Gwen Roundtree interview recording, 1997 November 14

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Gwen Roundtree	My name is Gwen Roundtree. I'm currently living at 1613 John Jones Road, Bahama, North Carolina. Bahama is spelled B-A-H-A-M-A. And about, oh, I don't know when Bahama first became a village, it was called Hunky Dory or something.	0:06
Mi Young Ryee	How long ago was that?	0:30
Gwen Roundtree	This is back in the 1800s, and the railroad company did not want to give them a station for Hunky Dory, so they had to come up with a new name. So they came up with Bahama: B-A, for a Ball, H-A, for Harris, and M-A for Mangum. Bahama. It was the Balls, the Harris and the Mangums that owned the majority of the land in this area at the time. Yeah, it is an interesting piece of information.	0:32
Gwen Roundtree	Since I've been working with the Center for Documentation, I've been doing some quasi-research of my own, and I found an article in the main library on Bahama that was written in 1990. And it substantiates my story about how we got to be named Bahama as opposed—	1:02
Mi Young Ryee	How did you hear that story?	1:25
Gwen Roundtree	Oh, I guess I heard the story when I was a child, back in the '40s, early '40s. That's far enough back, that's enough of that. Yeah, back in the '40s. Yeah.	1:27
Mi Young Ryee	Have you lived in this area your whole life growing up?	1:42
Gwen Roundtree	Yes. The site of this house, of this property actually, was once a tobacco field that my mother and father had. I was about seven or eight at the time.	1:49
Mi Young Ryee	Is that right after they got married?	2:07
Gwen Roundtree	Oh, heavens no. No, my parents grew up— I'm sorry, my mother grew up in Quail Roost. My father grew up around the Rougemont area and they were married when my mother was eighteen, and she was born in 1912.	2:09
Mi Young Ryee	And how old was your father?	2:28
Gwen Roundtree	My father was twenty-six years old when he was married. Now, he was born in 1904. Yes, that's right. So my mother was eighteen, my father was twenty-six, and that was 1926. I don't know the number right off the top of my head, but they had farmed in many, many different places before they began to farm what was then called the Gray Land. And my father worked out a deal with Mr. Thomas Gray to work on not halves, but three quarters. In other words, everything that was made, Mr. Gray would get one-fourth, and my father and my mother would get the three-fourths off of the land.	2:30
Mi Young Ryee	Where? Was this nearby here?	3:22
Gwen Roundtree	It's this land. This land, from the forks of the road, which is Blalock Road, here, I guess that would be west on John Jones Road to the big curve.	3:24
Mi Young Ryee	Is that all the way down to the school? Or [crosstalk 00:03:47]	3:46
Gwen Roundtree	No, not all the way to the school, but just, it's a little more, about a half a mile over. And this land has had fields not only on this road, but down on the river and what they call new ground and all of that kind of stuff. I mean—	3:46
Mi Young Ryee	Was it mostly tobacco?	4:03
Gwen Roundtree	Well, the major crop was tobacco, but my father raised wheat, and he also raised corn. Of course, we always had a gigundous garden. They raised strawberries and all of the other staples. Beans and—they'd call it salad. Turnip greens and potatoes and onions. Tomatoes.	4:06
Mi Young Ryee	I saw goats.	4:37
Gwen Roundtree	Yes, that's—	4:38
Mi Young Ryee	Was cattle farming popular in this area too, or not so much?	4:39
Gwen Roundtree	People had cattle, cows. A milk cow, basically. Maybe two. The more children were in the family, they had more cows, but they were not used as livestock, they were used for the milk and the butter that they offered the family. Maybe as a cow got older, or if it was a young steer born, then they would kill that animal for meat. But no, cows were not used as a means of economics.	4:43
Mi Young Ryee	I know that your mother mentioned that she and your father went to Virginia to get married. Do you know any details behind that story?	5:22
Gwen Roundtree	For the life of me, my mother says that she doesn't remember ever meeting my father until almost the summer, or the summer before that they married. But my father has always been in this area and so has my mother. So how they did not know each other, my mother doesn't recall. Okay? Everybody that I've talked to, since I've been back here, has known my parents practically all of their lives. I'm talking about the older folks, because I've been talking to people who went to school with my mother, okay? So they knew my father, even as children. So, my mother doesn't remember that, but why they went to Halifax, Virginia, a-hoo-hoo? [laughs] I don't know. I have no idea.	5:32
Mi Young Ryee	That was just so interesting.	6:32
Gwen Roundtree	Yeah, it was. And the thing of it was that not only did they go, but they were transported by a man named Mr. Bowen Mangum, I believe his name was. Who at the time would've been who my father worked with on halves, because up until that time, my father did not have any animals of his own. So he was working basically for food, clothing, and shelter, and possibly some remuneration and for his labels, but not very much.	6:32
Mi Young Ryee	So do you know anything else about the person that man who drove the military?	7:20
Gwen Roundtree	The only thing I know about Mr. Bowen Mangum is that he was a fair landowner and a person to work for. I think many of the unpleasantries of our lives, thankfully are no longer in our memory banks. I think that's basically how you get to go on and do other things rather than just kind of stay in the rut that you are in and just think about how bad it is as opposed to, I'm going to try something different. If I remember the man correctly, and I think I do, he was always pleasant, he had a great sense of humor if I remember well.	7:22
Gwen Roundtree	And we were a part of the working unit for the farm, all right, my father did not always work for him, but my father always had a good relationship with the person. And even after I grew to be late adolescence, I remember going to see them, that is Mr. Bowen and his wife.	8:21
Mi Young Ryee	So he had a family?	8:51
