Elbert Green interview recording, 1994 July 07

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Paul Ortiz	I didn't.	0:00
Elbert P. Green	Free time, this was when I was in the service. I looked for things to occupy my mind that might in the future have some kind of relevance. So I would cut things from paper like this person was the first to do this and this is the first female but this is the first male and this type of thing like that. And so I have now about a two-inch notebook binder full of newspaper clip that I had collected like that. And these were done back as far as 1978.	0:06
Elbert P. Green	And since I've been at the service line, I still keep up with some of those things, but I haven't been as conscientious in putting them in the right places together anymore. I do have quite a bit of that. And what got me interested in that was when I first started teaching school back in 1958, I was boarding at a house, and I happened to pick up a scrapbook in a latest house and had a very interesting news article of something that put on a hundred years before that. And so ever since I taken an interest in order just like that and I do a lot of things like that when I have some free time.	0:37
Paul Ortiz	That's quite an interesting side of you. I got to move the microphone. Okay.	1:14
Elbert P. Green	Okay. You hear better?	1:44
Paul Ortiz	Yeah.	1:46
Elbert P. Green	Okay.	1:46
Paul Ortiz	Reverend Green, if you could tell me just to begin with, when and where you were born and a little bit about the area that you grew up in.	1:47
Elbert P. Green	Okay. We'll start by saying I was born in a place called Laneview, Virginia, as spelled L-A-N-E-V-I-E-W, Virginia. Now that's a rural area, where I live was right on the border between two county lines. The Laneview is really in a different county from the actual county where I was living, I was living in Middlesex and Laneview is actually in Essex, which was at the county line. And during those days when I was born, June 9th, 1935, those days things were quite rural anyway and you had a lot of post offices where people located and the general would say if you ask someone where they live, they normally would name that post office, and that might be within a distance of 10 or 15 miles from another post office. And some of those places now no longer exist because they have been torn down with the extension of communication, so forth in society.	1:56
Elbert P. Green	Father was a minister, Baptist minister and he graduated from a boarding high school, and then took the necessary courses at the Virginia State College, at that time Virginia State Normal School to get a certificate to be a school teacher. And so his occupations included preaching, teaching, and rural farm work, and cutting what we call pulpwood or hardwood. My mother grew up in the same neighborhood as my father, graduating from the same high school, Rappahannock Industrial Academy, which no longer exists.	3:05
Elbert P. Green	But at that time went a few high schools available to Negroes at that time. And it was a boarding high school. I didn't know any of my grandparents, never saw any of them, except one which was my grandmother on my mother's side. From the history that she has passed on to us is that her grandfather was full-blood Indian. And he was buried in that same neighborhood and they had a big farm or although I did not ever see him, but we used to visit the farm lots of times in that area.	3:52
Elbert P. Green	There were 11 of us children and I'm the 10th of the 11. I have one youngest sister, who is seven years younger than I am. The rest of us generally were about 18 months to two years apart in age. We feel that we've been pretty blessed in that of the 11 of us, 10 of us are living today. And of the 10, all except one, in fact all of us are over 50 years old and I'm approaching 60. So we felt that we were pretty blessed to be around and we are one of the largest living families of that community today. There were a number of large families then.	4:50
Paul Ortiz	Of Laneview?	5:41
Elbert P. Green	Of Laneview, yes. But we have the largest number of living now out of that whole community. And one brother and one sister still live there, and the rest of us have ventured out.	5:44
Paul Ortiz	What was Laneview like in the '30s and early '40s?	6:00
Elbert P. Green	Farm area. Mostly we call the truck farming: corn, tomatoes, black-eyed peas, hanging beans, beans, wheat, and those general type field crops, watermelons and those types of things. And worked primarily on the farm as growing up. And we had factories in the area that processed most of the things that were raised in that area. And so as I grew up, we worked both in the field and in the factories there.	6:07
Paul Ortiz	Were you working in your parents land or?	6:41
Elbert P. Green	No, for the other people. My parents didn't do much farming when I was growing up. We had what we call gardens, but no large crops for sale, anything, just for home use.	6:46
Paul Ortiz	And at what age did you start working on the farm?	6:58
Elbert P. Green	About 9 or 10. And that was a general age for most children there, picking tomatoes and things of this nature.	7:02
Paul Ortiz	Would you call the area that you lived in a neighborhood? Was it close-knit or was it?	7:19
Elbert P. Green	Very close-knit. Much unlike where people live today, you would know where people live for miles around. Interesting enough, you would be able to direct somebody to someone's house who live way about 8 or 10 miles down in the woods over the hill by simple directions. And we use expression like a little piece down the road and turn right, turn left, and go by certain trees, and references like forks in the road, strings and things of this night jam. But generally everybody knew everybody for miles, not only just in that neighborhood but in the counties around. I'd say within the three or four counties, just what everybody knew everybody in the whole area and close the schools were far apart. And we were learn a lot this by school children and by going to church, you learn a lot where people live.	7:25
