she felt like he'd be good to me.	38:10
Chris Stewart	He was patient?	38:24
Alene Wade	And she said that to the day she died.	38:27
Chris Stewart	Really?	38:28
Alene Wade	And she'd say because he would be patient with me.	38:30
Chris Stewart	Why didn't you and why don't you believe her advice that she gave you about listening to your husband?	38:33
Alene Wade	Because he's wrong sometimes. Why should I stand up and listen to somebody that I know is wrong? Because he is wrong sometimes, but she came from that school where you listen to your husband.	38:43
Chris Stewart	Did you ever belong to any clubs or organizations during the '40s or '50s, community things?	38:55
Alene Wade	Church clubs, church things. Church activities? Yeah.	39:06
Chris Stewart	What schools did your children go to?	39:12
Alene Wade	I couldn't begin to tell you because all over the world—	39:17
Chris Stewart	[indistinct 00:39:22].	39:19
Alene Wade	—uh-huh, because my children went to school in Europe, all three of them. And every place we moved to, they went to school.	39:22
Chris Stewart	So you traveled a lot.	39:31
Alene Wade	Yes, we did. And I traveled with him. I didn't stay home. And just he'd see his kids when he got a leave or something like that. I traveled with him.	39:33
Chris Stewart	So did you start traveling then in the early '40s or did he go away to war?	39:45
Alene Wade	He went to war '40—When he left going to camp, when he first left, they took him, he did not come back, I did not see him until three years later.	39:54
Chris Stewart	Oh, my goodness.	40:07
Alene Wade	Three years. I had only one child, Dorothy?	40:07
Chris Stewart	Where were you living? Were you living with your family?	40:16
Alene Wade	At first, I was, and I was living with—Well, that's my family, too. I was living with his sister, Dorothy and I were. We were living in Wilmington. Mama and those moved up here. I moved home.	40:19
Chris Stewart	Wow, three years, that's a long time. So when your husband came back, where did you go [indistinct 00:40:39]?	40:31
Alene Wade	When he came back, where's the first place we went? I believe the first place we went was Texas and stayed there.	40:40
Chris Stewart	How was Texas compared from Wilmington?	40:56
Alene Wade	About the same.	40:57
Chris Stewart	Did you live on base?	40:57
Alene Wade	No. There, I didn't live on base. I lived in town with a lady. She was very nice. But I finally moved from there because she was down by the railroad track. They called her Little Mama and called this other lady, great big lady, Big Mama. And she had a nice new home, and built a new home, and she had a nice—and she furnished quarters for us. Moved up there. Oh, that's when my husband said I was so outspoken. Went downtown, was check cashing time. I went down to the Mac and cashed my check. Where were we? I'm trying to think what part of Texas. It wasn't Brownsville.	41:05
Alene Wade	But anyway, the woman short changed me $10 and I told her I wanted my $10. "Well, sit over there. When I'm finished, I'll see if I gave you—" Oh, was I mad. And somebody came. My husband was up at Fort Hood and I'm down in Bastrop, Texas. And she my money, but anyway, I sat there, and this man had come down to get some field forms, and he saw me. And of course, he wanted to know why I was sitting there, I told him, and he went back and told Howard and Howard said he'd like to not got any sleep all night, wondering about what was going to happen to me, but I got my $20, needless to say.	41:53
Alene Wade	This man say, "Well, looks like you were right." I said, "I hope you don't think I'd come in a bank with a big lie like that to get $20," but yeah, I was very outspoken.	42:39
Chris Stewart	You sound like you're proud of that.	42:55
Alene Wade	I am. I am, that I didn't let anybody tell me something was black when it was white. I am. I'm proud of the fact that I was able to stand up to most anybody. I don't know anybody I didn't stand up to. I am.	42:57
Chris Stewart	How do you think your children's childhood was different from your own?	43:10
Alene Wade	Oh, much different. I brought my children up the way my Aunt Lucy brought me up. I did. I really did. In so many ways, she was a person—strong culture and things of that kind. As I say, we roamed these woods and things of that kind, we have, and Mama made you work. But I don't know, it was just different. I guess it's like the city mouse and the country mouse, the difference.	43:19
Chris Stewart	Did your children grow up in cities, for the most part?	44:05
Alene Wade	Yeah.	44:11
Chris Stewart	How was it traveling around to different Air Force bases? And you were even [indistinct 00:44:25].	44:17
Alene Wade	We were Army.	44:25
Chris Stewart	You were Army?	44:25
Alene Wade	Mm-hmm.	44:25
Chris Stewart	Your family was in the Army before the Army was integrated, right?	44:29
Alene Wade	Yeah.	44:32
Chris Stewart	Were you still in there during the time of integration into the Army?	44:32
Alene Wade	Oh, yes, bot long after that because, I'll never forget, when we left Europe, Howard left, he didn't leave with his unit. He left his unit over there because, this time, he said he did not want to re-up for Europe. He wanted to come home. So he re-upped when he got home. He didn't re-up over there and we left them over there. Now, most of them are out in the Seattle area, one or two of them. He keeps up with the three. Mh-hm. Many of them.	44:36
Chris Stewart	Do you remember when the Army got integrated?	45:11
Alene Wade	Vaguely. It seemed like it wasn't a big thing to me. As far as I was concerned, it should've been integrated all along. So it was never a big thing to me.	45:13
Chris Stewart	There weren't ever any incidences that you recall where people didn't want to—	45:25
Alene Wade	No. The only incident I remember happening, we were going to Europe. We were going to Europe on the upshore. This lady came out and everybody was making fun of her and things of that kind. She had on a pair of bib overhauls and she didn't look very nice and neat. And they called me that little neat woman. I was very small, much smaller than I am now. And I told him, "She probably doesn't feel well. Don't say, don't bother." And she came out one morning, same overhauls on. And as I tell you, I knew I had a bad temper. She came, I was holding with my leg across—	45:30

