Behind the Veil Meeting, 1999 November 09

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Jennifer Ritterhouse	She would have [indistinct]. And I was like, well, Bob's coming late. So yeah.	0:01
Paul Ortiz	When I hear academics say 15 minutes late, I mean, I know what, what it means when I say 15 minutes late.	0:05
Jennifer Ritterhouse	15 minutes late means, "hopefully."	0:09
Paul Ortiz	Hopefully (laughter). Best case scenario. (laughter).	0:12
Jennifer Ritterhouse	All right.	0:17
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	0:18
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Are we rolling?	0:20
Paul Ortiz	We're rolling. Test 1, 2, 3. There you go. Just wanna make sure it gets everything.	0:21
Jennifer Ritterhouse	(laughs) Including those bags.	0:29
Paul Ortiz	Um, well, I'd be happy to throw out this, what I was doing on the, with the working manuscript, because most of this stuff we actually talked about, I guess, a couple weeks ago. And what I did is I just went back through it. I added one excerpt, the Cornelius Speed excerpt and just did some fine tuning with these other excerpts. I went back and listened to the tapes and I was able to clear up, I think most of the editing, the larger editing issues, you know, I'm sure there's still punctuation things. Um, and oh, I know somebody had asked me about this introductory text and what we had done with this introductory test text is that last year we tried to, to think about how we would introduce each section and how the introduction would, in some sense set up the excerpts. Um, so that's just a, a first run at that. But I, I guess I, what do people think?	0:36
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Did you end up lengthening the excerpt? I have to say, I, I didn't get those type announcement—	1:56
Paul Ortiz	Yet. Oh, okay. Um, actually no, I didn't end up, 'cause I went back and I was listening to, to these and some of them, well, actually yes and no. I didn't lengthen William Smith. I didn't lengthen Ann Pointer. Um, I did.	2:00
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Is that the one that was consumed by the—?	2:21
Paul Ortiz	Yeah, unfortunately, Ann Pointer got the Blair Witch syndrome thing.	2:22
Jennifer Ritterhouse	They took one too.	2:27
Paul Ortiz	Yeah. That's one has the funny—but see that one stays exactly the same. Um, all of them stayed the same except for Milton Quigless. Now, I did add some things onto the Quigless. Okay. And I did actually do I think an editing. Yeah. Um, I did augment that some, and I did change the header because he had, you know, most of the interview was about medical or healthcare. So I just added some more tax more onto that.	2:28
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Is this the only excerpt that we have thus far dealing with healthcare?	3:06
Keisha Roberts	No. Moore deals with it and the Butterfield.	3:11
Jennifer Ritterhouse	That's right. Okay.	3:14
Keisha Roberts	It's gonna talk about it. And that's why I picked that one to bring some more healthcare into plan. And I don't know if you know anybody else.	3:14
Jennifer Ritterhouse	I have someone much done. We need to pull out a midwife go through the database and type in midwife under occupation, see if they got what. Okay. Yeah. That sounds become the notes. (laughter). I did. Great.	3:25
Paul Ortiz	Because we do have, we do have several interviews with midwives actually quite a few, and even more interviews where people talk about	3:39
Keisha Roberts	Bartering with them.	3:47
Paul Ortiz	Bartering with them, but also where people also talk about, you know, herbal remedies. Alternative.	3:48
Keisha Roberts	I have a little bit about that briefly yesterday.	3:55
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Can you—	3:58
Keisha Roberts	Describing some of—	3:58
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Um, there's, there's an interview from Florida, I don't remember the name. Um, but it's, I mean, the whole second half is nothing but superstitions and, and like that and, and herbal remedies. But I was, I mean, it's fabulous stuff. And I was just wondering how, how we could, can we use that here? Can we contextualize it in a way to make it fit into a quote Jim Crow book.	4:00
Paul Ortiz	Oh, about what herbal remedies and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. Because in a sense—	4:28
Jennifer Ritterhouse	I mean, as long as we say, you know, denied access to actual healthcare, blah, blah, blah, this is one way—	4:32
Keisha Roberts	Particularly when you have to be self-reliant for medical treatment. I'll look for the midwife stuff this afternoon as another person to bring in with the Butterfield next week. So I can look up anyone. But I think that would be, yeah. Yeah. I think if we, we do a good job it work.	4:36
Paul Ortiz	Yeah. 'cause then you get healthcare from both, I mean, from different perspectives. Right. I mean, Milton Quigless has a certain	4:55
Keisha Roberts	Alternative	5:00
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Medicine and get the Well, and, and plus get the female involvement,	5:01
Keisha Roberts	Right? No, exactly.	5:05
Paul Ortiz	Yeah. We have, actually, there's one interview that we did with a woman who was like a third generation midwife from, it was in Arkansas. It was an Arkansas collection, and I think that one has been transcribed. And she talks about how her grandmother trained her mother, and then her mother trained her. And then how that, that craft actually changed over time. And one of the things that changes is that the state of Arkansas, and this is true with a lot of states, actually started requiring they set up a licensing program, right. Like in the forties or fifties that early. Yeah. Because the state realized that they just weren't providing or they weren't, you know, they weren't able to provide healthcare, whatever. And so they started requiring that license. Um, yeah, the Quigless is the one that I actually ended up adding stuff to. I mean, there's, there's more in his interview about about particular episodes. But I, I just thought that these seemed to be the most,	5:08
Robert Korstad	Well, we, where are we on the, on your—	6:13
Paul Ortiz	Yeah.	6:16
Robert Korstad	—Excerpts from the manuscript, working manuscript?	6:16
Paul Ortiz	Yeah. We were, I, the questions were like, when I went back and worked on this, did I end up adding things or augmenting Yeah. And with, I was saying with a, a few of them I didn't Yeah. But with the Quigless one I did because he talks about this floor. Which	6:18
Robert Korstad	One is that?	6:35
Paul Ortiz	Uh, Milton Quigless. Yeah. He was the doctor. In Tarboro. Um, I mean, beyond this, he does talk more about how he sets up the hospital that's more kind of a, involves business transactions. And he does talk a little bit more about segregation in the existing hospital in Tarboro. So	6:37
Robert Korstad	That wouldn't be bad to add. I thought that was I mean, there's a lot of good stuff in here that would be, you know, and he might be a character that we could, you could expand a little bit. Had a lot of, and these are interesting stories and insights and, you know, it's per and perspectives that you don't, perspective you don't normally get.	7:03
Paul Ortiz	Yeah. But yeah, I'll keep on, I'll go back and,	7:25
Robert Korstad	'Cause I think these, I mean, the two things with these excerpts I read back through 'em again this morning that you know, one is, I, I think that they don't, you know, the more we move into these larger, kind of more complicated individual narratives in which we are incorporating different aspects of the interview as opposed to the these little more snapshots things I think these stand, I don't think these are as strong as they were, but as the other ones just 'cause we're doing, we're moving that direction. Not, not entirely, but some of them. And then the and then how we organize 'em too, I mean, just seems to be a lot of the, the introductory material and some of the thematic ways that these are framed don't seem to work quite as well anymore.	7:32
Robert Korstad	I mean, Bitter Truth is I don't know my, that almost seems like a theme for the whole book to me. And, and I'm wondering how we, you. I don't know. I just, in particular, this whole introduction using Howard Thurman and CLR James and others is it was interesting, but I didn't think that I didn't think the the excerpts always did as good a job of relating to those things. This seems like a, the more abstract discussion here at the beginning. And then even the first excerpt, I mean, there's this whole thing in here about kind of sexual exploitation and, you know, of, of young girls and everything that's not that just kind of crying out for some, some descriptions, some, I mean, some, some framing.	8:30