Elbert P. Green	So I would ride school bus 16 miles to school each way, about an hour on the bus, going in about an hour coming back each day. And interesting enough, when I started the school, there was the day when they got the first school bus to come into our area to pick up children. And that was the middle of the school year. I didn't go to school the first half of the year because the school was two miles away and I was too small, my parents couldn't send me to school. So they got the bus by the beginning of the second semester and that's when I started going school and I rode two miles to the school.	8:26
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	9:04
Elbert P. Green	Now those who went on to the high school had to go about 16 miles to get to the high school. And before they had the bus, any children from our area who went to high school had to walk those two miles to the elementary school and catch the bus to ride to the high school and to come back in the afternoon, that's where they got off and walked back home. And keep in mind many of those kids also had to walk anywhere from three to five miles to get to that school. And even after we got the bus, there was some who had to walk three to five miles to finish that bus to go to school I went to.	9:05
Paul Ortiz	Do you know what was behind that change? Was there any kind of political?	9:43
Elbert P. Green	To get the bus?	9:46
Paul Ortiz	Yeah.	9:48
Elbert P. Green	Back during that time it was just pure discrimination. There were buses now, but not for the Black children that time.	9:48
Paul Ortiz	And then, do you know if there was any activity, any local activity organizing in the Black community to—?	10:00
Elbert P. Green	To do that, yes.	10:06
Paul Ortiz	Get a bus?	10:06
Elbert P. Green	My father was head of it.	10:06
Paul Ortiz	Oh really? You told me—	10:06
Elbert P. Green	Yes, at that time it was called the Senior League, L-E-A-G-U-E, League. And we had organized in the school, Senior Leagues and Junior Leagues. The students made up organization called Junior Leagues, and the parents and the teachers were the people belonged to the Senior Leagues and they were the structured organization that worked for promotion of those things.	10:09
Paul Ortiz	Do you know about the time that those Leagues were founded?	10:36
Elbert P. Green	I have no idea, but I know they were in existence in 1935 because we were going on then. I started school around '42 and they were in existence then.	10:40
Paul Ortiz	And were there meetings that occurred that you attended or?	10:58
Elbert P. Green	In the Junior Leagues, we had meetings once a week. I was president of the Junior League for several years from elementary school.	11:08
Paul Ortiz	And what would you talk about at the meetings?	11:18
Elbert P. Green	They were learning experiences, for one thing. We learned how to conduct meetings and people have a chance to express programs and things that they would like to see promoted and the foreign committees to carry out conduct programs. At those days we would have programs at our school at least once a month as fundraisers. The children perform and the parents come out and they would have sales after the programs, ice cream, pig feet and all this type thing to raise money. And those monies were used to help to buy some things for the schools, such as softballs and prepare the fields, even to cut the grass on the yard, this type of thing.	11:24
Paul Ortiz	Was this a public school?	12:10
Elbert P. Green	Public school, yes.	12:12
Paul Ortiz	Do you know of your father having any difficulties because of this activity? Is there any kind of controversy around it?	12:14
Elbert P. Green	I don't know. Never know of any threats or anything of this nature. In those days, I imagined the thought process was a little different and it was not so much as confrontation as it was trying to do something for yourself to get ahead. And I think that's probably why it was so, none of these things being done well had anything to do with trying to integrate anything for one thing. It all had to do with just trying to promote what you had.	12:25
Paul Ortiz	Equalization.	12:54
Elbert P. Green	Equalization, self-help to improve your surroundings.	12:55
Paul Ortiz	I see. How would you recruit other children, for instance, in the Junior League?	13:01
Elbert P. Green	In Junior League? The recruiting was very simple in one sense because we asked them to join and pay dues. Now whether they paid the dues or not, when the meeting was held, everybody was required to attend anyway. So they had an assembly in old days, didn't say we have no meeting and you come. Now you remember if you paid the dues which is old days, 5 cents, something like that a month, but based on the economy at that time. But that was the only thing was needed for recruitment.	13:05
Paul Ortiz	And how would decisions be made? Is this a vote order?	13:40
Elbert P. Green	Just vote, yeah. Make a motion, let's say they learn how to do that or make a motion and they vote on it.	13:45
Paul Ortiz	And do you have much recollection of your father's activity as a leader in the Senior League?	13:56
Elbert P. Green	No, other than basically the same thing. That he was quite influential being minister of pastor free churches so pair a lot of influence.	14:03
Paul Ortiz	Okay. And one more question on these Leagues because they're so fascinating, I've never read any reference to them in Virginia. Can you just give me a rough time span regarding their existence? When you started school, they were—?	14:13