Alene Wade	—she just jerked. I said, nice as I could be, because I made up my mind, I wasn't going to let anything upset me. This chair is for my husband, I'm holding it for my husband. She said, "I don't see any D name on it." I said, "Nevertheless, I'm holding it for my husband." And first and only time in my life, I mean the first and only time, she called me a nigger. A Black nigger. And before I knew it, I had her down on the floor, stomping her. And the captain ran out, one woman say, "Don't let her do her like that." The captain ran out, said, "What's going on?" I said, "She called me a nigger and I'm going to kill her."	0:03
Alene Wade	And he told this man, said, "Whose wife is this? Take her and carry her to the state room." He apologized to me and everything and I broke my watch and he had me say, "We'll have it repaired." And they had it repaired right on board ship. But that's the one time I really lost my cool, because usually I can just talk to you. And as I say, when I talk, most people have to cuss when they're mad, but I don't. That doesn't occur to me. Just get you off my back. But those were bad incidents.	0:47
Chris Stewart	When was this, during the '50s?	1:30
Alene Wade	Yes. Were we going or coming? '55 or '56.	1:35
Chris Stewart	How long did your husband stay?	1:47
Alene Wade	22 years.	1:50
Chris Stewart	He retired, what, in the early '60s?	1:51
Alene Wade	Yes. And then he went into civil service. He did something that most people don't get a chance to do, he worked 20 years, retired 20 years of civil service.	1:56
Chris Stewart	Oh my goodness.	2:07
Alene Wade	And as the general say, when he was retiring from civil service, he says, "Mrs. Wade, he has been give us 46 years," I believe he said. "Now I'm going to send him home to be with you." I say, "In the first morning he says I can't go out with the breakfast, I'll send him back to you, too." I had a lot of mouth.	2:08
Chris Stewart	He heard that. That's wonderful. Oh, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about travel, because you've said that you've traveled a lot, especially while you were in the—	2:34
Alene Wade	Service.	2:52
Chris Stewart	What were the accommodations, traveling throughout the United States? Let's say for example, going to Texas or whatever during this period of segregation?	2:58
Alene Wade	At first it was bad, because we could not go to a place and get accommodations, motel accommodations and night place. We had to more or less, travel and be in the automobile. I remember we left it one time with, you probably don't know what a pig foot jar is. It was about this high with a handle on it. We carry water and we bathe like that, because I had to be bathed every day. And I remember one time I went in the woods and bathed and I had red bugs all over me. It was pretty rugged, it was. But determination, you'd be surprised at what you can do if you were determined.	3:07
Chris Stewart	What kinds of things did you do? You give this example of the pig foot jar. What about—	3:52
Alene Wade	I know one night we parked in the woods, we got some rest off. I don't know whether we were in Alabama where we were, but we were getting on there home, but we had to have some rest. And we woke up to flashlights all around us, poking them in the car and everything. And I opened my eyes. I awoke and saw them, I didn't move. And I said, "Howard, there's a lot of men around the car." He woke up and talked, but it was the sheriff. And he said, we are just fortunate that he was the sheriff. Say, "If you have to rest," he found out whatever it was, he was looking for it. We didn't have it. He said, "Always park up near town. Park up there, don't park out in these woods. Some people come along and kill you for the fun of it." Now, that was a bad incident. That was kind of nerve-wracking.	4:00
Chris Stewart	Did you travel with your children, then?	4:55
Alene Wade	Yes, I had the children. I had three. Bobby was in the car bed, you could get car beds then. And the other two girls, Dorothy was six years older than Eva, and Eva's two years older than Bobby.	4:56
Chris Stewart	What would you eat? How would you feed your children?	5:14
