James Hall and Lollie Mae Hall interview recording, 1994 June 17
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Gregory Hunter | Could you just state your name and your date of birth? | 0:00 |
James Hall | Yeah, everything coming up from where I was born at. [indistinct 00:00:08]. | 0:01 |
Gregory Hunter | [indistinct 00:00:09]. | 0:07 |
James Hall | Okay. All right, I'll begin. I was born 1917, 18th day of May in Lee County, Georgia. And under my birth, it was twins. James and John was born on 1917, 18th day of May. That was my twin brother. He's not living at the present, but this is what happens. | 0:09 |
James Hall | And we lived in Lee County, Georgia by an old little grocery store by a railroad coming out of Albany, Georgia. That's where we lived out on a farm. And we worked. When we got grew up, we started working there before we left Lee County. We moved from Lee County over to Leesburg, Georgia. We stayed there two years. So we left Lee County and we moved to Worth County in 1925. In 1923, we moved to Worth County, Georgia. And here where we have lived the rest of our lives up until now. | 0:52 |
James Hall | We farmed half crop with some nice peoples. Some of them was nice. And we farmed with one guy that we rented the crop, made the crop, man took a turn around and going to run my daddy off, and somehow or another, my daddy's suspicion when he was going to take him to a spot where they was going to kill him at, he discovered that this is what they was going to do, because just before he got to the house, it was a crowd of folks there on the porch and the lights was on. They had these old lights, what you make in the ground. I forget the name of them. But there wasn't no electric lights in that day. | 2:07 |
James Hall | So anyway, this was 1929. This was 1929, year of 1929. So they were going to run up our accounts and they were going to the big house to run up our accounts over to her daddy's house. And they claimed this fella we were working with, his son, Molry, he claimed that my daddy left owing him some money. But they run us off the farm, and my daddy went and moved to his sister's farm. And that's where we farmed that the next year. That was in '29. So we farmed there in '29. | 3:11 |
James Hall | In the fall of '29, they decided, essentially made a pretty good crop and pledged some money that this brother husband was going to be smart enough to get it, and get some money out the deal. We didn't owe him nothing, but this is what he said. So at the same time, after we had gathered our crop and we're supposed to be getting our settlement, but they wouldn't settle off with us till we go to the big house, my daddy. And then they said to him, "Bring him over such and such an evening and we will settle off with him." So my daddy decided he would go. Then when he got near the house and he saw all this big light up there and all these folks, he got suspicious that they'd kill him. | 4:03 |
James Hall | So at the same time, his sister was carrying him over there in a little old rumbler seat car, and he was sitting in the back, and he told her, said, "Stop the car. I lost my hat." So she stopped the car and he got out and told her, said, "Go ahead. I ain't going no further." So he turned and went by this house that he was supposed to be going to get the settlement, and he saw a crowd of men who had crowded up there, and women folks and all, and they was planning on killing him, because they just had killed that old—That man was supposed to be killing my daddy, he killed one while we were staying on the crop on his place, when he took our crop. So my daddy wouldn't go. | 5:07 |
James Hall | Now, he come back home and told us the story. So we worked on two, three years with his sister, 1930. We worked on there it was actually '33. We worked three years there. When we left there, we moved to Shingler, Georgia. And in 1933 we moved to Shingler, Georgia, and we stayed there. | 6:06 |
James Hall | Well, at the same time we all was member of a church called Saint Paul Isabella, and we all joined church and was baptized in 1932. Most all of my sisters and brothers, we all was baptized the same day, along with some more guests and family, other people's children of the other people. So we left and moved to Shingler, and we joined Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in 1933. And where we had—My daddy had traded the farm with another landlord, so we started the farming there, and we farmed there for quite a few years. And then farming there, let's see, we farmed there about five, yeah, about five years we farmed there. | 6:35 |
Gregory Hunter | Could you describe what farming was like? | 7:54 |