Paul Ortiz	Right.	9:37
Robert Korstad	Uh, you know, and particularly how it, you know, it gets back into the issue of the police and criminal justice. Uh,	9:38
Paul Ortiz	I don't know. Well, yeah. I think that's, that's part of the dilemma about introductions and, and conclusions to the, the chapters and to the book is that the intro, the intros are gonna really have to be hinged to the, the ultimate excerpt. So the, to ultimately make up that chapter. So there's definitely gonna have to be, I guess at a certain certain point, we're just gonna have to decide which	9:50
Robert Korstad	Ones, how they. Yeah. How they get,	10:21
Paul Ortiz	Or, yeah. Are gonna go in the, in the chapter and then go back and really frame them.	10:23
Jennifer Ritterhouse	I guess the reason I was asking you about whether or not you added materials, 'cause it seemed like the question we had last time working in the excerpt stuff was whether it was gonna be a matter of using these as our occasional short pieces, or whether we're really try to use these with guides back into the interviews. And I'm just wondering if s one, again, giving you insight and reflection—	10:37
Keisha Roberts	That seems kind of like a provisional—the only answer that I would think you could generate to that would be provisional, because some of them [indistinct] because they said everything they needed to say then, and there's nothing more to augment from the transcript, which is why I think you generated more for the quick list and then and left the others with less expansion. I think it's gonna definitely vary a lot.	11:02
Paul Ortiz	Yeah. Some people's narratives, they're lend themselves to longer, you know, sections. But I think at the same time, it's important. And we talk, you know, we talk about this quite often is we have, you know, certain, I mean, sometimes longer	11:37
Robert Korstad	Narratives tend to emphasize certain types of experiences. And we have to think about the fact that we want to create this collection of a material which is gonna be more broadly representative. Um, and I think sometimes the shorter excerpts get us to some of the themes in a, in a perhaps more concise manner, sometimes no longer ex mm-hmm. Ext. Um,	11:52
Robert Korstad	They're not necessarily as, I mean, I think people read them for different, different reasons. Yeah. I guess my, yeah, I think that's right. I think the, the issue is, is how we start, I just thought like this bitter truce and heritage. I mean, I think all these things are good, but I just think we, I think even in our discussions, we started complicating these things in ways that, I'm just not sure how the, you know, how at this point we're gonna, how some of the division, how we're gonna place things, how the divisions of the, of the book itself, or what it's gonna look like. And I'm less really concerned about that than, than than really honing and developing. Um, 'cause I, what I started thinking about this morning was, you know, what does this book, this book isn't gonna be, it's gonna, even though it's gonna be a book of documents, it's not a book that, that a historian who's writing about this period is gonna rely on mm-hmm.	12:23
Robert Korstad	. So that we're trying to use documents, we're trying to use excerpts, we're trying to use the photographs, the things to, we're, we're trying to tell a story. We're trying to create an analysis. We've got a point of view. Uh, even though it's a pretty o you know, it's more open-ended than a, than a monograph would be, or a more synthetic work. So we're, you know, we're letting, and we're not trying to tell the reader everything. We're trying to, we're trying to have, leave some ambiguity in the text. We're trying to leave some complexity that somebody might get it out. But we're not, we're not just creating a set of documents that are gonna be, that somebody's gonna mine to, in order to write a history of Black life in the Jim Crow South. We're gonna be sure creating a book that students are gonna use and, and you know, kind of lay, people will read to, to, you know, enhance their understanding or stimulate their remembrances or things like that. So and I guess that every, for me, that I'm getting to the point where every, every excerpt has to, I'm, I'm more interested in that than I am. Whether we cover every topic or whether what we do is, is necessarily gonna be real useful to, you know, history graduate student writing on a particular topic here. Not that we ever were interested in that, but particularly,	13:18
Keisha Roberts	See, I think it's for those reasons that the short has to stay. Also because I'm thinking about readerly talking and readerly audience people's levels of engagement change their levels of interest and intensity are gonna shift. And so I think to address, to encourage the broadest mass of people to, to engage with this text, you need to have a, a real kind of textual variety. And I think a lot of these excerpts here are incredibly strong and compelling. Yeah.	14:49
Robert Korstad	Well, you see from the one that keys have been working on how much work you have to do just to get a, a short vignette like this Yeah. To a point where it, it, you know, it conveys the, the issues that we're talking about. And, and does that, you know, that job, because I think this is to had a few little comments on the headers that, I mean, I'll give you, give you all these, but you know, it's, you've got it honed now. So that, I mean, this is a, a kind of a strong, you know, powerful image. It conveys a lot of different things. And yet it's just in the way you've been able to edit and everything. It's still, it still has some ambiguity or, you know, I mean, there's some, there's some complexity to it that the reader has to figure out for themselves. Um, so in some ways, the shorter ones require more work in a weird way than some of the longer one. So	15:24
Keisha Roberts	These questions of context too, you have to try to get as much in there and provide as much context without having much space to work in.	16:24
Robert Korstad	Why	16:31
Keisha Roberts	Should we go to Stine George?	16:38
Robert Korstad	Sure. Yeah.	16:40
Robert Parrish	I really thought this was what was interesting to me, but you brought up some things that I not aware of. Um, he made the statement that he knew of no Black superintendents across the country.	16:55
Robert Parrish	And I know that you have, or Nicole has an example of one. So so I, I, I might wanna look into that a little bit. But beyond that, I, I had no idea of the power relationship within his own county or within his own area between the superintendents and how teacher hiring was done. I, I had always assumed that this was, that the Black schools were a Black institution where they had a great deal of control of what was going on within the hiring of teachers, the hiring of principals. And it was a pretty autonomous kind of atmosphere. But this excerpt for me just flipped that ball around.	17:09
Robert Parrish	Yeah. And what really struck me was the, was the atmosphere that was created where you have teachers that can, you know, tell on each other, you know, tattletale on each other to the superintendent, and the principal is worried about being told on, or having to give out information that might harm the lives of their teachers or the kids. And how they were pretty much shackled. They couldn't really ask for anything for their students, but they were just there basically as a figurehead, just to pass information back and forth between the community and the superintendent judge. So that's why I chose this excerpt. And I really,	17:53
Paul Ortiz	Did he, does he eventually, did he eventually actually become a principal? Or did he he went from teaching to Okay. He	18:42
Robert Parrish	Just kept teaching.	18:48
Paul Ortiz	Okay. Because this a, this is very interesting. 'cause this, you know, I'm thinking of the Kenneth Young interview. 'cause he act, you know, he became a principal and he talks about it from the other angle, you know, all these, these restrictions	18:49
Keisha Roberts	Right.	19:07
Paul Ortiz	That were placed on him. And I mean that the kind of fascinating side by side almost,	19:08