Alene Wade	You carried sandwiches or something, or you stopped. I'll never forget, whoever that woman is, I hope the Lord blesses her. We stopped one morning, we were hungry. This was a restaurant and we tried to get some food. She came out to the car and she said, "I can't serve you in there, but I'll serve you some food. I'll bring you some food to the car." And she made breakfast for us and brought it to the car. And I thought that was so nice of her. It was just the law, she couldn't do it.	5:17
Chris Stewart	Do you know where that was?	5:51
Alene Wade	Someplace in Arkansas. Someplace in Arkansas up against a sand, like a dune hill. This is where the little restaurant was.	5:54
Chris Stewart	It sounds like you had to be pretty creative on the road.	6:07
Alene Wade	Oh yes, yes.	6:09
Chris Stewart	You'd say that you've always—Were there church services for you before integration? I mean, were there Black churches that you could—	6:17
Alene Wade	Oh yes. This church down here is a Black church, Church Crossings is a Black church. Up here is a Black church. Crossings a Black church, and there's another Black church. And then further up is another. There was plenty churches.	6:29
Chris Stewart	What about when you were on the road in the service?	6:43
Alene Wade	Well, they had service on base. They had service on base. That is, the kids went to Sunday school and like that. We were in the service when my oldest daughter got married. She wanted to be married in the church that my mama got married in. My mama was the only one at that time that had a big wedding down here. Grandpa gave her this big bed, but he wouldn't go to the church. Right up the road there, she got married and she wanted to get married, and that's when she got married. I don't know about any pictures. I don't know where the devil the pictures are, but she got married then. And I ran back and forth to home to see that everything was set up, like to roll me out. But anyway, I ran back and forth to Wilmington, getting things straight so she could get married in that church.	6:44
Chris Stewart	Wow. Did you even as a child or as an adult, have any heroes, bigger than life people that you just were enamored with?	7:47
Alene Wade	I don't believe I did, I don't believe I did. With my temperament, you may would've thought I did, but I didn't. People were always people to me. As I said, I was crazy about Ms. White and she would probably say, "Well, Alene Smith you never told me that." I was Ms. Williams, I really was. I had two teachers that I really liked, but I liked all my teachers because they had something I wanted to get. I was very mindful to be such a devil out of class, I was mindful because I wanted to get what they had. And I thought the more I mind, the more I'd get. My teachers didn't have any trouble with me. You'd think, "Well, I know she was a problem child," but not in the classroom.	8:01
Chris Stewart	You sound like you were very—	9:01
Alene Wade	Not in the classroom. The boogey man in me.	9:05
Chris Stewart	One final question, if you will. Did people ever treat you—And you've given some examples here. But if you have any other examples, I would appreciate hearing them. Did you ever feel like other people treated you as if you were a second class citizen?	9:11
Alene Wade	They tried, but it didn't get off the ground. They tried, they really did. They looked at the color of my skin and that was it. They decided they could treat you a certain way and I didn't stand still for that. But I was human, cut from the same cloth that they was.	9:32
Chris Stewart	What group, what tribe is your mother from?	9:59
Alene Wade	Cherokee.	10:02
Chris Stewart	You sound like you're very proud of that.	10:06
Alene Wade	I am, I'm proud of her. She was a working woman, I was proud of her.	10:11
Chris Stewart	She sounds like a [indistinct 00:10:17]	10:12
Alene Wade	Yes.	10:13
Chris Stewart	Well, I don't don't want to keep you any longer. It's actually past 3:00 and I know that you had some other things that you needed to do, but—	10:17
Alene Wade	I'm a diabetic and one of them is going to eat.	10:25
Chris Stewart	Oh, so you were going to be on your way to go eat?	10:28
Alene Wade	Yeah.	10:30