James Hall | Oh, yeah. Farming was like we were supposed to be planting cotton, peanuts, and corn, and velvet beans. And the velvet beans were for the cows, and the corn were for the mule and hogs. So we raised hogs, raised some cows, and we raised, at that particular time, we raised chickens. We raised, in the springtime of the year, we had fries to last us all the year. We raised something like 25, 30, 40 and 50, we even had as high as 80 fries that were coming up during the spring of the year, so we'd have something to eat after Christmas. | 8:02 |
Gregory Hunter | What are fries? | 9:06 |
James Hall | Chickens. | 9:07 |
Gregory Hunter | Oh. | 9:08 |
James Hall | Yeah. I call them fries. Well, we call them chickens, and somebody these days call them birds. But anyway, they were chickens that was raised on the farm, as we go through, but we worked, made a good crop practically every year. | 9:08 |
James Hall | And this George Semler was the man name that we were farming with, and he— | 9:39 |
Gregory Hunter | Is this the same man who tried to— | 9:49 |
James Hall | Tried to kill him? | 9:51 |
Gregory Hunter | Kill your father? | 9:52 |
James Hall | No, that was Islsend Molry did that. | 9:52 |
Gregory Hunter | Could you repeat his name, please? | 9:54 |
James Hall | Islsend Molry. | 9:54 |
Gregory Hunter | Molry. What's his first name? | 9:54 |
James Hall | Islsend. | 9:54 |
Gregory Hunter | Can you spell that? | 9:54 |
James Hall | It's I-S-L-S-E-N-D, I think. Islsend Molry. | 10:02 |
Gregory Hunter | Okay. | 10:06 |
James Hall | He the guy that tried to kill him. So anyway, tried to kill my daddy. | 10:10 |
James Hall | So anyway, we moved on. We lived there with George Semler for five years, and we made good crops. And he wasn't like the other landlords around. He never did threaten to take our crop. He was a man that'd loan you money and give you a ticket. Every time he'd give you a check, he'd write it on your book. So when fall comes, he would take his book and our book and analyze it. And he paid us according to what we had on the book. And he was nice to us. We prospered there. We stayed there. | 10:15 |
James Hall | And after that, I married in 1930—1938, I married, and we went to farming. We were farming on the same George Semler place. And we, me and my wife, we farmed it for ourselves. My daddy died. We had to farm for my mother. We had to farm for my granddaddy and his family. So me and my two brothers, my one brother, the twin brother, that's all I had, we had to work for all them folk. | 11:16 |
Gregory Hunter | [indistinct 00:12:01]. | 12:00 |
James Hall | Huh? | 12:01 |
Gregory Hunter | [indistinct 00:12:02] You were the only two children that your parents had? | 12:03 |
James Hall | Parents? | 12:03 |
Gregory Hunter | You and your brother were the only two kids? | 12:06 |
James Hall | Yeah, only two. Only two boys. | 12:08 |
Gregory Hunter | Oh, okay. | 12:10 |
James Hall | We had five sisters and two boys. There was seven of us. And we had to do all the work after my daddy died. And we took care of them until we married. And then on after we married, we stayed there two years after that on George Semler's place. Then I was able to buy—I cleared enough money to buy me two mules and a two-horse wagon, and I got half of my corn and velvet beans and stuff like that. That's in order so I could make a crop when I moved. So I rented me some land. I went over on Dr. Semler's place and I rented me a farm. And on that farm we worked hard. That was 1920. I married in '38. This was '39. So anyway, we worked there '39. And me and my wife, we were hard workers. We made a [indistinct 00:13:38] crop, so we, for the first time in history that we were able to clear $1800. That was a heap of money. | 12:13 |
Gregory Hunter | Off of one crop? | 13:50 |
James Hall | Off of one crop. Yeah. We cleared the $1800 and we was able to finish paying for our mule, wagon, cows and hogs, and then maintain enough hogs and chickens and things to make another crop. So we made another crop there, and made good that year. And the next year, the guy thought I was making too much money. | 13:52 |
Gregory Hunter | Who was— | 14:35 |
James Hall | Okay. Dr. Semler thought I was making too much money by renting the land, but he wanted me to rent the land and he'd boss it and sell the crop, and I wouldn't let him do it, so me and him had a kick up over it and I wouldn't let him do it. So before I do that, I moved. So I went across Shingler, five miles from where I was, and rented me a farm. Old man Daniel. From a White man. I rented a farm from old man Daniel. It was a two, three house farm. I rented his and moved over there. Then I had a half cropper. I got me a half cropper to help me. | 14:36 |