Keisha Roberts	Uh, that's also, I was thinking, and with the Aaron paints a very different picture of a community of Black teachers who don't paddle. You know, everybody's just working together and staying with the kids all hours. So what I was wondering is if in the header you can identify that he is an educ, like make this particular excerpt stand discreetly from the rest of, from the longer piece. So we could collapse those three texts together in a kind of education section.	19:15
Robert Parrish	Okay. That's,	19:44
Robert Korstad	Yeah. I think you need to written in a footnote or something here to, to cite some of the literature. Because in some ways this is a, this is a story that contradicts what's becoming the, the narrative about Black schools and Black education in Jim Crow South, which is that—Wouldn't it be nice if we could kind of get back to that point, you know, when we had these Black teachers and they were role models and they really worked for the students and they understood the students' needs. And the, the reality is that, you know, it's a lot more com a lot more complicated than that. And I just think this whole, this whole image of, of White superintendents picking principals and, and picking teachers for their, their, their ability to enforce kind of, you know, rules and social norms.	19:48
Robert Korstad	But, but in particular, not picking people who were particularly well educated and were gonna do a job of really teaching. I mean, it just gets to the point that there's this, you know, this whole very concerted effort on the part of educators and public policy makers not to invest funds in, in Black education, not to, and here's an example in which even if the funds are being invested, you know, there's a concerted effort here not to actually provide high quality education for people. I mean, this quote at the end of the, you know, at the end of the, that first excerpt, we do, we do good to do as good as we are because we had no voice in choosing the teachers is a. Right? I mean, that's a great need to figure out some way of really playing that up. Again, that's a, that's a great kind of statement about, about this whole, this whole set of issues that's embedded here.	20:42
Robert Parrish	I wanted also, that was my other problem. I wanted to know from everyone else, because this, this story did really stick out to me as going against the, on what, what were some of the ones that they came across as far as Black teachers and Black principals and how they interacted with one another, the administration. 'cause this is like very, obviously the adversarial role or relationship. I just, I feel like this is really not what's the norm to see if this would just, like you're saying, if I should say in the footnote that this is like a extreme case Yeah. Into the rule.	21:52
Keisha Roberts	But see, I would be wary to make that statement because I, I would wonder, I feel like in, and that's a broad generalization, but in many school systems, there, these kinds of incentives, like in all kinds of, all forms of industrial and corporate culture, incentives to improve your professional status by ways that could potentially hurt others. And this to me is that kind of scenario where there are these incentives to tell.	22:38
Iris Hill	And you don't know really why there aren't more stories like this. I mean, what—	23:11
Paul Ortiz	In the collection—?	23:16
Iris Hill	A finding of who you interview. How people select out what they're going to talk about. Exactly. You know, maybe this, you know, Stine George is just unusually honest about the really awful situation that, you know, decided to tell it like it is or something.	23:17
Keisha Roberts	Because the Aaron to me read like Saccharin, it was just sweet.	23:38
Paul Ortiz	And we actually do have a lot of stories where people are very critical. Um, we have a couple of interviews in Wilson, which actually people talk about the what became known after World War I as the slapping episode, where—	23:42
Iris Hill	The slapping of what?	23:59
Paul Ortiz	A lot the slapping episode. And the, the a lot of groups got involved in this. What happened was, is that shortly after the end of the war, I get this story straight out. It, it has to do with daylight savings time. But anyway, a, a teacher—	23:59
Iris Hill	Get slapped for that— (laughter)	24:15
Paul Ortiz	I got so many stories—I'm trying to—okay.	24:16
Paul Ortiz	Well, yeah, she, she will get slapped for that. Um, because daylight savings is instituted. I'm not sure if it's right. You know, when, when the time change is over, a Black teacher lets her kids out an hour early or an hour later, whatever the principal reports her to the superintendent and says this, this teacher's a troublemaker, sends her to the White superintendent. He slaps her.	24:18
Paul Ortiz	And the aftermath is essentially, well, a couple things. Number one, the parents pull their kids out of the school and boycott the school. Number two, the principal is, becomes a target of a lot of animosity. How could you let this happen? You know, you knew what was gonna happen in this incident. So he needs, he actually needs to get a police escort to go to church because his own fellow church members are gonna, and actually I think there does have to be a couple you know, fights that come out of this.	24:47
Paul Ortiz	And it comes, you know, it's one of these cases after a week, it's like all over the press, you know, the slapping incident. And then, but the, the parents actually did carry out a boycott for a period of time. I'm not sure how long of, of the school system, but we have, I mean, that's just a more dramatic kind of story.	25:16
Paul Ortiz	But we have, you know, plenty of stories where people are very critical of the, of that relationship between superintendent, principal, principal teachers, and are, are pretty clear that, you know, this is and we have it in the general education board papers right here at Duke, you know, where the, you get the educate, the, the philanthropists and everyone saying, you know, education is not the major point here. Right. You know, training people to work is the point.	25:34
Robert Korstad	And providing them some rudimentary, you know, education. I mean, that's what's necessary. So that short school, you know, some, some kind of basic reading and writing skills and stuff, but not, you know, but more, it's more social kind of disciplinary. works, but other than—	26:05
Iris Hill	Understand the power structure. Learn the power structure.	26:24
Robert Korstad	Right. Exactly. No, it's not—	26:27
Iris Hill	That's basically, yeah.	26:27
Robert Korstad	But you, it wasn't that different from the White schools. That's what that was about too, for the, yeah, that was I think pulling these education—I mean the education stories, we've got a lot of different ones and that's, and I think that's one that's emerging as a, is a pretty coherent or a more coherent section already.	26:32
Robert Korstad	And we might when we put these together next week for Bill and Ray, this might be one that we can you know, we might group, I think we've got probably four or five now education stories in different forms that would go into that heading. We might do that. And then you could write a, you know, a good, I mean, at some point, not necessarily next week, but we could write a good introduction would address some of these larger issues. Um, you know, this, this to me seems like a natural way. Things are starting to, to fall out.	26:49
Jennifer Ritterhouse	So just using the Dolores Aaron as an example, would we start to pull that apart? Like not have it, you know, all of her things together as kind of like what we were,	27:27
Keisha Roberts	I think I had, I had initially kept her pretty segregated, and I think she is sort of, I think there are multiple excerpts. I I have to open my file upstairs.	27:38
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Right. But she has the education and the colorism.	27:49
Keisha Roberts	Right, right, right. And I did divide them. Okay. So there should be different headers to show when she shifts into education. But a lot of her—a lot of her really explicit education stuff comes later. Like, I don't know when her tenure for superintendent of school is. I'm getting the impression it's post the period of this project. So I don't know. Then if his statement isn't too far, if he's talking about a particular window of time when he didn't see Black superintendents, he might still be right in that.	27:51
Robert Korstad	Um, well, you couldn't, I mean, he wouldn't be in a position to make generalizations like that.	28:20
