Charles Pollard interview recording, 1994 July 23

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Charles Pollard	Pollard. Barbara Reed, my sister.	0:04
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm. She [indistinct 00:00:10]?	0:04
Charles Pollard	Yeah, this is Amber Pollard. That's my mother.	0:12
Tywanna Whorley	1879, 1910.	0:20
Charles Pollard	Yeah. My brother died in '21.	0:23
Tywanna Whorley	Well, he has his picture on here.	0:23
Charles Pollard	Yeah, that's his picture. They put it on there. They had it somewhere, and they had it stomped in there.	0:24
Stacey Scales	Is that right?	0:28
Tywanna Whorley	Lucius Pollard.	0:31
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	0:31
Stacey Scales	He has the picture of the house.	0:31
Charles Pollard	Yeah, and this was his first wife, my mother. Willa Mae was his second. She died in '43. My daddy died in '57.	0:36
Charles Pollard	And, oh, Willa, and this is Atlanta Pollard, here, Atlanta Pollard. That's Mae. Didn't you say [indistinct 00:01:16] was going to to put something?	0:47
Tywanna Whorley	Yes, sir. Atlantia Daniel?	1:18
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	1:18
Tywanna Whorley	August 19, 1914 to February 15, 1994.	1:22
Charles Pollard	Yeah. '94, she died. Yes, died this year.	1:25
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:01:29].	1:28
Charles Pollard	And here's Holiday. This is Holiday, and this my brother; got killed in 1954. He was 42 when he died. He was a bad boy, did everything possible; shot folks, he got shot, cut them up, and this is Emma Vee here, next to Holiday. That's his wife, that's my sister. That was [indistinct 00:02:09] Tim Pollard and them over there, and my first wife—My second wife is right there on the—With a flower, turned back. That's our beauty parlor, and this on this side was my first, Raffine, the one down there to the house. That's her mother right there on this side. See that?	1:30
Stacey Scales	Who was this Thornton? Lucy Thornton?	2:31
Charles Pollard	Well, that's the old foundation.	2:35
Stacey Scales	Yeah, I see 1841.	2:37
Charles Pollard	Yeah, back in there. Yeah, that was some of my foreparents.	2:40
Stacey Scales	Oh, really?	2:42
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah, [indistinct 00:02:49]—	2:49
Stacey Scales	Hold on, was that your grandmother, Lucy Thornton?	2:49
Charles Pollard	Well, I think that's—Yeah.	2:52
Stacey Scales	You said your grandmother owned land and a house.	3:07
Charles Pollard	Yeah. It's 20 acres, yeah. Yeah.	3:07
Tywanna Whorley	Leon Cooper, is that who?	3:07
Charles Pollard	No, that was some of the Coopers, but this one he was talking about over here, it's [indistinct 00:03:20] down through there. That was Maddie Pollard. That was hers along on this side, and she bought that, and he died, but she just died, yeah, this year or last year, at 72.	3:11
Stacey Scales	Who's Margaret Pollard?	3:33
Charles Pollard	Margaret?	3:33
Stacey Scales	Margaret. I see over there a Margaret Pollard.	3:35
Charles Pollard	Well, that's one of my peoples, too. Buried way back when.	3:38
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	3:44
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	3:44
Charles Pollard	Crazy. Grass everywhere.	3:44
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah.	3:44
Charles Pollard	When it dies down, they burn it off, kind of.	3:44
Tywanna Whorley	Got a lot of Pankards?	3:44
Charles Pollard	Yeah, there's a lot of them. Johnny Pankard, he's still right there down the hill. They bought two acres from my dad. Yeah, and I had all of this up here. I sold it. I cut a lot of timber off it, last year.	3:45
Charles Pollard	Well—	4:46
Charles Pollard	I'm just trying to figure out—Way over yonder.	4:46
Stacey Scales	Oh, I see it. Is that the VA?	4:53
Charles Pollard	No, that couldn't be the VA.	4:55
Stacey Scales	VA [indistinct 00:04:57].	4:56
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	4:56
Stacey Scales	That has to be a water [indistinct 00:05:01] water.	4:56
Charles Pollard	Water over up there. Yeah. Water up the freeway, yeah.	5:06
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:05:08] water.	5:09
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	5:09
Stacey Scales	City water.	5:10
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	5:10
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's [indistinct 00:05:16], I reckon.	5:13
Stacey Scales	So these were some of the earliest sites, right here?	5:18
Charles Pollard	Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, some of are buried up in the 1700s. But my own grandmother on my daddy's side, she was born in late 1799. Of course, she died. She died, and I was big enough to [indistinct 00:05:53]. Yeah, I was big enough to [indistinct 00:05:58]. Yeah. What you got in the bottle? Water?	5:22
Stacey Scales	Yeah, sorry, you want some?	6:03
Charles Pollard	I don't reckon, son. Yeah, that's our family there, and these are the Tuckers over here.	6:14
Charles Pollard	Yeah. They keep passing on, and the world keeps passing by. It goes and comes.	6:26
Tywanna Whorley	So the remainder of your family will be buried here?	6:38
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	6:41
Tywanna Whorley	They will?	6:43
Charles Pollard	Yeah. At least the one in Chicago—in Cincinnati. She said she told her children, she got two fat children, they in Chicago. But she got down and had to go up there and stay with them, just buried up there. Well, she died in Cincinnati, bring her back down here and buried her. That's what she done told us all and the children.	6:47
Charles Pollard	Oh. [indistinct 00:07:11] down there.	7:03
Charles Pollard	Yeah, you better let me catch you [indistinct 00:07:20]. There you go. That's right. Yeah.	7:19
Stacey Scales	So you gave her the [indistinct 00:07:37]?	7:36
Charles Pollard	Yeah, I told her she could have it.	7:38
Stacey Scales	And she said she's going to bring you $40?	7:40
Charles Pollard	$40, but I ain't seen her no more. [indistinct 00:07:47] for some of them to tell something, and get away, and that's all. I've loaned people sometimes, I let them have it; I know I ain't going to get it back. [indistinct 00:08:03] I've been [indistinct 00:08:03] to the side 20 years.	7:49
Stacey Scales	Did you ever have to lend money to White folks back in the '50s and '40s?	8:07
Charles Pollard	No, I never did fool with loaning White folks no money.	8:11
Stacey Scales	I guess it's about dinnertime.	8:17
Charles Pollard	[indistinct 00:08:25] big steak now [indistinct 00:08:26]. Really never did fool with steaks much. My uncle used to sell that. My uncle used to have a beef [indistinct 00:08:34].	8:25
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah? What was the name of it?	8:36
Charles Pollard	[indistinct 00:08:41].	8:40
Stacey Scales	The name of the bar?	8:40
Charles Pollard	Willa Pollard's Market.	8:40
Stacey Scales	Willa Pollard's Market?	8:40
Charles Pollard	Yeah, she had a big market.	8:40
Stacey Scales	Okay.	8:40
Charles Pollard	That's why some, we sold them peoples that lot. Our land started right there, our home house, and this over here, got 160 acre block, half a mile squared. Half a mile square. This gas line, every time, six crosses cross I think. Five or six, but every time we went across here—	8:40
Stacey Scales	I smell it.	9:20
Charles Pollard	—I smelled it's leaking somewhere, a little bit. They gave us $1,300. Sam Cardy, I reckon he's there by his self now, his wife gone on. Yep.	9:20
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:09:42] you [indistinct 00:09:43]?	9:42
Charles Pollard	We used to pay him [indistinct 00:09:43].	9:42
Stacey Scales	You got Dixie Electricity on your property, too.	9:43
Charles Pollard	Yeah, I sold them that acre. They gave me $100 for a Christmas present.	9:46
Stacey Scales	How long ago was that?	9:54
Charles Pollard	'45. That's when we got electricity. We didn't—farmers got electricity.	9:57
Stacey Scales	How much was the land worth then?	10:01
Charles Pollard	Oh, different prices, you know. I'd give away some. At least, I knew, I wasn't trying to make money off of. I was just getting 'em places. That [indistinct 00:10:17] first house we got, I was talking about it. I sold them that half acre for $500, I think. And the one [indistinct 00:10:25], I think I got $1,000 out of him for his acre. And that dark building going in there, and that person's car standing near the dark building near the house, they got an acre and a half, and I got $1500 out of them. All of the others, I sold it for $300 or $400, whatever they could pay.	10:03
Stacey Scales	That was in the '40s, huh? Mostly?	10:44
Charles Pollard	Oh, that [indistinct 00:10:50]. See, I bought it in 1965.	10:49
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	10:53
Charles Pollard	Yeah. They've been [indistinct 00:10:56] about 30 years [indistinct 00:10:58].	10:55
Stacey Scales	Well, we want to thank you for our tour.	10:57
Charles Pollard	Oh, yeah.	11:01
Stacey Scales	Thanks a lot.	11:02
Charles Pollard	I like to be going and talking. That's all I'm fit for now. Yeah. They're out and gone, ain't they?	11:03
Stacey Scales	I don't know.	11:10
Charles Pollard	Yeah, I don't see the car. You've seen the car they was driving, didn't you? One of them Lexus. $50,000 car.	11:13
Stacey Scales	Shoo.	11:21
Charles Pollard	They stay in Cincinatti. That's the onliest daughter.	11:21
Stacey Scales	Okay—	11:24