Gregory Hunter | What is a half cropper? | 15:27 |
James Hall | Oh, okay. It was a man and his wife that was working on halfs with me. Trying to name the person. Lollie? | 15:33 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Yeah? | 15:48 |
James Hall | What was them folk worked with us on Daniel's place? Them Colored folk. | 15:49 |
Lollie Mae Hall | [indistinct 00:16:01]. | 15:58 |
James Hall | Huh? Grimsley. Grimsley and his wife worked for us on Daniel's place while we were there. So we stayed there. We farmed that two years. We farmed that two, three years, and we made a bountiful crop there, on Daniel's place. Then we made enough money, we cleared enough money to save some money to buy us a little strip of land. So we sold 150, $250 worth of watermelon that year. | 16:02 |
Gregory Hunter | What were some of the prices? How much did a watermelon cost? | 16:55 |
James Hall | Watermelon was bringing? | 16:58 |
Gregory Hunter | How much were velvet beans? How much were corn? How much was [indistinct 00:17:02]? | 17:00 |
James Hall | Oh yeah. | 17:01 |
Gregory Hunter | How much did you pay for the mules and all those things? | 17:02 |
James Hall | Yeah. Well, the price of mules, back in that day, I had to give $650 for two mules. | 17:06 |
Gregory Hunter | Oh, okay. And this is in the night late 1930s? | 17:23 |
James Hall | This is in late 19—Yeah. Yeah. This was in '33, '34. Yeah. Yeah, this was '40. It was actually '30s. I married in 1938, and this was in '39 that I bought. We made enough money that I forsale on this place to buy that stuff. And then we moved from there over to this Daniel place. Then I bought two more mules. I gave about, I believe, right at $500 for them two. | 17:30 |
James Hall | So Grimsley and his wife come and farm with me and my wife, half crop. And we made a good crop that year. And then we worked there another year. We paid off our bills that year. And we worked there another year and we made a bountiful crop that year, so we saved the money that we made. First money we saved, we sold watermelon for 30 or 40 cents a piece and come up with $250, so we hid it under the rug. | 18:05 |
Gregory Hunter | The money? | 18:56 |
James Hall | Hid the money under the rug until August, September. | 18:58 |
Gregory Hunter | Why did you hide the money? | 19:07 |
James Hall | Well, we didn't want to put in the bank because this is the money we were going to save to buy us a farm with. So we saved the money. We hid the money and saved it. And July, when I laid by, I took a stroll down to Mag, Georgia. | 19:07 |
Gregory Hunter | Where? | 19:25 |
James Hall | Mag, Georgia. | 19:25 |
Gregory Hunter | Mag, Georgia? | 19:26 |
James Hall | Yeah. There's an old man down there owned a farm out the Shingler, Pleasant Grove, out the Shingler. He owned this farm, but he lived in Mag, Georgia. | 19:28 |
Gregory Hunter | How far from Shinglers is that? | 19:41 |
James Hall | Shinglers is five miles from here. | 19:46 |
Gregory Hunter | And how far is Mag? | 19:47 |
James Hall | Mag, Georgia? | 19:48 |
Gregory Hunter | Mag, Georgia. | 19:50 |
James Hall | Yeah, Mag, Georgia about 65 or 70 miles from here. And he lived there, so I went on the bus down there and got off the bus at his house and I went in there and sat down and talked with him. He was sitting on the back porch and he invited me in. Went on and sat down and we got talking, and I told him my story. I said that me and my wife just got one or two children. I believe I had two then. I said, "We need somewhere to stay." I said, "You got a little old farm out there I'd like to buy." | 19:51 |
James Hall | He said, "Oh, yeah." He said, "Yeah, them there crackers out there are trying to beat me out of it." | 20:31 |
Gregory Hunter | Was he White? | 20:37 |
James Hall | Yeah, he was White. | 20:40 |
Gregory Hunter | Do you remember his name? | 20:41 |
James Hall | His name was—Oh. It looked like I'd never forgot this cracker's name, but I—My mother [indistinct 00:20:56] those old-timers, what you call old-timers, you're forgetful. You know. It's possible to forget. But anyway, this guy, let's see what his name was. Maybe I come back to it and we can add it in somewhere. | 20:43 |
James Hall | So I bought—I paid him the $250. I said I hid, I gave it to the man down on the place. It was 60 acres of land and he sold me the 60 acres of land for $3900. | 21:14 |
Gregory Hunter | $3900. | 21:38 |
James Hall | 39. Yeah. That was cheap. | 21:41 |
Gregory Hunter | That was cheap? | 21:44 |
