Hazel Phillips (primary interviewee) and Jesse Phillips interview recording, 1995 July 20

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Kisha Turner	You got yours on?	0:00
Jesse Phillips	I don't see my battery on.	0:03
Kisha Turner	Can we begin by both of you stating your full names and when you were born?	0:08
Jesse Phillips	Go ahead.	0:17
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	[indistinct 00:00:20]	0:17
Kisha Turner	Okay. You all were saying your names and when you were born.	0:23
Jesse Phillips	My name is Jesse Phillips. I was born March 30, 1922.	0:25
Kisha Turner	1932, '22?	0:25
Jesse Phillips	'22.	0:34
Kisha Turner	Okay.	0:35
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	My name is Hazel Mae Phillips. I was born May 8, 1926.	0:38
Kisha Turner	Where were you all born?	0:47
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Como, North Carolina.	0:47
Jesse Phillips	Same place.	0:47
Kisha Turner	What is it called?	0:47
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Como.	0:47
Kisha Turner	Como?	0:47
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Mm—hmm.	0:47
Kisha Turner	Okay. What was that area like when you were children?	0:59
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	[indistinct 00:01:07]	1:03
Jesse Phillips	[indistinct 00:01:08]	1:03
Kisha Turner	Was it rural or agricultural?	1:09
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	It was rural. And agriculture, because there was farms.	1:11
Jesse Phillips	There were farms. [indistinct 00:01:35] farmland.	1:34
Kisha Turner	Okay. Did your families farm?	1:34
Jesse Phillips	Yes.	1:34
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Yes.	1:34
Jesse Phillips	Side crop was what you called it back in those days.	1:35
Kisha Turner	A side crop?	1:36
Jesse Phillips	Yeah.	1:36
Kisha Turner	What's a side crop?	1:36
Jesse Phillips	You worked for the White man. And he'd give you so many acres and at the end of the year, you get certain [indistinct 00:01:48].	1:36
Kisha Turner	So your parents were sharecroppers?	1:51
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, yeah, yeah.	1:52
Kisha Turner	Okay. And were your parents also sharecroppers?	1:53
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Yeah.	1:54
Kisha Turner	Do you all remember the names of the family who owned the farm or the person who owned the farm that your family worked on?	1:57
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	The farm that I worked on, the man's name was Mr. John Wood.	2:02
Jesse Phillips	I forget the name of the man that my daddy used to work the farm for.	2:05
Kisha Turner	Okay. What was, if each of you could describe the house that you grew up in, that you were born in.	2:23
Jesse Phillips	Okay, the house that I was really born in, I really don't know too much about it, but I lived there after I got old enough to remember. You could sit in the house and look on the ground when it rained or snowed. You'd be laying in the bed, you liable to have some snow on your feet. That's how the house was.	2:28
Kisha Turner	How many rooms were in your house?	2:54
Jesse Phillips	About four rooms and the kitchen.	3:11
Kisha Turner	Was this also in North Carolina?	3:11
Jesse Phillips	Yes, all this is in North Carolina.	3:11
Kisha Turner	Okay. Was yours the same?	3:14
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Mine was a small dwelling house. We had four or five rooms.	3:14
Kisha Turner	How many people? Was it just you and your brothers and your sisters and your parents lived in the house?	3:17
Jesse Phillips	Okay, I go back there in my background. It was five of us. My mother died when I was little, a little before I was six years old. My oldest sister — There were five of us. All of us is two years apart. And I had one sister younger than I am. When my mother died, my baby sister was around two. And I was about five. My oldest sister, well, my grandmother lived with her. And she had taught her how to cook everything, so she took over. She and my grandmother took over after my mother died. So anyway, my father died when I was 11. At that time, working on the farm, my youngest brother and myself, we could get out there and do a man's work, do what a man could do. So anyway, when I first started working for money after daddy died, my oldest brother, he took over.	3:25
Jesse Phillips	So where we lived at, we lived around White people. There might be, I'd say about [indistinct 00:05:09] but we was the only Blacks that lived in that area. So we played together. So after daddy died, [indistinct 00:05:09] my brother [indistinct 00:05:13] White fellow named Ure, he wanted me to work for him, which I did. But [indistinct 00:05:20] my brother, because my brother was my daddy and my brother.	5:09
Kisha Turner	Okay.	5:09
Jesse Phillips	So anyway, I worked. When I first started working, I worked for a dollar a week [indistinct 00:05:35]	5:29
Kisha Turner	A dollar a week?	5:35
Jesse Phillips	One dollar a week [indistinct 00:05:35]. As I worked the first year [indistinct 00:05:46] this fellow's first cousin, he told my brother that he would give me 25 cents more a week than his first cousin was. So then I worked for Donald Porter [indistinct 00:05:59] supposed to have bought me a new suit, but I never got it.	5:35
Kisha Turner	Okay.	5:35
Jesse Phillips	In the meantime, [indistinct 00:06:08] first fellow I worked for [indistinct 00:06:12] worked for his first cousins, his last name was Ure too.	5:35
Kisha Turner	How do you spell it?	5:35