Gwen Roundtree	Oh yes, he had several children. Who they were? Where they are now? I have no idea, I don't even remember their names. My father had a relationship with him, but we did not have a relationship with the family. It is, it is. It's truly interesting that—my father had relationships with several white families in this community, my mother had working relationships with several, but I had no relationship with them at all. None. I mean, I don't remember the names, I don't remember where they lived. I was kept away from that part of their life, if you will.	8:52
Mi Young Ryee	Do you think that was intentional?	9:38
Gwen Roundtree	Yes, yes. Yes, it was.	9:39
Mi Young Ryee	What do you think would've been the motives behind doing that?	9:42
Gwen Roundtree	Well, the motive was—	9:43
Mi Young Ryee	And you also have two siblings, correct?	9:49
Gwen Roundtree	Yes. I have an older brother and an older sister. Well, see, at the time there were only a couple of things that African Americans were doing, and that was housework, that was laundry, all right, or you worked the field. And my father being an independent needed us to work his fields. Therefore, we did not work fields for other people and I was never very good as a housekeeper. So it wouldn't do me any good to go in and be in and amongst the folks because I had no value really. And my attitude was not very nice. Anyway, I think I had learned enough by then to understand that the differences were manmade as opposed to God-given. And I suspect I was a sullen child in the presence of working situations.	9:51
Mi Young Ryee	When do you think you came to that realization?	11:08
Gwen Roundtree	The day—	11:08
Mi Young Ryee	That age or?	11:08
Gwen Roundtree	Yeah, I was about.	11:08
Mi Young Ryee	An incident?	11:08
Gwen Roundtree	I was about four and a half or five years old and a child spit in my face and I slapped her face. And I was adamantly admonished. And even though I was threatened with a whooping, I said, "Anybody spit in my face", and I was a small child, I said, "I will hit them." And I felt that way from then on. I don't know where it came from, but out of the depth of me, it came that people did not have the right to hit other people just because they could without retaliation. And, I think that's kind of when I stopped hitting people too, letting my emotion, as opposed to my intellect have say, I hope that's when was.	11:08
Mi Young Ryee	At what age did you start working and helping out your father on the farm?	12:10
Gwen Roundtree	Oh, let's see. I guess, I must have been—well, as soon as I was old enough to start to get water, see, even in the '40s, African Americans were still living in hovels, or cabins, or shanties. However, you want to call it. I mean, they were small log edifices out in the woods, someplace a mile and a half from water. It always seemed a mile and a half, but the house was always at the top of the hill, and the spring was always at the bottom of the hill. So, as soon as I was able to carry a half gallon bucket to the spring and get water without muddying the spring, then I would imagine you would call that a chore and picking up wood and picking up chips for the stove and that kind of thing.	12:18
Gwen Roundtree	Up until I was about fifteen, we lived in, I call it abject poverty because we had a privy, we had no running water, we did not have electric light. Although, there were bathrooms being put in the neighborhood and people were digging well, but we were still living in the back of nowhere and these necessities were still drag and pull, if you will. And when I say fifteen, I'm saying 1955, 1955 to I think in 1957. No, no, no, no, it was '55. We moved into a once big house, but now the family had died out or moved away and the house was for rent. So my father rented the house.	13:18
Mi Young Ryee	Was that near the—	14:30
Gwen Roundtree	Yeah, it's near here. It's about, it's in, it's falling down now too. It's about a mile back and two-thirds of a mile over on Ball Road. So, we lived there, but you still had to walk down the hill to get water. There was a well in the back, let me clarify that. There was a well in the back that we could use for washing, for washing dishes, for bathing. But it was not, you couldn't drink it. So we still had to go to a spring that wasn't too far, well, fairly far away to get drinking water and for cooking. So that was part of—	14:31
Mi Young Ryee	In a way of chores and helping out on the farm, did your brother and your sister and yourself, were the chores kind of gender-specific? Or was it, if you had two feet and two arms you're doing this, this and this?	15:16
Gwen Roundtree	Well, they were gender-specific because my sister, Arlene, who is not my sister, Helen and Babe Ruth, who were already gone, they left real young. They married and my brother joined the service when he was sixteen, so they were already gone. My mother and father raised two children from the community and we made up another family. We made up a triad and these children were younger than me. So, my sister Arlene was taught the skills of homemaking, whereas I more or less took on a role of a weak boy. I don't know.	15:34
Gwen Roundtree	I did many of the chores that a guy would do. I was responsible for the cows, I was responsible for codling, mules and horses from one farm area to another. I was responsible for the wood and the water, I was responsible for helping my father in the field because my youngest brother, Eli was not stocky enough or big enough yet to do the work that he needed to do. So, I was like, between the two of us, between Eli and me, we were more or less the whole boy, because he was younger than me. He was four years younger than me, we were the whole boy my father needed it in the field.	16:35
Mi Young Ryee	So, Eli and Arlene were younger.	17:30
Gwen Roundtree	Yes.	17:34
Mi Young Ryee	And then Babe, and who is your older?	17:35
Gwen Roundtree	Helen.	17:37
Mi Young Ryee	Helen, are your older sibling?	17:37
Gwen Roundtree	Yes.	17:39
Mi Young Ryee	Okay. And when you said that Eli and Arlene were just from the community, that—	17:40
Gwen Roundtree	Yes.	17:48
Mi Young Ryee	And your parents were, kind of, brought them in?	17:48
Gwen Roundtree	Yeah, they were fostered. They were foster children. In other words, let's see their parent—	17:51
Mi Young Ryee	They know they're parents?	18:00
Gwen Roundtree	Yes. I mean, they were community folks but the family broke up and the children were left unsupervised.	18:00