James Hall | Yeah, oh, that was cheap. $3900. I bought it. Then I come on back and I told him when I finished gathering my crop, I would come finish making the down payment. I just give him $250 when I was down there and trading for it. So when I did, I went down there and I paid him all I could pay him. I had to leave enough money to operate the next year. So I went down there and I paid him, and then he gave me the copy of the deeds. We made up some deeds. He gave me a copy of the deeds and all. | 21:44 |
James Hall | Then I come back home and built, that same year, 1942, I built a house, I built a barn, I built a car stall, I built a little pasture for my hogs and cows, and turned loose on our farm. | 22:27 |
Gregory Hunter | And this is on your own land. | 23:07 |
James Hall | This on my own land. I just had bought this 60 acres, and this was my own land, so I built all this stuff on my own land. So then I worked that land there, and I rented about, I don't know, four, five, I rented about 400 acres of land, 300 or 400 acres of land, and I put two half croppers on it. I put John Tow and James Lamar. They half cropped with me. And my brother, I let him have enough to rent. He was renting from me. So I took it from there and went on. | 23:09 |
James Hall | Later on that year we made a good crop that year. Everybody made a good crop. We cleared pretty good money, so I decided I needed some more land, so I went farther, tried to get some more land away from home, but I couldn't make it. But in the deal at this 60 acres, when I moved there, then I was adjoining some Whites, some crackers, you know. I was adjoining their farm. | 24:02 |
Gregory Hunter | What do you mean you joined? | 24:40 |
James Hall | My line fence— | 24:42 |
Gregory Hunter | Was it next to theirs? | 24:43 |
James Hall | Which had to split us, you know. I was on this side and he was on that side. So he claimed, during the—John Bachelor claimed during the year we were there, first year we were there, that his hogs got out on me and I took part of them. So me and them had a big blowing out because it didn't take nought. We had a big blowing out and I stood hard against him. | 24:44 |
Gregory Hunter | How did the blowing out take [indistinct 00:25:26]? What happened? [indistinct 00:25:28] | 25:25 |
James Hall | Yeah. He said to me, "No wonder you got so many hogs to go to the sale." Said, "You got a ditch cut out under the wire where my hogs come on over there and you selling them." | 25:30 |
James Hall | Man, I blowed him up and told him how big a liar he was. I said, "Now, if you find that hog on the sale belong to—" I said, "If you find that hog on the sale belonging to you, I'd like for you to describe him." | 25:45 |
James Hall | And so he went on back home and he told his folk I was a crazy nigger. Said, "That James Hall over yonder, he's crazy." Said that, "He ain't got good sense." Said, "He over there—My hogs getting under his fence." And the biggest lie [indistinct 00:26:20] ever told. The hogs didn't even root against the fence. | 26:02 |
James Hall | So anyway, we went to—Later on, my cows got out, my cows got out in the road and he drove them up the road and put them in his pen, in his barn. | 26:24 |
Gregory Hunter | The same White man [indistinct 00:26:54]? | 26:52 |
James Hall | Yeah. Yeah. John Bachelor. Yeah, same White guy. Then when I got over there to get them, get the cow, get my cows, $25. That's what I had to pay him to get my cows out of the pen where he had them locked up. | 26:55 |
Gregory Hunter | Did you pay the $25? | 27:11 |
James Hall | Yeah, I paid him the $25 and got my cows and carried them home. | 27:12 |
Gregory Hunter | Why did you have to pay to get them out? | 27:17 |
James Hall | Huh? | 27:18 |
Gregory Hunter | Why did you have to pay $25? | 27:20 |
James Hall | Oh, he said they was going to eat up his crop. They didn't allows us, at that particular time, they don't allow other folks' stock to go in their place and eat up their crop. They put them up and charge them a fee. And some of them go out there and kill them. The White folks do. | 27:21 |
Gregory Hunter | So this was fair? | 27:42 |
James Hall | Huh? | 27:44 |
Gregory Hunter | This was fair. | 27:44 |
James Hall | That was fair deal. But they could overcharge you. He did. He overcharged me, because the cows didn't get out the road. What they done, he had his hand pushed the cows in up there and headed the cows right off the highway, right off the public road, right into the barn. And he ain't never told his place or told to eat nothing. But he charged me just because he's mean enough. That was his trouble, he's just mean. | 27:45 |