Keisha Roberts	Well, yeah. Naturally—	28:26
Keisha Roberts	He can only really talk about his little, his community.	28:30
Robert Korstad	I mean, that's—Yeah. When people made generalizations and had kind of images of things, but when in fact they were more diverse. Uh, one thing, I, I didn't, this thing at the end on organizing didn't work for me just because I don't know what that, you know, what is he talking about? And I know this is kind of post, this is civil rights era stuff. Um, but just tagged on like that, I mean, I would just, I would either cut it out or, or either you don't have to do some kind of a transition into it and then do more with it.	28:32
Robert Parrish	I decided to add it because for me it was showing his principles and his trouble with the whole situation, with the whole environment of the school. He wanted, he wanted to try and protect Stine in a sense, but he, he felt really uncomfortable. It was kind of like a "Don't ask don't tell" policy that he had to maintain to keep their working relationship healthy in a sense. I felt like it was a little disjointed too, but I dunno how to get away.	29:08
Keisha Roberts	Do you wanna share something like that in the header about him? Maybe like a character statement?	29:45
Robert Parrish	About his organizing?	29:49
Keisha Roberts	Yeah. A person who did this and that and mm-hmm. Um, worked from the, from behind the scenes, you know, Stine shares some of the things that would, would make that kind of subversive behavior necessary.	29:50
Robert Korstad	Yeah. Think about it a little bit more. Okay. I mean, think if you don't do more with it, then looking at it.	30:11
Keisha Roberts	Chapman, everybody has the Hall also.	30:27
Keisha Roberts	Did you wanted to, did you talk about that?	30:30
Paul Ortiz	Oh, you can talk about Chapman.	30:33
Keisha Roberts	All right.	30:35
Robert Korstad	Can you do, I don't see Chapman.	30:35
Keisha Roberts	There's Chapman.	30:38
Paul Ortiz	It's edit three, or no, no, no, I'm—	30:39
Keisha Roberts	Edit two. And then there's Chapman's from last week and Hall.	30:40
Robert Korstad	Oh, maybe I'll look.	30:44
Keisha Roberts	And I brought some images to go with the Marie Fort from the week before. With Chapman, try to perfect the first excerpt that you got in regard to the, the incident with the, with the gun—	30:46
Robert Korstad	Just look at it real quick.	31:06
Keisha Roberts	I'm trying to remember what's new. This would definitely be the second section. And this, in the excerpt two, excerpt two and three, he talks about staying in a hotel that he had labored in the 1940s and the experience of going into this exclusive place that he had promised he would come back into. So I thought that was interesting, particularly to talk about a person who has grown to become such a, a prominent figure in his community. Um, and having waited tables and really worked hard to get the accomplishments that he had. Then I was also interested in, I'm interested in the kinds of people that he knows. The fact that he knows Vernon Jordan and Jesse Jackson—	31:09
Keisha Roberts	Trying to make sure this is the right person.	31:57
Keisha Roberts	And then the price that he pays in terms of his own business and his life in regard to being willing to speak out the incident with people pulling him off the side of the road while he's transporting goods to his beauty shops. So I don't know if anyone has any particular comments about the content of excerpt two and three. 'cause I believe that's the newest. That one is what's new to you.	32:00
Paul Ortiz	Excerpt? Oh yeah, that's right. Excerpt three. Yeah.	32:38
Keisha Roberts	Well, with the Cadillac story, I thought that was significant to talk about someone who is so well respected in the community that they encourage you to purchase their car and say, well, keep the car, you know, when you feel comfortable, you can bring it back. We'll talk about the price, you know, whatever you wanna do. Um, it kind of gave a fullness around as to his life.	32:41
Keisha Roberts	Having, he started on this farm, then put himself through school, working as a waiter, people asking him to smile, then coming back to, to the hotel where he was basically so ha ha ha, you'll never be back here. Is anything more than what you're doing now to a man who can buy Cadillacs perpetually with no money down? Literally.	33:00
Keisha Roberts	So, and I also like the fact that he talks, and I didn't include the Meharry, but I tried to encapsulate it in the header, these class questions in regard to getting into graduate school, which I hope as we get into some of these education, I don't know who else might be able to provide some insight into some of these class questions. And, you know,	33:22
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Secondary education, actually, I just found a really good point. We have a lot of things about early childhood education, but not much with Collegiate or Graduate.	33:47
Keisha Roberts	Graduate.	33:55
Jennifer Ritterhouse	I have some from 1960s. Yeah. We need to see if you can running off of education by adding those over years.	33:57
Keisha Roberts	Right. See, I don't know how, unless we can find someone who maybe even administrative or works in one of these institutions to talk maybe about some of the rigors of getting accepted.	34:06
Robert Korstad	I think some of the Bricks School interviews—	34:19
Paul Ortiz	People went to Columbia to get their MAs.	34:21
Robert Korstad	And people have been to Hampton and come back. So there's, there's stuff, and we, you know, we, we need to scour these interviews for some, you know, some stories about kind of collegiate life, I think. Because it was a big— I mean, the, the way in which the middle class goes back into the communities and tries to replicate the kind of the, the social kind of institutional functions of that, or, or that world, you know.	34:26
Robert Korstad	And how important the, how important Black sorority. I mean, in a town like Winston-Salem, that's the for middle class women, their sorority is really as much a and that gives them as much of a sense of identification as, as their church does, or their family or their job if they work.	34:55
Keisha Roberts	I'm trying to think now, who mentions fraternities? One of the individuals that I went through. But yeah, there's not too much. I was hoping to get a sense of, well, dormitory life or something, but I'm not really finding miracles. It had so much disdain for Tuskegee, and he's clearly upset with Howard and Meharry.. Um, and doesn't really get into it at all.	35:17
Jennifer Ritterhouse	You know, I, there's a Florida transcript and talks about being in college and dealing with I'll just look for that excerpt. Okay. There was some good things in there.	35:43
Paul Ortiz	A Florida A&M—?	35:59
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Um, may have been, I don't remember. It's been so long since I read that one.	36:01
Robert Korstad	Look in the Charlotte interviews, we interviewed so many teachers, you know, who had all have college—all of 'em, many of them had college degrees.	36:05
Iris Hill	Where, what some of these people—the interviews also in Tampa were HBCUs—	36:16
Paul Ortiz	Yeah. Tuskegee.	36:22
Iris Hill	Wasn't there some stuff in those?	36:24
Paul Ortiz	Definitely. I mean, there was, there was stuff in like interviews we, in Tallahassee, you with people that went to Florida A&M. But also in Albany, you know, people who went to—	36:25
Iris Hill	Morehouse?	36:37
Keisha Roberts	He, he's really emphatic about Morehouse, but doesn't talk about it.	36:37
Paul Ortiz	And, and actually a lot of people, I mean, one of the, the distinctive things that I noticed when we were doing field work is that a lot of people from the Lower South actually went to college in North Carolina. Went to Central, A&T, or Johnson C. Smith or Shaw, St. Augs. Yeah. St. Augs. Yeah. So we do have and then, yeah, so we have some.	36:43
Jennifer Ritterhouse	I remember from three years ago to when Charlotte talking about their training. One of was more like a business college, but obviously it was a, a pretty good discussion, if I remember it from three years ago. So I think the interview with two women at the same time in might find it in my note.	37:12
Paul Ortiz	They're going to business college one.	37:31
Jennifer Ritterhouse	The other might've been in college. around World Wari. But it was a really good discussion. 'cause it talked about like social life and stuff. I'll remember it was okay.	37:33