Mi Young Ryee	Was there a reason for the family breaking up?	18:06
Gwen Roundtree	Why do families break up? I mean, you know, mom and dad don't get along. So mom goes, one way dad goes the other and the six kids left—	18:11
Mi Young Ryee	There were six?	18:20
Gwen Roundtree	There were six of them, yes and my mom took two, the two youngest and we grew up as a family. The three of us were as close as close could get. I mean, we were—	18:21
Mi Young Ryee	I didn't find that that out before, that's interesting.	18:33
Gwen Roundtree	Yeah. It's an interesting scenario because although they were not, I didn't really know them as, I didn't know them because I was eleven when they came to live with us and it didn't take us long to become very close and to work as a unit. It was interesting.	18:35
Mi Young Ryee	Did they have any contact with their other brothers and sisters?	19:02
Gwen Roundtree	Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Not until they became old enough though, to go on their own. I mean their older brothers and sisters did not have any more access to them than they had because they were in other homes about the community.	19:03
Mi Young Ryee	In the community, where were your closest neighbors? How often did you see them?	19:27
Gwen Roundtree	At that time? Closest neighbor, about a mile. How often did we see them? At church, every second Sunday. Or, in the summer, there was a baseball team that was made up of the young men of the community. And we would see each other about every Saturday afternoon.	19:31
Mi Young Ryee	When you say every second Sunday, is that because that's how often—	20:00
Gwen Roundtree	Church met, but that was Sunday school every Sunday morning, but the church preaching Sunday, it was called was second Sunday at Mount Calvary. Now, the other churches in the surrounding communities had a Sunday also. So what would happen is the folks from this community would journey to the adjoining church, Sunday.	20:04
Gwen Roundtree	Funny example, the Mount Level Church that's right here in Braggtown would have their Sunday meeting on the first Sunday, Mount Calvary would have their meeting on the second Sunday, Red Mountain would have their meeting on the third, Sunday and I believe King's Chapel had their meeting Sunday on fourth Sunday. So actually, the community was small enough or cohesive enough that people from each would support all of the churches. So, every Sunday, although you didn't go to say your immediate community church, you would use a Sunday to go to one of the other churches.	20:33
Mi Young Ryee	And did the Sunday school work the same way or did [crosstalk 00:21:18]	21:15
Gwen Roundtree	The Sunday school? Every Sunday, we had a Sunday school lesson every Sunday.	21:18
Mi Young Ryee	And it was at your immediate—	21:22
Gwen Roundtree	Our church.	21:24
Mi Young Ryee	Do you remember anything about your teachers or Sunday school teachers and the kids in your class?	21:25
Gwen Roundtree	Sunday school teachers were, for the little kids, it was a teenager.	21:34
Mi Young Ryee	Usually woman?	21:45
Gwen Roundtree	Yeah, usually a woman. The adolescent boys were usually taught by the either trustee or deacon I believe and the adult men of course were taught by the lead deacon or the minister. And the lead women, the Missionary class it was called, was taught by the minister's wife, I believe, or one of the leading citizen women. One of the women who had had high school training, somebody that had more education seemed to have been one of the guidelines for teaching adult education Sunday school.	21:46
Mi Young Ryee	There was the Sunday school for kids, but then there were also the Sunday school for adults?	22:39
Gwen Roundtree	Yeah, Sunday school was for everyone that would come.	22:45
Mi Young Ryee	Really?	22:50
Gwen Roundtree	Yeah, it would. For some folks, Sunday school was their worship service because we did not have the church meeting, if it were, so. Now don't get me wrong, there were not thirty men sitting in the men's service or twenty-five women sitting in the women's service. I'm talking about four or five, two or three in the men's group four or five women in the women's group, five or six boys, four or five girls, adolescent girls, adolescent boys, three or four little ones. And that was it. I mean, the Sunday school was made up of twenty-five people if it was made up of that many, maybe fifteen.	22:51
Mi Young Ryee	Was that also kind of a social time when you went to Sunday school class or not really? Was it more like going to kind of a school or was it—	23:40
Gwen Roundtree	It was more going to school. It seemed to me it was a very serious time. You went through the rituals of the Sunday school, you had your lesson, you came out into the Sunday school again and you had a benediction. And those, of course there were those that had very close associations and they did use it for socialization, but basically people went straight home. I know that's what I did, but I've always—	23:54
Mi Young Ryee	Was it the same way with the service too?	24:22
Gwen Roundtree	School, the Sunday service? People came earlier than for the service, they did use it for socialization, yes. For courting, for seeing folks that they hadn't seen for a while. Now, remember, many of these people are walking long distances, few of them have cars. Well, but I'm what I'm talking about in the forties, '47, '48, '49 few cars. Then in the fifties, it got to be better, more people started getting cars. And of course, they started to go to other churches more often. And I think as we went to the other churches more often it became more social, but many of us knew each other from school. So yeah, we would go to church to meet with folks for social reasons, but basically, it was a spiritual time I think, that was the intent anyway.	24:23
Mi Young Ryee	Was there any special holidays or any kind of events related to farming, like harvesting and things like that that were used to celebrate as a community, or even in a family at certain times?	25:46
Gwen Roundtree	Yes. There used to be at Little River, a harvest festival time that would be in the fall. And then in the spring, there would be the 4-H club elimination or elimination piece where everybody's cow or everybody's flowers or everybody's cakes were then judged. And the best ones of course would go to the county fair so, that was the main event that I can remember.	26:02