Jesse Phillips	U—R—E.	5:35
Kisha Turner	Okay, U—R—E. Okay.	5:35
Jesse Phillips	So we had to walk, we did, my brother and sister going to school and going to church, I'd say about four miles one way, about eight miles—	5:35
Kisha Turner	To school?	5:35
Jesse Phillips	Yeah. So anyway, the White kids would come by. They're riding the bus. They're come by and call us nigger—	5:35
Kisha Turner	Really?	5:35
Jesse Phillips	— all the kind of junk. So anyway, getting back to this fellow I used to work for, for a dollar week [indistinct 00:06:53]. I worked for his first cousin for a dollar and a quarter a week. So one Sunday morning, I was going to Sunday school. [indistinct 00:07:04]	5:35
Kisha Turner	No did you live with the man?	5:35
Jesse Phillips	Yeah.	5:35
Kisha Turner	Okay, and your brother and the rest of your family were still on the farm, were still sharecropping?	7:09
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, this wasn't a farm, but my brother tended that [indistinct 00:07:24]	7:17
Kisha Turner	You were renting?	7:21
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, yeah. So one Sunday morning I was going to Sunday school and this fellow came along that I used to work for. "Hey nigger, do you want a ride?" I said, "Yes sir." He said, "Run." He stopped, so I started running. I got close to the car, I'd say about 10 feet. He kind of pulled off slow. I don't know what I was thinking about. I figured that he was going to stop again. So after I got so close to the car, he done pulled off. He didn't give me a ride.	7:28
Kisha Turner	Wow.	7:49
Jesse Phillips	So I came up on the rough side. It was very rough.	8:04
Kisha Turner	Now those White families you were taking about, were they also sharecroppers or renters?	8:12
Jesse Phillips	They owned the farm.	8:16
Kisha Turner	Oh, they owned the farm?	8:17
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, they owned the farm, yeah.	8:18
Kisha Turner	Okay. When your family was still sharecropping, were there any White families that were sharecroppers also? Do you remember any?	8:20
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Yes there were.	8:26
Kisha Turner	There were?	8:27
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Yes there was.	8:27
Kisha Turner	But it was primarily Black people? Was it mostly Blacks?	8:27
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Right, that's true.	8:27
Kisha Turner	And do you all remember what that relationship was, other than just your professional kind of work relationship with the owners? You said you played with their kids.	8:38
Jesse Phillips	Oh yeah, yeah.	8:47
Kisha Turner	Okay.	8:48
Jesse Phillips	And also, not only black family in that section. with their kids [indistinct 00:09:13] my wife and myself, I guess we lived about eight miles apart. And the section that I lived at, we were the only Black family in that section. We played with the kids and we'd go there to eat. The only thing is, we couldn't sit at the table with them. We eat in the kitchen and the eat in the dinning room. Same thing working for this fellow, I ate in the kitchen while they ate in the dinning room.	9:05
Kisha Turner	Okay. Mrs. Phillip, what kind of experiences did you have with your family as sharecroppers on the farm?	9:37
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Well, it was nine of us. And my daddy, he worked out on the farm there. And my mother would go out and do laundry for the ladies that lived on the farm and all. She did it for $35 dollars a day. I mean, 35 cents. I'm sorry.	9:40
Kisha Turner	35 cents a day.	10:05
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	35 cents. I'll never forget it, 35 cents, yes.	10:13
Kisha Turner	She took in the farmer's laundry, or other White—	10:13
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	No, mostly like a White family would live here and a family lived there. She would go to each house [indistinct 00:10:26] and she would do their laundry. I went with her.	10:19
Kisha Turner	Did you?	10:35
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Yeah.	10:35
Kisha Turner	What was that like?	10:35
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	What was it like?	10:35
Kisha Turner	Was it—	10:35
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	It was all right. I thought it was nice.	10:35
Jesse Phillips	[indistinct 00:10:37]	10:35
Kisha Turner	The wash?	10:36
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, yeah. You didn't have no electricity.	10:37
Kisha Turner	Right. About how long did it take to do that work? How much time a day did she spend?	10:45
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	It took about three hours.	10:50
Kisha Turner	Three hours?	10:53
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	For a large family. All the White people, they had large families. [indistinct 00:10:58] back then. Mm—hmm, so we did it.	10:54
Kisha Turner	What kind of crops did were they growing?	11:04
Jesse Phillips	Peanut, corn, soybean, cotton [indistinct 00:11:18] in that part we lived. We didn't grow no tobacco.	11:09
Kisha Turner	What part of the state is that county?	11:22
Jesse Phillips	It's set in Hertford, Hertford, North Carolina. H—E—R—T—F—O—R—D.	11:22
Kisha Turner	Hertford? Okay. I'm from North Carolina.	11:33
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Oh, you are?	11:36
Kisha Turner	Winston Salem.	11:36
Jesse Phillips	Oh yeah?	11:36
Kisha Turner	Mm—hmm.	11:36
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	My cousin [indistinct 00:11:37]	11:36