James Hall | So on down in the year, fall of the year, we had stacked our peanuts and put them on the pole. We stack them. You put up a pole and then you stack the peanuts around the pole, up like that, getting ready for them to drive the thresh. His old cows come over there and got on my peanuts and went to eating them, so I went over there and told John Bachelor, I said, "Your cows over yonder eating up my peanuts, tearing my stack down." I said, "I want you to come over there and get them." He got his hands and he bushed over there and got them and brought them back home. | 28:17 |
Gregory Hunter | He didn't pay you? | 29:02 |
James Hall | No. He asked me, he said, "How much I owe you?" | 29:04 |
James Hall | I said, "Not a dime." | 29:10 |
Gregory Hunter | Why didn't you want him to pay you? | 29:12 |
James Hall | Well, if anybody mean to you, you got to be nice to them. And this is the reason I didn't charge him nothing. I wanted to let him know that the cows didn't ruin me and didn't eat up much of my stuff, therefore I didn't charge him, not a dime. So he come and got them, put them back in his pasture. About two days later they was out again. I went right back over there and told him the same story. And they come out—He come out there and got them, "Huh? How much do I owe you?" | 29:13 |
James Hall | I said, "Not a thing." I said, "You just keep them up until I get my peanuts threshed, and if you get over there then they ain't going to bother me. Don't worry me after I get my peanut threshed, you know, if they walk across my land." | 29:58 |
James Hall | So he come over there and got them and put them back in his pasture. And later on down the line, his wife told him, said that, "You keep bellyaching about James Hall," said, "James Hall's a nice fella." | 30:13 |
James Hall | So he said, "I don't know. I don't know. He appeared to be a little better than I thought he was." | 30:30 |
James Hall | And she said, "Yeah, he's a nice man." | 30:39 |
James Hall | So he died. His buddy died and left 200 acres of land. And the line fence running through there, and his buddy on this side next to my farm. And Steve Bowington—His name's Steve Bowington, all right, owned 200 acres of land next to my land. And Steve Bowington told his daughter, just before he died, said, "When y'all get ready to sell that 200 acres of land," said, "y'all give James Hall the first offer." | 30:42 |
James Hall | He's the man that me and him have a shooting scrape. He come to my house, going to make me move. And I told him, yeah, only way I go away from here is he going have to took me away from here dead. I'm not going no other way. I was saying, "If that being case, this morning would be a good time to go." I went and started back to the house and he hauled on and left. Went back and told them niggers I was a crazy nigger. | 31:31 |
James Hall | So sure enough, when he died, old Steve Bowington died, and he told his daughter that, "James is a nice man. He's better than I thought he was." Saying, "We found that he's a nice fella." Said, "If y'all go get ready to sell them 200 acres, I'm willing y'all—" There was two sisters there. Said, "You give James Hall the first offer." | 32:03 |
James Hall | So sure enough they called me down in that next year, called me over the telephone, said, "Hey, this is James Hall?" | 32:39 |
James Hall | I said, "Yes, ma'am, this is him." | 32:52 |
James Hall | "I just wanted to talk with you." Said, "My daddy, he knew you, and we got a place there by you. The place Tim Bowington had, he willed it to me and my sister." Said, "He told me—We ready to sell it." Said, "He told me that if you get ready to sell it, y'all give me the first offer." Sure enough. They said, "Do you want it?" | 32:54 |
James Hall | I said, "Yeah, I want it." So he went on. I said, "I'll be back here. I'll be down there Monday to make a down payment on it." | 33:30 |
James Hall | So sure enough we went down there, I made a down payment on the 200 acres of land and come back and went to the government Farm Home Administration to borrow enough money to finish paying for it, because they wanted— | 33:45 |
Gregory Hunter | Which government agency did you go to? | 34:04 |
James Hall | The Farmers Home Administration. We got it here in Sylvester, Farmer Home Administration. This a company buy land for people, furnish money to buy land. So I come there to borrow the money from the company, and the old boss man what was operating the office, he was operating the business for the Farmer Home Administration, he took all my application, everything, and my rep proved that they could loan me some money on my rep. I had a good rep. | 34:08 |