Stacey Scales	So you said your grandmother had land?	0:04
Charles Pollard	Yeah. My old great-great grandmother. She lived until 100 and something.	0:07
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	0:14
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	0:14
Stacey Scales	Did she talk about the slavery times?	0:14
Charles Pollard	Well, somewhat. You know, I was small, back then.	0:16
Stacey Scales	I see.	0:19
Charles Pollard	She was over 100, when I was born, you see. I was born, of course, March the 13th, 1906.	0:20
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	0:22
Charles Pollard	And she died, in that period of time. But I slept with her, once or twice. And she told my daddy, one day, "You and Lucy is going to have to get this boy out the bed with me. If you don't, he going to kick me to death." I was a bad sleeper.	0:30
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	0:44
Charles Pollard	Yeah. She died along during the 1900s.	0:45
Stacey Scales	Did she talk about her times, or anything like that?	0:48
Charles Pollard	Well, not too much.	0:50
Stacey Scales	No?	0:50
Charles Pollard	We always kept teacakes in her pocket.	0:54
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	1:01
Charles Pollard	Where we could nibble off of. Yeah. You see, when I was two years old, I was plowing. Scratching out there in the field.	1:02
Stacey Scales	Really?	1:05
Charles Pollard	My daddy had three boys. And Dan was his horse, he'd go to town. He was the boss, you see. And he owned land, then. And then, after—He had done left from over there, where Grandma was. And it's still in the Colored race, but a boy had bought that 60 acres off of the old place. Alderman Pollard, he had his place. Will Pollard had his place. But wind up with his place, White folks got his.	1:05
Stacey Scales	Where was your grandmother from?	1:48
Charles Pollard	Oh. Right here.	1:49
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	1:56
Charles Pollard	She was born right back in there. Yeah. She was born over there.	1:56
Stacey Scales	And were your parents born here too?	1:58
Charles Pollard	Yeah. My daddy was born right down there, where it's called the truck stop.	2:02
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	2:05
Charles Pollard	That's over there—	2:06
Stacey Scales	This is Macon County, right?	2:07
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	2:08
Stacey Scales	Okay.	2:09
Charles Pollard	Yeah. And over here, in the truck stop, you know it's two miles from down here, to Harbor Bridge.	2:11
Stacey Scales	Right.	2:14
Charles Pollard	But up there is the truck stop. We call it the truck stop. See, that's where my Rising Star School is out there. It's a big—I mean, that's where they went to school down there, Rising Star.	2:15
Stacey Scales	That was the Black school?	2:27
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah. And we had a teacher taught down there in the early years. I think Ms. Daisy Weston was the first one I went to, Daisy Weston. And another lady come on in after then. But Daisy Weston, she taught up there in the one room schoolhouse.	2:31
Stacey Scales	Really?	2:50
Charles Pollard	Yeah. One room. I expect it's as long as this house. Yeah.	2:51
Stacey Scales	What type of things did you learn in there?	2:58
Charles Pollard	Huh?	2:58
Stacey Scales	What type of things did she teach?	2:59
Charles Pollard	Well, we had regular books. We had them blue back speller books then. And tablets. Had the alphabets, all going from one to twelve.	3:02
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah.	3:16
Charles Pollard	See, I learned all that going to school. Set at one table from one to twelve.	3:22
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	3:23
Charles Pollard	Yeah. And we started up there and I went to school with two more boys, of course they've been gone a long time ago. But I was just a little kid then. But they was in the community. And the Robertsons. And you had my people been owning land all my life, on my daddy's side.	3:26
Stacey Scales	So your daddy was a farmer?	3:50
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Old farmer. That's what he was and that's all I ever did was farm.	3:50
Stacey Scales	Were there times when people tried to take his land or get jealous because—	3:50
Charles Pollard	Well, if you didn't have any. See, we were the only one right in here had any land. And you see, my daddy was raised up with old Major Ramsey in the Slavery War. He'd taken care of him kind of up there in Notasulga. See, they was born back over here, but he come out. He wouldn't chop cotton and pick cotton or work in the field for 35 cent or 25 cent a day. You see, he stepped out of town. And when the train—We used to have plenty of trains running through here. But now we ain't got no passenger train, but freight train.	4:03
Stacey Scales	How was riding the passenger trains back then during—	4:43
Charles Pollard	Well I come up from Montgomery a time or two.	4:49
Stacey Scales	Were they segregated?	4:51
Charles Pollard	Oh yeah. They had the front care up there and Blacks had the back car.	4:53
Stacey Scales	So how was your section?	4:55
Charles Pollard	Huh?	4:55
Stacey Scales	How was it in your section, where you had to sit?	4:55
Charles Pollard	Both of them were the same.	4:55
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	4:55
Charles Pollard	Yeah. But they was just in front, in the front car. In the first car was the baggage, you see. And yeah, I went to Opelika a time or two on the train. I used to test the freight train go up there. I had a girl up there in Opelika way back years ago. Of course I got on up pretty good then. And that was up in the '30s and '40s.	4:55
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	5:26
Charles Pollard	But you see, I was raised right over there. I was born right over there. We owned—Well, we sold it to one of the—Loaned it to my brother's part. And he sold his. But he's dead. He died in, was in the 40s. He was a bad boy. And you know you do bad things, you're going to reap bad things. That's the way I always looked at it. And he did everything rotten he can. But anyhow, back to me, can you see—We didn't—Back then, you could buy a nickel worth of cheese and you couldn't eat them all up.	5:26
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	6:18
Charles Pollard	Now you can buy five or six dollars worth, you ain't got enough to eat. That's the way prices have changed.	6:19
Stacey Scales	Now did anybody ever get jealous because your family owned land, like White folk? Did they ever try to—	6:27
Charles Pollard	Well, I heard talk of it. But they didn't—They wasn't on their place.	6:36
Stacey Scales	What do you mean by they weren't on—	6:39
Charles Pollard	They didn't own no property.	6:40
Stacey Scales	They didn't own your father's land, right?	6:42
Charles Pollard	No, no.	6:45
Stacey Scales	Did they ever try to take it?	6:45
Charles Pollard	Oh no. No. We paid for it and kept it. Of course, you see, over there my grandmother and all raised up back in there, you see, them older peoples is gone on. Used to be houses and the school back in there, between here and the truck stop. If you over front on the freeway, you know where that Big Buck truck stop over there and the other one down on the shoulder, you know. But this is right up—It's two miles from down here to the bridge, big creek at the end, up there to the truck stop. You see, you come on around. We used to go right through here over that truck stop back in an old T model car. We been owning cars all our life, you might say. We had a '23 model Ford.	6:49
Stacey Scales	How was it traveling through the South?	7:38
Charles Pollard	Fine, fine.	7:51
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	7:51
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	7:51
Stacey Scales	How about—	7:51
Charles Pollard	You know.	7:51
Stacey Scales	Jim Crow gas stations. Did you ever run into that?	7:51
Charles Pollard	No. No. Go up there and fill up my tank, 10 cent a gallon.	7:52
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	7:57
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Get some of it for a nickel a gallon.	8:00
Stacey Scales	So how did your family make it through the Depression?	8:01
Charles Pollard	Fine.	8:05
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:08:07]	8:05
Charles Pollard	We knew that—Yeah, he was. And I tell them they make theirself poor by talking loud. I mean, trying not to do nothing. They can't think. Lot of them can't think good. You know. They come up under the White man. You can't think for yourself trying to think for him too. You know. I know there's hear tell of them and Beasleys used to be up here. They owned 300 or 400 acres of land. The Hughs is back in here. Right through here in Macon County. You know, White folks always fought Tuskegee and Macon County. There's more Negroes down here than anywhere else own their own property. You heard talk of Joe Louis. And he's right there. I got his picture in there.	8:07
Stacey Scales	Here?	8:58
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Got his picture in there. When you go out there, when you stand out and look, and the boys—You know you read about JL Robertson, the football player out in California. You heard about him.	8:59
Stacey Scales	You knew him?	9:15
Charles Pollard	Yeah, he was raised here on our place.	9:18
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	9:18
Charles Pollard	Born and raised right here on our place. And that's what I tell some of them. I'm proud that he out there with the Los Angeles Rams playing ball. But he live in Minnesota. And when he come down here, come down here last year, spent about 15 or $20,000 right there on his people. His people, White people too. That's where we go to school too.	9:21
Stacey Scales	Right.	9:43
Charles Pollard	But back then, we didn't go to White schools. We went to our own school. But and then, I reckon you might've heard about Ms. Roosevelt.	9:44
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	9:55
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	9:59
Stacey Scales	You knew her?	9:59
Charles Pollard	Well she come down here. See White folks didn't want Tuskegee—I mean, VA hospital's here.	9:59
Stacey Scales	So what happened?	10:08
Charles Pollard	Huh?	10:09
Stacey Scales	What happened?	10:09
Charles Pollard	Well, White folks didn't want it here. Too much for them.	10:12
Stacey Scales	So what—	10:18
Charles Pollard	And Ms. Washington come down here and brought all them corn and things, brought a Colored [indistinct 00:10:27] said if they didn't leave there they'd tear this place down. Yeah, they didn't want this Tuskegee Institute. Over there, Tuskegee Institute. The VA hospital. Yeah. And they always fought it. And you see, my old foreparents come from Boston, Massachusetts. My foreparents on my mother's side. But my daddy was raised right over here, truck stop.	10:21
Stacey Scales	So how did they get the VA started then?	10:55
Charles Pollard	Well, that was because, during the World War I.	11:01
Stacey Scales	Did Ku Klux Klan—	11:07
Charles Pollard	Well, Ku Klux Klan wasn't bad much through here as far as I know of. No. You know they had, I think, a song or story about the Ku Klux Klan, a freight train come through Tuscaloosa I think. They said it was a White woman over there and Black boys was riding on there too, I think it said they killed one of the Black boys or something. Or put them in jail. Put them in prison or something like that. You know all that, I heard that, you see. Because back then Jim Crow and you know. But you know, I had a plan when I come here. You know, when your thinking's good. But a person raised on White—Most of them was raised on the White one. But this was the best city. That's one thing where there's more Negroes in here than anything else. See, because from over there at the truck stop, come on through here into Notasulga, we owned all that land. But all of them left from down here and went north. Of course, some of my uncles went north to all them buildings up there in Chicago. And we bought some of their land. You see the Cummins place over there and the Louie Parker place, we bought it but it was 80 over there. Bought it for $600. And my daddy, when he bought this place down here, he paid $4 a acre for it.	11:07
Stacey Scales	Really?	12:51
Charles Pollard	Yeah. $600, 160 acres.	12:53
Stacey Scales	Who would you sell your crops to? Your family farm.	12:58
Charles Pollard	Well, we'd gin cotton up to the gin house. Thought it would move.	13:01
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	13:08
Charles Pollard	Yeah. All our cottonseed mill over there [indistinct 00:13:13] Yeah. [indistinct 00:13:14] mill and salt mill come in here in 1926 and hired people. And you heard talk of the back water up there, the claim. And two fellows come from down in Georgia. Because down in Georgia it was pretty rough how people were raised over there. They come on through here and stayed until they went to Florida. Flew around there and walked up on the track drunk. On the track. Wind had blown a electric wire on the track, both of them locked up drunk, hit that rail and down they went. That happened right there [indistinct 00:13:55] I started going down there in 1943.	13:08
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:13:58]	13:56
Charles Pollard	Go down there on the bus for $15, down there and back.	14:01
Stacey Scales	Was there a organization or a union that Black farmers had—	14:11
Charles Pollard	Well, we never did have that in here.	14:11
Stacey Scales	No?	14:11
Charles Pollard	Mm-hmm	14:11
Stacey Scales	Did you ever need [indistinct 00:14:16]	14:11
Charles Pollard	Well, back up, yeah. That, when you know the riot was.	14:16
Stacey Scales	What year was that?	14:19
Charles Pollard	I think it was 1932, they had a riot come out of a [indistinct 00:14:27] out there in the real town. [indistinct 00:14:32] that's Tallapoosa County. And see that wasn't—It was right on the edge of Macon County and Lee County. That one there, they had that little riot out there and it was Ned Cobb and Ned James, I think. James or something. I know Ned Cobb was in it, because I was going out there to see [indistinct 00:15:03] one of his daughters name. All of them gone on. But I was just going to see her, you see. That's my daughter. Yeah. Yeah.	14:23
Stacey Scales	How old are you?	15:25
Charles Pollard	Who?	15:30
Stacey Scales	How old are you?	15:30
Charles Pollard	Fourth month, the 13th, 1906.	15:30
Stacey Scales	That's all right. I wouldn't think so.	15:30
Charles Pollard	How much you make? Fourth month. Fourth month now. 13th day, 1906.	15:30
Stacey Scales	1906?	15:34
Charles Pollard	Yeah. That's it. That's it. And see, from April the 12th up to now, last week, three more months. And I told them I'm 88 and three months. 13th of July, I'll see, and the quarter in there.	15:36
Stacey Scales	Right.	16:05
Charles Pollard	See these people—I've seen so and so and so nine tenths. Some of them ask me, "What is nine tenths." You know.	16:06
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	16:12
Charles Pollard	And when the [indistinct 00:16:16] White man [indistinct 00:16:18] all he wants you to do is wait.	16:16
Stacey Scales	Right.	16:19
Charles Pollard	But we right through in here. We didn't know much about that. Wasn't no White people in here. They was up there in Notasulga. Up there. And y'all's church—I knew when they built Shiloh Church way back there in the 1900s. Yeah.	16:21
Stacey Scales	Did they have hangings, and them things?	16:39
Charles Pollard	Well, I heard talk of one hanging. And one the old fellow was here, down here in Tuskegee. I just heard of that. They broke his neck.	16:47
Stacey Scales	How did it happen [indistinct 00:17:01]?	16:57
Charles Pollard	He had cut a White man neck off about a dog.	17:01
Stacey Scales	A dog?	17:04
Charles Pollard	That's what he told the man. The other fellow. He worked there with us 30 days. See, my daddy'd been using hands all of his life. We had three mules and the hands that would go to town and piddle around, [indistinct 00:17:23] bring you something to eat. And Jasper Morris and Pat Young and Joshua Young, Rosie Young and Jed Young. All of them was working on halves. The house right up there on top of the hill right now. But they've remodeled it, you know, since then a little bit. Added another room to it. But the same old—And then over there where I bought that place on top of the hill in 1965. I give $5400 for it. I could've bought it for $4000, but I knew where all the corner was.	17:06
Stacey Scales	Did you have to get a loan [indistinct 00:18:13] get started?	18:06
Charles Pollard	Well, no. No. I never did. My daddy died in '57 and I took over in '58. And you see, he dealt with [indistinct 00:18:27] In '58, after Christmas, I went to Tuskegee and bought me a brand new John Deere tractor. And then the man—I was down there, one of my friends, he down there back down there toward [indistinct 00:18:44] towards that bridge down there. That's where the girl takes care of me right there at the creek, between them two creek in that brick house on that side. She there since you come here. She was going [indistinct 00:18:59]	18:12
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:18:59]	18:57
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah, because you come on in, yeah. And I wasn't there [indistinct 00:19:06] But she has been—She's down there. And then the other one, he worked for Tuskegee [indistinct 00:19:14] You might've seen him over there. Go right into the school, right above the filling station. Going toward the school. You know [indistinct 00:19:26]	18:59
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	19:23
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	19:26
Stacey Scales	Mr. Reedy?	19:26
Charles Pollard	Yeah. But I thought—	19:27
Stacey Scales	I used to work [indistinct 00:19:37]	19:31
Charles Pollard	Yeah. That's it. Now the Reedy filling station and the cleaner was a different Reedy. Thomas Reedy, that was who that was.	19:38
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	19:43
Charles Pollard	That's the one who sent off, you know.	19:43
Stacey Scales	Right.	19:45
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Thomas Reedy. You done seen him and met him.	19:46
Stacey Scales	Yes, I've seen him.	19:49
Charles Pollard	Yeah, of course. Been up talking, you see.	19:50
Stacey Scales	Right.	19:52
Charles Pollard	When we had the Democrat meeting, he was there. But they sent him home. You know, when they send you home. And then if he wouldn't have been doing what he was doing [indistinct 00:20:07] about that flag. Wasn't nothing to talk about it. He run it his own self. You know? You can't go over.	19:53
Stacey Scales	Right.	20:21
Charles Pollard	You know, back there then. Sent him off two, three years, but sending you off will do something to you [indistinct 00:20:38] You ain't got no say so over nothing. But I [indistinct 00:20:47] If you can think pretty good. If you can't see nothing—As my daddy used to say, whatever you do, buy you one acre of land. You can go deep as you want to or go high as you want, but if you couldn't think of nothing to feed your own self—You know you can feed your own self.	20:23
Stacey Scales	Right.	21:16
Charles Pollard	—if you get out there and do something. Don't have to ask nobody for nothing. If you want to [indistinct 00:21:26] but if you can't think, that's it. And God built it in you. You see, people that—judgment.	21:16
Stacey Scales	Did you [indistinct 00:21:43]	21:42
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah.	21:42
Stacey Scales	What kind of man was he?	21:42
Charles Pollard	That was the—He was the old man, wasn't he? Yeah. Yeah.	21:45
Stacey Scales	Did he ever help out with the farming and [indistinct 00:21:53]?	21:45
Charles Pollard	Well, that's what I was fixing to say. Most of the [indistinct 00:21:56] they had all the skeletons down there, different things. And Professor Carver. Because I might've seen him once, but you see, Booker was there. I seen him.	21:53
Stacey Scales	You seen Booker Washington?	22:09
Charles Pollard	Yeah. And you see, my foreparents come from Baltimore, Maryland. They come down here, Grandma Brown and Grandpa Felix. Peg Brown and Grandpa Felix. And they come on [indistinct 00:22:39] down here. Grandma Bill and Grandma Grammit. Do you know the girl that dress hair?	22:11
Stacey Scales	Grandma Bill and Grandma who?	22:52