Elbert P. Green	They were still in existence when I got out of high school, it was still having those. Now those same organizations I think were the one that later became what we have now, parent teachers associations and parent teacher students associations. They are generally on the same trend as those organizations were then. And I imagine the League thing went out of existence for sure when we started talking about integration and stuff like that because it probably only pertaining to Black schools.	14:31
Elbert P. Green	That's what they call their organizations. Now, I have heard that term used here since I've been in Tuskegee, they was trying to start some organizations. I said, "Well, it's not a new term to me," because I grew up with that term, but it's just a word I guess that people don't use anymore. But we basically have the same organization in parent teachers associations in schools now.	15:06
Paul Ortiz	Okay. Can you tell me a little bit about your family life growing up?	15:36
Elbert P. Green	Well, my family's very close-knit family and still are today. We communicate with each other at least once a month through the circuit hour into our family touching base with everybody doing at least once a month. And we know where we are and we communicate, we still send Christmas cards, birthday cards and this type of thing, and call each other and write each other frequently. And the last four years, we started having family reunions and so the next one is for next year. We had one last year, next one's scheduled for this coming year. We have school reunions. I'm hoping to go to the school reunion on 29th of this month, which the school, that high school I attend to.	15:42
Paul Ortiz	High school.	16:28
Elbert P. Green	And the reason why they're calling it a school reunion is because that school has become outdated and they have just completed building a new school in a new location, but it will not have the historic name of that particular school. So what was now a high school is now a middle school and now getting it to be I guess some alternative place where people meet for a library or something. So we're hoping to have a big union, and everybody will be ever attended there we're hoping to come together with a big union. This will be the second one.	16:30
Paul Ortiz	Second one.	17:05
Elbert P. Green	Yes.	17:06
Paul Ortiz	What were your interests as a child and then going into high school? Were you?	17:06
Elbert P. Green	I was guess pretty interested in getting my lesson for one thing, which was a must, and for outside activities, I enjoyed singing and music and travel, which I still do. And out of that, I still do performances myself. I started singing with the Brothers Quartet, and I have continued and the other two brothers still sing in their work but I still sing as a performer. I performed on programs and things still. And out of that, I learned to trample with a few instruments, I played in the first high school band that our high school had. And then I went off to college and played in the ROTC marching band for two years there, playing baritone on that. But also in between that I taught myself some other instruments. So I play piano, organ, I blow a horn still a little bit. I play guitar and I still play for churches and things like that now.	17:14
Paul Ortiz	Now you also showed me a book of poetry?	18:27
Elbert P. Green	Poetry.	18:30
Paul Ortiz	Now when did you develop an interest in poetry?	18:30
Elbert P. Green	I think my interest first came in the '70s while I was in the service and just passing time I put some thoughts together and wrote few rhymes. At one time I thought a little bit about trying to write a song, but I still haven't gotten into that yet. And then I just kept those poems that I had. And when I retired from the service and moved here, when I really got interested in working on my Master's at Troy State. I then went back to collecting the poem I put together and decided I would write a book and publish it. I wanted to be a published author. And so I put together those poems and contacted a few publishing companies and finally selected one, which was Carlton out of New York. And they published me my first book of poetry in which I was quite proud of, which was quite a collection over something I had written and then some others that I added to it just to get the book published.	18:35
Elbert P. Green	The other thing that I added to it, I sent one of my poem into a contest and surprisingly, I got a certificate of recognition and that got my interest going. So every time I see contests I apply again. And interesting enough, every contest I've ever entered, I've always gotten at least a certificate of merit for writing a poem. And I have gotten a number of awards, and I got my first goal award for poetry writing from Royal Poetry Press. I was interested and so I said I guess I'll get keep participating. So I just kept participating in writing and because since that time now I have a collection of some five gold awards in poetry, which not too many people going to top because number one, the company that was publishing at that time, they'd gone out of business. So I going to be [indistinct 00:20:37] at the top there. And then I also had three civil poet awards from them too.	19:42
Elbert P. Green	I also was listed in Who is Who in poetry twice and because I've been Who in Who education and some other things too. But in poetry, that was my main interest there. And then so later I decided, I went to publish another book in poetry so I got busy, and this time I did it locally to cut down on the cost, and thus this book right here, which is called Poetry is Gold, the first one is called Poetry is Soul. And I'm in the process of writing a third one now, which is going to be a long masterpiece, which is twice as many poems as any I've written in the past. And I haven't said too much about it because I told someone it's a very special project and hopefully within the next year or so I'll have it completed.	20:43