Paul Ortiz	Oh, was that the, in Durham, was that, was that the beauty college or the?	37:43
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Thought it was in Charlotte.	37:49
Paul Ortiz	Charlotte, okay. Okay. 'cause I was thinking we do have some interviews where people talk about going through the the beauty school here, which is in Durham, which is, yeah, I'm not sure. Interesting big institution.	37:50
Keisha Roberts	Was there anything else specifically about the Chapman? If anybody wanted to mention to me in terms of contact before I jumped to Hall I felt Hall was a, a nice companion to Chapman, which is why I selected and to Buddy along with Chapman. Friends are talking about, again, the ways in which people are chronically denying their income and the cr that they had earned, and these kinds of false accusations that go on as a way to mitigate or accomplish that task. Um, and I was also really interested in, in the ways in which he went about acquiring property	38:07
Robert Korstad	Mm-hmm. ,	38:56
Keisha Roberts	He went from, you know, working on another farm with this other gentleman and also helped the to farm for extended family members to acquiring $203, which he hid under a rug. And, and was there there I able to produce a down payment or a partial down payment toward property. And I also think it's, it's important to point out that people might've had the desire, might've even gained the financial resources, but couldn't find anybody to sell property to them. And I think in some ways it's a kind of an underwritten text as he says, I wanted to buy more, but it just couldn't go through. And then of course, you know, what Paul has identified as the classic F h J maneuverings that would, again, you might have the ambition, the financial or capital wherewithal, you need the government the loans to pull it all together. And you can't,	38:58
Robert Korstad	I thought this I mean this is another example where this picks up on a lot of the things and say all God's dangerous, and this, this guy is very much, seems to me in the tradition of Ned Cobb, and I mean, even the stories are very similar in some ways, even though they don't have, they have their own lives and trajectories. But it is this kind of, this really ambitious kind of entrepreneurial energy here that gets that gets thwarted and all these, I mean, it's successful in many ways, but also gets, it gets thwarted in, in a lot of moments too. Um, and you might, might be worth going back and looking at, at certainly referencing it here just to. You know, in terms of the, some of the header notes and just also—	40:02
Keisha Roberts	Standards.	40:50
Robert Korstad	Yeah. Looking at some of the themes. Okay.	40:50
Paul Ortiz	Um, it's about 700 pages.	40:53
Robert Korstad	Yeah. You, you can do it in a couple weeks. (laughter) (laughter). But it's a, you know, it's a, the, I mean, it's a good way, I mean, I, I want us to make sure that we're, as we're going through here, at least from footnotes, and the extent we can in headers, kind of acknowledge how, how both we're breaking the ground with this work, but also how we're either confirming or, or challenging some of the traditional interpretations of, of Black history in this history. And this is a good example.	40:56
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Well, one thing we can do that Rosengarden couldn't do is match up somebody who's got this sort of entrepreneurial style and is trying to do it through agriculture, next to somebody who leaves agriculture 'cause he's not making it, but does it in some other realm of life. I remember who called the Miracle might be a good example. Somebody who see—so in other words, you can look at two different opinions about security.	41:29
Keisha Roberts	Mm-hmm. , no. Right. See, I wish, this is why I wish Chapman had talked more about how he gets his beauty school, because he goes from the agriculture to another kind of entrepreneurial, which he's clearly successful at.	41:56
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Right. And it seems like from what we've seen so far, they people had a better chance of making it outside of agriculture. And makes me wonder, you know, is that always the case? Is it, you know, how, how does that shape out?	42:11
Paul Ortiz	Right. It is. I mean, with these, with federal programs, it appears that, I mean, a lot of the stuff, I'm trying to think of people like Keith, Daniel that have written about this. Um, but even in Mississippi, I was looking through something the other day that was saying in terms of federal programs small farmers in general, African Americans and even White farmers were more successful when they're involved in this. Was the argument that they're more successful in keeping the land and holding onto it across generations if it was part of a larger project, like a resettlement project during the New Deal, for instance, where you have, you know, 50 families or whatever. Mm-hmm. Were those programs more successful than say these more individual, like say the f h a story that Chapman or Hall talks about where, you know, you have a local agent who is clearly not dancing to the tune of the, of the federal.	42:23
Paul Ortiz	I mean, his, his, his mandate is as much who's in local power here. Right. As you know, his written regulations or whatever. Right. Uh, and that's where people get, get get really screwed over. Okay. Yeah. Because there's, I mean, there's communities. I mean, Charles Payne talks about this in his book where in Holmes County there's this large community of Black landowners who really, when they get involved in the Civil rights movement it's, it is, it is just a stark difference between them. And what happens just the adjacent county over in Greenwood, because you have this large group of landowners. They were, it was a resettlement community. They owned the land, they kept the land and things, things were just different there. in homes. It was just a dramatic difference. Uh,	43:28
Iris Hill	Until when, I mean, is that true? I'm thinking of the Tillery resettlement.	44:18
Paul Ortiz	Yeah.	44:23
Iris Hill	All the land loss issues.	44:24
Paul Ortiz	Yeah. Because more recent, definitely in the seventies and eighties, things, things changed.	44:26
Paul Ortiz	Changed. Yeah. I mean, but, and then for everybody, for all small farmers.	44:31
Robert Korstad	I guess, but it's still, that's the center of kind of protest and the organization against it. Whereas again, more isolated areas, there's not even, people aren't even able to do that.	44:34
Iris Hill	But they're able to hold onto their land a lot longer.	44:42
Robert Korstad	I think that's an important theme here too, about, you know, it's, it's one of the, the after, you know, the, it's one of the after effects of the failure of reconstruction. I mean, this, this and, and one, one of the reasons why it wasn't put through is just the kind of economic independence and ultimately the political independence, land ownership, and be able to, you know, have that kind of, that kind of autonomy, what it does for the larger power structure. Because there's embedded in all this, these you know, this kind of almost, I mean, it gets violated at times, but almost this conspiracy that, that among Whites, that, you know, that any—That in order for the system to really work for White supremacy and its various manifestations to work, you can't let people, you can't let very many people uh, kind of break through the, the barriers.	44:46
Robert Korstad	I mean, you can't, you can't, you can't make too many exceptions. You can't have too many stories of, of success, because every one of those undermines the basic foundation of the, the, the basic ideological foundation, which is why this kind of thing, you know, it's so ir it's, it, it, on the one hand it seems really irrational. Who would, you know, why would people go to great lengths to, to kind of deny people their, you know, they're what's rightfully theirs? I mean, it's not just greed but there's just, it, it, the whole system is tied up in, in saying, well, you know, we have this system because Blacks are not capable of, you know, of being farmers or they're not capable of being successful. They're not capable of managing their own land. That's why we have to have the sharecropping system so that these stories have, even though they're, I mean, they, they, they're about a, a, a lot about something really substantial about this whole system, and we need to—	45:46