Charles Pollard	Well, I'm telling you, I'm talking about the girl that dress hair in there, down there, Clara Grammit now. That's the lady that dress hair. Maybe you ain't heard talk around that, but you know. They run, you see. Now, both of them was up at church last night. They remember my church. Raised up in Notasulga. But one of them married [indistinct 00:23:23] He was first [indistinct 00:23:27] No, I done forgot his name. But anyhow, Zi lost his eyesight and he finally died. And he had one boy. But he died. And she don't have no children now. You know. But no, her first boy died, Mason. [indistinct 00:23:58] And she knows it matters what you got. She got her boy to call her BB, big fat boy. But Clara, [indistinct 00:24:09] first cousin. He stayed right there in [indistinct 00:24:13] right there, before you get up to the—What's the home there?	22:53
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:24:25]	24:21
Charles Pollard	No, right there when the [indistinct 00:24:29] at the cemetery. Where they put up that new building there.	24:25
Stacey Scales	Oh [indistinct 00:24:32]	24:30
Charles Pollard	Well that's a—[indistinct 00:24:36] you come around that corner where the old house tore down [indistinct 00:24:39]	24:32
Stacey Scales	The gas station over there?	24:39
Charles Pollard	Yeah, gas station comes from there going out to the hospital. And it's then going to the school [indistinct 00:24:50] and you see, from there, back to that other house east from that filling station, over where that old house tore down and all those other in wood. Well that in there, Walter and Clara stay in that brick house right there. Coming on out before you get to Magnolia Homes, go down this hill. But that's where Grandma Hagg, Grandpa Felix, and Grandma Hagg stayed right there. Can you see? Grandma Bill and Grandma Grammit. And Grandma Bill, she married at [indistinct 00:25:34] come from [indistinct 00:25:36].	24:42
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:25:38]	25:34
Charles Pollard	No. We wasn't no kin. But James Pollard over here, we kin on his mother's side. And you see, in my day I was raised right now here. And he married Grandma Grammit's daughter Alma. Had two or three—She had three or four—several children. But anyhow, all of them gone on. But the grandchildren and Walter and Clara's there in the old Hagg—Well they built—and they [indistinct 00:26:16] built the house there. And her son worked in the post office over there to the school. Yeah, and he was a pretty good whisky drinker.	25:38
Stacey Scales	So Carver was [indistinct 00:26:26]	26:25
Charles Pollard	No. Carver was gone then.	26:25
Stacey Scales	Oh.	26:32
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah.	26:33
Stacey Scales	Did you get together with the farmers and help them?	26:33
Charles Pollard	Well that's where it come out. Peanuts, you see.	26:36
Stacey Scales	Right.	26:39
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Peanuts, you know. We did a heap of things with peanuts. Made him a millionaire back there then.	26:39
Stacey Scales	So other farmers, did you ever see him come out and work with the farmers?	26:49
Charles Pollard	Well, no. No, I never did see him come out. But we'd go down there. We had the ag teacher then, back then.	26:56
Stacey Scales	Do you remember any experiences you've had with him that you could tell me about?	27:02
Charles Pollard	Anyhow, they was teaching me how to read pastures and things. When you come from down there. And you see, I have a grandson, Michael over there. We raised three time [indistinct 00:27:25] that come on up to see in the late years. And I used to raise black Angus cows. I had 150 head of cows once. You see, just wasn't nobody in here like that. A lot of them—Well my uncles and them come from back in there. But we got one of them, my cousin's place, we go back in there and that's going straight towards church [indistinct 00:27:59]	27:07
Stacey Scales	Right. Is that your father right there?	28:01
Charles Pollard	That's him right there on that picture, at the top.	28:02
Stacey Scales	Right.	28:04
Charles Pollard	That's my two—Well, the dark one on here, that's my baby sisters. One died a while back. That's Sam Daniel. I thought, see, he was coming in really—But he come in and pick up Sam. Pick up Alma.	28:05
Stacey Scales	Did folks back then talk about their experience [indistinct 00:28:32]	28:26
Charles Pollard	Well yeah. Some. I never did. I never did. I used to get up trying to see him.	28:32
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	28:39
Charles Pollard	Yeah. But I never could see nothing. And I used to—and they said moonshine and that. I used to go up there and walk all over the cemetery, see my foreparents is buried right up there. And I bought that place up on top of that hill. When Old Man Bowens come down here, going with this Rambler girl, got married to her, he come from Hooker up north. He was a Yankee. White folks didn't like him. So my daddy would start anything down here [indistinct 00:29:12] let me know.	28:41
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	29:12
Charles Pollard	[indistinct 00:29:15] Major Ramsey raised them up there in Notasulga, see.	29:15
Stacey Scales	So [indistinct 00:29:21]	29:17
Charles Pollard	Huh? Say what?	29:21
Stacey Scales	Your ancestors are buried on the land?	29:26
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah. Right up there on [indistinct 00:29:29] cemetery. Shiloh Baptist Church. Yeah. I remember when they built that church up there.	29:27
Stacey Scales	So you go up there trying to see them? You go up there at night?	29:35
Charles Pollard	Yeah, go up there anytime trying to see something. Well, I ain't never seen nothing.	29:35
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:29:46]	29:43
Charles Pollard	Well, that's what they say. That's what I've heard talk about, how it made them run.	29:45
Stacey Scales	Made them run? Oh yeah?	29:47
Charles Pollard	Yeah, got scared and run. And I tell you, one night we was coming right along out there, the moon was shining bright, and them old—Out in the field, I don't know if you ever seen it, but they come up and got stickers on him. [indistinct 00:30:08] something that tall and it had white blooms on it. But we come down there [indistinct 00:30:13] and one of the fellows [indistinct 00:30:13] and he said, "Look at that little thing [indistinct 00:30:19] when we was down yonder. And we seen it. We got even with him. He's keeping up with us. And then we looked back and seen he was right behind. And it wasn't nothing but that thing bloomed there out there in the field. Yeah. Yeah, I remember a one cent stamp.	29:55
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	30:46
Charles Pollard	Two cent stamp. Get a stamp for two cents, get a card for a penny. Yeah.	30:46
Stacey Scales	Did you know the Lewis Adams family? Adams? That was the guy that helped out [indistinct 00:31:01] school.	30:49
Charles Pollard	No, I didn't know them. But I was around these other ones, you see. I went to [indistinct 00:31:13]	31:01
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:31:15]	31:11
Charles Pollard	Pocatello.	31:11
Stacey Scales	How was that?	31:11
Charles Pollard	Well, anyhow, we used to go to the commencement. They'd fry fish down there and give us some salmon.	31:17
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	31:24
Charles Pollard	Right there in the old chapel, see. The old chapel got blowed up. Built a new chapel.	31:25
Stacey Scales	Right.	31:31
Charles Pollard	And you see, something [indistinct 00:31:41] democrat lady in Tuskegee. We went up there where Booker was, you know. We had a meeting right there in the eating place, where the eating place, whatever. I can't pronounce the hall that they called it. You know, you'd go down there—	31:32
Stacey Scales	Boise Hall?	31:44
Charles Pollard	Where they eat and have meetings.	31:44
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:31:45]	31:44
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Right that way. And look right [indistinct 00:31:45] Booker T. Washington. You could look at Booker, you go right in this building here. That's where—They called it something.	31:45
Stacey Scales	Tompkins Hall?	32:12
Charles Pollard	Something like that.	32:15
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:32:17]	32:16
Charles Pollard	Yeah. [indistinct 00:32:20] I can't—They told me what it was, but anyhow, we had a democrat meeting there. And you see, there's a bunch of them [indistinct 00:32:33] they was raising money for the Democrat Party. And you see, they had me in the table, you see. We had to pay $15, I think. It was raising money for the Democrat Party. And it was 10 to the table. The [indistinct 00:32:49] up here at the school. Him and his wife, Beasley and his wife, and then David Warren, the chief of police. The head police now. Him and his wife was there. And I knew all of them, you see. We kinfolk, you say.	32:17
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:33:12]	33:11
Charles Pollard	Yeah. All of them and I. And it was 10 to the table, see. We paid $15 a piece. We raised money for the Democrat Party.	33:11
Stacey Scales	Oh, right.	33:12
Charles Pollard	Yeah, and Fred Gray was there. [indistinct 00:33:23]	33:21
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	33:23
Charles Pollard	Yeah, and then we had [indistinct 00:33:26] after the talk.	33:24
Stacey Scales	Do you remember when things started to change here? [indistinct 00:33:38]	33:32
Charles Pollard	Well, yeah. I knew what he said. [indistinct 00:33:38]	33:37
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	33:38
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Later, [indistinct 00:33:50] Lancaster. I tell you, you know—Do you know where old Reed's place was, [indistinct 00:33:56]	33:45
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	33:55
Charles Pollard	Right there on that corner. Well that brick house there to the left, that was Mayor Woodall's house back there in the '30s.	33:57
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	34:07
Charles Pollard	'20s. Yeah. See, I had pneumonia in '21, had it again in '31. And then Doctor Hayes worked on me '21 and '31. He had the double pneumonia in '33. He didn't wake up. He left then.	34:10
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:34:38]	34:31
Charles Pollard	Well, that was Charlie Palmer. [indistinct 00:34:42]	34:38
Stacey Scales	Did you know him?	34:42
Charles Pollard	Yeah, it broke the store in 1947 too.	34:45
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	34:45
Charles Pollard	Yeah, that's when the store went broke. See, it started in '32.	34:49
Stacey Scales	So you're the one that—	34:52
Charles Pollard	Yeah, I'm in both. I was getting something, they put nothing in.	35:03
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	35:04
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	35:04
Stacey Scales	So how did they get you in there?	35:06
Charles Pollard	Well, every year when the school started up, everybody would go up. We had the meetings and the [indistinct 00:35:20] the first one thing or another, and everybody would go up and get a blood test.	35:10
Stacey Scales	Did they tell you [indistinct 00:35:26]	35:24
Charles Pollard	Yeah. We'd get blood tests every year, you see. And especially school time.	35:26
Stacey Scales	Right.	35:30
Charles Pollard	And you see, plenty of children went to school bare feet. I reckon I went to school bare feet. But I always had shoes.	35:38
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	35:45
Charles Pollard	Yeah. And you see, I been working in the farm all my life. And I told them if I had to run my life over again, I'd do the same thing only I'd try to do it better. From what I learned coming on up.	35:46
Stacey Scales	So they [indistinct 00:36:05]	35:58
Charles Pollard	Yeah. That's it. And then—	36:06
Stacey Scales	And in '42 [indistinct 00:36:08]	36:07
Charles Pollard	Yeah, in '32.	36:07
Stacey Scales	'32.	36:07
Charles Pollard	[indistinct 00:36:08] was broke in '42.	36:07
Stacey Scales	Oh, I see. So you told the news?	36:07
Charles Pollard	Huh?	36:07
Stacey Scales	You told the newspaper?	36:07
Charles Pollard	Oh yeah. Yeah, my daddy took the newspaper [indistinct 00:36:13] I wasn't asking them out.	36:08
Stacey Scales	No, you tell [indistinct 00:36:13]	36:11
Charles Pollard	Well anyhow, Norris [indistinct 00:36:13] you see, he was in. And she'd come out here the next morning. And it first started down there in Montgomery. I was selling cattle at the Hoople Stockyard. The one on the Mobile highway.	36:11
Stacey Scales	Right.	36:11
Charles Pollard	That's where I was. But I had been going through the union stockyard. I've been selling cows all my life. We raised cattle. My dad said when he first married, first thing he did, got him a mule and a cow. Got him a mule and a cow where he could get the milk.	36:13
Stacey Scales	Right.	37:08
Charles Pollard	And plant his corn, raise his feed. Bought him a [indistinct 00:37:15] mule to start with. When I was big enough, he had [indistinct 00:37:23] running around with. But Kate and Lula was Jasper [indistinct 00:37:31] and Joshua had Tate. Two mules and a horse. Dan was the horse. But the two mules was female mules, both of them.	37:08
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:37:42]l	37:42
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah. Kate and Lula. We kept them for years. And see all of hem's gone on, been gone on. He got hit—I mean Uncle Alden now, he got some. And Jasper, he married my first cousin [indistinct 00:38:08] all of them gone on. And all the uncles has been gone on now. And old Uncle Majors gone. She got one grand niece and she married Arthur, I think [indistinct 00:38:22] something. But Mayor Lee was, he was first cousin.	37:43
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:38:30]	38:23
Charles Pollard	Yeah. He would take care of me.	38:30
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	38:31
Charles Pollard	I lost my wife in '89. She lost her son. She had a son. I had a daughter. But she lost her son in '88. She come on and passed in '89. And my oldest sister passed in '90. Right down the line. And Barber Reed died in '87. He was the husband that stayed down there in that brick house down there. Times that we used to call that Red Creek, you see. And it's two creeks, that [indistinct 00:39:09] that go together right there back of that house and the first bridge you'll come across, I mean the first one coming up this way, see that water go under on this side the house. And that Mahone, both of them join over there right behind the house and make on going towards—	38:32
Stacey Scales	Oh, [indistinct 00:39:35]	39:34
Charles Pollard	Yeah, right there back of they house. Connect there and went on through under the low bridge. Both the bridge—She right between the two bridges, see. But they go together right back of the house, make one, and it goes on down there to [indistinct 00:39:49] and empties into [indistinct 00:39:52] Creek. And going down to the Alabama River down at Shorter. Go in the river there. River go right there, Montgomery Station. And go into Mobile, Selma. Mobile Bay. All the water come from up under that down, come right down here and go in.	39:34
Stacey Scales	You say you saw Cadillacs?	40:15
Charles Pollard	Huh?	40:15
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:40:16]	40:15
Charles Pollard	I raised a lot of cattle.	40:15
Stacey Scales	Oh, cattle.	40:15
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Auctioned them off.	40:15
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	40:15
Charles Pollard	And when first started—555 was mine. Crompton, TS Crompton. That's what it used to say on my cows, too. Cow man leave them and wait to sell them, cow man leave them, come on back. They mailed a check to me. Different one would buy them. I turned my to TS Crompton, that's who I started off with. [indistinct 00:40:52] And they had to come down there and consign them. See Ms. Crompton, her husband had died and she run the business on until she died. And then they finally closed up. The union gone and took up nothing but the capital stockyard.	40:23
Stacey Scales	Did anybody ever [indistinct 00:41:15]	41:12
Charles Pollard	Well anyhow, they was auctioning them off.	41:15
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	41:17
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	41:17
Stacey Scales	Did you get a fair amount?	41:17
Charles Pollard	Yeah, back there then. Everything else was cheap. I sold plenty of them for 15 cent a pound. Yeah. I bought three calves down there one day for $30. I bought them, auctioned them off. You have to sit there and [indistinct 00:41:47] he's watching you [indistinct 00:41:50] I bought calves down there one day, I paid a dollar for them. They weighed 200 pounds. That same one I was first telling you about. But when I sold him, I sold him for $600. He was a baby calf, weighed 100 pounds. And you see them big Holstein cows, them black dairy cows?	41:24
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	42:21
Charles Pollard	That's what it was. Dairy cow, see. And I—	42:31
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:42:31]	42:31
Charles Pollard	And made money myself. You see, it's a heap of them [indistinct 00:42:31] something you have to build in your mind. You know, you got to think for yourself. Whatever you go through in life. And I took it out [indistinct 00:42:44] And you see, a lot of them up there on top of the hill where the cemetery is, I bought that place up there for $50 a acre. And old man Henry Neil Seger, we went down there and I kind of still [indistinct 00:43:03] for them, you see. I knew where all the corners was. And first, I could've bought it for $40 if I'd have went on old man Henry Neil.	42:31
Stacey Scales	Now you said you bought a car [indistinct 00:43:17]	43:16
Charles Pollard	[indistinct 00:43:17]	43:17
Stacey Scales	Oh.	43:17
Charles Pollard	Section line and the beat line. Beat line run east and went, section line run north and south.	43:17
Stacey Scales	Oh.	43:23
Charles Pollard	Yeah. And you see, you get on the corner of the property and that's where you buy. And if you buy 20 in some corner or another, you got 20 acres. Buy 40, buy 60. And now it's cut up in quarters. Yeah.	43:24
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:43:47]	43:43
Charles Pollard	Huh?	43:47
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:43:49]	43:47
Charles Pollard	Well, along there. You know, when it was [indistinct 00:43:56] we got the chance to vote. But I hadn't voted none [indistinct 00:44:00] and they finally got a boy in there. Come on in here, Charlie, they've been talking about Wolf Creek, this that and other. Sign here. Tell me your name and your address and everything. Go on about your business. That's [indistinct 00:44:16] He was from down there, truck stop. He was married.	43:48
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:44:22]	44:17
Charles Pollard	No, it's a White fellow. Up there.	44:17
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:44:26]	44:17
Charles Pollard	Oh yeah. Back there then, yeah. When you come in—But my daddy been voting all the time.	44:28
Stacey Scales	How did he do that?	44:35
Charles Pollard	Well he would go [indistinct 00:44:37] and he owned a whole lot of land. He had this land practically when I was born. See, I was born right back there on the old place what he bought after he come from over there at our grandma place. And it wasn't nothing but a big room and a kitchen [indistinct 00:45:01]	44:39
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:45:01]	44:59
Charles Pollard	What? That's where my great-grandmother stayed there. That was my daddy's grandmother. His mother and father was [indistinct 00:45:20] yeah. That was [indistinct 00:45:25] That was they grandma, Grandma Margaret. Yeah. Grandma Grammit, now she was in Notasulga. Yeah. And on my mother's side, they had a place right there in town. And the Johnsons owned it. And the Grammits come from out on the road towards [indistinct 00:45:40] And the Grammits, Johnson, they had a home. You been to Notasulga?	45:00
Stacey Scales	No I haven't.	45:40
Charles Pollard	Ain't you? It's right up through there.	45:40
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:45:41]	45:40
Charles Pollard	Look around. Come out there [indistinct 00:45:41] ride up and down the road with you. Take you around.	45:40
Stacey Scales	Maybe we can do that.	46:24
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Maybe some Sunday evening.	46:24
Stacey Scales	Maybe Sunday [indistinct 00:46:24] I can give you a call.	46:24
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	46:24
Stacey Scales	I'd like to know [indistinct 00:46:30]	46:24
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah. Be around in the area. Yeah. Go from here to the truck stop, go down there to the creek—	46:30