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	21:33
Elbert P. Green	And then I'll seek out a publishing company for me.	21:34
Paul Ortiz	Wonder if I can ask you just a few more questions relating back to your childhood, what kind of influence did your mother have, do you remember?	21:38
Elbert P. Green	Well, I think the kind of influence that she basically had on us is that number one, the whole philosophy, a good name is better to be chosen than great riches. In other words, stay out of trouble and go as far as you can in life. As far as her going to college like we did wasn't so much of even a dream. We were just that far in poverty because I told someone that they talk now about you have to be within the poverty level to get something. I said, I remember when I was below the poverty level because I remember when they had the first lunches, free lunches at our elementary school. I was below the level to get one of those lunches. Now that's what I called being below the poverty level, you see.	21:50
Elbert P. Green	Because then, to participate, you had to bring something to the school to put into and then make a big pot of soup coming in. My family, we didn't have any to bring, so I didn't participate in that and I called that below the poverty level. So coming from that, we didn't have real dreams. I didn't anyway, I was going off to college anywhere else. And to say things like that would be just saying something. Never would have dreamed that one day I would've a doctorate degree. That was him in the pension. And I had some good fortune by working hard. And that is when I graduated from elementary school, I was number one in my class. And when I graduated from high school, I was number one in my class, and that helped me get a scholarship to get started in college to begin with. And once I got in college, I became a work student, and I stayed then I worked the entire four years that I was there.	22:33
Paul Ortiz	Which college did you attend?	23:32
Elbert P. Green	Virginia State College, Petersburg and now Virginia State University, Petersburg.	23:33
Paul Ortiz	What kind of college was Virginia State? Now you went there, you've been there in the early '50s.	23:41
Elbert P. Green	'53 to '57.	23:46
Paul Ortiz	So.	23:47
Elbert P. Green	It was mostly an educational university at that time and agriculture, that was the primary subjects. Most everybody came out there were somewhere in the teachers or secondary educational related fields into agriculture.	23:50
Paul Ortiz	Was that a private?	24:07
Elbert P. Green	That's a State school.	24:08
Paul Ortiz	State school.	24:09
Elbert P. Green	Yeah, state school.	24:09
Paul Ortiz	So was that an integrated school or?	24:13
Elbert P. Green	Not then.	24:14
Paul Ortiz	Primarily.	24:14
Elbert P. Green	It integrated I think about two or three years after I finished in the '60s when the integration program began, that's when they integrated.	24:16
Paul Ortiz	So it was primarily an African-American school or?	24:25
Elbert P. Green	Yeah, then it was, yeah. And still primarily is.	24:28
Paul Ortiz	Okay. So from that point you decided to go into the service, you must have been in ROTC?	24:36
Elbert P. Green	ROTC, yes. Four years in college ROTC. Those days, the first two years was mandatory. The only way you get out of being ROTC if you were a veteran or disabled, otherwise you have to take ROTC for two years, then all men, no females. Essentially, the females weren't allowed.	24:41
Paul Ortiz	Okay, yeah. Now the '50s were a rather auspicious time for the military in terms of race relations, attempts to integrate the service. So you must have seen quite a bit.	25:03
Elbert P. Green	Remnants of it because I was caught up in the transition. I had three brothers who served in what we call the segregated army, the three. The first one that went in and he was the one that was killed in the service in Korea 1950. The other two were drafted out of college after that first semester at the fight in the Korean War. And they both returned after 18 months and went to GI Bill, re-enrolled in college and both of them finished college. And both of them are ministers since then. One of them has three doctoral degrees now, and he's retired, full Colonel from the army, Chaplain Corps. And the other one after his 18 months, he never did fill with the service anymore. But he's been pastoring for 28 years at the same church. So he's been pretty successful in the.	25:18
Paul Ortiz	Wow. Do you remember, you used the word transition earlier, could you explain a little bit about that transition?	26:20
Elbert P. Green	Yes, and I can relate to somewhat in that I had a chance to work in the race relations field and do some background study in that. But it is about in a transition period in society trying to do anything. But what it means is that first in the '50s when the, actually '49 when Truman gave the order to integrate the service, you don't do anything overnight. So they transition was a little bit like what we did in schools. What they did then would take a Black unit and put it into a larger White unit. So you may have a regiment but full retiring, one retired Black free battalions and White. And that's the integration process.	26:30
Elbert P. Green	Well, you see in doing that, it takes time for people really start to intermingling and working together, all you've done, just added some units together. It's like taking a little wheel, putting it on a car with three other new tires or something. They don't relate to each other that much. And so gradually, they begin to wove the army like they do everything else, into all the different organization societies, putting people in the same unit, same company, same barracks and all this type of thing like that. Which was, it takes a while for people to get used to that.	27:20