Keisha Roberts	I brought, I know from the last time we met, I had the Marie Fort excerpts and interested in issues of color and the possibility of having some supplementing supplementary materials that accompany that. And there was, there was an interest in some of the representations that, that went along. Why parts of the Black community might have been corrupted by the sense of lightness as better.	0:02
Keisha Roberts	So I brought some representation from African American presses starting, I guess the first one is 1901. The rest of them kind of concentrated on 1917, 1920, and then ending with Essence in 1973 and 75 to get a sense of what people liked and really only want to extract two maybe to supplement to, to companion with, for something very old and something more recent, like the Essence stuff in the height of the Black aesthetic. So I'll just pass it around and anybody is there looking to—	0:30
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Or we can get some Essence stuff from 1999 advertising, (laughter) advertising their finishing creams.	1:07
Paul Ortiz	Yeah, that's true.	1:13
Keisha Roberts	Right, I mean, I don't disagree with that. I just—	1:14
Jennifer Ritterhouse	I'm being sarcastic. No, I, no, I know. I understand your reservations—	1:15
Keisha Roberts	I feel that, I feel, I feel like that also, but I also feel like people are less probably receptive to seeing that the things that they actually buy right now. It would upset a lot of people in that community, and I think they would lose the sense of the argument.	1:17
Jennifer Ritterhouse	I completely agree.	1:31
Keisha Roberts	"No. What do you mean? No, that's not what it's for."	1:33
Jennifer Ritterhouse	"It's a finishing cream—" It's not a finishing cream.	1:35
Keisha Roberts	It is definitely—	1:37
Iris Hill	When, when you're looking, you know, the looking through the photo archives to the photo materials. So you come across any photographs taken of beauty shops and with pictures in the windows—	1:38
Keisha Roberts	You know, we have some of beauty shops.	1:49
Iris Hill	We should see why it's, with the illustrations are in the windows. If they have illustrations to keep, keep an eye out for that.	1:51
Keisha Roberts	For beauty shop would be important. 'Cause that's such a essential—	1:57
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Start a revolution—	2:00
Keisha Roberts	Essential, essential site of cultural activity.	2:01
Iris Hill	We talked about	2:05
Paul Ortiz	She— long as she did the seminar paper. Yeah. Yeah. And finished it. Yeah.	2:10
Iris Hill	One of the people from the first group?	2:15
Robert Korstad	Class, yeah. Mawhood. Yeah.	2:17
Iris Hill	She went, interviewed a lot of people who worked with Beauty Shops.	2:20
Robert Korstad	And those are in our, I mean, that's where I, I think some of those got in our collection finally—	2:24
Paul Ortiz	Didn't they? Yeah, I think so. And she finished that paper. I remember she was submitting it to—	2:27
Robert Korstad	I think she did it with her master's eventually or something.	2:32
Iris Hill	At UNC?	2:35
Robert Korstad	At Duke. She was at Duke.	2:36
Iris Hill	What was her name again?	2:37
Robert Korstad	Rhonda.	2:38
Iris Hill	Oh, Rhonda.	2:39
Paul Ortiz	She's—first, first year, North Carolina year.	2:40
Iris Hill	Right. She's real tall. I remember Rhonda. Yeah. Very, very tall (laughter).	2:44
Robert Korstad	Right. Yeah. And then she kind of, she did, she worked for the that summer, didn't she?	2:48
Paul Ortiz	Yeah, she did work that summer because she, she took the class. She worked that summer,	2:54
Robert Korstad	Right? Yeah.	2:57
Iris Hill	Yeah. Okay. Didn't realize she didn't stay for her PhD.	2:58
Robert Korstad	Well, I don't know what she, the last time I heard she was coming back—	3:00
Paul Ortiz	She's a—	3:05
Robert Korstad	Massage therapist or something. Yeah,	3:07
Paul Ortiz	She's a massage therapist.	3:08
Robert Korstad	Okay.	3:10
Jennifer Ritterhouse	That stress will get to you. (laughter)	3:11
Paul Ortiz	Yeah, I know. I hear that.	3:12
Robert Korstad	I need a massage. I go to one. (laughter) That's not bad—Okay.	3:14
Jennifer Ritterhouse	We can, we can do, you know, just have quick scan to see who else she's interviewed. Um, because I know that there are some photos that she specifically tributes to the collect. We can take a look at those. Yeah. And you know, since she's interested in this, she might've pulled these out in her interviews. Okay. And it's not something that we've, we've talked that, you know, we've addressed previously how important beauty shops and barbershops are for social, social—	3:22
Keisha Roberts	Fort herself, underwrites it	3:48
Jennifer Ritterhouse	And political organizing.	3:49
Iris Hill	She underdescribes her own involvement. She says, "I didn't do anything all my life. I just taught, had a beauty shop." Um, and really emphasized the music school that she had, dancing, music lessons.	3:51
Jennifer Ritterhouse	But she didn't do anything. (laughter).	4:03
Iris Hill	"But I didn't do anything." And you don't hear too much. She tells you about the beauty store, how she rented the place, the roof collapses and dust went. The beauty, the beauty, the beauty parlor.	4:04
Iris Hill	Which reminds me of something when you said this dancing, music, when Susan and Keisha and I sat down the other day to go over some of the themes and as they're searching these photo archive, something that just me, I said recreation celebrations, you know, then you're saying like the people went to theaters, you know, they—	4:14
Keisha Roberts	Marie talks about the, the theater.	4:34
Iris Hill	We never have any place in our document—	4:36
Keisha Roberts	To address that.	4:39
Iris Hill	That that allows for pleasure—	4:40
Paul Ortiz	Sanctuaries, sanctuaries,	4:45
Iris Hill	Sanctuary. The sanctuaries that are more sacramental.	4:48
Paul Ortiz	Well, actually not the way we talked, because we had this conversation about what sanctuary meant, and then we decided it wasn't going to be simply for churches.	4:53
Jennifer Ritterhouse	It's institutional. Communal is that communal.	5:05
Paul Ortiz	Institutional—	5:07
Iris Hill	Yeah. So having the notion then that you could look for things that showed that kind of linking of people. Yeah.	5:08
Jennifer Ritterhouse	We have some incredible photos with this. Um, there's this, a Zulu parade in in New Orleans, people in White Face. It's been incredible marching band.	5:15
Robert Korstad	Okay. So what have we got? So these two more are yours, these two new ones are yours, Paul?	5:28
Paul Ortiz	Yeah. I got, is that what like John Volter and I told Leroy Boyd and started working on these last weel.	5:35
Paul Ortiz	All, oh, actually it looks like there's two copies here. Do you want you copy the Volter? Okay.	5:45
Robert Korstad	These, I guess I got these up. These came. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.	5:52
Jennifer Ritterhouse	That's, there must have been some, some problems. Yeah, the email, because she didn't even get the email where I checked to make sure you got everything.	5:56
Robert Korstad	Oh, really?	6:03
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Yeah.	6:03
Robert Korstad	Yeah. Well, yeah, you, you're using her wrong. You've got a short address for her. It's Jennifer at, and I think the last one I saw you, the address was just Jen.	6:04
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Oh?	6:14
Robert Korstad	I just having to know	6:15
Jennifer Ritterhouse	That then there must be something wrong with my address book.	6:16
Robert Korstad	You address book. It's, it's just—	6:18
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Okay.	6:21
Robert Korstad	Yeah, just shortened it. I wondered why I said "maybe she's changed her email."	6:23
Jennifer Ritterhouse	(laughter) All right. That, that explains it.	6:27
Paul Ortiz	Okay. That with these, with the Volter, I've actually listened to the tape and went back over it and juggled some things around. Um, not so with the boy. Now the interesting thing about the Volter is that his mother's also interviewed and she talks about, apparently, just looking through the notes, Kate Ellis interviewed both of them. Um, Kate says that she actually talked about this incident, but I'm not sure to what detail. So I'm gonna listen to that because that interview is not transcribed. And just see if there's anything that could be added	6:32
Robert Korstad	Yeah, I thought this was needed some more depth or some more fleshing out a little bit to make it, I mean, it's a nice powerful it's a powerful story in the the analysis. I thought in the first paragraph. Really, you need to do more with both in the, in the header probably. I mean, this is a, you know, this is a good, pretty good little piece of revisionist history from somebody. You know, it wasn't set up by the lower class of Caucasians at lower class. Were recruited above former, but, and property back backing. They use predictive ideas, class ideas on these ignorant low class Caucasians. I mean, there's a nice piece of kind of social, social economic analysis in here. Um,	7:14
Robert Korstad	And it's, I mean, let's just play with that a little bit. I mean, you hear, you know, the people aren't just going through the experience of Jim Crow. I mean, they're analyzing it, they're framing it. They're, they're, they're understanding it. I mean, there's a, there's a tremendous amount of, of you know, they're not just I think this is true of Whites as well as Black, but they're not just kind of accepting or, you know, they're, they're studying it. They're analyzing the same way they historian it. I mean, that's as, I mean, my God, how many books have been written that don't say anything more than just what he says in that one paragraph, you know, 500 pages to prove it. (laughter)	8:03
Paul Ortiz	Good point.	8:40
Robert Korstad	I mean, I'm writing one of 'em, so I. (laughter)	8:41