Charles Pollard	That's [indistinct 00:00:01] cherry be a mile out of Notasulga, going in Lee County.	0:01
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	0:07
Charles Pollard	There's a line [indistinct 00:00:09]. And we in Macon County. Yeah. And back there is a road when whisky stuff was ginned. Day after day in Macon County. Oh yeah, have plenty bootleg. Made plenty of it. And, [indistinct 00:00:31].	0:10
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:00:13]	0:13
Charles Pollard	That's right. I went everywhere I want to go. I used to run all over Tuskegee, wasn't nothing but mud holes. Right away went down there. [indistinct 00:00:43]. Right there where there old folks place, wasn't nothing but rocks and hills right there in muddy hole.	0:33
Charles Pollard	Many [indistinct 00:00:53] running [indistinct 00:00:53] there. And that old man been out there all of my life. Now, he was there, said, whatever you do, keep the nigger down, that's what some of them told me. You know? But yeah.	0:53
Charles Pollard	That old monument there, that was put there in three years time. Some of them said "Whatever you do, keep the nigger down."	1:01
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:01:12]	1:12
Charles Pollard	Well, you know, you seen Booker T. Washington's house. That was [indistinct 00:01:28]. Wasn't even built back there in them days.	1:16
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:01:33].	1:31
Charles Pollard	Huh?	1:33
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:01:35].	1:33
Charles Pollard	Well, probably so. Probably so, because see I remember when Booker come down here. And as I told you, they cost about down there. And you see, Claire and them, they in the [indistinct 00:01:52] Grandma [indistinct 00:01:52] and Grandma feed [indistinct 00:01:58]. And they [indistinct 00:02:02] and she had one son boy. She had some children. They was in California. They come down here once, just to come out here to my house. And went out and [indistinct 00:02:12] going to pro. But to come back, and they never did come back, and ran off.	1:35
Charles Pollard	After [indistinct 00:02:18] die, I ran. They [indistinct 00:02:19] some [indistinct 00:02:29]. After she died, they hauled up there in Nashville. Walter and them, she's my sister [indistinct 00:02:40] stayed down there a little bit. They couldn't get a long. So she passed [indistinct 00:02:42] this year. She been dead over a year now. But anyhow, you know how old [indistinct 00:02:59] go around the stream over there. You know?	2:18
Charles Pollard	See, I dropped evergreen leaves on it, when [indistinct 00:03:06]. Yeah. Your sandwiches over there, for [indistinct 00:03:11]. And I've had prime fishing [indistinct 00:03:15]. And I used to—We have a [indistinct 00:03:18]. I used to save my peaches and have some peaches down there, but it's good for growing some peaches. That guy [indistinct 00:03:26].	2:59
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:03:28].	3:25
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah. We'd go down there on the [indistinct 00:03:31] both way.	3:28
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:03:36].	3:30
Charles Pollard	That's it. Well it wasn't many of them like [indistinct 00:03:41]. No. It was summer. Back over there, but anyhow well the Clemon fellow and [indistinct 00:03:56]. Another White fellow over there. Abercrombie. They owned all the land back in that way. [indistinct 00:04:17]. We have school [indistinct 00:04:20] own Clemens Hill. That's why I went to school over there in [indistinct 00:04:21]. We [indistinct 00:04:21] went over there [indistinct 00:04:22].	3:35
Charles Pollard	But we went to—We had one of them is Daisy Western. She was from Baltimore now. Yeah. We have another one called Miller. You know? During that time. And the teacher, Miss Western stayed right over here. We only played where she lived. It was a big house over there just like I have a home [indistinct 00:04:54] down there. And it had lightening rods on it. Back there then. A few of them bought lightening rods to put on the house. Because [indistinct 00:05:05] make too. When they come in the house, over there, we own that place now.	4:25
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:05:06].	5:05
Charles Pollard	Huh?	5:05
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:05:06].	5:05
Charles Pollard	Oh, there wasn't no Black man in this town then there. Only have two shoe shops. Yeah. They had a theater there once way back there [indistinct 00:05:24]. I don't know. They can tell you, something like that. And you see, everybody go over like in Montgomery theater. See they built a big building there [indistinct 00:05:42]. They never did do none of that [indistinct 00:05:44] from a big [indistinct 00:05:45]. Yeah. You know? [indistinct 00:05:54] bank. Bigger bank that went drive-in theater [indistinct 00:05:57]. It wasn't but one building there back there on the road.	5:06
Charles Pollard	Well, you know how I am. You know, back there then, you just hope the other people they—But we got a heap [indistinct 00:06:19] now. Don't do that and stay around town, and things like that. And then they whole lot of them, hang around down there. They got nowhere to stay. Oh, when I was coming up, you see wasn't no White people between—hanging onto that she hold on. Right by [indistinct 00:06:41]. We call it down there on the [indistinct 00:06:48]. And down at the old airport. That low road take you straight into Tennessee. Right down here by the road. Drove that way, and coming on that freeway. Yeah. You go in the chee hole.	6:14
Stacey Scales	Right.	7:01
Charles Pollard	Yeah. You know. See right there where that store was, used to be a hole there called Silk Hole. We'd drive up there, and we'd walk up and down and drink water. These up to [indistinct 00:07:16], they standing there and drank water. You know, just talking about Silk Hole. We was going from [indistinct 00:07:24] on the way. Then this bridge down here, they built back in '26. What it was then down on this here, that old bridge. We had to go around for a long time. Until they put this here bridge up. High water in '26 I think, or '36 [indistinct 00:07:45]. Moved the old bridge and you had to go around, when it went down, they'd find that [indistinct 00:07:50] coming. Build a new bridge down there. Had a bridge down there. You see, all up here on this side the creek, it was a bank to go up. But they raised the creek up, and cut the bank down. So it made the whole road is level now. Go down, you know-	7:02
Stacey Scales	So it's not there anymore.	8:11
Charles Pollard	No. See they lowered the ground down there. Then they raised the bridge up.	8:13
Stacey Scales	Right.	8:18
Charles Pollard	Yeah. And you see, high water get up now. See it'll come way on our town, and still go across the bridge.	8:19
Stacey Scales	Right.	8:26
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah.	8:27
Speaker 1	Excuse me. [indistinct 00:08:31].	8:28