Mi Young Ryee	And was that something that entire families would go to all the children?	27:03
Gwen Roundtree	Yes, yes, yes. Yes, that was a community big festival harvest kind of thing mean we do—and it was always on May first because we would do the maypole thing with the country dances and the wrapping of the maypole and hog calling. And, what else did they do? Horseshoes, there were a lot of horseshoes that got men did that they had, I can't remember all the things that, but it would be a full day of games and almost somewhat like, I guess you would call the English tuney where the entire community would come together and— well, it was basically the same thing and it was a good time had by all truly, truly.	27:08
Gwen Roundtree	The same thing would happen at the church, there would be what they call Homecoming, where everybody would come to the church. There would be a big meal and there would be a whole day of service. There would have two services and there would be a lot of people socializing because it was something that you only did once a year and paper from all of the communities would come together at one church	28:21
Mi Young Ryee	Was Homecoming specifically related to harvesting or was that just related to church?	28:54
Gwen Roundtree	It's basically a church event. And I think it had to do with harvesting because people were finishing up the year, they more or less had whatever monies they were going to have. And so they either had money for the church or they didn't. It was a celebration of a year completed. Now, all of the Homecomings for the churches in this area have occurred already in the month of September, I believe. I'm sorry, in November. I know ours was last week and I wasn't here, so I missed that again after thirty-five years.	29:01
Mi Young Ryee	Do you remember ever, while you were growing up, interaction with the city or what you thought—	30:02
Gwen Roundtree	Going into the city?	30:12
Mi Young Ryee	Yeah. I mean, did you ever go into Durham or did you have any ideas about what it was?	30:12
Gwen Roundtree	Yeah, my mother was one of those folks that would hop the train, and at that time there was a Northern Western that came through here and we would, in the forties, '44, '43, '44, we would hop the train, here in Bahama, using a segregated waiting room; sitting in the car right behind where the coal was and the cinder was coming out. When you get to Durham you would have all these little smut spots all on, or little burns on your clothes, whichever. But, we went through that, we went through the segregated train rides, yes. I remember once going into Belk Leggett's and at, I must have been seven, eight years precocious kid. I have to back up a little so that you'll get— This story kind of starts when I got burned at three and a half with hot grease and I was in Duke Hospital for six weeks and I had these enormous burns on my face and arms and whatever.	30:15
Mi Young Ryee	Was that, were you cooking?	31:37
Gwen Roundtree	Oh no, my parents were frying the grease out of pork, it's called stirring up lard. And what it means was that the very fat part of the hog was cut up in small pieces and then it was put into a large wash pot and then it was cooked very slowly until it rend all of the fat out of this meat. And my mother had been doing that all day and it was a late evening and I was small and it was cold, and my parents said go inside. And, of course, being a hardheaded child, nobody expected me to go, but I went and as I went, I fell over the can of lard. That's how I got burned. I fell over a can of lard and of course that even, I had to go to hospital [indistinct 00:32:42] thing, but	31:38
Mi Young Ryee	How did you get to the hospital?	32:42
Gwen Roundtree	One of the family friends worked for the railroad and he had a 1936 Dodge or Packard or Buick or something, his name was Mr. Sandy Parker. And my mother's first cousin's husband took me to the hospital. And actually, he was also the one that brought me home after six weeks.	32:48
Mi Young Ryee	How far away was the hospital from?	33:20
Gwen Roundtree	Duke campus?	33:23
Mi Young Ryee	About half an hour?	33:26
Gwen Roundtree	It was probably more like forty minutes at the time because this road was nothing, it was all dirt. And we think of dirt roads as the dirt roads with the big ditches on the side and it's all shape cut back so you can see, but I'm talking about dirt roads that are about this big with the holes in it. Yeah, it was probably more like forty-five minutes to an hour. And I don't know, I don't remember. And a lot of what happened after I went to the hospital, I don't remember either. I just remember the enormous light and sometime later on the doctor telling me I have to come home. But most of that time, it's like being behind a black veil, a black looking through black transparent material. That's what that time in the hospital is like for me. And what went on, it's all muddle outside of me somewhere.	33:26
Mi Young Ryee	Were there any people, any doctors or nurses that really stand out, or did they all kind of blur together?	34:45
Gwen Roundtree	Only one, and I can't remember his name. He was the physician that had done the grafting because at the time grafting was a brand new medical procedure and to do grafting on a child was just, it was just never heard of, but this particular doctor did it for me. And he put a graft on my face from the hip on my face. For a long time, it was really a dark spot on my face, very dark. And it wasn't quite straight because it pulled my mouth down a little bit, but in '58 I went back and I had another graft was put on. That's why I don't have the pucker anymore, which is, I thought was great. No pucker, no black skin. That's how it was. A lot of things have changed.	34:52
Mi Young Ryee	Was that the first time that you had really gone into—	36:05
Gwen Roundtree	Durham?	36:05
Mi Young Ryee	Yeah.	36:05
Gwen Roundtree	So first time I remember being away from home.	36:05
Mi Young Ryee	And that was really like, did anyone stay with you? .	36:16
Gwen Roundtree	No. No, no, no,	36:20
Mi Young Ryee	No. So you were by yourself?	36:21
Gwen Roundtree	Yeah. I think my mom came as often as she could, I don't remember. I remember seeing my dad.	36:22