Robert Korstad	So you might say, you know, I I would do some, something like that in the head or just about, about how insightful the, the, you know, the social and political analysis is of of many of the people that we interviewed, how well they understood the way the system worked, worked and what was, what, what was all about. Okay.	8:42
Paul Ortiz	Any more thoughts on Volter?	9:18
Robert Korstad	I thought the transition between the first two parts is, I mean, I think you need to write some kind of a, something there. Like you have to going from, you know, the top of the second page to the, to that next extra. I don't think I mean either. Either. You just have to kind of keep the, you just need to, you need to sail a little bit of something move. You gotta move the reader from one, one to the next, I think.	9:23
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	9:53
Robert Korstad	Maybe, I don't know.	9:54
Paul Ortiz	I'll look, I'll look through that again and see if there's, I mean, there might be some—	9:55
Robert Korstad	There might be something there, but you could also just write a couple sentences too. Okay.	9:58
Paul Ortiz	The Leroy Boyd maybe has a lot of, there's a lot of rich things in this. I just started really working with this. I like this interview because he talks about things like, you know, what the house, what their house was like and interactions with, you know, other people in the community. Um, and really this is just, he's talking about, about the first, I mean, there's more things that he goes back to. I mean, he goes back to talking more about this, about his rural roots. Um, now pretty soon he is actually gonna leave, migrate to Memphis and you know, take an industrial job. But I just think this whole section about his, you know, his early years in, in this rural community are very, very interesting.	10:06
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Yeah. I thought it was, I mean, since we seem to have so many urban centered stores, I thought it was really great that this one really elaborated on the rural communities. And you know, actually I was wondering if, if the house description should come before the farm description . But, but then again, I wasn't sure if chronologically they were in that house before these other experiences occurred, or if that was something that we were gonna be concerned about. So.	11:04
Paul Ortiz	Right. That's a good—	11:37
Paul Ortiz	Because in this, I haven't done much very much reordering. It's just pretty much in sequential order so far. So I haven't really done much changing around or	11:45
Robert Korstad	Yeah. I think this is one, another one that's gonna take some, some transitional stuff between some of the stories that they're not. Uh oh. Yeah. Yeah.	12:04
Jennifer Ritterhouse	I always saved that for the last two. It's the longest thing.	12:15
Robert Korstad	Yeah. It's a hard, yeah, it's a hard, and you don't wanna do 'em if you're not quite sure where it's gonna go. I thought that, yeah, the, the, I mean, the most powerful thing in here is just the kind of, it's this description of the routine of daily life and kind of yearly life on the farm, the sharing and stuff. And you ought to, you know, you ought to note in there, I mean, this, this could have been a story by a White sharecropper, you know, that we use in "Like a Family" The same thing, the same issues. I mean the, the, the lives of rural people, Black and White aren't, aren't all that different around a lot of, around certain issues.	12:17
Paul Ortiz	Okay. Well, I'm gonna continue to work on rural, but actually, yeah, I mean these, the Chapman and the Hill and I mean, these are pulling out some good rural experiences, I think Stine George. So that's really good.	13:17
Robert Korstad	Um, is that, is that all we've gotten for, is that what we're through Ron? What	13:41
Paul Ortiz	Yeah, that's all the excerpts.	13:47
Robert Korstad	Just wanna make sure I've gotten so where are we in terms of kind of figuring out how are we gonna—Keisha gonna make the decisions on what to pull together to, have you gotten, been able to set up a time to get Bill to come?	13:50
Keisha Roberts	Haven't gotten any responses.	14:04
Robert Korstad	Did you call Mary? I mean, write Mary.	14:06
Keisha Roberts	Yeah, I, I see CC email to her. I'm gonna	14:07
Robert Korstad	Do that. Stay with her tomorrow.	14:13
Keisha Roberts	Um, what, what I think might work better, I mean, since we already have a time that works for when,	14:15
Robert Korstad	Seven months. Yeah. Try to find if you can,	14:20
Keisha Roberts	Yeah, I'm going to you know, just send them an email with, you know, a couple Tuesdays listed and say which ones work for you. Right. Try to get them in quickly and go ahead and set a date.	14:22
Paul Ortiz	I'm meeting with Bill on Thursday, so.	14:33
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Bring it up again—	14:35
Paul Ortiz	Yeah, I can just reinforce.	14:35
Jennifer Ritterhouse	That would be great.	14:39
Iris Hill	How are you doing on your project?	14:40
Paul Ortiz	Dissertation, (laughs). Plugging away. Finish another chapter. Two more to go. So coming along slowly.	14:42
Robert Korstad	So how do you, how do you, how are you thinking about how we're gonna arrange this?	14:52
Keisha Roberts	I think we're supposed to, each of us are responsible for the ones that we did to make sure in clean order by. Um, a date that [indistinct] has given us so that you can get collated—	14:56
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Making is I need to get excerpts from everybody by the 17th so I can have them packaged and ready to go out by the 19th. And why are you laughing at me? (laughter)? Oh, (laughter).	15:08
Keisha Roberts	Interesting. Interesting.	15:20
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Thought you were laughing at me being anal. Um, but I, I would like someone else to be here and help me order them.	15:22
Keisha Roberts	I can do that.	15:31
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Yeah.	15:31
Robert Korstad	It can help. Great. So you're gonna, so, so people are gonna give you what are their, the kind of most polished of the things that they've been working on. Right. And you'll look at 'em and try to	15:33
Jennifer Ritterhouse	And try to order them in a, in—	15:41
Robert Korstad	Some sense.	15:42
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Yeah.	15:44
Robert Korstad	And if they don't fit exactly. Don't worry about that. And then, and then you'll pull a few, a few photographs together or just Yeah, yeah. Some things that just, yeah.	15:44
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Susan and I are devoting all day Friday to photographs, so we should be able to pull some things out and, and we have a slide scanner now up of the design computer. So figure out how to use that thing. Okay. And get some, yeah, get some, you know, Xerox copies.	15:53
Iris Hill	Okay. Has everyone marked on their excerpts? The section, I think the appropriate. I know sometimes the see some excerpt, you know, section question in the section, some name is put. And I just wondered whether, what people should just start work with their hunches as to what section belong.	16:14
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Yeah. Make sure that, you know, when you give those to me on the 17th, I mean, I think for the most part we've been doing that. Yeah. But I just make sure it's there for the 17th and you already have some idea of where it's gonna fit so that we don't consume any time at that particular meeting, work on that kind of stuff.	16:34
Robert Korstad	I think make sure, make sure you include all this information too. Uh, Nicole and Keisha probably got the form—every, they're using the same format, so why	16:53
Keisha Roberts	Yeah. Nicole. The, the format that Nicole works out worked—	17:02
Robert Korstad	Out. Yeah. Robert, why don't you and Paul try to do that too, just to, so we know sub series, I mean all those, all those things, those are, those are helpful sometimes knowing when it got, you know, when you actually did the, or kind of printed it out. worked on it. Just so, 'cause sometimes I get confused when they were done.	17:05
Robert Korstad	So what's next in terms of I mean, are we just, are we still kind of going in and mining new stuff? Is that kind of the stage we're at? I mean, we seem to Yeah. Slow down a little bit here in the, the last couple weeks or so, but I'm not, it's not because we're not losing, I mean, we're not, we're not kind of going through the stuff. Right. We're not coming to start coming to dead ends.	17:26
Keisha Roberts	The Hall is new, Butterfield would be new next week,	17:46
Paul Ortiz	Okay. Right now we have, we were counting this up earlier. We have what, 23?	17:50
Keisha Roberts	23?	17:53
Paul Ortiz	Good excerpts.	17:53
Keisha Roberts	We got through 23 excerpts so far.	17:55
Robert Korstad	One thing you might do is, Paul, I I'd like to see you take some well, we suggested that about people you didn't do, but I also take some people that don't that are more compromisers , I mean, pick, pick some people that you, that you don't have this kind of natural affinity to and see, I mean, 'cause a lot of, a lot of the, you're pulling out of things here, kind of themes that fit with, you know, what you're, the, the interviews you did and the kind of take that you have on certain things so that they're more, your victorious stories tend to be more kind of struggles of good versus evil or resistance or of not, not entirely, but I noticed that in here too. Or, and there's, there's the kind of, there's a kind of prototype that emerges sometimes in yours interviews and maybe other people are doing the same thing. It might be, might be interesting to pick out and play with somebody who you really don't, you know, it's not a person that you particularly like or find heroic or exemplary in some way. And you have to, I like everybody though. (laughter).	17:58
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Well actually, we talked about this a little bit earlier about how now in, in reading excerpts were being a bit limited by the rating system that was established, you know, years ago. Because some of these, you know, less likable characters might be twos or threes. Right.	19:09