Charles Pollard	The end of the Colored people's line is right back there.	0:00
Stacey Scales	In this field?	0:00
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Slow down [indistinct 00:00:10]. So all this is old John's place, 420 acres, each side. Railroad and—	0:12
Stacey Scales	I want to put this microphone on you because—	0:17
Charles Pollard	Yeah. The railroad over there, and he got 420 acres in here. He promised to—I could work it as long as he didn't sell it for $400, but I made so much cotton on there, he took it from me.	0:18
Stacey Scales	Who took it from you?	0:33
Charles Pollard	White man.	0:33
Stacey Scales	What?	0:33
Charles Pollard	Because it belonged to White. All this belonged to White. I used to work all of it. I had six acres. I picked 13 bales off it, before I stopped picking. Now this here, this belongs to somebody else now. That's the block school. That was school for Notasulga.	0:37
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah? What about this lake over here?	1:01
Charles Pollard	Well it belonged to Whites, and they were burning it off. Burning it off over there now, cleaning it off. Part of it is, we used to work all this land in here, back 50 years ago. We worked clear on up here to this bridge. But White folks owned that from back down there, on this side of the church. White folks owned that. Yeah. You all went all in there. That's the propane and mill yard out there. Colored fellow bought it and selling it. He bought that place. And that's been there for—That's the end of that now. Now we're in the city limits.	1:03
Stacey Scales	So the bridge ends the line?	1:49
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	1:51
Stacey Scales	Okay.	1:51
Charles Pollard	Yeah. See, we're in the city limits now. From right there at that store. There's a little store back there. This is the overhead bridge. This been here. We used to didn't have a bridge here to cross the railroads back in the '30s. We crossed on the railroads.	1:53
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah?	2:09
Charles Pollard	Yeah. We had to stop for the train. Want to go through North Salem?	2:09
Stacey Scales	Oh, you want to go and look through the town?	2:15
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	2:15
Stacey Scales	Okay.	2:15
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	2:15
Stacey Scales	Sorry.	2:15
Charles Pollard	Yeah. I thought—And I'll keep check on it. Yeah, we're going—You ain't got to go so fast. They ain't behind you. All of these White in here. Ain't no Colored people. Well it is, one or two. Well, we've got some Coloreds up in here now, but the older heads died out, and you know White people, they don't like a gang of children. They don't have a gang of children. Some of them don't want any. But you see, the older heads gone. There's a Colored fellow stay right there.	2:17
Charles Pollard	And that was one of Paul Ray's old house. Him and his wife stay there. These houses are empty—	2:51
Stacey Scales	How long has this been White?	2:59
Charles Pollard	It seems to been all my life.	3:00
Stacey Scales	Really?	3:03
Charles Pollard	Yeah. When I was a little boy, I came to notice that. When cheese was a nickel a pound, you'd get more than you could eat then. Now, you can get about $5 worth, and you don't have enough to eat. That's strange, ain't it?	3:04
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm.	3:20
Charles Pollard	See, when it was a nickel a pound, Prince Albert, 10 cents, [indistinct 00:03:26] nickel bond, that—I never did smoke. I never did smoke. I never did drink no whiskey. I used to bootleg some whiskey. Bootleg, but you got sealed whiskey everywhere.	3:20
Charles Pollard	I used to live right back there, me and my wife, when I married her. That was a little store there. All this White in here. Used to farm cotton right out there.	3:39
Stacey Scales	You did?	3:50
Charles Pollard	No.	3:50
Stacey Scales	Okay.	3:50
Charles Pollard	Other people.	3:50
Stacey Scales	Do you know-	3:51
Charles Pollard	Just hold to the—Gone around to the right of the light.	3:55
Stacey Scales	Okay.	3:58
Charles Pollard	To the right of the light.	3:59
Stacey Scales	Okay.	3:59
Charles Pollard	Yeah, don't go so fast, so we can look while we're looking. Well you've got the [indistinct 00:04:08] now, I see. That's the wash house. That's the bank right over there. We used to have two banks. That's a—It was a shirt factory, but they moved it from there and got something else. Now that used to be a post office over there, but it's something now. Just ride on across the bridge here, to the old school where integration took place.	4:00
Stacey Scales	Did this area here have a place where Black folks would shop? Like Black-	4:35
Charles Pollard	Oh, yeah.	4:40
Stacey Scales	—owned places.	4:40
Charles Pollard	Oh, no. They didn't have no stores they owned. Some of them had a little rusty ranch around, an eating place, but all the stores, White folks owned all the stores. That's the old cemetery out there. Some out there were buried in the 1600s.	4:42
Charles Pollard	Yeah, that old fellow stay there, Edward Brown. That's the White folks cemetery. This is all White folks in here. That's the old Hottington house. I don't think nobody—All of them are dead and gone. I don't think nobody even live in the house. This house here, old fellow Bentley stay in this house here. Now he's the grass man. Down there below my house, all that grass from down there by the big bridge?	4:50
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	5:31
Charles Pollard	Well that's his farm. Bentley. He stays right back there. He got some boys running it for him. One of his sons runs it.	5:32
Stacey Scales	Okay.	5:38
Charles Pollard	This is the high school here. We might—Drive around it, if you want to. Yeah, that's where we go to—That's where the integration come up, and police led them through up here and they—One of them, when they came through, got over here and unloaded. One of the White fellows here in Tuskegee kicked the driver. All of them were White, you know?	5:40
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm.	6:28
Charles Pollard	But he kicked it. Now go in a little square, that way. The teachers and them, they had classes in all those trailers, and that's the school. That brick part been there. My wife played football and basketball down there. I would have been—play basketball in one of these buildings here. That's the football field down there.	6:29
Stacey Scales	So what year did that take place? Do you remember when that took place?	6:42
Charles Pollard	When the integration came on.	6:45
Stacey Scales	Okay, '60s?	6:46
Charles Pollard	And they been had Coloreds every since. That was when, in '63? I think it was '63. This a new building over here they built then.	6:52
Charles Pollard	We'll ride out this way, just a little piece. Right off to the right. That used to be the old Tom Livingston place. Judge Livingston.	6:57
Stacey Scales	And that's who?	7:27
Charles Pollard	Gunner's old house back there, of course he's dead and gone. And that was the old judge's place. We can go out [indistinct 00:07:43]. This one of the gunnery houses here. One of them stay there. And the little fellow that runs that, he went to Auburn, but Butch came back down here. They own that land in here, and I know when he bought it. Been cutting hay all day. That's where they run the hardware, called Butch knife. But what—And that's the other brother's place there. He works around Auburn, I think. But they own all that land down there, for hay grass. Most of them places pasture grass now. Some coming over to my house. I got a field of hay they're going to cut. Get me a little money out it. I done raised—I used to have 150 heifers.	7:32
Stacey Scales	150 what?	8:32
Charles Pollard	Cows. 150 head of cattle. They done started to cutting that. Look like it's been cut in the last day. Well I probably—I'm supposed to start on mine next week.	8:33
Stacey Scales	Did you have White neighbors when you stayed here?	8:55
Charles Pollard	Oh, yeah. Yeah, they were White and Coloreds all around in here. And on back there was an old White man. He had a whole lot of White children my color. Two sisters had children by one White man, way back.	8:58
Stacey Scales	Really?	9:16
Charles Pollard	Way back, long when I was born. Of course they—One of them is still in Florida. Let's turn around up here on the top of this hill.	9:16
Stacey Scales	Okay.	9:32
Charles Pollard	That's where one of my neighbors live, there. John. That's where one of our deacons live, right here. We'll pull up in here in John—Pull around and turn around here, top of this hill. Gone out there further. Don't go so fast to make a turn right in here. We can see it pretty good.	9:37
Stacey Scales	Cool.	9:44
Charles Pollard	Don't get on the grass. Go to the road, this clay. Ms. Poet stays there. Her husband died. James Willie stays out there. He worked with that man on the grass mower. Roy Gridhouse stays out there, one of our deacons. He got a son live right there. They own those houses. John, me and him go out to the site together, he stays in that house. That's the old Apple Grove schoolhouse. The old church used to be in there, we called Apple Grove.	9:53
Stacey Scales	Apple Row?	10:46
Charles Pollard	Apple.	10:47
Stacey Scales	Apple. Okay.	10:48
Charles Pollard	Oak Grove. Way back years ago. It ain't nothing there now. Everything done rotten down. You've only got one, take it easy here now. This road here, this is the main one. I thought that was him. It is. He is out there cutting. Yeah.	10:50
Stacey Scales	What did you do?	11:29
Charles Pollard	Nobody. I don't have no machines. See I was going to cut mine, unless I give it to him and tell him to cut it. He has some cattle, one of my neighbors. Told him to give me something if he wanted. He didn't take it. He drove that far out there. Yeah, they're cutting that hay today. That's old Butch out there. Watch for these cars now, coming out here. You don't want to hit none of them. Yeah.	11:46
Charles Pollard	And that's the high school. Mike, my grandson there at the trailer, he went to school there right—Way back in the '60s.	12:14
Stacey Scales	Okay.	12:22
Charles Pollard	And they're all mixed up now. That's when the integration started. That's the old Judge Livingston house.	12:24
Stacey Scales	He's a judge in Notasulga?	12:46
Charles Pollard	Well that's back 50 years ago. Then they got a mayor up here. He runs the whiskey store and runs the store. It ain't but one store up here now.	12:46
Stacey Scales	Really?	12:51
Charles Pollard	One grocery store, and he runs—His wife and son runs it. We'll go by there, but he runs the whiskey store up the road. That's the old White people's cemetery. That's the old rental loft, where my wife—She used to work for them folks right there.	12:52
Stacey Scales	Where did attorney Gray live back then?	13:17
Charles Pollard	Who?	13:22
Stacey Scales	Gray.	13:22
Charles Pollard	He lived in Tuskegee.	13:50
Stacey Scales	Right.	13:50
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	13:50
Stacey Scales	Did he near you?	13:50
Charles Pollard	Take it easy now. Let's go down this way. Kind of stop and go down this way. Be sure you're clear.	13:51
Charles Pollard	That was the old Hope house. The back of it, but he's gone. And he lived to 102. He died. That's the old depot man. He used to have a depot here, a train stop. Don't nothing stop here now. Tullis is that way, Auburn straight up, 13 miles. We're going up towards the county line and turn around. We're in Macon County, but when we get up here and where we'll turn around, we'll be in Lee County.	13:51
Charles Pollard	That's the fellow work on cars, there. Trucks, everything. This what you call the town brain. Used to baptize in there. You know, it don't rain like it used to be.	14:18
Stacey Scales	They used to baptize where?	14:32
Charles Pollard	Don't go so fast. Right there. But you see grass done grew up in there now.	14:34
Stacey Scales	Do you know anybody that got baptized in there?	14:41
Charles Pollard	Yeah, I knew plenty of them baptized there. This was my wife's church. We stayed together 54 years. Now there were some houses bought and put up there, some double wide trailers. This Macedonia here. That was my wife's church. She died in '89. These are all Coloreds over here on this side. They bought those places and built those houses here, just a few years ago. These been over here a little while. Yeah, they've been there. That boy work at the VA Hospital. They've been there a long time.	14:42
Charles Pollard	And some of my friends stay there, over here. I don't think nobody—That boy died in there. The boy didn't have much judgment. He went to—Bennington sent him to the penitentiary.	15:20
Stacey Scales	What's the name of the place where they were baptizing people again?	15:55
Charles Pollard	Macedonia there, that church we had passed.	15:58
Stacey Scales	And then people from that church were baptized down in that water?	16:02
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Back years ago. They ain't had no baptizing this year, I don't think. Told you here. Put your lights on. We wanted to turn here.	16:04
Stacey Scales	Turn left?	16:24
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Don't go so fast. Pull up in there.	16:24
Stacey Scales	You want to go down there and come back up?	16:34
Charles Pollard	Just turn around. We're at the line now.	17:02
Charles Pollard	Someone's on a motorcycle. We used to go up to Opelika, because they had one of them. You could take your whole family on it, and a trailer behind it, and a rig look like a motorcycle. And had the trailer behind, carry his whole family on it. It was $17,000. That boy work at the VA Hospital, there. Yeah, that was Lee County we turned around in. All of this is Macon County. That girl that cooks for me, that's her mother's house. That's their house right back there to the right.	17:02
Stacey Scales	What was the biggest crop in this area?	17:44
Charles Pollard	Well ain't no crops now. It done-	17:46
Stacey Scales	No, you said, "50 years ago."	17:48
Charles Pollard	Oh, yeah. We used to farm cotton and corn.	17:51
Stacey Scales	Cotton and corn were the biggest?	17:53
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Peanuts. We raised a few peanuts one year, but cotton and corn were the main thing. Raised a lot of sugarcane. I used to make syrup. I made syrup from it.	17:55
Stacey Scales	How did people feel when Carver said to grow peanuts?	18:12
Charles Pollard	They—All right. Those that had their own land, they raised them. And the other ones raised them for the White folks. Didn't many Coloreds—We're going to cut to the right here now. To the right. See, we came from that way, we're going back here. This the old depot place. That's the gas place there. That's the FHA Co-Op Farm. Co-Op done bought everything in there. That's where I used to buy a lot of fertilizer from.	18:17
Charles Pollard	We're going on out here where I eat damn near every day. There's Colored people there, and Colored people, they own this here. This is some of my people here, the Grimmetts. The Grimmetts stayed there.	18:51
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah?	19:01
Charles Pollard	Yeah. White right there. That's where Grimes stayed at. Used to run the filling station down there, next to the inn, but he stays down there. He stopped running it and bought that place there.	19:02
Stacey Scales	The Grimmetts, that's your mother's side, right?	19:16
Charles Pollard	Yeah, on my mother's side, the Grimmetts. These are all White in here. Old. Done got old, most of them. And the young ones, gone. Some of them—That may be empty there. Well he died, but I reckon why—I think the fellows that built them over, they done sold them. They couldn't keep them. Yeah, White on both sides.	19:17
Charles Pollard	That's the road. We come right through there now, when we're going to get something to eat, we'll go back through there. That's where my nephew stays, there. One of my old friends, White lady, stays over here.	19:43
Stacey Scales	You know every house.	20:06
Charles Pollard	Yeah. I got a grape pauper there. We eat the grapes.	20:06
Stacey Scales	What used to be right here?	20:10
Charles Pollard	That's just an old pasture over there. They started that store back there, 50 years ago, but you know the—I don't know why that fellow died, what started it, I think. All of them are Whites right here now. A little old store there.	20:15
Charles Pollard	We used to work that land all out there, where that hay bale is up there. They done baled that hay out. Looks like they just baled it. I stop at that store here, about every day.	20:30
Charles Pollard	Oh, she's cutting her grass. They got a pretty—Some cattle in there off over here. We're going to turn up here at this post to the left. That's where we eat, out there.	20:41
Stacey Scales	Right here?	21:17
Charles Pollard	Yeah. You're going to go down in there and turn around. Straight on down in there.	21:17
Stacey Scales	So you come out here to eat every day?	21:38
Charles Pollard	Yeah. And put them—And back. Right back. [indistinct 00:21:44] in there. Now bag back. Straight back. Down a little. Don't hit the fence now. Because the fence belong to somebody else. Somebody hit it up there on the corner now. They've been hitting it. Yeah, we hit down there every day. That's Bubba Langford. He's the mayor. He built that for the senior citizens. He gets paid from the government I reckon, for that. Imagine he does. Behind the covered building. Old pole cat, I believe. You can smell those skunks, ain't you? Skunks, we call them pole cats.	21:39
Stacey Scales	Pole cats?	22:34
Charles Pollard	Yeah. That's the old cemetery. That's the old cemetery there. They bury one out there every once in a while. And then they got a new one right there, next to the slight, on the South side of that place where we eat. Where them—They got some pretty houses out there. That's what I used to raise at. I had some red Angus. I got them from out in Wisconsin. They came from out there.	22:35
Charles Pollard	Yeah, we used to work all that land out there. Those guys, they're cutting that hay, ain't they?	23:07
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm.	23:12
Charles Pollard	I believe they are packing it and baling it now. We'll cut through right there, where that car came out from.	23:15
Stacey Scales	Okay.	23:36
Charles Pollard	Yeah, my niece stay—One of my cousins stays there, Nadine. Her husband died 10 or 12 ago. They lived in Chicago but they came back home and bought that place there. He died.	23:37
Tywanna Whorley	You have missed seven calls.	23:54
Charles Pollard	Huh?	23:54
Stacey Scales	Somebody called you.	23:54
Tywanna Whorley	Seven calls.	23:54
Charles Pollard	And we had some corn groves in there. Old fellow stay right back there. When he come out to eat crumpets, his wife is on the—Well that's the one run the senior citizen's place. Yeah, they come out there to eat. That boy runs the cattle. Here comes one from over this way. That's going out towards Montgomery. We'll go back this way. This is the way we come to the site. Yeah, we're turning right here, to the right.	23:58
Stacey Scales	Right here?	24:38
Charles Pollard	Yeah. That just carries us back up into town. But that's the Baptist church there. That's the church over yonder, by the depot. One of my friend's, Bob, stays there. He came from Chicago and bought that house. A White lady had it. Yeah, and he stays out there. He has him one of those—What you call those—	24:41
Stacey Scales	A two car garage?	25:12
Charles Pollard	—Got him a short, new trucks. It's a van now.	25:14
Tywanna Whorley	Minivan?	25:16
Charles Pollard	Huh?	25:16
Stacey Scales	You can get melons for a dollar.	25:19
Charles Pollard	Y'all want to stop and get one?	25:21
Tywanna Whorley	I don't know where we're going to put it.	25:22
Charles Pollard	Put it in the car.	25:25
Stacey Scales	In the car. In the thing.	25:25
Charles Pollard	We buys them there.	25:26
Stacey Scales	Oh, really? They're just a dollar.	25:27
Charles Pollard	Yeah. I'll buy one for you. I'll buy one myself. Didn't you say a dollar?	25:27
Stacey Scales	Yeah, that's what I saw. I guess that's the—	25:37
Charles Pollard	Pull on up there. I know him. If we can get up.	25:39