James Hall | And so anyway, he said, "Well, I'm sending out the money." And we just had a set time to—You got to put up a down payment, and it last 60 days or six months, whatever time you set. When that time out, the money you put up, you lose every dime of it, because you didn't close the deal out. So anyway, had my money held up there and I'm wanting the place too. So I had to fight him like a, I don't know. I had to worry him day after day trying to get him to get me that money so I could pay for that place before the deadline come. | 34:52 |
James Hall | And so this old agent was Littler. His name was G.E. Littler or something. But anyway, he was the man that's supposed to been letting me have the money, the government, let me have the money to buy the place. He got to fool around there and he messed with me. And so my boy come here from Florida, I said, "Run me to Athens, Georgia." So he run me up to Athens, Georgia that next day. And we got up there, it was a big—Well, the big time Colored fella, he's holding the office there. | 35:45 |
Gregory Hunter | What did you have to go to Athens for? | 36:32 |
James Hall | They was the head of all this money that I was going to borrow from FHA. But the big office was in Athens, Georgia. | 36:43 |
Gregory Hunter | It was a Black man who ran it? | 36:52 |
James Hall | Black man was running it. It was four of them there, three White and one Colored. And I got there and told my story. Man, that nigger went to raising sand. And that White man, them other White folk got to raising sand. So they set up a line where everybody would have a telephone, put me on one and all four of them had one. And then they call this cracker and see. And man, they blowed him some. Said, "If you don't have that money there before closing day—See, Friday, coming up that Friday was my closing day. If I hadn't have closed it then, them folks would've took the money I had deposited down on it, and then didn't have to sell me the place. | 36:54 |
James Hall | So I wanted the place better than I did [indistinct 00:37:55] I did deposit. But anyway, we got on the telephone, and when I come from work that day, they—Used to go by there every evening because the time was pushing me to have the money so I could finish paying them two women off for the place. So sure enough, when I got there that day and stepped up and pulled the door, "Oh, yeah, I know you happy. You ain't smiling?" | 37:51 |
James Hall | I said, "I don't know nothing to smile about." | 38:29 |
James Hall | "They say your money done come." Told how long it had been there, for the longest, and didn't want me to have the place. So anyway, "Come on, get your wife Friday. Let's go ahead and buy it. Pay for it." Sure enough, we went on down there and they paid everybody off. We paid for the farm. | 38:30 |
James Hall | And we come on home. So we went to farming on it. We farmed now till, well, five years ago. We farmed there until then, then we rented it and stayed off it probably four years or something like that. | 39:04 |
Gregory Hunter | So you stayed on that land for— | 39:22 |
James Hall | Them 200 acres. See, that made me have 260 acres. That give me 260 acres of land, all told. | 39:24 |
Gregory Hunter | And you've farmed that ever since. | 39:33 |
James Hall | We farmed it till five years ago. That's been— | 39:34 |
Lollie Mae Hall | [indistinct 00:39:42] that farm [indistinct 00:39:49]. | 39:48 |
James Hall | Yeah, but I was just trying to kill it out on one deal. But what time this was then? Go ahead. | 39:48 |
Lollie Mae Hall | I don't know. | 39:54 |
James Hall | Well then you— | 39:55 |
Lollie Mae Hall | [indistinct 00:39:57] | 39:55 |
James Hall | See, that still didn't— | 39:56 |
Lollie Mae Hall | It was further than that back though. I know, because— | 39:57 |
James Hall | Yeah. | 40:00 |
Lollie Mae Hall | —we stopped farming four or five years or something. | 40:00 |
James Hall | Yeah. | 40:04 |
Lollie Mae Hall | And then we—[indistinct 00:40:06]. | 40:05 |
James Hall | But I can't remember the date, so I just said we stopped farming for five or six years. And I went back and I farmed four more years and saw that it looked like things was getting tough like it is now. The crops was hard to make. Drought was eating us up, so I quit again. So I leased it. | 40:05 |
James Hall | But during this time, I was fortunate enough to own over a hundred—The most time, I've had over 100 heads of hogs doing farming on this land. And I had 100—The highest head of cows I had, I had 101 head of cattle that I was farming on this same land. I'll tell you, the 200 acres I bought from them women. So we farmed on that land until we quit five years, and then we went back and started up five more, and we quit. And today, we're sitting out here in town. | 40:27 |