Elbert P. Green	And I've seen some of that same transition. Particularly my experience when I went to Korea, I had to learn that we had what we call the KATUSAs, but the initial for Korean Augmentation To United States Army. So the word KATUSA you see is a euphemism that gets caught up the leg. Other terms, we had United States too and people react to things like that. So instead of saying Korean Augmentation To United States Army, they said KATUSA. You KATUSA, okay. And they respond to people like that. So we had KATUSA barracks, KATUSA clubs, and believe it or not, I was one of the people that addressed that.	27:57
Elbert P. Green	That's one reason I didn't get no further idea I guess any service because I would address things like that. And I told them that. I said, we doing the same thing we used to do in the United States. I said this is a form of discrimination. I said, they're in the army, we ought to be going the same clubs and same everything instead of having some separate length. But they showed did and I brought to their attention. And so that's the example of a transition thing.	28:40
Elbert P. Green	And the reason for that was after the war, we began to pull a lot of our troops out of there. And so what we did, the augmentation part was like a company with say 210 men, we may have left a hundred GIs and you have 110 Korean soldiers to augment to make that company 210. So they called that the KATUSA, and you'd have interpreters and things like that. And even in my company, it was small, at one time I didn't have enough GIs to function too well because I had a weapon platoon that needed a lot of drivers. And at that time they didn't allow the Korean soldiers to have license to drive all vehicles. So that was a bind all the time trying to make sure I had somebody have alert. I don't have enough people to move the trucks because the GIs were going home and it was in that pullout phase.	29:07
Elbert P. Green	But that's to me just a brief example of what I'm talking about when you go through a transition of adding ethnic groups or racial groups or anything else into each other and making it this a smooth flow. And in the process of this change over where social changes are always slow, somebody begins to feel the effects of things because somebody always carry some attitudes along with them that are unhealthy in the process. And so I came in service during that. Now they also means that those attitudes affect people in terms of promotions. You're not going to get promoted if somebody's attitude say you ought to look a certain way, you see, to get somewhere. And I can relate that socially to lots of things in terms of what a person should look like in order to be somewhere, you see, into something.	30:01
Elbert P. Green	I even had an experience once, and this is one happened right in the United States, we have a military where we called color guard. I don't know whether you're familiar with that or not. The one that carried the flags and all like that. Well, they carry a certain image, the banner representatives. I was in a case one time out at right at that Fort Carson, Colorado. And then we were forming a color guard unit, just been organized. And this was in the '60s. And this lieutenant colonel got a hold of my boss who happened to been White and said, "What'd you get that nigger in there for?"	31:00
Elbert P. Green	And believe it or not, the guy that he had selected to be on the color guard, he was a sharp-looking soldier. I mean, I had some look and so you know I'm talking about, but his image was, he didn't want to say that Negro in that color guard. He thought that detract for him regardless of how well the guy look. Well, that's one example of people understanding a transition. Another is when we got into the service, we looked at some people who's supposed to have that nice trimmed image of a soldier, can't get promoted for nothing yet some old guy look like a Santa Claus and he get promoted right on up. So I was one of the people that dressed there too, incidentally.	31:37
Elbert P. Green	Excuse me, we're having an interview.	32:21
Speaker 1	I'm sorry, Reverend Green, somebody left on the car, their lights on.	32:21
Elbert P. Green	Okay.	32:21
Speaker 1	Okay, I'm sorry.	32:22
Elbert P. Green	Yes.	32:34
Paul Ortiz	So you were talking about discrimination against Black troops in terms of promotions.	32:35
Elbert P. Green	Yeah, a lot of that. Lot of that.	32:41
Paul Ortiz	Now do you see this as, were you a company commander or?	32:44
Elbert P. Green	Yes, I've been a continual leader. I've been since but all the ranks. I went from second lieutenant, I finally got to be a major.	32:48
Paul Ortiz	Ah. So as a second lieutenant and as a company commander, I think you, perhaps, alluded to some tensions within your hierarchy because you saw the unfairness against Black soldiers. Can you maybe talk about a couple instances?	32:55
Elbert P. Green	Well, I'll give you one. I was commander of a company at Fort Polk, Louisiana. And I recall vividly we had a process where at night you have step guard duty and we rotated the guard from our company. Well, you have to have a sergeant on guard, and you have to have one other trooper on guard and you're also required to have a Jeep of some transportation for your guard. When it came I turned for to do it one night, the only person I had available to do it was one White sergeant and one Black corporal to go. Okay, but the corporal couldn't drive, see. Well, so normal relationship is the lower ranking man drives. Okay, I said, "Well, I can still fill responsibility." I said, "Now, the area's not that big."	33:21