Robert Korstad	The way in which, the way in which people—	19:27
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Because of the interviewer's feelings.	19:28
Keisha Roberts	Because there is a kind of consistency out of the ones that I hit.	19:31
Robert Korstad	Yeah.	19:35
Keisha Roberts	Somewhere there are rabble rousers.	19:36
Robert Korstad	Well, there were, you know, rabble-rousers. They're, they're people who are kind of complicit in lot, you know, I mean, there's, I mean, I think we're getting some of that, but I think always striving to find more of that and, and each one of you to have to write about somebody who's a little different, you know, or, or something. Mm-hmm. It's not a, that's just a generalization (laughter). Um, but I think that, I think that helps a, I don't know what to do with these excerpts. I mean, I think, I think we, you know, the, we ought to include these, you know, work on 'em some more and, and then put these in the package that we work with, unless when we have our larger discussion with him , see what, see what people think. Yeah. Uh, 'cause I agree. We're gonna have to mix it up a little bit. Both for the reader and—	19:38
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Plus that represents like a year and a half, two years back that we can't just let —	20:24
Robert Korstad	No, that's right. That's right.	20:28
Iris Hill	When you go into the index, the interviews that aren't ranked by, are they indexed?	20:32
Keisha Roberts	Well—	20:38
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Probably not.	20:40
Paul Ortiz	Indexed by?	20:41
Keisha Roberts	You know, keyword.	20:42
Paul Ortiz	Oh, keywords. Yeah. Yeah. The only,	20:43
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Probably not the entire—	20:45
Paul Ortiz	The only indexed by the keyword are the ones we transcribed—	20:46
Iris Hill	Went into?	20:50
Paul Ortiz	Yeah.	20:50
Iris Hill	So you can't really have any kind of easy way of getting into—	20:50
Robert Korstad	Other than listening—	20:55
Paul Ortiz	Other than listening.	20:56
Robert Korstad	Well, it would, it'd probably be worth at least sitting down and going through some of the, I mean, having somebody look at the, the paperwork on the twos and just see if you, you know, somebody different may maybe you or Robert. Um, and just see if they're, if they're, you know, particular. 'cause the, you know, sometimes the descriptive material that's in those, in the notes from the, from the researcher are useful, but, and good enough. And you might just start finding some, some characters or some you know, people from different places or different work experiences or different life experiences that stand out. And even if it wasn't, even if the whole interview didn't seem successful enough to transcribe.	20:57
Iris Hill	Was there a bias to the way teachers were ones? I mean, was that part of the problem? I mean, I know there were a lot of teachers interviewed throughout the whole—	21:40
Paul Ortiz	Yes. A lot of teachers interviewed and Yeah, we noticed that I think about a year after we've been transcribing and decided that we would have a moratorium on teachers. Well, in terms of transcription.	21:48
Jennifer Ritterhouse	It's what, like 34% of what we have transcribe is teachers—	22:01
Keisha Roberts	I'm trying to remember—	22:04
Paul Ortiz	Was Yeah, originally was 70%. I mean, it's all, we were transcribing for a while and then we stopped and said we need to, and then—	22:05
Jennifer Ritterhouse	We have to make sure this book is rounded.	22:13
Iris Hill	So maybe even in the ones what people really have to start knowing is looking for other professionals. Yeah. Represented.	22:15
Robert Korstad	Well, it's hard, you know, because the reason that happened is that these are people who are more articulate. They're more used to dealing with students. We had a lot of White students doing these interviews. They were more, you know, in particular in some of these rural areas, more used to dealing with with Whites. Uh, they thought about it. You know, have had to articulate, some of 'em had been involved in kind of African American history groups. Whereas the, there's a, you know, in some of the other ones, there was a rawness that I think some of the interviewers didn't—	22:22
Paul Ortiz	Were embarrassed by.	22:52
Robert Korstad	They were embarrassed by, or didn't appreciate or didn't, you know, didn't the subtleties, they didn't understand, you know,	22:52
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Didn't realize how valuable it is.	22:58
Robert Korstad	So we can't go deep into that, but I think we could you know, I think it would be worth a couple hours one afternoon just to start going back through each, you know, each one of the subseries and just. Paperwork is all right there. It's one, one file. You can flip through 'em pretty quickly. Yeah, I pick a few out, take the tapes and carry 'em, drive 'em around your car. You know, when you're going from here to there, you can listen.	23:01
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Everybody has CD players in their car now, right? (laughter)	23:22
Robert Korstad	All you need is a tape deck. You don't need a C—	23:24
Iris Hill	No—	23:28
Robert Korstad	Iris.	23:30
Iris Hill	My '88 Peugeot—	23:31
Robert Korstad	Oh no.	23:32
Iris Hill	Has, has a hiccup trouble, serious trouble.	23:34
Jennifer Ritterhouse	It's really embarrassing. My sound system in my car is worth more than my car.	23:39
Paul Ortiz	That's right. You have a CD player.	23:44
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Yeah. (laughs) Surround sound (laughs)	23:45
Keisha Roberts	You have A cd. Oh, I—	23:47
Iris Hill	Well, nothing's worth—	23:49
Jennifer Ritterhouse	I just, I justify that by, you know, how much driving I have to do, how much commuting I do. So. (laughs).	23:50
Iris Hill	You have to treat yourself well.	23:57
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Right? It was a Christmas present a couple years ago.	23:59
Paul Ortiz	Just avoid the hockey traffic now it's kind a mess.	24:01
Iris Hill	Yeah.	24:06
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Yeah. I was thinking	24:07
Iris Hill	About taking out my first hockey game to so nearby, you know, low, low price of what? $40	24:08
Paul Ortiz	The parking is. Like	24:14
Jennifer Ritterhouse	I didn't go to them. They were Harford. I'm	24:17
Iris Hill	Like	24:18
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Going 70.	24:19
Paul Ortiz	We saw a game when they were playing over in Greensboro and it's, it's fun. It was, you know, I, I'm not a big hockey fan. It was, it was actually fun to go out to see the game.	24:21
Iris Hill	I just feel like they went up. Well, isn't it supposedly tonight that Greg and Craig are playing hockey and over at Oh, I sports play said you could see a pretty not professional game	24:30
Jennifer Ritterhouse	(laughter),	24:45
Iris Hill	But actually Greg was a professional hockey player for five years. Oh	24:46
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Really? I didn't know that.	24:50
Iris Hill	Between college and law school? Not with a major team. Oh no. It was a major team, but it was not like a star team. I think it was, I dunno, (laughter)	24:51
Jennifer Ritterhouse	That's interesting. Hockey and a pool hustler and everything.	25:04
Iris Hill	Oh, we have a pool	25:07
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Hustler. Yeah. I told Greg that's out. We should raise more funds for the center (laughter) on the pool hustle second. It's pretty good Wells too.	25:08
Paul Ortiz	Yeah, we have a lot of people on center that really good at video games and uh, pool.	25:17
Jennifer Ritterhouse	And I think we've digressed to a point in our conversation (laughs).	25:21
Paul Ortiz	Hanging out at the greenroom. What?	25:25
Keisha Roberts	And I need a, I need a contemporary one. One of the, those—	25:30
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Are so amazing because not only does the screen change your skin tone, it changes your bone structure. Which—	25:33
Paul Ortiz	Your socioeconomic background—	25:41
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Yes.	25:43
Keisha Roberts	Everything, your status—	25:44
Robert Korstad	Like Esoterica medicated "helps the darkened discolorations to bring out natural skin tone."	25:48
Iris Hill	That's a current product—	25:54
Keisha Roberts	Right, which is why I thought it would upset a lot of people who have it on their shelves, I'm sure.	25:56
Robert Korstad	Okay.	26:01
Keisha Roberts	So glove (laughs).	26:01
Robert Korstad	Okay. So we'll get stuff for next week, right? Okay.	26:05
Iris Hill	Just happened to be the wrong—	26:10
Robert Korstad	Oh, here now I've got, I've got things for everybody.	26:13
Robert Korstad	There's those. Keisha, Paul, Paul, Robert,	26:19
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Whoops.	26:29
Keisha Roberts	It's, sorry. I didn't realize your foot was there. No, I always do it far then, right? Except to make—	26:31
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Yes, we have cookies and cream cheese Danish and [indistinct] rolls.	26:42
Iris Hill	Oh my goodness—	26:53
Jennifer Ritterhouse	Yeah, I was actually just thinking, and I'm surprised I didn't get a bounce.	26:53

Item Info

Title:

Behind the Veil Meeting, 1999 November 09

Date:

November 9, 1999

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:

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

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

Identifier:

RL00170-CS-0098
bd0f9fe57d985ddec6587d631a1cb03c
behindtheveil
e47addb2-f481-4766-9a59-85dca433be26
ark:/87924/r4pv6pg4n
e47addb2-f481-4766-9a59-85dca433be26

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Behind the Veil Meeting, 1999 November 09

Transcript

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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