Kisha Turner	Really?	11:36
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	[indistinct 00:11:37]	11:36
Kisha Turner	Oh, okay. What was I going to ask? Can we talk about — Oh, I turned it [indistinct 00:11:56]	11:37
Jesse Phillips	[indistinct 00:11:56]	11:37
Kisha Turner	Mm—hmm. Did your families raise gardens for—	11:58
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had on every farm a garden. As a sharecropper you had your own farm you raised. They would start raising a garden with watermelon, cantaloupe, stuff like that, tomatoes, [indistinct 00:12:21] cauliflower. I didn't know what collard greens was before I moved here [indistinct 00:12:26]	11:59
Kisha Turner	Really?	11:59
Jesse Phillips	Yeah.	11:59
Kisha Turner	Oh. Did you raise the same type?	12:30
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Yes we did.	12:30
Kisha Turner	How about meat?	12:34
Jesse Phillips	We raised our own hogs. And also we had one cow [indistinct 00:12:45] milk cow. She might [indistinct 00:12:48] we had our own hog meat that we had to feed our family.	12:34
Kisha Turner	How about your grandparents? Did your grandparents ever tell you any stories about what it was like when they were young? I don't know—	13:00
Jesse Phillips	Well, the only thing was, all the grandparents I know were my grandmother. I can't remember if she'd tell about how it was when she came up.	13:05
Kisha Turner	Okay. How about your parents?	13:21
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	My grandparents, I don't remember [indistinct 00:13:25]	13:21
Kisha Turner	Did your mother and father ever talk to you about it?	13:29
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	No, they didn't.	13:30
Kisha Turner	Okay. What kinds of things did your parents tell you about dealing with White folks and that kind of thing, and racism, people calling you nigger, the kids on the bus and stuff like that?	13:34
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, my daddy always taught us, at that time when a White person, a White kid called you nigger, that's what they would call you.	13:44
Kisha Turner	That's what they said, huh?	14:16
Jesse Phillips	Right, right.	14:21
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Yeah.	14:21
Jesse Phillips	So the only thing our daddy taught me—	14:21
Kisha Turner	[indistinct 00:14:22] big deal—	14:21
Jesse Phillips	See my daddy, I talked to my daddy because my momma was dead, he always taught us that when they called us nigger [indistinct 00:14:22] don't get ourselves in trouble.	14:21
Kisha Turner	Okay.	14:21
Jesse Phillips	And then back then in those days, if a White man, which I had never had one slap me, he would slap you, if you hit him back, go to court, you'd be the one going to court, going to do some time. So like I said, if they called you nigger or that kind of thing, [indistinct 00:14:55]	14:28
Kisha Turner	What kind of relationship did you have with the other Black families near you? Did you share [indistinct 00:15:06]	15:00
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, yeah. Okay, one thing about the Black families, regardless if I lived eight miles from where the Blacks were, where she was living I guess, that probably was I'd say about seven, eight houses on the farm, on Sunday all the kids would meet at one of the houses. [indistinct 00:15:38] and not only me, she's going to whip me. And she'd tell my daddy. He going to whip me too. Same way when we'd go to school.	15:06
Jesse Phillips	If we got a whipping at school, I'm talking about my family, me, my sisters and my brothers, if we'd go to school and get a whipping from the teacher and my daddy knows about it, when we get home, we getting another one. Because he said the teacher is not going to whip you for nothing. He was right because most times when I got a whipping at school, I did something that I wasn't supposed to. And also, the school that we went to, one school I took care of the first grade up to the seventh grade.	15:44
Kisha Turner	Did y'all go to the same school?	15:54
Jesse Phillips	Yeah.	15:54
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Yeah.	15:54
Kisha Turner	What was the name of it?	15:54
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Oak Hill.	15:54
Jesse Phillips	Oak Hill.	15:54
Kisha Turner	And what was Oak Hill like?	15:54
Jesse Phillips	One bedroom with one door. It didn't have no backdoor, just the front door. There was a wood heater that we boys would go get the wood in the back of the school. We'd go back there and cut wood and bring it in so that we could keep warm during the day. Not the same boy every day. I mean, different grades that's big enough to cut wood. Also when they cut wood, they cut some little whips to so when we'd do something wrong, the teacher would give them—	16:55
Kisha Turner	A switch?	17:04
Jesse Phillips	Yeah.	17:04
Kisha Turner	Did y'all take a North Carolina history class or anything like that?	17:04
Jesse Phillips	Myself? No, I didn't get much school.	17:11
Kisha Turner	Okay. How long did you go?	17:25
Jesse Phillips	In Oak Hill, the only time I had a chance to go to school when it was a rainy day and we couldn't do nothing on the farm. And then again, I might have had a chance to go more, but I kind of broke the rules and cussed the teacher. [indistinct 00:17:35] so I got about a fourth grade.	17:28
Kisha Turner	Okay, so you had to work.	17:40
Jesse Phillips	I had to work, yeah, yeah.	17:41
Kisha Turner	All right. And how about you?	17:42