Elbert P. Green	I provide the Jeep, the sergeant can drive, and if he feel it necessary he need to get that and go somewhere, he get in that Jeep and drive himself and that corporal can walk. See? He don't have to ride, he can walk. So I thought I had covered the position until I was not given a class and my first sergeant comes out and says, "Sir," got some [indistinct 00:34:40], my retiring commander says, "Take that sergeant off that detail even if you have to drive it yourself."	34:19
Elbert P. Green	And that didn't rest well with me. I said, "Class dismissed, first sergeant take charge." And I went straight to personnel and put him for a transfer out of the unit because I felt that that was directly a indication of discrimination. Now, he could tell me, "Take that sergeant off that even if I have to drive it myself." Well, I was a captain, see? Which is about six or seven ranks higher than sergeant. Now I didn't think that that made, due discretion tell me that I could drive it, but don't let the sergeant.	34:48
Elbert P. Green	But I knew what the inference was. The inference was he didn't want this White sergeant driving this Black corporal around. See, but I didn't even have that in mind. I said now to become a necessity, this is all I have to offer him. But my plan was to son, he didn't have to do nothing if he wanted to sit there and the offer to be in charged and tell that corporal go walk. You didn't have to walk all the night you ever saw, check the perimeter. But if something came up and let's say you had to go way across post, they couldn't go over there. But we had a sergeant who couldn't take that Jeep and go over there. And so I figured I had a cover. So I felt that that was a direct example of discrimination.	35:20
Paul Ortiz	And the corporal was Black.	35:55
Elbert P. Green	He was Black, yes.	35:56
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	35:57
Elbert P. Green	And I can go on with some others too that where I've seen discriminatory things done and some of the things are subtle. And I went through some of this in Vietnam and I was a comic man over there too. And also I was a personnel officer in Vietnam. Well, we had case of guys who tried to get out of doing things. So I was thinking about it the other day when rain was coming down because I recall one night I walked God and raining like that in Vietnam. So I said I'm just blessed, I don't have get out of that night. I say, but ain't no big thing. I said, because I have God post in Vietnam rain like that, got wet too. But I had to do that and I didn't die and they didn't expect dying as I got shot.	35:59
Elbert P. Green	But I had cases like guys who didn't want to do their duties and they come in at six o'clock in the afternoon, don't show up at all to go on the duty. So I'll get a call, this when I was a personnel officer, to find out to, "Who's supposed to be on duty? Ain't nobody out there." I said, "No, so-and-so." And so I said, "Where is he?" "Oh, he went off on a mission this afternoon." I said, "Okay, well we got to fix that." So then I would do it. And then they started pulling that stuff for me. So the man told me, my boss told me, says, "Okay, you are responsible for the guard duty. You need to give them 48 hours advanced notice if you want them to be on duty. And if they don't have 48 hours notice, then you have to do it."	36:46
Elbert P. Green	And I went one whole week pulling that duty myself like that because somebody always come up, they can't be there. But how can I give somebody 48 hours if they let me know two hours before time for the duty? And nobody else agreed to do it. He said, "Not even with 12 hours notice," because he's giving me 48. But eventually I got out of that unit, I went to look for another assignment and I got out of that, and did much better when I got in another unit. Now I say this to say that not everything is prejudice to begin with, all circumstances are not bad. But we do sure get our share of those kinds of circumstances.	37:35
Elbert P. Green	And it does come from that transition primarily. And what people have to go through and integrate anything and begin to understand people and understand how they feel about things and without thinking, a lot of times people can just impose some on people, without thinking. And remind me of a lecture was given when I went to the housing conference in Jacksonville, Florida this year and we had a speaker there and he's saying that the most treacherous thing that we have to deal with is people trying to, who are in authority and have the power to make the right decision, because it is easier for them not to see what the other person is going through.	38:18
Elbert P. Green	And because I've been through so much of it, I guess I don't know whether I was oversensitive because of some background or what I was trying to do or way I approached things that I have been thinking about writing a book about it anyway and just haven't gotten round to it. It's [indistinct 00:39:22] on my priorities right now because of right now I'm involved in project in poetry I want to do.	39:06
Elbert P. Green	And then after that, I might get back to writing this book about some of the discriminatory things that actually went on during my stay in the 21 years I been in the service. And for those things were very real. And that helps people to understand why some people get promoted and some don't, and a lot of people may not understand that. I guess it's not appreciating dead heroes and those guys who have fought the battles and they got killed and they're dead and they don't know whether they got a Purple Heart or not, and some of them didn't.	39:30