Mi Young Ryee	I know that you said that a lot of it is kind of hazy, were the doctors white?	36:33
Gwen Roundtree	Yes.	36:38
Mi Young Ryee	Doctors, nurses were white.	36:39
Gwen Roundtree	Yes.	36:40
Mi Young Ryee	Do you remember ever thinking anything about that? About being there and seeing all these strange people, white people, or you—didn't even never thought anything about that?	36:40
Gwen Roundtree	No.	36:48
Mi Young Ryee	Because that's something that we were studying a lot in our class is, Duke Hospital specifically, and issues of race and—	36:52
Gwen Roundtree	I don't remember, there must have been other children. I do remember sitting up in bed by myself, I remember that, being alone. And I remember— Like I said, this one doctor, I don't remember the nurses, I don't remember if they were white or otherwise, I don't remember seeing them often.	37:09
Gwen Roundtree	I think maybe there's a lot of pain there that I refused to look at because like I said, I was away from home for the first time. And the other thing is, I'm sure, after being there a while, it was a lot of physical pain that I have not even begin to think about for whatever reasons. But I seem to remember being by myself a lot, and I think that may have started a lifestyle change for me.	37:51
Mi Young Ryee	That young?	38:28
Gwen Roundtree	To understand that you can be alone and things and people can be away from you, but that you are not severed from them just because you're away from them. I think that may have helped me in a lot of different areas and steps later on in life to understand that people are not necessarily tied to each other at the hip. That you can make decisions, you can come up with personal ideas and ideologies and you can make decisions on your own and nobody will be hurt by it. So out of something bad, something good comes, always. It's amazing, that time at Duke is really a very fuzzy time for me, but intuitively I think I know what came out of it. Yeah, I think I do. I hope I'm not making it up as a go, but I think that's how I accepted it, I think so.	38:30
Mi Young Ryee	You were mentioning how that related to when you were on the bus going Duran.	40:00
Gwen Roundtree	Oh no. On the train?	40:04
Mi Young Ryee	Yeah. Yeah.	40:08
Gwen Roundtree	I started all of that to tell you about the time that I was in Belks, and back then they had White water, Colored water and this precocious child tried the White water. And I said to all in Sundries, "Mother, this water is just like that water over there! Why did they have two of these, ma'?"	40:10
Gwen Roundtree	"Quick, Come on, come on!"	40:37
Gwen Roundtree	"But I understand, it don't make sense to have two water fountains. It's just dumb, that's what it is its just dumb!", because she's eight year old. But I think because the stairwell was full of African American people and Caucasians and my mother is trying, without grabbing me by the scuff of my neck, to shut me up and get me going.	40:39
Gwen Roundtree	But all of that, that I was telling you about being burned, and not feeling alienated, and getting that whole piece together about making decisions for yourself and that kind of thing, I think that all kind of works together there. And well, my parents weren't really abusive people, they were disciplinarians, but they weren't abusive. They helped me to think through things as opposed to just nailing it down and saying, this is the way it is and this is the way it's going to be.	41:05
Gwen Roundtree	And then too, like I said, they were very careful in shielding us from a lot of the despair and the hate and the worration. They were very good at it. They were always with those people that they could work well with. And the other thing, I think when I started this conversation, is that we only dealt with one person in the white family group, and that was generally the head of the family, the father. So that's kind of the way it was for us. And then when my father became an independent, we didn't have to deal with White people at all, except in very minor ways. If you wanted to go to the store, dealt with them there.	41:55
Mi Young Ryee	So, most of the times when you did actually go into Durham, it was for shopping?	42:49
Gwen Roundtree	Yeah.	42:56
Mi Young Ryee	Most of the times when you left Bahama.	42:59
Gwen Roundtree	Yeah. Bahama	43:02
Mi Young Ryee	Bahama.	43:03
Gwen Roundtree	Same reason people go to the mall. There were areas, you could go to Hayti area and you could go to the movie there without being insulted. There were a couple of Jewish places down at Five Point where we would go and buy heavy coats and shoes and stuff like that, where you were not given any in a hassle because of your color. You could always go to—	43:10
Mi Young Ryee	Were there any—	43:36
Gwen Roundtree	Kress's, Kress and order a hamburger, but you had to eat it outside.	43:40
Mi Young Ryee	Besides the Jewish owned shops, were there any other non-White owned businesses?	43:48
Gwen Roundtree	Only in Hayti, only in Hayti, and that is questionable. Were they White own or were they owned by White people and fronted by Black people? I mean, that's still an argument that is very rampant in this neighborhood that people did not own those businesses. Black African Americans did not own those businesses, but were fronts for other—	43:51
Mi Young Ryee	Was that an issue at that time also or something that came about—?	44:20
Gwen Roundtree	It was one of the folk stories. When the men sat around, that would be one of the arguments that went on. Half would be, oh, they do own it other half the has boy, now they can't possibly own it. As a child you didn't really understand what they were saying because basically, children were not allowed to hear adult conversations, unless somehow another you could hide. If you could hide some place in the near vicinity and not get found out, then maybe you could listen to some of the conversations. I was never interested in what they were saying. I had my own agenda, which was possibly running through the woods screaming or something, I don't know. I did a lot of that as a child. Sneaking up on stuff. I was a very, very good Indian. [indistinct 00:45:41]	44:26
Mi Young Ryee	In what ways do you think that growing up in a rural area versus growing up in a city area affected—	45:42