Tywanna Whorley	Yeah, he got that sign.	25:42
Charles Pollard	Is they—Yeah, pull up in there.	25:42
Tywanna Whorley	Melons for a dollar.	25:42
Charles Pollard	Huh?	25:42
Stacey Scales	Do you know him?	25:42
Charles Pollard	Yeah, I know him. That's all right.	25:53
Stacey Scales	Okay?	25:55
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Well we can keep on. Yeah, that way, all these people around here, they're friendly people. Been knowing them all my life. And he just married this girl here.	26:01
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah?	26:13
Charles Pollard	Yeah. He just married her. She married one of the Reynolds' boys. And I had an uncle stayed back in there in an old shack. That was old Dr. Samuels' old home there. He have an old shack back there, and my uncle stayed in it. He stayed drunk all the time. He had a shack back there. He stayed in it, look out and the see the moon shine. Shining at night, in the old house. That's old [indistinct 00:26:46] house. Right there, that's John Candler's house. He has 220 acres there, adjoining me. I'll go back down there under the hill, below the service station.	26:14
Stacey Scales	This way?	26:57
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah, there. You know where you are now. You can come to the old circle anytime you want now. You done made a circle around.	26:57
Stacey Scales	All right.	27:03
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah. And you know you're around in town, looking, and don't go too fast. And just ride it [indistinct 00:27:17]. It's just playing on different people. I never did have no trouble out of people and I've been around here all my life.	27:10
Stacey Scales	How did you manage to survive? Like—	27:24
Charles Pollard	Nothing. Just going on working.	27:29
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	27:31
Charles Pollard	Yeah, and they were all the time talking about the integration and things. I ain't never seen no difference in nothing since I been coming up here. These White folks go everywhere, fishing, but didn't go to church together. Well, we still don't go to church together.	27:32
Stacey Scales	Right.	27:49
Charles Pollard	No.	27:49
Stacey Scales	Did anyone ever get jealous of you because you had a lot of land?	27:54
Charles Pollard	No. No. Always did—	27:55
Stacey Scales	You said they took your land once.	27:58
Charles Pollard	Yeah. We had plenty of land. Well we're going to drive by the place. And you see, we used to work all this land. And what people's going to hire you? What if they didn't have nowhere to stay and nowhere else? They had to work on halves. And my daddy was working people on halves. When I was big enough—	27:58
Stacey Scales	What's half mean?	28:15
Charles Pollard	Huh?	28:16
Stacey Scales	What do you mean, "on half"?	28:16
Charles Pollard	Got them working on halves. Cotton and corn, and he'd take it over.	28:17
Stacey Scales	Was he good to you?	28:21
Charles Pollard	Well he had his half, and if it ain't pay enough out, he'd take all of it. But my daddy didn't do that. It was White folks had plenty of them on it. But you see, I ain't never worked on half. My old great-grandmother had a home when I was born. She had 20 acres they gave her. This was still back in slavery time. Yeah, we used to work this land right here, back down to my house. And I worked for the grass farm down there, going towards Tuskegee. That grass farm, I worked that one year. Made so much cotton on it, that man wouldn't rent it to me the next winter. Wanted me to work it on half. I said, "Hell no. That's slavery time stuff." And I said, "In other words, y'all don't like Black folks no ways. I ain't studying about you. If you don't want to rent it, I could—I had more land than I could use."	28:23
Charles Pollard	That's where that old planter mill—Those are Coloreds all out there, but the Whites run the store. Well a Colored lady be in there sometimes, they say. I think she got a Colored lady behind the—That's one of those good old White folks right there. She made that out there. She got a grandchildren a pool right behind that fence. That's her house right there on the—That's her son there, and she's in the other house. That's her whole family there, and she built that pond. She has a lot of grandchildren.	29:12
Charles Pollard	That's one of our boys out there. Now that, he bought that place. He call himself buying it, I don't think he do it that much. That's a block school. That's where the headstart went. Now the place there, from here on back, down on right where we used to work—	29:51
Stacey Scales	We've got to stop at the school and church.	30:08
Charles Pollard	Yeah, that's where we were—Go up under there. That way. You can pick up some, just take it easy. I used to work on both sides of the road. I made 30 bales of cotton from right there, down to the line yonder. Back where that shed in the road done got off the slab, that's where it crosses, right there. Right there where the car is now. That's where they go across the road. Another belonged to Colored people, on down below me. Yeah, from right on—The first house over there, out the sink.	30:17
Charles Pollard	Well Colored people used to live along in here, but they were working on halves, and some of them were renting. Don't nobody stay there. All the older heads gone, and him that got it, he's getting old and they ain't got no children. Nobody got land no how, because when they're dead, they're gone. Ain't nobody still out. This Colored all right here. That boy now, he got a pretty good—We sold him some land. At least we didn't sell it to him. Boy that had it got mixed up with the—We'll turn in here now. We'll turn in.	30:51
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah?	31:30
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Look. Watch. There you go. Come on over where you won't hit your door. See, now we're moving too slow, huh?	31:40
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm.	31:41
Charles Pollard	You know you got—You've still got to wait yet. Got to get him up here with some dirt here on this road. I didn't know it was in this kind of shape. They all had to—Go right up in the front there, if you want to.	31:45
Stacey Scales	Right here?	32:13
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah. See where it's marked off here, where you—if you want to take—Just don't hit it.	32:13
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:32:29].	32:19
Charles Pollard	Want to make some pictures and [indistinct 00:32:32] one thing or another?	32:30
Stacey Scales	Yeah. I just need to—We're going to reconnect this when you get out.	32:32
Charles Pollard	—I been tending all my life. All of my life.	32:36
Tywanna Whorley	And it was organized in 1870? Wow.	32:36
Charles Pollard	Yeah. That's a stone up there where—	32:51
Tywanna Whorley	In 1870.	32:52
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	32:52
Tywanna Whorley	That's a long time.	32:52
Charles Pollard	Yeah. My daddy was born in 1881. He left us in '77.	33:00
Tywanna Whorley	Oh wow.	33:03
Charles Pollard	He left on. Of course all us done outlived him now. But my mother died young. She was on the Grimmett side.	33:08
Stacey Scales	What's the—Who is the earliest minister you remember listening to?	33:16
Charles Pollard	Was he a Woods? Is it on there?	33:23
Tywanna Whorley	The earliest one?	33:23
Stacey Scales	Woods?	33:23
Charles Pollard	Woods or Young. Caleb Young, I think. Was some of the first ones.	33:28
Stacey Scales	Okay.	33:32
Charles Pollard	First ones for me, was W.M. Burton. Burton Funeral Home, here in Tuskegee, right on Arbor Road. Well Burton runs all the undertakers now, you know.	33:33
Stacey Scales	Okay.	33:42
Charles Pollard	Yeah. When I was big enough, it was Poe and another one. Day and Poe. Now my mother and wife, they came up, the horses brought them up to the cemetery. That's what we had back there then, didn't have no vaults and things. Just had a wooden.	33:42
Stacey Scales	Right.	34:08
Charles Pollard	Yeah. I married when I was 18 years old.	34:08
Stacey Scales	Really?	34:11
Charles Pollard	Yeah, I married too early. But anyhow.	34:12
Stacey Scales	You said, "too early"?	34:16
Charles Pollard	Yeah. That daughter there, you see there? That's my daughter.	34:17
Stacey Scales	Oh, really?	34:22
Charles Pollard	Yeah. And she's 69. She was born in the '20s too, 1925.	34:22
Stacey Scales	For real?	34:24
Tywanna Whorley	She doesn't look it.	34:28
Stacey Scales	Yeah, she doesn't.	34:28
Tywanna Whorley	She looks young.	34:28
Charles Pollard	Well she's—That's when she was born, '25. 1925, March the 22nd. And I lost my wife in '25, second day of July. And her aunt raised her, but all of them gone on. And then her husband and brothers, all of them gone on.	34:30
Stacey Scales	Going to walk down to the school?	35:00
Charles Pollard	Huh?	35:01
Stacey Scales	Going to walk down to the school?	35:01
Charles Pollard	Oh, yes. If you want to walk down there, you—	35:01
Stacey Scales	Okay.	35:01
Charles Pollard	Yeah, we'll walk down there. And talk and make some pictures, if you want. And talk. Yeah, this is my place.	35:02
Tywanna Whorley	Do they still hold meetings in the church?	35:08
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	35:08
Tywanna Whorley	I mean, in the school.	35:08
Charles Pollard	They don't—They just have different little meetings down there, and sometimes they have picnics. On a Saturday, raise a little money. Some of them want to raise a little money for something, put on a fish fry.	35:22
Tywanna Whorley	Oh, a fish fry?	35:33
Charles Pollard	Fish fry. Top of that, where we're going up there, that's where I used—I bought a place up there, $5500. I bought it from the old White folks up here in those—Bought it from a Yankee, and he was from [indistinct 00:35:52], Illinois. Old man Boeing. I bought that place down on top of the hill where our cemetery is.	35:35
Stacey Scales	Did the people from the church make the school?	35:58
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	36:00
Stacey Scales	Or they put the [indistinct 00:36:02]—	36:00
Charles Pollard	Yeah, they put up that school. That school was put up—When that school was put up? I reckon, '45.	36:09
Tywanna Whorley	1945?	36:15
Charles Pollard	Yeah. I imagine that, back then they put it there because when I was little—because I didn't go to school there any.	36:16
Tywanna Whorley	Okay.	36:28
Charles Pollard	Because I had got—You know I wasn't married. Wait a minute, I wasn't married at that time, but I had got married during the time that school—Anyhow, it was built along there, in there. It was built in the '30s. Yeah.	36:28
Tywanna Whorley	So it was a one room?	36:54
Charles Pollard	Oh, no. That's just like up here. It was—Now in the old school, where I went to, it was sitting right out there, about those pines there.	36:57
Tywanna Whorley	Okay.	37:01
Charles Pollard	And it was just a one room, and it had a little house on each side for our jackets. And it had a little—had something you could put your lunch in there. We'd bring a lunch to school. Sometimes I'd just put mine in my pocket.	37:07
Tywanna Whorley	In your pocket?	37:22
Charles Pollard	Yeah. But had me a butter biscuit or something. Have a sausage patty in there, a slice of meat, and wrap it up in paper and just put it in my pocket. Just to the schoolhouse. And we had to pull off our jacket. We'd just let our lunch stay in our jacket.	37:22
Tywanna Whorley	What happened to the school?	37:41
Charles Pollard	Where the other one, the old school, they tore it down.	37:46
Tywanna Whorley	Oh, they tore it down?	37:48
Charles Pollard	Yeah. And built that [indistinct 00:37:52].	37:50
Tywanna Whorley	So did the money for this school come from donations from the church?	37:52
Charles Pollard	Yeah. People built around Shiloh here. Built that school. Oh, they got a little help from the—Ms. Roosevelt was the first one came down here. Ms. Roosevelt, she came down here with those coons and things. You know Tuskegee didn't want that John Andrews Hospital. I mean, VA—	37:59
Tywanna Whorley	VA Hospital.	38:25
Charles Pollard	—VA Hospital, down here. Ms. Roosevelt came down here and got with those coons, and all of them out of Washington. Told them that if they didn't let those boys in there, they would blow it up. Yeah.	38:28
Stacey Scales	How would you all get to school?	38:33
Charles Pollard	Huh?	38:33
Stacey Scales	How would you all get here?	38:42
Charles Pollard	Walk up here.	38:43
Stacey Scales	How far was that?	38:45
Charles Pollard	Back down to the house, a mile and a quarter. You better not be late.	38:46
Tywanna Whorley	Really?	38:54
Stacey Scales	What would happen?	38:54
Charles Pollard	Children now, you can't get them up on time to catch the bus. Catch the bus, can't get them up on time to catch the bus. You know children, most of them out there in the country, they stay in the bed too late. And then the—See, TV's running these young children. Of course, that's all—I've got three there. Yeah, three there. Willie, Bubba, and Carla. They've got their eyes set on that TV, and I say, "Y'all children, y'all sitting down there looking at the—looking in your book and you're seeing the TV. Can't learn like that. Need to cut it off." But you see, all of them looking. And that's it.	38:56
Charles Pollard	This where we were when that Tuskegee study was going on.	39:46
Stacey Scales	Oh, really?	39:49
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	39:49
Stacey Scales	Hm.	39:49
Charles Pollard	Right up here on top of this hill. Got a bunch of us up here. Nurse Rivers, Dr. Smith, [indistinct 00:40:02] Long.	39:52
Tywanna Whorley	Did they—How long did they hold school here? I mean, was it year round or like six months, or [indistinct 00:40:13]?	40:11
Charles Pollard	That's what I was telling you, that we didn't have nothing but seven months school.	40:12
Tywanna Whorley	Seven?	40:20
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Seven months, that's all I had. You left there and—Well later on, and we went to [indistinct 00:40:30]. Yeah, I went up and down those steps many of time, but I didn't go to school there. But you know, in and out.	40:20
Tywanna Whorley	Yeah.	40:41
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	40:41
Tywanna Whorley	So is it like two rooms in there now?	40:42
Charles Pollard	Oh, yeah. That whole—See, you go in either one of these doors, and—	40:45
Stacey Scales	Can we go in it?	40:47
Tywanna Whorley	It's probably locked.	40:47
Charles Pollard	It's locked, ain't it? This here—Yeah, it's locked. I don't know, it's just benches sitting around in there. Nothing but benches I don't—	40:55
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:41:12]?	41:10
Charles Pollard	Huh?	41:10
Tywanna Whorley	The benches?	41:10
Charles Pollard	You see, they been stopped school there. See, all the schools you see—Reverend Padgett, y'all heard me talk about Reverend Padgett, he's the first one started the—all of the children—He bought a bus himself and hauled the children to Tuskegee. For two years.	41:19
Tywanna Whorley	Two years?	41:38
Charles Pollard	Before the county took it over. He was 63, I think, when they—These children were already riding the bus. They made them buy those yellow buses. What, some horses up there?	41:47
Stacey Scales	Yep.	42:00
Charles Pollard	Yeah, plenty of those things around here.	42:00
Stacey Scales	So why did they build a school up here?	42:00
Charles Pollard	Well that's where—It was built along in the '30s, during that study.	42:01
Stacey Scales	Okay.	42:02
Charles Pollard	Because that's where we were, at the church. And—	42:02
Stacey Scales	So they built it specifically for the study, or they just built it because [indistinct 00:42:15]—	42:12
Charles Pollard	No, this was a school.	42:12
Stacey Scales	Okay. So they just built a school for the kids?	42:12
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	42:12
Stacey Scales	Okay.	42:15
Charles Pollard	Yeah. That's where our school was at.	42:15
Tywanna Whorley	So did everyone who belonged to the church, did their children come here, or did you have other children from the other community able to play?	42:16
Charles Pollard	Just in this community.	42:30
Tywanna Whorley	Okay.	42:30
Charles Pollard	It was another—Now we're talking truck stop over yonder, on the freeway. Well people on that—Between here and down there, it was school back in there, Clemonsdale. That's where they went to. My daddy was born down there, by the truck stop.	42:31
Tywanna Whorley	Who built this school?	42:45
Charles Pollard	Huh?	42:45
Tywanna Whorley	Did—I mean, who built it? Did—	42:45
Charles Pollard	You know, county. County and the Tuskegee Institute.	42:52
Tywanna Whorley	Oh, wow. Looks pretty sturdy.	43:07
Stacey Scales	What was the name of it?	43:08
Charles Pollard	Huh?	43:08
Stacey Scales	What's the name of the school?	43:10
Charles Pollard	Shiloh School.	43:11
Stacey Scales	Shiloh School?	43:12
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah.	43:15
Tywanna Whorley	Did you have kindergarten all the way up to sixth grade, or—	43:17
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	43:19
Tywanna Whorley	Really?	43:19
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Well at kindergarten, you know it started out here way—Just a few years back.	43:21
Stacey Scales	Let me get a shot.	43:23
Charles Pollard	From the first grade.	43:23
Tywanna Whorley	Uh-huh. Did—The teachers, did y'all hire the teachers, or did the county hire them?	43:36
Charles Pollard	County hired them.	43:39
Tywanna Whorley	Oh, really?	43:39
Charles Pollard	Yeah, county paid them.	43:39
Tywanna Whorley	Black teachers?	43:39
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah, the county paid them.	43:39
Tywanna Whorley	What? It's been lasting a long time.	43:55
Charles Pollard	Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's been there a heap of years. Because you see, '63, they cut—All them in Tuskegee. And you see, all—because the children up here, they all went to school here, because they didn't go down below to Tuskegee, to that school. That's the reason I'm telling you to go over to North Salem. Wasn't no point in leaving North Salem, just to get any grades down there. Below Tuskegee. All the other counties went in though, but this one up here didn't go. We stayed here at this school. And then they were going up there anyway, because you see, they ain't had no schools here in 30 years. Just had them little—You know how people have kindergarten—	44:03
Stacey Scales	Can we get a picture of you in front of the school?	44:41
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	44:44
Tywanna Whorley	Well we've got to walk over—	44:45
Stacey Scales	If you could stand right here, I could just kind of—	44:46
Tywanna Whorley	Turn around.	44:46
Stacey Scales	—do a background.	44:46
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	44:46
Tywanna Whorley	You can turn around. I—	44:46
Stacey Scales	You want to get further? That's good? That's good. Okay. You're ready?	44:55
Charles Pollard	Ready to say something, so tell me. Cheese. Cheese. Yeah.	45:06
Charles Pollard	Yeah, and Nurse Rivers, she made a heap of trips up here. She finally died. Lost her mind up there in Opelika. I had to go up there and get here.	45:14
Stacey Scales	So where would you all eat in here?	45:29
Charles Pollard	Huh?	45:31
Stacey Scales	Where would you all eat in the school?	45:32
Charles Pollard	We'd bring our lunch.	45:33
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah?	45:33
Charles Pollard	Yeah, bring a lunch from home. And some of them back there then, you know it just depends on whether—who raised them for you to—Because I'll tell them, "I don't like somebody said 'poor.' I ain't been poor in my life." I've been working all my life. I had pneumonia in '21. I had it again in '31. And the same doctor, doctored on me both times, he died in '33. He was gone the next November. He had double pneumonia. He went in. But he had one child, and he was in the post office, but he retired from the post office. I've been on this ground all my life, church and school.	45:38
Stacey Scales	So the church owns all this land right here?	46:27
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah, they own this.	46:29
Tywanna Whorley	Right. And you better not be late getting to school too.	46:33