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	I got to the eighth grade. I did eighth grade.	17:42
Kisha Turner	Okay.	17:42
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	High school [indistinct 00:17:49]	17:42
Kisha Turner	Now did your school close down during certain times, when it was time to harvest? Or did it stay open?	17:50
Jesse Phillips	We still had nine months of school, nine months.	17:53
Kisha Turner	Okay. When did y'all come to this area?	18:04
Jesse Phillips	Okay, we moved to Virginia in 1944.	18:06
Kisha Turner	1944?	18:15
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, down here, not too far from where you live. We moved on a farm down here where Lynnhaven Mall is.	18:18
Kisha Turner	There was a farm?	18:24
Jesse Phillips	Yeah. I moved out here with a [indistinct 00:18:31], he was a little bit older. I was sharecropping with them. But he was paying me so much a day. And I had 30 acres on the side.	18:27
Kisha Turner	Okay.	18:43
Jesse Phillips	And I got [indistinct 00:18:44] that 30 acres.	18:43
Kisha Turner	Okay. And that was yours?	18:44
Jesse Phillips	Yeah.	18:45
Kisha Turner	You owned that 10 acres?	18:46
Jesse Phillips	No, I meant 30 acres. I mean, I didn't own it, but like I'd plant soybeans. If it comes to $700, I got a third of that $700.	18:48
Kisha Turner	I see. I understand.	19:04
Jesse Phillips	I mean, it happens it might be less than 700, but when you're a farmer you gather your crop [indistinct 00:19:13].	19:04
Kisha Turner	Were you all married when you came here?	19:13
Jesse Phillips	Yeah.	19:14
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Yes.	19:14
Jesse Phillips	Oh yeah. Okay, we got married early. She got married, she was 14. I got married before I was 19. So we been married around 54 years.	19:18
Kisha Turner	How was that accepted? Were people upset or anything?	19:20
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	My mother was, yeah.	19:20
Jesse Phillips	[indistinct 00:19:20]	19:20
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	It didn't matter to my father.	19:20
Kisha Turner	Okay.	19:20
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Not that it didn't matter, but he didn't fuss about it like my mother. She was very upset about it. But everything worked out.	19:20
Kisha Turner	Did you have the marriage, was it at home or did you—	19:20
Jesse Phillips	We went to [indistinct 00:19:21] double wedding. A close friend of mine and a close friend of hers got married. I had a car and we dated together before. That Sunday we decided to get married. We got married that same Sunday. But luckily he let me get married first, because she would have broke it up. I mean, her mother would.	19:20
Kisha Turner	Oh, okay.	20:25
Jesse Phillips	Because we had got married and my brother and another fellow, they went [indistinct 00:20:42] so her mother went down there to get the man that worked on the farm to take her [indistinct 00:20:57]. Her first cousin went [indistinct 00:21:02] Sunday school [indistinct 00:21:05]. She didn't go back home because we had [indistinct 00:21:17] when we got married. He sister knows she had. We told he brother we got married. [indistinct 00:21:20]. He wasn't home, so she went and got her oldest son. So he took her, but he drives slow, so that hopefully we'd be married when they got there.	20:25
Kisha Turner	Okay.	21:28
Jesse Phillips	So when he got there, my brother [indistinct 00:21:35] the house that he was living that had no doorbell. You had to knock. So she knocked on his door. [indistinct 00:22:13] so he said, "Hey, hey, hey," he said, "don't break the door down." He didn't know who it was. So she broke in the house and said, "Are you married?" She said, "No ma'am." [indistinct 00:22:22] told us that. Don't tell no stories. [indistinct 00:22:22]. So far we had some ups and downs but it's been mostly happy days these 54 years.	21:31
Kisha Turner	What did you all do once you got married?	22:21
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	What did we do?	22:21
Kisha Turner	Did you continue to work for the same people you worked for?	22:24
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, I did.	22:26
Kisha Turner	Okay.	22:26
Jesse Phillips	By that time her parents were still working. But I'll tell you a stupid trick I did. I was living with my brother. I didn't tell my sister or my brother I was getting married [indistinct 00:22:54] and I bring my wife there. So I guess I lived with my oldest brother for about a week. The farm that I would work on at the time where my brother was living. So I moved in a house that no Black had ever lived in. My boss was living there. And the house that he lived in was the man on the farm, he didn't work. At that time, he lived in the city and let the man that run the farm move in the big house. Then I lived in the house that he was living in.	22:40
Kisha Turner	Okay.	23:36
Jesse Phillips	So after we got married, we lived in North Carolina about two years before we came to Virginia.	23:36
Kisha Turner	Why did you move to Virginia.	23:41
Jesse Phillips	Well, just like I said, I done had traveling on my mind and I know this White boy that want to rent this farm down here where Lynnhaven Mall, so he asked me would I come down and work for him.	23:51
Kisha Turner	So you just came and worked for him?	23:58
Jesse Phillips	Yeah.	23:58
Kisha Turner	And what did you think when you got to Virginia?	24:00