Mi Young Ryee	Affected your personality and just the way you think about nature and other people, because if you lived in the city—	0:07
Gwen Roundtree	I have no idea. I think it would have been.	0:19
Mi Young Ryee	Like, did you have a sense of having space and being very close to land and things like that?	0:24
Gwen Roundtree	Yes.	0:35
Mi Young Ryee	Or not notice it so much?	0:35
Gwen Roundtree	Well, growing up you don't notice it, but once you become an adult and an adult that happens to move to the city, you notice the differences right away. I mean, you notice that there is nobody sitting around talking about, "Oh, aren't the trees beautiful this year?" I mean, you notice that immediately, there are no long conversations about what a certain area looked like in the spring. And there is just no, none of this talk about where something is growing that other members of the community might need.	0:36
Gwen Roundtree	For example, you talk about the herbs and the roots that were used for medicinal purposes, as well as for teas and stuff like that. Well, a lot of the women's talk was where they had found certain herbs in the area when they got together. "I went by Mr. John Jones' place the other day, and you know where that sycamore tree is over there? Da, da, da, da, da." "Well, honey, that's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." So eventually when you are out herb hunting, and you did do that, you would go in that general area for that specific herb and you would probably run across a neighbor and you might stand and you might talk for a while.	1:22
Gwen Roundtree	But basically it was food gathering. It was farm work. And the food gathering, by the way, when I talk about food gathering and that being in the woods in and about the woods, was also recreational time. It was also gathering wood for lighter. We call it lighter, which was actually the pine that had rotted and it had a real thick knot on it. And then you could bust it up and make it into small splinters and it would help to start a fire. So when you did this, it was walking through the woods, had more than just the purpose of walking through the woods. You were also gathering and, you know, medicines and you were having a good time as well. It wasn't just frolicking through the woods. Now as a kid, by myself, it was a lot of tree climbing and running and playing in the branch and that kind of stuff. But when it was done with the mother, it had a specific purpose.	2:11
Mi Young Ryee	So it was mostly the women who went looking for the herbs, for the home remedies, and things like that.	3:29
Gwen Roundtree	Yes.	3:36
Mi Young Ryee	And so would it be most of the women or would there be specific women who had a lot of knowledge about it and that's how knowledge got passed down?	3:36
Gwen Roundtree	I learned that from my mom. And I learned it from my mom who learned it from her mother who learned it from her grandmother, who learned it from her mother who was my grandmother. And it wasn't a lot of—it was just stuff that women did, okay. It was the women's stuff. That was the women's job, if you will. I can't tell one plant from the other right now. I mean, I walk through the woods for the coloration of the trees, but it's wonderful. I'm sure though that it wouldn't take me long if I had to go back. If I had to go out for the purpose of gathering for medicinal purposes, I would be able to identify a lot of the herbs and a lot of the plants, whatever that we—	3:47
Mi Young Ryee	In addition to polarities that women themselves—while you were growing up, were there many midwives?	4:42
Gwen Roundtree	Oh that? Yes, there were midwives. Who they were, now? I don't know. Because that was really hush, hush. You didn't talk about women that were in that way and you didn't talk about who delivered them. That was all adult talk and children weren't permitted.	4:52
Mi Young Ryee	In addition to the midwives, were there doctors as well?	5:23
Gwen Roundtree	Yes. We had a doctor out here. We had a couple doctors, in fact we had a Dr. Patrick, I think he attended my mother when I was born and he never wrote a birth certificate for me. He also attended her when my sister and brother was born and wrote both of them birth certificates. And then there was a Dr. Stroud in this area. In my lifetime, there was a Dr. Stroud and a Dr. Marie Roberts, a woman, which it is really different, it took her quite a while to establish a practice here. The women went, but the men were few and far between, as I understand it. She may have had a very large men's clientele, but she may have gone to their homes too. I don't know, but I knew it was a really, really different thing to have a woman doctor in our community. Oh, that's wild. I was really impressed that a woman became a doctor.	5:25
Mi Young Ryee	Do you remember you seeing her in the community and reflecting on you or any of the other kids and thinking there's a role model? She did this, or—	6:46
Gwen Roundtree	I don't know. My role model for me was a woman named Ms. Branch. She was my second grade teacher.	6:55
Mi Young Ryee	And where did you attend school?	7:09
Gwen Roundtree	Little River. Little River. Yeah. It was an all Black school and Ms. Branch impressed me tremendously. Then there was Ms. Richardson who taught me to sing and she introduced me to the piano. And then there was Ms. Perry, who was the math teacher. This is high school. And she was also the choir director. They introduced me to people like Marian Anderson and Ralph Bunche. Who else can I think of off the top of my head? W.E.B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington.	7:10
Mi Young Ryee	Were all these teachers African American teachers?	8:21
Gwen Roundtree	Yes.	8:25
Mi Young Ryee	And they were all women?	8:25
Gwen Roundtree	Yes. I did not have a male teacher until I went to eighth grade. His name was Irving Johnson. And in ninth grade, of course we had a biology teacher, Mr. Whitted. And commercial commerce teacher, that was Mr. Jenkins.	8:26
Mi Young Ryee	Was that uncommon for you to have a male teacher or was that pretty regular?	8:46
Gwen Roundtree	To have men teachers?	8:53
Mi Young Ryee	I mean, were there many?	8:58
Gwen Roundtree	In high school there seemed to have been—most of the science teachers were men at that time. There were men chemistry, biology, physics were men. Mathematics were men. Now, the fact that Ms. Perry was also a mathematics teacher and the music teacher was uncommon. So for me, these people introduced me, I think, to being a whole individual just as you are without excuse. For a long time, it was very difficult for me to feel like the other kids, because I thought that having a scar really meant something different, you know, being different. But I finally learned that I wasn't different. I was different in that perhaps I did not have as much group ties. I was more of an individualist as opposed to being a part of a, you know. I mean, I had friends. I was a part of the kids. I was a part of the group. I was part of it. And I did a lot of stuff that they did, but I did a lot of other stuff that they didn't do.	9:00
Mi Young Ryee	I know that your mother went up to school up until a certain grade when she had to stop, because there just wasn't anywhere else to go. How much importance did both your mom and your dad place on you getting the education you did? Or did you not really feel like that was a—	10:47