Elbert P. Green	People didn't think it was so significant Private George got shot down on trail and things like that, but insignificant because as I was telling the students about ROTC, I said, "I'm going to tell you just like it is when it gets down to going to combat." And so your leader's up front leading, I say, "Yeah, he out front leading all right. When he get up and them bullets flying, you ain't going to find the leader walking down the road in front of the squad.	40:02
Elbert P. Green	He get some private and tell him, you go down there about 50 yards and see if you see anything and that's how you lead." I say, "So that's why you have to train to be the leader, you don't want to always be the private, try to be the leader." And that's where he was. Even though some people refuse to be leader, I bet people tell me they don't want to be that responsibility, be the leader. I said I used to tell him, I said, "Well sometime he got to do it so it might well be me."	40:30
Paul Ortiz	Reverend Green, the one thing that really strikes me about your military service is that in a way it would've been so much easier to let certain things slide on by, but you'd expect a much more difficult route. And I'm wondering if there were influences from your father or your mother or from your earlier upbringing that may have distinguished you from say someone else who took a much easier route and got promoted much quicker.	41:02
Elbert P. Green	Yeah.	41:31
Paul Ortiz	Can you see any early influences that?	41:32
Elbert P. Green	Well, it could possibly, because my father's one that he didn't take, at this, he didn't take any tea with a fever off anybody now, he was like that. But I wasn't a very drastic type person just ever. I was sensitive to things like that, and I believe that, as I just tell folks that they were never wearing me would been promoted, I told them if I couldn't be a captain, I couldn't care less about being a major. What I need to be there for if I don't have the respect of being a captain? What am I looking forward to? And that's the way I carried myself like that. I wanted to respect for where I was, and because it took me a long time in the service to even look at the military as being a career in the first place. I looked it as a lifestyle that I was a part of. And I didn't go in there with intention of staying.	41:34
Elbert P. Green	But after I got in, I put so many years and began to look at the benefits of hanging on in. And then the other philosophy that I have that if you were going to fight anything effectively, be a part of it, don't be on the outside kicking it. That's what I always believed in. I said because the person outside of me don't carry much weight. They don't know what's going on to be kicking something that's going on inside [indistinct 00:43:00], and because I look at a lot of life like that too. Even the government, even city. Sometimes I say it's all messed up. I say, but I'm not in that government out there. I don't know what they going through, what decision they have to come up with. And so I have to listen to see what they got to present. Might be wrong, might be wrong, but I find it's discriminatory now. I'll speak up to that now.	42:31
Paul Ortiz	Did your father have a congregation at Laneview?	43:26
Elbert P. Green	Yeah, old countywide. He preached all over that whole area. He's well known throughout state, and he pastored three churches and which was spread out. Those churches, one of them was about 30 some miles from where he lived, and he always pastored two to three churches and one church, he pastored it for 45 years until he died.	43:28
Paul Ortiz	And which church did you go to as a child?	43:52
Elbert P. Green	The church I was a member was called Shiloh, Union Shiloh. And it's strange enough, it was the address for it really was Jamaica, Virginia. And this was in the Laneview community, but the nearest post office to it was Jamaica. So sometime they use both addresses and that's where the school was too. We had church right here and the school right beside it.	43:54
Paul Ortiz	What was church life as a child like? Was it a church that would have revivals, community celebrations?	44:23
Elbert P. Green	Yes, it was a Baptist church. In fact, that county had 14 Baptist churches in the county. At one time, I was the president of the Sunday School Union, which encompassed his own 14 churches for seven years in fact. And I guess I was fortunate to be the youngest president ever to be the president of that union. Nominated by my high school principal when I was a senior so I couldn't turn it down. So I accepted and I stayed until I came to service.	44:36
Elbert P. Green	In those days, revivals were quite different than now. There would be a whole week, two services a day, morning and evening service and last a week. And we usually baptized down in the river, in the Rappahannok River and most churches baptized in the river or creek as they call them then. Now, most churches have pools inside for baptizing. And the services were the very emotional type service where the preacher get up there in stomp in the hall and do it, and very emotional singing and everything. So that's why I grew up and as a result of that, that's how I got into being a gospel singer as well.	45:15
Paul Ortiz	Do you remember any early musical and influences on you as a child?	45:58
Elbert P. Green	In terms of groups?	46:09
Paul Ortiz	In terms of groups.	46:11
Elbert P. Green	Yeah, quartets was my thing. Yeah, particular The Harmonizing Four of Richmond, Virginia. I still think it was one of the greatest groups ever. And all of them are passed, deceased now.	46:11
Paul Ortiz	Did you have heroes as a child, role models keeping you really?	46:25
Elbert P. Green	Well, coming out of my background, wasn't too many of it for us to know people like Jackie Robinson and Joe Lewis and let's, who else? Mahalia Jackson. But the rest of them would just be.	46:34