Jesse Phillips	Well, I was kind of going back in a year. But after I got here, I met a lot of friends. And I had never seen Black clubs, like Virginia at that time, they had I'd say about eight or nine Black clubs. So after I got down here and got with some good people, I didn't ever go back to North Carolina.	24:35
Kisha Turner	When you first came to Virginia, did both of you come together?	24:35
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, yeah, yeah.	24:37
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Yeah.	24:53
Kisha Turner	Okay. And what did you think about it when you first got here?	24:53
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	I thought it [indistinct 00:24:53]	24:53
Kisha Turner	Do you remember the names of any of those clubs?	24:53
Jesse Phillips	Yeah [indistinct 00:24:54] Time Club. Do you have Ed Lee?	24:53
Kisha Turner	Ed Lee?	25:17
Jesse Phillips	Ed Lee.	25:17
Kisha Turner	Okay.	25:17
Jesse Phillips	Time Club, that was the biggest club that would bring in all those big bands like Fats Domino and [indistinct 00:25:48]. That's before your time though. And also we had Ed Lee. You got Ed Lee?	25:17
Kisha Turner	I have Ed Lee and I have Time Club.	25:59
Jesse Phillips	Say the rest for me.	25:59
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Shady Rest.	25:59
Kisha Turner	Shady Rest?	25:59
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Mm—hmm.	25:59
Kisha Turner	Okay.	25:59
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	You got —	25:59
Jesse Phillips	What's the name of that club [indistinct 00:26:00]	25:59
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	[indistinct 00:26:00]	25:59
Jesse Phillips	You got Shady Rest?	25:59
Kisha Turner	Mm—hmm.	25:59
Jesse Phillips	Oh yeah.	25:59
Kisha Turner	Okay.	25:59
Jesse Phillips	And at that time when we moved here, [indistinct 00:26:00] when I got married, I [indistinct 00:26:00] before I got married. When I [indistinct 00:26:02] I was married. That's when I didn't go in the service. So in the meantime, we moved out here. The war broke out. At night time, all the cars had the top of their lights painted black, just in case the enemy come over here, they couldn't see all those car lights.	26:08
Kisha Turner	Oh, okay.	26:20
Jesse Phillips	At that time, you could not act like you was going to the water in Virginia Beach.	26:24
Kisha Turner	Oh, you couldn't go to the beach?	26:26
Jesse Phillips	No, you couldn't. You just stayed. You go to the movie or down there on Atlanta Avenue. They had two movies, one on Atlanta Avenue and one on 17th Street, which that is Virginia Beach Boulevard. But we Blacks had to go upstairs.	26:28
Kisha Turner	Oh, you had to sit upstairs?	26:52
Jesse Phillips	Yeah.	26:53
Kisha Turner	Okay.	26:53
Jesse Phillips	The only ones that could go down on that waterfront had to be going to the hotel. But they couldn't go in the water. They had to wait until night when they go down there. And they better have on their uniform and everything. So we couldn't go to that water until Martin Luther King [indistinct 00:27:16] so that we could go [indistinct 00:27:19]	26:53
Kisha Turner	Oh, when they desegregated?	27:18
Jesse Phillips	Yeah.	27:20
Kisha Turner	Because they were segregated beaches, right?	27:20
Jesse Phillips	Right, right, right.	27:22
Kisha Turner	What beaches could you all go to?	27:22
Jesse Phillips	We could go to Sea View Beach.	27:22
Kisha Turner	Sea View?	27:24
Jesse Phillips	And Ocean Breeze.	27:25
Kisha Turner	Okay. Ocean Breeze?	27:33
Jesse Phillips	Yeah. You got all three of those?	27:34
Kisha Turner	I have Sea View, Ocean Breeze and what was the third one?	27:40
Jesse Phillips	City Beach.	27:42
Kisha Turner	How about restaurants and other kinds of places?	27:48
Jesse Phillips	[indistinct 00:27:52] if we go to one, we had to go to the back door. You couldn't go in the front door until Martin Luther King come.	27:54
Kisha Turner	Okay. What was your community like when you moved into — You said you met a lot of people and you made some friends and stuff like that. What was the community called that you lived in when you moved to Virginia Beach?	28:02
Jesse Phillips	Oceana and Lynnhaven.	28:26
Kisha Turner	Oceana? Okay.	28:29
Jesse Phillips	[indistinct 00:28:30] first name, Lynnhaven, that was [indistinct 00:28:37]	28:30
Kisha Turner	Okay.	28:37
Jesse Phillips	Oceana right here.	28:38
Kisha Turner	Okay, and these were Black communities?	28:43
Jesse Phillips	Yeah. When we moved here there wasn't but about four houses and they were all Black.	28:45
Kisha Turner	Okay. Did you all get to Norfolk?	28:52
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, yeah.	28:53
Kisha Turner	What did you think about Norfolk?	28:55
Jesse Phillips	Well, only time we went to Norfolk, we went to the movies that's right in Norfolk. Church Street is still there, but that was where the Blacks hang out at. It was kind of rough down there.	28:57
Kisha Turner	Was it?	29:11
Jesse Phillips	Yes. So we had our places picked before you went anywhere. Like I said, we moved here and made friends. [indistinct 00:29:23] sister and brother—in—law, she ran the school. She met her husband at school. After they got married, they moved back here in Oceana, so they were our friends. [indistinct 00:29:35] about eight of them together.	29:11
Kisha Turner	Okay. How long did you work for this gentlemen that you were sharecropping?	29:34
Jesse Phillips	About two years when I got here in Virginia.	29:54
Kisha Turner	Okay.	29:57
Jesse Phillips	Then I went to work for a man, Mack McCoy.	29:58