Gwen Roundtree	I believe that perhaps their belief in education as a way out was—and I'm pointing my fingers, I know you can't see that. I want you to remember that—a way out. They believe that education was a way out of the rut of farming or the rut of second class ship or out of the "me and them" kinds of attitude, or "we and they" attitude. In other words, somehow another, I got it in my head that if I became educated, that that would be the equalizer. That then I could kind of be my own boss. My father was his own boss as a farmer. And that independence helped me to know that if I was going to do something other than farm, I needed to have an education.	11:06
Gwen Roundtree	And somewhere about ten, I decided I was going to college. And say, how do you go to college on a wing and a prayer? How else do you go? So that's bubble gum instead. I don't know, how do you go to college? You just go as it were, but you prepare yourself to go. You try and get all of your tests done. You try to get all of your grades to be right. You try to get all of the people that you need to be your writer recommendation for you. But you don't have any money, so a lot of folks didn't have any money, but they went to school anyway, and I'm going too. That was the attitude. And I think my parents' independence proved to me that you could be independent. And the more education you had, the more independent you could become. I think that was what helped me to keep going. As far as education is concerned.	12:38
Mi Young Ryee	Do you think that, I know that you mentioned that your older brother went to the service and do you think that, I mean, with the farm, was there any kind of your parents wanting someone to help and continue on with keeping the farm? Or was it understood that if you wanted to go to school, that was okay? That you could go to school and go to college? Were any of the kids encouraged to kind of stay?	13:54
Gwen Roundtree	Well, yeah, I was, but I ignored it. I'm back though. I mean, my nephew who's my mother's grandson, he was and he stayed. So yeah, it happened, it happened with all of us, but it's like anything else. Too many cooks in the kitchen will mess up the soup. So one of the things that we learned as we became adults is that we could not be adult people with our parents because they were the only adults around. So either you were an adult by the amount of work you could do, but you were not an adult when it came to making decisions and living the way you wanted to live. So like the old man says, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.	14:22
Gwen Roundtree	So my brother went to the service, my sister got married, I stayed until I was twenty-two. I finished school. And then I left too, because that was how we had to make it. In other words, my parents had to do certain things in order to be independent individuals. Well, my brother and my sister and I, we had to do certain things in order to be independent people.	15:30
Mi Young Ryee	What do you remember, how would you describe your mom? What kind of mother was she?	15:58
Gwen Roundtree	Fun.	16:03
Mi Young Ryee	What kind of woman was she?	16:04
Gwen Roundtree	Hardworking. My mother could take a job that had to be done next December and start on it today and work on it and work on it and work on it. And next December, the job could be done. I guess I found organization from her, I could see that. She had goals that she wanted to attain and she just didn't get too old to reach them.	16:06
Mi Young Ryee	What do you think were the most important things to her? What kind of values and what kind of—	16:50
Gwen Roundtree	For my mom, I think doing what you say you're going to do was very important. Integrity. Don't touch nothing that don't belong to you, okay? And what other value, what other does she have that she lives by today?	16:55
Gwen Roundtree	Well, I don't know nothing about that, I ain't going to bother that. She still does it. In other words, if she doesn't have prior knowledge to something, she does not extend herself to find out about it. And she's been that way all of her life. Narrow in one way, but very open and very outgoing and very expansive. I mean, when I say that, she and my father were instrumental in developing a recreation center for the community. From the time I was about seven or eight until after I left school, after I was twenty-two, I mean. I think they were still working with the recreation center up until I was about twenty-five. And they did a good job too. They got a building built, they got a field cleaned off, and my father got it laid out. They got the bats and balls and gloves for everybody. And t-shirts for folks. I mean, they worked well. They did a lot of work in the community.	17:31
Mi Young Ryee	Do you remember her telling you any stories or anything about family history? Anything that you remember?	19:04
Gwen Roundtree	Family history? She talked about her father because her father is not from here. He's from South Carolina and he had—apparently my grandfather was the product of a Black woman and a white landowner. And because of that, they were given some land. I know what, a petition to some land. And they were well to do farmers in South Carolina, but he left South Carolina and was a wanderer. And he apparently did some work on ships. And he had been to England and then he came back here and he married and his first wife died. They had six children together and his youngest child was six or eight months old. And then he married my grandmother. She was eighteen. Now, my grandmother was what you call a strapping woman, okay? Robust.	19:18
Mi Young Ryee	And then did they have twelve children together?	20:53
Gwen Roundtree	Yes. But the children were not strong children. There was a lot of weakness, a lot of weaknesses in the children. I don't know if it was birth defects or if it was nutrition or what, but most of them did not live to be 18 years old. The youngest of the first group passed about three weeks ago. The youngest of the first set of the first six. He passed about three weeks ago, three, four weeks ago. We went to his funeral. We had not had any real close relationship for a lot of years. I don't know what immigration and—	20:55
Gwen Roundtree	Oh, yes I do, not being on the farm and not having the farm lifestyle, it breaks the family up. Because people have to go out there to earn a living and out there sometimes is several hundred miles away. And sometimes living becomes so grueling that you just never get enough put together to come back. So the new economy, I guess, is what I'm talking about, has really had a deafening effect on the family. You have to work at keeping the family together. There has to be a responsible member that does that. So does that answer your question?	22:15
Mi Young Ryee	Yeah. I know that one of your mother's sisters, is she living in Atlanta? Or—	23:20
Gwen Roundtree	Atlantic City.	23:27
Mi Young Ryee	Atlantic City. Do you, while you were growing up, remember keeping in touch with her much?	23:28
Gwen Roundtree	Well, she was the one that kept in touch with us. Now—	23:35
Mi Young Ryee	Did she live nearby?	23:37