Charles Pollard	Well, you can't tell winter from summer—	0:00
Stacey Scales	That's true.	0:03
Charles Pollard	—now, it don't look like. Don't have no real cold weather. When you've seen an icicle? You used to see icicles on the ground. I've been wearing shoes all my life.	0:06
Tywanna Whorley	Were there some students who came without shoes?	0:16
Charles Pollard	Huh?	0:21
Tywanna Whorley	Were there students who came without shoes?	0:22
Charles Pollard	Oh, yeah. Come barefoot. Yes, some of them come barefoot.	0:23
Tywanna Whorley	Was that road here?	0:30
Charles Pollard	Huh?	0:32
Tywanna Whorley	Was that road right there or was that—	0:32
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	0:34
Tywanna Whorley	—man made?	0:34
Charles Pollard	Yeah, that's been a road ever since I've been big enough.	0:35
Stacey Scales	Was it paved like that?	0:38
Charles Pollard	No.	0:38
Tywanna Whorley	Or gravel?	0:38
Charles Pollard	Dirt road.	0:38
Stacey Scales	It was a dirt road.	0:38
Charles Pollard	Get stuck down there on it. I pulled a many of them out mud, coming up the hill from our cemetery back there we stopped at.	0:45
Stacey Scales	How were teachers viewed in the community? How did people feel about teachers?	0:54
Charles Pollard	Fine. They'd whoop your—tear up with—We'd go down the swamp and some of the fellows would get them hickory switches, and some of them would gather just a regular switch. And they didn't do much, no. We got our lessons. And the only thing, me and the other boy, we used to chew up balls of paper and take and throw it across and hit one another across—in the schoolhouse. And you better not go to Sunday school with chewing no chewing gum.	0:57
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	1:33
Charles Pollard	Didn't allow you to do that. Don't even bring none in your mouth. Because the teacher come to Sunday school too. Catch on Sunday, she'd see about you that Monday morning.	1:35
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah?	1:46
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Of course, since then, children do what they want to do. These past few years there's been fighting in the school. And that's one thing, we didn't have no fighting, which when I was coming up. Running around in the sand. One thing I told them, "I'd rather fall out—I'd rather grow up, stay up in there, than go into water." I don't have nothing to do with the water. Going up in there, that's quick death. But if I'm down there in the water—Somebody said, "If you're a good swimmer and one in there and catch you, he might drown you, trying to keep from drowning."	1:48
Stacey Scales	That's true.	2:30
Charles Pollard	Of course, I never did—Well, I used to go to the creek over there in Jonesboro, our home creek over here. Just walk around the water after going to Sunday school. We went to Sunday school when we were coming up. What is that down by that tree there? The root of that tree. It looks like cat there. Do you see it?	2:32
Tywanna Whorley	Yeah, it does look like—It's not a cat though.	2:36
Stacey Scales	It's just a piece of wood.	2:36
Tywanna Whorley	Piece of wood.	2:36
Charles Pollard	Is it?	2:36
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	2:36
Charles Pollard	I looked there and saw the tail, myself. First thing I thought about, a cat.	2:36
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:03:03].	2:36
Stacey Scales	It looks like a cat. Yeah, it looks like a cat right there.	2:36
Charles Pollard	Now that, just under—	2:36
Stacey Scales	The root?	2:36
Charles Pollard	It's a—You could go under that there.	2:36
Stacey Scales	Oh, those bricks right there?	2:36
Charles Pollard	Yeah, there. There's a place under there that goes around under there.	2:36
Stacey Scales	All right.	2:36
Charles Pollard	Kept the wood under there. We kept the wood there.	2:36
Stacey Scales	Okay. How would the people dress in the school? Would—	3:39
Charles Pollard	Dress like you dress. We used to buy fertilizing sacks, and some of them make the dresses and things out of them cotton sacks.	3:44
Tywanna Whorley	Mm-hmm. Burlap sacks? Burlap.	3:53
Charles Pollard	Cotton sacks. Yeah. But now they got a whole paper bag. Make 50 pounds, 25 pounds. Used to be had 200 pounds fertilizer, take two or three of them sacks, three or four shirts. Make them underwear and wear it sometimes. I been walking all my life. I'm 88 years old.	3:55
Stacey Scales	Oh, say what?	4:09
Charles Pollard	Thirteenth of this month, I'll be three months. Eighty-eight and three months. Fourth month in 1306. When I first married my wife, I stayed with her 54 years, I used to walk [indistinct 00:04:51] from Notasulga, down home.	4:25
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	4:53
Tywanna Whorley	Oh my goodness.	4:54
Charles Pollard	I tell them I—If I wanted to, I could walk to Tuskegee.	4:55
Stacey Scales	From Notasulga?	4:57
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	4:57
Tywanna Whorley	Oh my gosh.	4:57
Charles Pollard	You couldn't walk that far, could you?	4:57
Tywanna Whorley	No, sir.	4:57
Charles Pollard	Yeah, I can walk. I've been walking all my life. Ain't nobody had to help me do nothing. I get up in the morning, I have to sit up there and then my—Of course, I do a little wobbling a little bit. My blood level, poor leg circulation. And I can still holler loud. Some of them who had some meeting up here this week, this past week—If you don't feel nothing, don't say nothing when the preacher going on. If you feel something, say anything you want to say. Preach. Like it. I love that singing. I do. I love that singing. Preaching too. Good for you.	5:06
Tywanna Whorley	Mm-hmm.	6:09
Charles Pollard	Yeah. The person going along in the world, don't say nothing much. He can't enjoy his own self. You got to jump around. Like that fellow was talking up there, talk and say something. I've been far as Cheyenne, Wyoming, Colorado. I got people in Maine, back to Mexico. Had a girl stayed in Montreal, for 11 years, but she's in the northern part of California now. She was out there when they had that earthquake.	6:10
Tywanna Whorley	Earthquake?	6:42
Charles Pollard	But it was in the southern part. We had a trip out there, but I never did go out there. We went to Baltimore, Maryland about three or four weeks ago. I had been to Baltimore, Maryland, back in '51.	6:43
Tywanna Whorley	'51?	6:59
Charles Pollard	I went to Niagara Falls.	7:01
Tywanna Whorley	Oh, you've been to Canada too?	7:06
Charles Pollard	No, not—I don't mean—The one in New York there.	7:08
Tywanna Whorley	Okay. You ever been to New Hampshire?	7:11
Charles Pollard	And we went to New York, and we went on out there to Long Island, New York, where they raise strawberries and white potatoes. We carried some boys up there and left them.	7:17
Tywanna Whorley	You left them?	7:29
Charles Pollard	They worked up there. Hector Holiday, he and—He went to school up there in Connecticut, so after Tuskegee, they were staying there. That's my older sister's children, four of them. And aren't y'all from Houston, Texas?	7:30
Tywanna Whorley	Uh-uh.	7:47
Charles Pollard	But anyhow, he's the president of that school down there.	7:47
Stacey Scales	Oh, really?	7:47
Charles Pollard	He's got over 200,000 children, and he's the superintendent of them. When he went there, they didn't have but one old White lady teaching. Now he's the head of the school, and got 40 working under him.	7:56
Tywanna Whorley	That's all right.	8:10
Charles Pollard	Give him $100,000 a year. He comes over here pretty regular—	8:11
Stacey Scales	Okay.	8:17
Charles Pollard	—with my oldest sister. They stayed down there with little Tuskegee, down there with little green fork. They got a home down there. Holiday. They finished in—Well, Hector's the only one finished. He got all of his education. And Kenny, Kenny said, "Uncle Charlie, I can get a good job without going to school." He makes three or $4,000 a month. He works for the Shell Oil Company, out there on the water, there in Houston, Texas.	8:21
Charles Pollard	They been wanting him to go over in Africa and operate, but he said he didn't want to leave his family and go over there and stay. He's going to stay there with his family. That year when we was out to—Where were we? Columbus, Ohio, I think. Out when there was an earthquake that year, and out there in—What's that place? Over the pond there? DuBois. Not—What is it?	8:50
Stacey Scales	What place is that?	9:29
Charles Pollard	I was trying to think of what they called them boys. I said across the pond over there, where the bridge fell in that year. Kenny used to be over there. It's out west. Montreal? No, not Montreal. But there's a place out there and they used to play. The Dodgers beat them one year, and then Tommy Lasorda went over there and beat them twice, and they come back over here and beat him. Come back from—What's that other place over there? It's—	9:32
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:10:11]?	10:07
Charles Pollard	No. Italy? No, it ain't Italy.	10:12
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:10:13], I don't know. You said from—	10:12
Charles Pollard	From Niagara Falls.	10:12
Julius Whales	You're talking about Albany, New York, surrounding area?	10:12
Stacey Scales	Canada? Up in Canada?	10:12
Charles Pollard	Well, it wasn't Canada, but it was crossing another nation.	10:12
Stacey Scales	Alaska or—I don't know.	10:28
Tywanna Whorley	England?	10:28
Charles Pollard	But anyhow, it's a bridge across there in the year that they had a little light earthquake out there. And Kenny was working with the company, and they sent him up there, and they had a little earthquake. And in the end of that bridge, what drove that fall, it's a big lake you go across. Just like down here in Pensacola, Florida, it's over the little water right after you leave Miami.	10:38
Julius Whales	Yeah, that's true.	11:05
Charles Pollard	Pensacola, Florida. Well that little place back up here, northwest.	11:05
Julius Whales	Oh, okay.	11:07
Charles Pollard	Anyhow, it's back up there, northwest. They sent Kenny up there from Houston, Texas. And the bridge—And there's a ball team over there. And the daddy is the owner of them, and I think his son do the managing. Korea? No, it ain't that. Anyhow, it's somewhere between Mexico and Maine. But anyhow, I just know Tommy Lasorda. They went over there and beat them twice, and then they come back over here and beat them twice. Two years.	11:07
Stacey Scales	Who is that? I was trying to think of it.	12:16
Charles Pollard	Huh?	12:16
Tywanna Whorley	Yeah, only thing I can think of is Japan, has a baseball team.	12:16
Charles Pollard	This here is a little pond. Right up here in the northwest. You go across there. It's a bridge across. It's like it is down in—	12:18
Stacey Scales	Niagara? I don't know where up there.	12:24
Charles Pollard	Niagara Falls? No, my daughter—I've got a daughter in Niagara Falls. She's a registered nurse up there. She was down to the family reunion here in—seventh to the 10th, we were in Atlanta. Family reunion. In Columbus, Ohio, year before last. Have them every two years. Yeah, girl stays up there in Niagara Falls. And Odella down there in Brooklyn, New York. They were down with the school down there. The name of that little thing on up there, across that pond? And they had a little earthquake out there a year or two ago.	12:26
Stacey Scales	Oh, really?	13:13
Charles Pollard	They sent Kenny up there.	13:15
Stacey Scales	Where, in California?	13:18
Charles Pollard	Yes, out from California there.	13:20
Stacey Scales	Okay.	13:22
Charles Pollard	It's back up northwest and—And I always looked at it. I look at it all the ballgames, but this year, it's all a different story kind of, with the ballgames.	13:23
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	13:31
Charles Pollard	And that team over there, I love to see them play, because the boy, he always keep his hair—pulling his hat off, feeling his hair, pushing his hat back. Headed back down.	13:34
Stacey Scales	Do you remember the old Negro teams?	13:46
Charles Pollard	Huh?	13:48
Stacey Scales	Do you remember the Negro teams? Baseball teams.	13:49
Charles Pollard	Oh, yeah.	13:54
Stacey Scales	You ever see them play?	13:55
Charles Pollard	Yeah. At least our battalion.	13:57
Stacey Scales	Who did you see?	13:59
Charles Pollard	Carver Bailey, Joe Morse, Raymond Tripp, Luther Morse, Bubba Morse, Albert Robertson, and Siebert, all them were old ball players. We used to be where—We used to go way up there in Society Hill, going towards Columbus, on two of those wagons. Go up there on two of those wagons. Used to go over there to East Tullis on two of those wagons. Go right through here.	14:02
Stacey Scales	Were the games segregated?	14:29
Charles Pollard	Huh?	14:31
Stacey Scales	Did you have to sit someplace else, other than the White folks?	14:32
Charles Pollard	We didn't have no White folks in the game then. I never did play with no ball, with no White folks. I played when I'd go in the school, but I never did play no more ball. I used to catch a little fouler. This place I bought, that's where I was born, [indistinct 00:14:52].	14:35
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:14:53]?	14:50
Charles Pollard	Hm?	14:50
Tywanna Whorley	I was saying, y'all don't have church every Sunday. Y'all have it the first and third Sunday?	15:13
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Used to have it once a month.	15:13
Tywanna Whorley	Once a month?	15:13
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Every third Sunday. But now we have it—	15:13
Tywanna Whorley	Twice a month.	15:13
Charles Pollard	Yeah, twice a month. And some of the churches have it every Sunday.	15:13
Tywanna Whorley	Yeah.	15:13
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Well you see, it used to be a heap of people around here, but you see, most of young people now, they're in town. Ain't nobody out in the country [indistinct 00:15:29] here now. And the children born now, they leave, go someplace. From my house back to the truck stop, it used to be plenty houses back in there. With farming back there then, we always made plenty money farming. You just—I made plenty money, spent a plenty of it. And back during that study, they gave me 32 and a half thousand dollars. And I bought a—I gave my wife $10,000.	15:15
Stacey Scales	What study is that?	16:06
Charles Pollard	Huh? That's the Tuskegee Study, syphilis study.	16:07
Stacey Scales	Oh, what you were telling me about?	16:11
Charles Pollard	Yeah. They gave me 32 and a half thousand dollars. Somebody asked me did I spend it. I said, "Hell yeah, that's what your money's for, spend." But you make money with money.	16:12
Stacey Scales	Right.	16:23
Charles Pollard	You don't—	16:23
Julius Whales	[indistinct 00:16:27].	16:24
Charles Pollard	I got a—At least my sister passed on now. He down there to the house now. He's got the old timer's disease now. Don't know—Everything is gone, old timer's. And he don't know nothing, but he goes to church every Sunday, and goes out to eat every day. He married my sister. They are—Some of them don't like for me to tell it, but he had $800 when he married my sister. They married when they were 25 or 30. And they have a daughter who was born in '39. First day of '39.	16:27
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:17:13].	17:07
Charles Pollard	She graduated. Dot came on eight years after she came on. She's in Atlanta. She works in the big library up there. Berta and them, her husband, they teach around up there in Washington. But Laura and Melvin, that's where they are. They went to work up in Washington. They got an education, but I expect I made more money than they made. Farming. You farm, watch the market and study. Cotton, corn, anything.	17:14
Charles Pollard	But that was my brother-in-law down there. Nobody there but him, and he's old timing. Got the old timer's. He don't know nothing.	17:59
Julius Whales	Do you remember—	18:17
Charles Pollard	Never did know nothing.	18:18
Julius Whales	—Do you remember Marcus Garvey?	18:19
Charles Pollard	Huh?	18:20
Julius Whales	Do you remember Marcus Garvey back then? With the UNIA, Marcus Garvey? Back then, a lot of places in the South were doing a lot with the UNIA back then, with Marcus Garvey.	18:21
Stacey Scales	Marcus Garvey, from New York. United Negro Improvement Association, was—Do you remember him?	18:33
Charles Pollard	I don't know. I've been free all my life, as far as I'm concerned. I know when everything was going on, and when King—	18:42
Stacey Scales	Right.	18:57
Charles Pollard	—I was raised down there at that home. I wasn't raised in that house. I was raised—I grew up three quarters, in back of my house. That's 340, and I was born on that 40 back there. But when I moved up on top of the hill from the home house down there, I was two years old. And I had a sister born, and she had some kind of scales. Dr. Giles said he didn't know nothing about that back then. He didn't know nothing to it. And he said, "Get some of her clothes and put them in the stove and burn them up, and that scale will leave her." And that worked.	18:57
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah?	19:34
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	19:34
Stacey Scales	Some of her clothes in the stove?	19:34
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Burn them, let her smell it. That broke it up.	19:34
Stacey Scales	Did they talk about stuff like that a lot down here? The spells and spirits?	19:34
Charles Pollard	Some of them did, but I never did think—I used to go all through the cemetery, trying to find something. I ain't seen nothing out there. Never. I'll pass through up here, all times of the night, and I'll ride my mule. I'll go off looking for cows after school. Down in our home, we had cows would go right up here to fellow's oat field. But I'd go up there at night and get them, and bring them on back down. Railroad them on back down to the house. That's when we were turning them out, to run out everywhere. But coming home, you had to keep them off the highway. Don't get—Rest all your cows [indistinct 00:20:34]—	19:35
Stacey Scales	Did you believe that work? The spell?	20:34
Charles Pollard	Huh?	20:35
Stacey Scales	The clothes, did you believe it?	20:36
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	20:37
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	20:38
Charles Pollard	Yeah. I had pneumonia twice. They thought I was going to leave here, but it get walked around. The doctor waited so long, he sent me one out. And the lady worked on me, midwife they had back then, midwives. She was there with me, both of those times, '21 and '31.	20:38
Stacey Scales	You had a Black doctor then?	20:57
Charles Pollard	Uh-uh, White.	20:59
Stacey Scales	Okay.	20:59
Charles Pollard	Didn't have no Black then. I never did have no—I used to go to Dr. Hughes them, way up here then. Of course, during that study, Dr. Dilbert was giving those shots.	21:06
Stacey Scales	Doctor who?	21:09
Charles Pollard	Dilbert.	21:09
Stacey Scales	Okay.	21:09
Charles Pollard	He gave me those shots in my hip. In my backbone there.	21:19
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm. How did you feel after that?	21:23
Charles Pollard	Felt good.	21:26
Stacey Scales	Okay.	21:27
Charles Pollard	But some of them, you have to stay still. What they had, a nurse on this side and a nurse over here, nurse on my head and one—Dr. Dilbert, back there in the chair and I had to draw up there and stay right still, and it's four or five of them doing it. But when I had in that Dr. Capa, in Montgomery, I went down there one day and got signed up. Went back the next time, and he gave me one in the same spine. He put me in the bed, told me what to do, just lay up there.	21:27
Charles Pollard	At least lay on my side, draw up my legs, and put my hand down on my knee and sit down on my heel, and lay over on my back side. And he got back there, right there, back there, and stuck that thing. Told me, "Just be still." Just took me and him, did that. Put that back there, and I just laid still there, and drew as tight as I could. And hold it here, and he—Go in there around. See, he'd go in those joints. Go in that needle up there.	22:04
Stacey Scales	They were giving you money for that?	22:35
Charles Pollard	No, they weren't giving me no money.	22:37
Stacey Scales	No?	22:38
Charles Pollard	Uh-uh. They put a spinal in me. I had to have a spinal. Dr. Capasi already had done had another one, but he—	22:45
Stacey Scales	I remember—Is that when you found out? You called attorney Gray?	22:49
Charles Pollard	That was the first beginning of it, when we talked to him, 1932, '33. Yeah, right down there. She came out—Well I was at the stockyard, and that White lady came up. She was from Birmingham. She had been to [indistinct 00:23:18]. They said—I had called down home and the girl said I was gone to the stock market. And I was down to the whipper stock yard, and she came down there and found me. Took me out there and talked a little, and whooped me. Then the next morning, three or four of them—That's the day I went out and Fred—And they had to—Nurse said, "Gone over there to Fred. Gone over there to Fred."	22:55
Stacey Scales	What did Fred say?	23:51
Charles Pollard	He just took the case.	23:54
Stacey Scales	Okay.	23:56
Charles Pollard	Took the case, yep.	23:57
Stacey Scales	Didn't the president have something to do with it too? Kennedy.	23:58