Kisha Turner	Mack McCoy?	30:03
Jesse Phillips	Yeah. At that time he ran a service station.	30:04
Kisha Turner	Okay.	30:06
Jesse Phillips	So at that time, okay, I worked there. I worked there 49 years before I retired.	30:07
Kisha Turner	So you stayed with him?	30:19
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, I still work there part time in the winter time for the oil company.	30:21
Kisha Turner	Okay. What'd you do?	30:21
Jesse Phillips	Deliver oil to houses and hotels.	30:21
Kisha Turner	Okay. And what kind of work did you do?	30:22
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	[indistinct 00:30:29] I take that back, I did [indistinct 00:30:41].	30:28
Kisha Turner	Do you all remember any civil rights organizations? You mentioned Martin Luther King. Do you remember NAACP in this area? Or different—	30:45
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, we were a member of the NAACP at that time. [indistinct 00:30:59]	30:53
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	[indistinct 00:31:02]	30:54
Jesse Phillips	Yeah. [indistinct 00:31:05]	30:54
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	We had some [indistinct 00:31:09]	30:54
Kisha Turner	Huh?	30:54
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	We had some [indistinct 00:31:09]	30:54
Kisha Turner	Okay.	30:54
Jesse Phillips	[indistinct 00:31:13]	30:54
Kisha Turner	Okay. What was he? He was the president—	31:14
Jesse Phillips	Yeah.	31:17
Kisha Turner	— of the NAACP?	31:17
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, yeah, yeah, for this area.	31:17
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Virginia Beach.	31:17
Jesse Phillips	Yeah.	31:17
Kisha Turner	Okay. What about social clubs or anything like that?	31:29
Jesse Phillips	Yeah. We had, okay, we men [indistinct 00:31:44] Esquire Club—	31:33
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	[indistinct 00:31:44]	31:36
Jesse Phillips	[indistinct 00:31:44] club, and at that time, I mean it's [indistinct 00:31:44] all the members now done died out, at that time, everybody could get in that club. So anyway, we had 12 men's clubhouse [indistinct 00:31:44]. We did two parties a year for free. Each member can invite four guest. At that time I had a big backyard [indistinct 00:31:44] in the summertime we did a summer party here. In the wintertime, you could rent a club. So we'd invite about 250 people. They don't have to pay nothing.	31:36
Kisha Turner	You'd have a big party.	31:36
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, a band, everything.	31:36
Kisha Turner	What church did you all join when you got here?	31:36
Jesse Phillips	Saint Martin's.	31:36
Kisha Turner	Saint Martin's? Oh that's right, Saint Martin's. Were you AME when you were back in North Carolina?	31:44
Jesse Phillips	Yes and no.	33:10
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	I was.	33:11
Jesse Phillips	I was a Baptist.	33:12
Kisha Turner	Okay.	33:13
Jesse Phillips	But I joined AME before I moved to Virginia because she was going to AME church. The church that I went to was, I'd say it was about eight miles from where I lived. So I used to go to school at Oak Hill. So I just moved my membership to that church so church and school was the same.	33:16
Kisha Turner	Okay. Oak Hill was the church, okay. Were you all active in the church?	33:43
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Yes, I was.	33:59
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, we both. I'm a trustee on the board. [indistinct 00:34:07] and I helped Sister [indistinct 00:34:07] take care of, I call it the flower garden around the church.	34:06
Kisha Turner	Oh, you have flowers? Yeah, we plan to come on Sunday.	34:07
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	This coming Sunday?	34:10
Kisha Turner	Yeah.	34:10
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	You have to come at 11:00 mass.	34:10
Kisha Turner	11:00?	34:10
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Yeah.	34:10
Kisha Turner	All right.	34:10
Jesse Phillips	Are you married?	34:10
Kisha Turner	No.	34:10
Jesse Phillips	Just you and your girlfriend?	34:10
Kisha Turner	Mm—hmm. Let's talk a little bit about being in this area during World War II. What was that like? Was it tense or did anything change, other than you couldn't visit the beach?	34:33
Jesse Phillips	The only thing that changed was like I said, when we moved here we were young. [indistinct 00:35:01] but we had our couple of places to go. But during the war time, if you went down there to the bus station, [indistinct 00:35:15] rail car running from Norfolk to the beach on the track called a rail bus. And those sailors, Army and Marines, they wanted to fight all the time. So like I said, we had certain places to go and certain people to go down to Virginia Beach.	34:47
Kisha Turner	Were there areas of Virginia Beach that Black people just weren't supposed to be in, weren't supposed to go to?	35:37
Jesse Phillips	The waterfront and the nightclubs, nothing like that. [indistinct 00:35:50]	35:45
Kisha Turner	Okay. Do you remember White people coming into the Black community for any reason?	35:53
Jesse Phillips	At that time, we had our own clubs and everything, just Blacks in there. [indistinct 00:36:12]	35:55
Kisha Turner	Okay. When you all moved to Virginia Beach, did you come by train? I mean, how'd you get—	36:16
Jesse Phillips	See, the fellow that I worked for that ran that farm, the man that owned the farm, he had trucks—	36:25