Gwen Roundtree	Oh no. She never lived nearby. For a long time in seeing she was in Person County or somewhere out of Durham County, she was not near us. She was away from us and she would come to see us. And it was always a wonderful time had by all, because she was just that effervescent, fun, loving individual that came with a whole bag of new experiences. She might be the reason why I like to grab life and hang onto it so dearly, because she did. I know another one of my aunts, she was the first Black woman I ever saw with an automobile.	23:40
Mi Young Ryee	Really?	24:34
Gwen Roundtree	Yeah. What was [indistinct 00:24:40] doing? She was working for American Tobacco Factory. She came, she had a fur and a flapper hat and the shoes and a beaver coat, it looked like it to me. And she drove her own car. She drove her own car at night. I mean, I'm talking, this is back a time. I'm going back forties now, '44 or '45 when women didn't own cars. They definitely didn't drive them. I mean, there's been a lot of mavericks, in a way of speaking, in my family. They always did stuff. You know what I mean?	24:35
Mi Young Ryee	How about your grandparents? Do you remember them having much of an influence?	25:39
Gwen Roundtree	My grandmother. My grandmother had a lot of influence on me. She was an exuberant woman. She had a great sense of humor. She could tell stories that would stand your hair on end and curdle your blood. And I was always so in awed by her. She was a big woman, I thought. She was heavy set, she was fat. She was heavy. But on top of that she was tall and she always dressed with these crisp starch dresses. I mean, for every day and these crisp starched aprons. And she would wear a bandana, but it was always starched. And just so, you know.	25:42
Mi Young Ryee	Did she visit a lot?	26:48
Gwen Roundtree	Well, when I was six, she came and stayed with us for a year and a half or something. My mother was working in the factory and I didn't have a babysitter so she came and stayed with us for a while, and she was an awesome lady. I remember walking behind her, trying to step in her footsteps and they were so long. It was great.	26:51
Mi Young Ryee	Is there anything that you don't know or that you're just very curious about that you would like to know about your family history or your mother?	27:25
Gwen Roundtree	Yes. I am curious as all get out about this man Pride. His name was Dave and he came from South Carolina. I am curious as I'll get, and that's my grandfather. Now my grandmother's father's name was Louis Bratcher from Person County. I'm curious as I'll get out about that man. Now, somewhere in between, there's a whole history and that's kind of what I'm grappling for. Well, I want to know about my dad. I want to know about his dad now.	27:37
Gwen Roundtree	See, my father's father supposedly was also an African American and Caucasian individual that was born right up here in Rougemont. He was a landowner and that kind of stuff is just clawing to get out. But you have to give yourself time. People don't like to talk about who was where and what. The folks are dead, give it up, tell me about them. What happened? How did they get to be that way? What was the lowdown? I guess I'll just have to go to the census bureau and start pulling, start asking for information there. I really don't know where to start and I'm doing a couple of things. I'll get there, I'll get there.	28:39
Mi Young Ryee	And this is going to be the last question, how do you think that the way that you've kind of structured yourself to think in the way that you're organizing these oral history projects and involved in the researching part of it, how does that influence the way you think about your own family history and things like that? Or do you think it was the other way around? Your curiosity about your own history—	29:40
Gwen Roundtree	Yes. It was curiosity about my own history and no direct lunge to anybody. You start off and you start talking about, well, this one, and then there's a solid wall. You don't know who comes from. And as you talk, you hear conversations where this lady over here may have been your father's aunt's mother's cousin's daughter's child. And this woman over here, who you call Miss So-and-So all your life you find out may have been your father's mother's sister or your father's father's brother. You see what I'm saying? But you can't get any real information. So in doing that, you say, well, I know what I'll do. I'll find out how to go about documenting history period, anybody's history. And then I will have some skills that I can use in order to find out more specifically about myself. And so, yeah, it was wanting to know about my past and my father's past. And my mother's past that prompted me to get involved with the center for documentation.	30:06
Gwen Roundtree	But even so, their stories are so a part of the lost generation. And that's how I think of it. Because if my father had had the opportunity to put his ingenuity to work, it would've been a whole lot more than two acres sitting here as a legacy to him. He did not buy this land until he was sixty-five years old. There was no money available for him to buy two acres of land until he was sixty-five years old. So suppose he could have gotten two acres at thirty or suppose he could have been able to say work as a woods cutter. Because he loved to whittle from the time he was thirty. My mom is an excellent seamstress. She did needle work that would just floor you. I mean, so suppose they could have used those skills instead of just digging the land. Well what could they have accumulated? You see what I'm saying? It's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah.	31:27
Gwen Roundtree	I got pissed about it too. I mean there is a lump, there is a lump. I hope it's not the core. I hope it's not the core of my heart, but I understand that there is a lump in my heart that's very hard. It has a very hard shell on it because of the kinds of restrictions and the kinds of crapola. All right, I've got this and this done. All right. And then when you get all of it spread out you're told, but you need that for the first time. First time you've earned it. In other words, that subtle kind of discrimination. That subtle kind of undermining your soul. Yeah, I got a lump. [inaudible 00:34:09] yep.	33:01
Mi Young Ryee	That was great.	34:10

Item Info

Title:

Gwen Roundtree interview recording, 1997 November 14

Date:

November 14, 1997

Creator:

Roundtree, Gwen

Contributor:

Ryee, Mi Young

Description:

Name: Gwen Rountree; Date of birth: ~1940; Place of birth: [Bahama, NC?]; Occupation(s): none given; Residence: Bahama, NC
Informant ID: 1256; Interviewed by: Mi-Young Ryee.

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Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

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

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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.

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CC BY-NC 4.0

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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.

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behindtheveil
c0b928d9-6d19-486f-86e8-dda7eb98fd36
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Gwen Roundtree interview recording, 1997 November 14

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1. Gwen Roundtree administrative file, 1997

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Gwen Roundtree interview recording, 1997 November 14

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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