Elbert P. Green	The nearest town where there was a doctor was 17 miles to town. Things was segregated growing up now. In those days if there was an accident, first question somebody was going to ask, "Was he White or Black?" And from that socialization came, so they'd say, "Was he drunk or sober?" But back then it would say Black or White. And that determined what would go from there.	0:04
Elbert P. Green	But the two known doctors were Dr. Stewart and Dr. Tony. Stewart in Tappahannock and Tony in Urbana. So if any Black person got sick, they were going to call one of them two. And they would get in their little car—	0:36
Paul Ortiz	Were they Black doctors?	0:53
Elbert P. Green	They were Black doctors. And then they would come to the house. They would have house calls. They'd be right there.	0:53
Paul Ortiz	Were there any Black businesses in Laneview?	1:02
Elbert P. Green	When I was growing up, I don't know of any Black businesses in that area at all. They were just the workers.	1:07
Paul Ortiz	And how did you come to relocate to Tuskegee?	1:21
Elbert P. Green	That was a long way by the way of the military. And let me tell you something about the military. When I joined the military, I met my wife in the service. She was a Army nurse. And her home is Montgomery, Alabama. I had never been to Montgomery, Alabama at that time. I met her in Fort Leonard Wood Missouri. We were married 33 years ago yesterday in Boulder, Colorado. And at that time I was a first lieutenant in the Army and she was a first lieutenant in Army Nurse Corp.	1:28
Elbert P. Green	And we have two children, twins. My son is a captain in the Army Reserve. My daughter is the first lieutenant in the Army Reserve. And I thought that was kind of unique, because I bet there are not many families in this country where the mother and father are military and both the children are military. Because I know in my family, that's the only one like that. And really, there's only one other sister or brother that have a child. And none of the grandchildren [indistinct 00:02:53] service at all except one.	2:19
Elbert P. Green	And that wasn't by any particular persuasion other than the fact that when I retired, I started a ROTC program at a high school in Mississippi, and taught that seven years. And both of my children were two of my first students in the program. And that may have had some influence on them going into the military and following up. And my son stayed, he joined the National Guard when he was in high school and been with the service ever since.	2:58
Elbert P. Green	My daughter, both of them went to college in Mississippi and graduated from Delta State, Mississippi. But my daughter didn't stay in ROTC. But the year she graduated, we moved back here to Tuskegee and she enrolled in Auburn and got her commission at Auburn University Montgomery. And then she's been ever since. She enlisted first too, in the reserves. And then she got her commission to Auburn University. Now living in Atlanta.	3:28
Elbert P. Green	So that's, in a way, of how I got here, because Montgomery was my wife's home. That's where she grew up. And interest enough, the only one I could remember that ever left Montgomery was one sister. That sister went to Virginia to live. I thought that was a real coincidence too.	4:02
Elbert P. Green	So I kind of like this part of the country. I like the weather and everything. So we made all of our plan to settle and retire in Montgomery. And just the job opportunity I had, it took me to Mississippi. And I decided that, well, let's go back to our original plan. We came back here, she said, "Well, I don't want to go to Montgomery." So I said, "Well, I've already accepted the job in Shorter Alabama, which is down the street from us. "And if you don't want to live in Montgomery, we'll go over to Tuskegee, because I'm going." And so, we came.	4:19
Elbert P. Green	And I'm glad we did, because I've had all kinds of successes since I come back here. Most of my life began after I got back here in 1986. For example, I published my first book, my second book, got my master's degree and my doctorate degree, and got my license as a minister since I've been back here. So I say it's all beginning when I get back here. Prior to that, I guess I was just spinning my wheels. So that's why I say I'm glad I came back because everything looked like it been uphill since I've been back.	4:52
Paul Ortiz	And your degrees are from Tuskegee?	5:28
Elbert P. Green	No.	5:30
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	5:30
Elbert P. Green	She got her nursing degree from Tuskegee, but I got my master's from Troy State and my doctorate from Southwest University of New Orleans, Louisiana. Because I've always studied and I have a bachelor's divinity from a little school up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. That was a few years back. I don't even know if they exist anymore. And then I've studied different small or short religious courses. And then I got a master's of bible philosophy from the American Bible School in Kansas City, Kansas. And I also have a honorary doctorate of divinity.	5:31
Paul Ortiz	If you had to kind of sum up your life and all the changes that you've seen, what would you say [indistinct 00:06:32] impressed [indistinct 00:06:35] or the thoughts that kept you going?	6:19
Elbert P. Green	I guess it's just from one interest to another. One thing about traveling around and seeing different things has kept me going, to begin with. And then I've always believed in showing up my obligations, so I always have worked hard to do that. And I always had the intention in my life that, regardless what happened, I live a lifestyle so that if something happens or some tragedy or something, I don't intend to be going backwards one inch.	6:40
Elbert P. Green	So whatever I do, I land on solid ground and say there ain't [indistinct 00:07:16] go but forward or stop. And some people say when you stop, you start going backwards. But I'm not looking forward to that day, because the idea is I planned it so that when I stop, I don't mean stop, stop. I mean that I'm at the stage where I'm not going to be giving away and supporting everybody else. But I hope and I'm going tell them, I'll say that I hope to have enough oil in my limbs to take care of my family till the [indistinct 00:07:43] come.	7:10

Item Info

Title:

Elbert Green interview recording, 1994 July 07

Date:

July 7, 1994

Creator:

Green, Elbert P.

Contributor:

Ortiz, Paul

Description:

Name: Elbert P. Green; Date of birth: 1935-06-09; Place of birth: Laneview, VA; Occupation(s): minister; counselor; armed services; Residence: Tuskegee, AL
Informant ID: 662; Interviewed by: Paul Ortiz.

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Behind the Veil

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

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

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behindtheveil
d954bbf0-1964-43ab-b3b8-5ab54f2143d2
ark:/87924/r41v5pp61
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Elbert Green interview recording, 1994 July 07

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1. Elbert Green administrative file., 1994

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