Kisha Turner	So you all just came in the trucks?	36:30
Jesse Phillips	He loaded us up in the trucks and we put our stuff on the truck.	36:31
Kisha Turner	Did y'all just drive straight over? Did you stop at all?	36:38
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, it don't take but about an hour and a half.	36:39
Kisha Turner	Oh, okay.	36:41
Jesse Phillips	An hour from North Carolina where we lived.	36:42
Kisha Turner	Other than your move to Virginia Beach, did you take any other trips?	36:53
Jesse Phillips	Yes. We have been right many places. We went to California. We went down to Florida. We been down to Florida about four times. And also the first trip that I ever been on an airplane, my boss gave it to me, that was Springfield, Massachusetts. Because when been there because our son is there in Springfield, Massachusetts. So my friend Gary and myself, I think there were too many little places that we hadn't been. We drove out to California, him, his wife [indistinct 00:37:47]. They had a son in the Air Force and he was stationed in California. That's why we went to California. The first time we went to Florida, he was stationed down there.	36:54
Kisha Turner	Okay. You all have been in Virginia Beach for a while. What kind of changes have you seen happen over the years?	38:10
Jesse Phillips	Well, I'll put it this way, just like I said. I got along good with the Black and Whites. But [indistinct 00:38:28] I'd say it's 96% better than what it was when I first moved here. I still say, I might be wrong, if I'm wrong I'll have the Lord forgive me, but some of our young Black people [indistinct 00:38:49] back where we came from.	38:13
Kisha Turner	When you all lived in North Carolina, and when I guess your early years here in Virginia Beach, if someone got sick, was there a doctor in the part of North Carolina you were in that would come out?	38:59
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Yes it was.	39:11
Jesse Phillips	If you had the money and the man that you worked for, tell him that he'd be responsible for the money. I think that's why my daddy died, both my mother and daddy. My mother died when she was about 35. At that time, he said she had high blood because she had those spells that she'd black out and they'd have to bring her back around. [indistinct 00:39:50] if my daddy had had the money to get the doctor, I think she would have lived longer. The same reason about my daddy. We weren't able to go to the doctor anytime we got sick or anything. But like I say, if your boss man tell the doctor to go to you, he will come out. And it won't but about two doctors in the whole center of Hertford. And I guess at the time, I guess I don't know what the population was [indistinct 00:40:26]	39:14
Kisha Turner	When the civil rights stuff was going on, you all followed it?	40:33
Jesse Phillips	No, I didn't never take no action.	40:36
Kisha Turner	No, but did you follow kind of what was going on in the newspaper or something like that?	40:36
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, we listened to it on the radio and TV.	40:43
Kisha Turner	On the radio?	40:45
Jesse Phillips	Yeah.	40:47
Kisha Turner	Okay. Did you know a lot of people — Did most people kind of stay in tuned to what was going on in different parts of the country with King?	40:50
Jesse Phillips	Did we know them personally?	41:05
Kisha Turner	No, could you keep up with the news, with the events that were taking place?	41:05
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, yeah, yeah.	41:06
Kisha Turner	Okay. And did people talk about it? Was it a topic usually, a conversation [indistinct 00:41:15]	41:10
Hazel Johnikins Phillips	Oh yeah.	41:14
Kisha Turner	All right, well thank you.	41:14
Kisha Turner	Were there ever any kind of fights with the White kids?	41:27
Jesse Phillips	Oh yeah, the children that walked to school went to the White school. And the Black school, the fights got so bad, they wouldn't turn out at the same time. They turned out earlier so the White people got home before the Black crowd because otherwise there would be a fight.	41:29
Kisha Turner	What was the relationship between the Black community in Virginia Beach and in Norfolk?	41:55
Jesse Phillips	Okay, [indistinct 00:42:07] growing. Before, at one time [indistinct 00:42:12] Lynnhaven, Oceana, [indistinct 00:42:18] every city had a school. Before they integrated, all high school children go to the same school. Back then if you leave [indistinct 00:42:38] and come to Oceana, there's going to be a fight amongst the Blacks.	42:11
Kisha Turner	Okay.	42:38
Jesse Phillips	If a Lynnhaven boy comes over [indistinct 00:42:39] there will be a fight. But by them all going to the same school, they got to know one another. When it come time for them to date girls in the community, they had no problems.	42:38
Kisha Turner	Oh, okay.	43:51
Kisha Turner	Okay, you talked about the back of the bus.	43:51
Jesse Phillips	Yeah, yeah. When we would travel around on the buses, we had to get in the back. And then if more in the back went to the front, and then if I White person, I don't care if it was a man or a woman come on that bus, we had to get up and stand up and give them our seat. So we [indistinct 00:43:55]	43:52
Kisha Turner	Were there any, do you remember any incidents?	43:55
Jesse Phillips	No.	43:55
Kisha Turner	No?	43:55
Jesse Phillips	When the driver of the bus "[indistinct 00:43:55] you dark or you nigger move further back," we got back there.	43:56
Kisha Turner	Okay. Okay.	43:58