Chris Stewart	I have a couple of—The final thing that I need to do with you is to ask you if we can use—When Rhonda called you, did she explain to you what we are doing with the tapes and—Well, let me just take a couple minutes to explain it. What we're going to do, and I think I'm going to go, I can keep that on. What we'll do is take all the tapes that we collect in North Carolina and then we're also going to be doing research for the next two summers in different states throughout the South. We're really hoping to interview 2,000 to 2,500 people to put in a collection for a library or an archival collection. And it'll be called the Behind the Veil Collection.	10:33
Chris Stewart	What we need to do when we talk to each of the individual people we talk to is get permission from them to put the tape in this collection. And the collection will be housed at Duke University. In addition to that, Duke University will make copies of all the tapes that we get and they'll give a collection back to each community. So Wilmington will have its own collection here. We're not sure where it's going to be housed yet, but all the interviews that we do while we're here in Wilmington, and I think we've done 42 thus far, we've only been here a week, though. We're very proud of that.	11:26
Chris Stewart	All those tapes that we get will be here then, in Wilmington. Well not because we're not in Wilmington, but they'll be there in Wilmington for the community to use, to learn about their own history. What we need to do then is to ask permission from you to place this, your tape in this collection. And we have a form actually, that asks permission. And what the form is, is it states that there are actually two options that you can choose. One option, it's called an interview agreement form. And it basically asks you permission to give the tape to Duke University, and the rights to the tape then go to Duke University.	12:11
Chris Stewart	That's one of the options. The other option is that you would do that, but you could place restrictions on the tape if you would like to. And what happens when these tapes get in the library, this is what we're hoping will happen, is that students, if I'm a student and I read this, will be able to listen to the tapes, will be able to read the transcripts of the tapes and learn more about the period of segregation. That's what they'd be doing in the library. These tapes will probably also be used in classrooms to teach about Wilmington, North Carolina history. So we need to ask your permission to do this.	12:59
Alene Wade	Yeah. It's just a horrible way, but I think how people grow and learn, what a horrible way in some of the instances in which people will treat his fellow man, treat their fellow man. People are not supposed to be treated, some people. See, I wasn't and the people around here wasn't, but some instances how people were treated because people knew that they could get away with it.	13:51
Chris Stewart	And it's important, I think—	14:23
Alene Wade	It's man's inhumanity to man.	14:25
Chris Stewart	And this is something that we really need to be teaching our students so that it doesn't continue.	14:31
Alene Wade	Yes.	14:42
Chris Stewart	At least that's my hope.	14:44
Alene Wade	Yeah, because that has always bothered me. Like the instance, I know once this is an incident. I don't want this on tape.	14:48

Item Info

Title:

Alene Wade interview recording, 1993 July 16

Date:

July 16, 1993

Creator:

Wade, Alene

Contributor:

Stewart, Chris M.

Description:

Name: Alene Wade; Date of Birth: 1913-08-21; Place of Birth: unknown; Occupation(s): unknown; Residence: Wilmington, NC
Informant ID: 195; Interviewed by: Chris Stewart.

Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South interviews, photographs, and project records, circa 1864-2011, bulk 1990-2004

Series:

Related Resources:

See below

Provenance:

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired the Records of the Behind the Veil Oral History Project from the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

Identifier:

Interview number: 1229
d73906f7-a310-459d-b819-cc3b5d1a2a57
behindtheveil
btvnc07049
ark:/87924/r4pz5623n
203916bc-9c63-44af-a150-2bf1d5e504b6

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Alene Wade interview recording, 1993 July 16

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1. Alene Wade administrative file, 1993

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Alene Wade interview recording, 1993 July 16

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