Charles Pollard	Yeah. He's the one got everything to going back there then. Yeah. But the little money they gave us, I been doing it. I told them just pile me up from 100,000. I told them to just put up a pile out there, and give me the interest off of it every day from now on. Put up $10 billion, give me the interest off it, every day. What that make? Whenever it come through, the interest, a million dollars, be a million dollars a day, give me that from now on. Nobody know how long you're going to live. Government thought I would have been dead, but I done seen them go in.	24:03
Stacey Scales	So how did you feel about that? Them giving you money for that? I mean, the amount of money you got.	25:13
Charles Pollard	I told them it wasn't nothing. Shit, I borrowed more money than that. I could go anywhere. You know when you've got collateral, and I had plenty cows. Running a big farm, I used to make three or 400 a day, off of cotton. But my daddy died in '57, he farmed with mules. In '58, I bought a tractor, '61, I bought another one. '65, government took those children out the field to educate them. I bought me another tractor and a cotton picker. I went to farming then, rice. Didn't farm nothing but cotton and cattle. I had 150 heads of cows.	25:13
Stacey Scales	Damn. Did your family work together on the farm, your children?	25:58
Charles Pollard	I ain't had nobody to work. I hired all these people.	26:00
Stacey Scales	Oh, you had to hire everyone?	26:01
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Of course I didn't—And then my oldest sister, she went to Tuskegee Institute and graduated. But when those children went to school, that were picking cotton for my daddy, the government put them in school, so I bought a cotton picker. A little tractor and a cotton picker, one burned propane gas. Picked four or five—It'd take 100 hands to pick four, five bales of cotton. But we used to do that then. I could pick that in a day. See, I made money.	26:09
Charles Pollard	One year, my daddy—I was just telling him about some of them said it didn't make no money. How in the heck he had what he had if it didn't make money? Just people ain't got good common sense. Some of they said, "How did he make it?" Worked and made it. I talk about my brother-in-law so much, they moved off the peckers. They ain't stayed nowhere but on a peckerwood place. I ain't never been on one's place. I had a place to doo-doo since I was—Most of the people didn't have that.	26:43
Stacey Scales	Right.	27:24
Charles Pollard	Be on the White man's place. I got a bunch where—We're going back through there. I'll carry you back through there.	27:24
Stacey Scales	Okay.	27:30
Charles Pollard	They've been out there on around rail town and everywhere else. Anyhow, I always liked to take the money and do something with it. Give it to somebody, help somebody.	27:31
Stacey Scales	Can I go that way?	27:46
Charles Pollard	Yeah, we can go look down there. You could turn around here in the yard, you have to [indistinct 00:27:56]. That's it. Whichever you want. Whichever you want, it don't matter. You could back down that hill and go down through—But anyway, it's just getting used to it.	27:47
Stacey Scales	Right.	28:06
Charles Pollard	Around that way, go on around the church, come on back this way.	28:06
Stacey Scales	Would it be cold in there in the wintertime?	28:28
Charles Pollard	Oh, no. We had coal. We brought coal in there then. Of course I didn't go to school much there. I had went around up there. Up there. I don't never [indistinct 00:28:43]. Stay over this way, because you don't want to hit that.	28:31
Stacey Scales	I'm going down this way here, right?	28:46
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Go on now, come on. Go ahead. [indistinct 00:28:59].	28:47
Julius Whales	What are they doing?	28:47
Charles Pollard	Huh? All of these trailers in here now. That's one of our old—Sam White's place right there. His daughter lives there. And that's where I started, right back there.	29:07
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah?	29:23
Charles Pollard	Yeah. I used to own all of that. A half a mile in here. Half a mile down to my house from—I'm a mile from home. That girl stays there. Several of them stay there. We're going to turn to the right, right here. I want to go by—	29:24
Stacey Scales	Right here?	29:41
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	29:41
Stacey Scales	The first one?	29:42
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah. Old right when you get a chance.	29:43
Stacey Scales	Another right?	29:53
Charles Pollard	Yeah. I used to own all of that. What bought that out there, he was from Mobile. Mimms. He went back to Mobile to see about his mother and father. He was a teacher. He did that too. He got kids by a girl there and he gave it to her. That girl there, one-eyed Shawnda. I finally got him a blacktop road.	29:54
Stacey Scales	Keep straight?	30:30
Charles Pollard	No, just turn here. That stops right there. Just one house yonder. His wife died here, last year.	30:31
Stacey Scales	How about that old house right there?	30:39
Charles Pollard	That's an old house. I bought it too, when I bought this place. Paid 5400 for it. That's where Jessie—She was the first one built a house there. And that was the first trailer was put there. And this girl put a trailer—She stayed down there on her place. That boy, Purdy, he bought that house there. Deola and Martin, their folks stay there. That's where Helen stayed at one month, girlfriend. That's the old—	30:41
Charles Pollard	Go over there, round on down here. Under the hill. I sold them all of that there. That's the first house built up here.	31:14
Stacey Scales	That one right there?	31:38
Charles Pollard	Yeah. That boy there, old Bill Johnson, that's the one that rents the country.	31:39
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah?	31:49
Charles Pollard	Old Bill Johnson fat. Tore up now. I sold them all of this in there. Alabama is noted for pine trees. Take it easy going on down there because the blacktop goes out down there. That's it.	31:50
Stacey Scales	Down there?	32:23
Charles Pollard	Yeah, we can go down there all right. Just take it easy, would you? I thought the blacktop was all the way, but when they came over here, they give out of blacktop, I think. Those lots and things. See how the trees done grew?	32:24
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm.	32:42
Charles Pollard	I come over here. right across over there, I come over there and cut $5,000 worth of timber off it. Just went off and left it, three acres. And I come up there and cut pulp wood off.	32:44
Stacey Scales	You cut it with—How did you cut it?	32:55
Charles Pollard	People bought it.	32:58
Stacey Scales	With a saw and you cut it?	32:59
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Yeah, they saw it with power saws. To cut pulp wood—You know about the cord. They give me $20 a cord. Don't get in this here. Go around this tree.	33:02
Stacey Scales	Which way? That way?	33:22
Charles Pollard	Pull up this way and we'll back it up.	33:25
Stacey Scales	We're getting ready to go back the other way now.	33:30
Charles Pollard	I expect we better back up, of course I don't know go down that way.	33:32
Stacey Scales	We can go out this way?	33:34
Charles Pollard	Yeah. We can go on out this way. Not a regular thing, but—That's where I—I cut that timber out through there. They left here and went back to New York, too good. Shoot, I cut the timber off it. It's some timber out there now you can cut. You know, pines and that. But that was last year, the year before last.	33:37
Stacey Scales	So this way?	33:53
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Go on up this way.	33:59
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:34:01]?	33:59
Charles Pollard	Yeah. You see this little road over here. You're all right.	34:00
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:34:19].	34:13
Charles Pollard	Huh? I'm coming down here and cut some timber, I think.	34:19
Julius Whales	[indistinct 00:34:30].	34:23
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:34:33]. This still your land here?	34:35
Charles Pollard	Yeah. I own the land. Yeah, I used to own it. I had sold it. That's where—And they done left here.	34:38
Stacey Scales	I think we're going to go on someone's property now.	34:45
Charles Pollard	Huh?	34:48
Stacey Scales	I think we're going to be riding on somebody's property.	34:49
Charles Pollard	Just tell them—You're all right. We're going to go down to this house here.	34:52
Stacey Scales	How we're going to get out of there?	34:54
Charles Pollard	Gone up there.	34:54
Stacey Scales	I think we better go out this way.	34:54
Charles Pollard	No. Gone up here. That's where—	34:54
Stacey Scales	I don't want to get in this way of the road.	34:54
Charles Pollard	Huh? But you can't go out through here though. Turn around and go—	34:54
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:35:21].	35:20
Charles Pollard	—What, you want to turn around and go back?	35:20
Julius Whales	You can [indistinct 00:35:25].	35:22
Stacey Scales	I think I need to cut on to this.	35:22
Charles Pollard	But it's a ditch out there.	35:22
Stacey Scales	I'm not going to get in a ditch.	35:22
Charles Pollard	You're going to turn around? You can turn—	35:22
Julius Whales	No, you're going to go around the ditch. I mean, not around.	35:22
Tywanna Whorley	You can't—You don't even know.	35:38
Charles Pollard	Hm? Dog ain't going to move. I mean, he'll move. We can go through here on where that house stop right up there.	35:38
Stacey Scales	Go this way?	35:43
Charles Pollard	Yeah. He'll get out the way.	35:44
Stacey Scales	Let me get on out of here.	35:46
Charles Pollard	Yeah. Take it easy now. Go on over that way, where you see you're coming through these trails up here.	35:53
Stacey Scales	I don't think we're going to make it through here.	36:00
Charles Pollard	Yeah, you are.	36:01
Julius Whales	You got it. [indistinct 00:36:04].	36:01
Stacey Scales	I can't get through that way.	36:17
Julius Whales	[indistinct 00:36:18].	36:18
Charles Pollard	What? What you got to—	36:26
Stacey Scales	Keep straight out that way? I think we need to turn around or something.	36:26
Charles Pollard	On up here.	36:26
Julius Whales	See up there where that car is, right?	36:26
Charles Pollard	Go up there a little bit. Go up there a little bit.	36:26
Stacey Scales	Go up there a little bit?	36:26
Charles Pollard	Yeah, go up there and turn up there and back up. It's leveled all out there.	36:30
Julius Whales	Go to the left. Go to the left.	36:31
Charles Pollard	Huh?	36:31
Julius Whales	See, there's a road coming out towards us.	36:33
Stacey Scales	That's somebody's yard.	36:36
Charles Pollard	Well anyhow, what I'm talking about, you go out there and turn around. We go right back the way we came up here. Ain't nothing out here. Nothing but the level ground, and you can turn around out here anyway. Now pull up the hill there, but cut it short and back up.	36:37
Tywanna Whorley	What's that over there?	36:56
Charles Pollard	It's a little house right back there in the grove.	36:56
Tywanna Whorley	Uh-huh. I'm talking about right there.	36:56
Charles Pollard	That fence.	37:05
Stacey Scales	That's a road. Yeah, it sure is.	37:06
Charles Pollard	Yeah, that's the road.	37:07
Tywanna Whorley	It is a road right there.	37:07
Charles Pollard	That's the road to go around. You just—	37:07
Tywanna Whorley	Actually, you can just keep straight up that way.	37:07
Stacey Scales	That way?	37:07
Tywanna Whorley	Yeah. Right.	37:07
Julius Whales	[indistinct 00:37:18].	37:07
Stacey Scales	Yeah, you see all of it. I know where I'm at now.	37:07
Julius Whales	[indistinct 00:37:24].	37:07
Charles Pollard	Now turn around.	37:07
Tywanna Whorley	Huh?	37:07
Julius Whales	You ain't got to worry about it. This a brand new car, it'll be all right.	37:07
Charles Pollard	Yeah, come on out through here. This way, you can—That boy stays back in there. I know all of them.	37:40
Charles Pollard	Don't get out the—Don't you get out the road. Let them get out the road. Turn your glass down. Hello, Ms. Deola.	37:57
Deola	Ooh, Lord. Hey, there. (Pollard laughs) How y'all doing?	38:06
Stacey Scales	Fine.	38:06
Charles Pollard	We're just riding around.	38:06
Stacey Scales	How you doing?	38:16
Deola	You're just riding around?	38:17
Charles Pollard	Yeah, and—	38:21
Deola	Well that's nice.	38:21
Charles Pollard	—Yeah. We started to turn around down yonder where the girls were, but I told them come on up this way to get through. These some boys from down at Tuskegee Institute. We used to—	38:22
Stacey Scales	How you doing?	38:33
Deola	[indistinct 00:38:34].	38:33
Charles Pollard	I was just hollering at y'all.	38:33
Deola	I'm trying to see if I know the people.	38:33
Charles Pollard	No, you don't know them.	38:33
Deola	What? I don't know them?	38:33
Charles Pollard	No, you don't know them.	38:33
Stacey Scales	How you doing?	38:33
Deola	They're so friendly, I see that.	38:33
Charles Pollard	That's it.	38:33
Deola	Cast them a smile.	38:33
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	38:33
Stacey Scales	Okay.	38:33
Deola	Delighted to meet you.	38:33
Stacey Scales	Stacey Scales. Good to meet you.	38:33
Deola	I saw you going—Who you say this young people?	38:33
Charles Pollard	They're from Tuskegee Institute.	38:33
Stacey Scales	Students.	38:33
Deola	Oh, indeed.	38:36
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	38:55
Deola	That's lovely.	38:55
Charles Pollard	You're from where, Louisiana?	38:55
Stacey Scales	I'm originally from Indiana.	38:59
Deola	Oh, ain't that so nice?	39:00
Stacey Scales	Yes, ma'am.	39:00
Tywanna Whorley	Tywanna.	39:00
Deola	Oh, that is so kind—	39:00
Julius Whales	How you doing?	39:00
Deola	—of you. I told my son, I said, "That looks like Mr. Pollard."	39:00
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	39:10
Deola	Oh, he's a nice person. He's the nicest person I ever met.	39:10
Stacey Scales	Yeah, he's all right.	39:10
Charles Pollard	Yeah, that's what I been telling them.	39:18
Deola	We met him about 34 years ago. This my [indistinct 00:39:22].	39:19
Charles Pollard	It's been that long?	39:19
Deola	Uh-huh, 34 years. We used to gather his cotton for him.	39:25
Charles Pollard	That's it.	39:25
Deola	My daughter and myself.	39:25
Charles Pollard	That's it. They've been asking what did people do, and I told them, "We worked around down there and had a good time coming on up."	39:32
Deola	That's right.	39:32
Charles Pollard	It's just different people.	39:32
Deola	Oh, that's right.	39:32
Charles Pollard	Different people, they can't think.	39:32
Deola	That's true.	39:32
Charles Pollard	Everybody can't think.	39:32
Deola	That's true. That is real true.	39:32
Charles Pollard	Nothing but, if they tell you to do something, you won't ever do nothing. Something that the God Almighty—	39:46
Deola	You have to.	39:48
Charles Pollard	—you know, you get it from Him.	39:48
Deola	You know you have to do something to accomplish something.	39:48
Charles Pollard	That's it. That's it.	39:48
Deola	You can't just sit in a school, looking for everything to find you.	39:48
Charles Pollard	Fall in your mouth.	39:48
Deola	You've got to get up and offer yourself, and do it for something.	39:48
Charles Pollard	And do it. That's it. That's it.	39:48
Deola	You see, I've experienced where y'all young people on your way.	40:00
Charles Pollard	That's it.	40:05
Deola	You're in the educated field. I wasn't, but I got common sense.	40:05
Charles Pollard	That's it.	40:05
Deola	You can't just sit down, just looking for everything—	40:05
Charles Pollard	Come up here.	40:05
Deola	—[indistinct 00:40:15]. "I can't get this. I can't—" Get up off of yourself and—	40:05
Charles Pollard	Do something.	40:05
Deola	—show what you want. If you want something, you can—	40:05
Charles Pollard	You can get it.	40:05
Deola	—get something.	40:05
Charles Pollard	That's right.	40:05
Deola	I'm not going to hold you, because I know you've got to go.	40:05
Stacey Scales	That was well said.	40:05
Deola	But I'm so glad to meet you.	40:05
Stacey Scales	Okay, you too.	40:05
Charles Pollard	Come on. I told them we'd come right by you, and I told them to stop here.	40:31
Deola	Oh, I'm so glad you've done that, Mr. Parlor.	40:32
Charles Pollard	So I could holler at you.	40:32
Deola	—Mr. Parlor. I am so glad. Well I hope to see you all in the near future, and I hope you be successful in whatever you engage in.	40:41
Stacey Scales	Thank you. Take care.	40:43
Deola	All right.	40:43
Charles Pollard	I'll be back.	40:43
Deola	All right, Mr. Parlor. You do that now.	40:43
Charles Pollard	All right.	40:43
Deola	Okay.	40:43
Charles Pollard	Don't get me now.	40:50
Deola	All right. Okay. Take care.	40:50
Stacey Scales	Bye now.	40:51
Charles Pollard	These people, I've known them from down there off of Ben Walker's place, between Tuskegee and Montgomery. Over down there at—	40:59
Stacey Scales	Sounds like you've helped a lot of people.	41:02
Charles Pollard	Oh, all of these people up here. This young boy over here works for the VA. He's been in the Army all the time, but he bought an acre there from me, before he came out of the Army. His people used to live there in Montgomery. Down there in Tuskegee.	41:12
Charles Pollard	That's one of the first trailers. That's the first house was built up here. The boy who had it, he was going to put him a barbershop right there, but he soon died, and that girl is still there. She has two children. Well she had one, her oldest child got killed. Up here by the side of the hill.	41:21
Stacey Scales	Now you said you had a plot, a cemetery, on your land?	42:00
Charles Pollard	Yeah, that's it. My cemetery.	42:04
Stacey Scales	That's your family, right?	42:04
Charles Pollard	Yeah.	42:08
Stacey Scales	Can we see that?	42:09
Charles Pollard	Yeah, we'll go up there. It's a bunch of houses down this way, but we'll gone out here to the cemetery and go around. That's it. Then come short in here.	42:11
Stacey Scales	This way?	42:35
Charles Pollard	Come in here. Come on in here.	42:36
Stacey Scales	Right in here?	42:39
Charles Pollard	Come in. Come on in here. Go on right around it, and then go out yonder where it's cleaned up. And just go right around the cemetery. And Macedonia Church got a cemetery around here too. Just stop here, right here. This the closest place. Just stop. Stay in the road. Stay in the—	42:44
Stacey Scales	So you—Okay.	43:05
Charles Pollard	We can go down that way, and I'm just gone—We can go around there if you want to, and then we can stop when we get back around to there—Right where my daddy and them is buried. Just straddle that kind of. That's it. Straddle it, and take it easy now. Take it easy. Just take that way. There you go. That's DuBois's place. When they build it—	43:06
Stacey Scales	These don't have any tombstones over right here.	43:39
Charles Pollard	Yeah, some of them got some, some of them don't. That baby right there, that boy got killed in the Army, and he was stinking when they bought him here. Said they found him in the woods, hung up in a tree. Young boy.	43:41
Stacey Scales	What's his name?	43:54
Charles Pollard	Gaines. He was a Gaines.	44:01
Stacey Scales	So somebody hung him up, huh?	44:01
Charles Pollard	He was in the Army, and they found him over there in a tree, hung. Dead. This is Macedonia Cemetery. See the Parlor yonder?	44:04
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm.	44:10
Charles Pollard	Martha Parlor. That's Macedonia Cemetery.	44:11
Stacey Scales	That was your wife right there?	44:17
Charles Pollard	No. My people.	44:17
Stacey Scales	Martha?	44:17
Charles Pollard	No.	44:17
Stacey Scales	That's not related to you?	44:21
Charles Pollard	No. Well, on my mother's side. Yes, some kin on my mother's side. Yeah. And that cemetery goes down in there. They need to come in there and cut it up.	44:23
Charles Pollard	I gave them this cemetery up here. Two older people up in there. Jethro Parks and Luelie Pearl Parker. Dorothy Mitchell, in Tuskegee, she's on the other side.	44:52
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah?	45:23
Charles Pollard	You can go and talk to her over there. She works in Auburn. She's a veterinary teacher. Veterinary. Just stop right here now. Just stop right here now. Just go out there and I'll show you our family.	45:26
Stacey Scales	Okay. Let me turn around.	45:27

Item Info

Title:

Charles Pollard interview recording, 1994 July 23

Date:

July 23, 1994

Creator:

Pollard, Charles

Contributor:

Description:

Name: Charles Pollard; Date of Birth: 1907-04-26; Place of Birth: Notusulga, AL; Occupation(s): agriculture; Residence: Notusulga, AL
Informant ID: 682; Interviewed by: Stacey Scales and Tywanna Whorley.

Occupation:

Agriculture

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:

RL00170-CS-1613
RL00170-CS-1614
RL00170-CS-1615
deb9b2a1-894b-40e7-84ff-974cd28bb53d
behindtheveil
c3f4cfba-35f6-4385-82a1-9f6675284eca
ark:/87924/r4668mt9k
c3f4cfba-35f6-4385-82a1-9f6675284eca

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Charles Pollard interview recording, 1994 July 23

Transcript

Item Info

1. Charles Pollard administrative file, 1994

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Charles Pollard interview recording, 1994 July 23

Transcript

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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