Item Info

Title:

Hazel Phillips (primary interviewee) and Jesse Phillips interview recording, 1995 July 20

Date:

July 20, 1995

Creator:

Contributor:

Turner, Kisha

Description:

Name: Hazel Johnikins Phillips; Date of birth: 1926-05-08; Place of birth: Perquimans Co., NC; Occupation(s): housekeeping; Residence: Virginia Beach, VA. Name: Jesse Phillips; Date of birth: 1922-03-31; Place of birth: Perquimans Co., NC; Occupation(s): farmer; Residence: Virginia Beach, VA
Informant ID: 988; Informant ID: 989; Interviewed by: Kisha Turner.

Occupation:

Housekeeping

Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

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

Series:

Related Resources:

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Provenance:

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

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

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

Identifier:

RL00170-CS-1329
c6a12981-639f-4b90-b089-d03b2ea966ec
behindtheveil
e8e7a728-5031-470c-b5e0-8b3873e590cd
ark:/87924/r4474k16m
e8e7a728-5031-470c-b5e0-8b3873e590cd

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Hazel Phillips (primary interviewee) and Jesse Phillips interview recording, 1995 July 20

Transcript

Item Info

1. Hazel Phillips and Jesse Phillips administrative file, 1995

2. Jesse Phillips administrative file, 1995

3. Jesse Phillips interview recording, 1995 August 9

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Hazel Phillips (primary interviewee) and Jesse Phillips interview recording, 1995 July 20

Transcript

Item Info

Related Items

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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