James Hall | Me and my boy went out there and we planted 175 acres of pine trees on it. And a fella leasing it now, Charlie Nelson, he's leasing the farm now. He rents it. We rent and he pays us the rent, and this is how we survive, through the rent process. So he pay us rent every year. | 41:18 |
James Hall | And then the pine tree man, they pay us for planting them pines and then turn around they pay us monthly or yearly. And they give this check comes in every October. Every year in October they send us a check. And they'll send this check for 10 years, and after 10 years they don't send nothing [indistinct 00:42:29]. So if I live the 10 years out, we can go in there and we can sell fence posts to start with, then we can go in there and we can sell—Next thing we can sell telegram posts. And the next thing we could sell, we could sell sawmill wood, timber. We could sell timber for sawmill purposes. That is to cut lumber. So we got three steps there that we can take, whoever lives to see it. But when you start planting pine trees and waiting on them to get grown, sometimes you go down one or two generations, see, to get to that point. | 41:57 |
Gregory Hunter | Back in the earlier days when you first started out with your farm, first got the 260 acres, were there many other Black people who owned their land? | 43:20 |
James Hall | No. Uh-uh. | 43:27 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Not many. | 43:27 |
James Hall | Not many. They're still, they trying to own something, they went to [indistinct 00:43:38]. They [indistinct 00:43:39] around and wouldn't do justified, and crackers beat them out of it. | 43:32 |
Gregory Hunter | For you, since you were one of the very few or one of the only ones who owned your own land, was that very difficult? I mean, did you get a lot of harassment? | 43:45 |
James Hall | Oh, yeah, I got it. When I was working for the NAACP—I joined the NAACP and I fought them like I'm fighting them to you. | 43:54 |
Gregory Hunter | When did you join the NAACP? | 44:02 |
James Hall | Let me see, way back in 1940, around—Yeah, it was when they were starting school. I started then. That was around '50. | 44:07 |
Lollie Mae Hall | [indistinct 00:44:18]. | 44:17 |
James Hall | It was around '50. | 44:18 |
Lollie Mae Hall | [indistinct 00:44:21]. | 44:20 |
James Hall | It was in the '50s, right at '50. Right in the '50s. And I fought them jokers for year after year until they—Ain't been too long. I give out down the line. We all— | 44:21 |
Gregory Hunter | What were some of the activities you did [indistinct 00:44:39]? | 44:35 |
James Hall | Oh, some—A heap of it. When they found out that I was the president then of the— | 44:39 |
Gregory Hunter | Of the local chapter? | 44:46 |
James Hall | Yeah. | 44:47 |
Gregory Hunter | Where was the local chapter, in Sylvester? | 44:47 |
James Hall | Sylvester? Yeah, local chapter here in Sylvester. So they harassed me, so they'd come out there and about arrest me every—Every day sometimes they'd arrest me and put me in jail. | 44:47 |
Gregory Hunter | Why? | 45:09 |
James Hall | Say I run the stop sign. The taillight wasn't right. Just anything to lock me up. | 45:10 |
Gregory Hunter | What kind of activities was your chapter doing? | 45:16 |
James Hall | Huh? | 45:21 |
Gregory Hunter | What kind of work were you doing with the NAACP? | 45:21 |
James Hall | Oh, we were— | 45:25 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Marching [indistinct 00:45:27]. | 45:26 |
James Hall | Marching, trying to open up the banks. | 45:27 |
Lollie Mae Hall | [indistinct 00:45:30]. | 45:28 |
James Hall | Put a man in the bank, a woman in the bank, or somebody in the bank. And we were trying to open up the stores, trying to open up the restrooms. That wouldn't allow us drink out the fountain. | 45:29 |
Lollie Mae Hall | [indistinct 00:45:43] places. All that. | 45:41 |
James Hall | Yeah, eating places, we couldn't go in there. | 45:44 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Bus [indistinct 00:45:46] ride on the bus. | 45:47 |
James Hall | Couldn't ride on the bus. Couldn't ride on the bus. So we had all that to go through there. And then they found out I'm president and they [indistinct 00:46:00] somebody they could pick on, because most of Black folk was working for the White man and they didn't want to do nothing to damage the White man. So what they do for us, they come out and cut my fence where my cows would get out, stole a bunch of them. And they put beat up—Poisoned my cows and put beat up glass in there, so when the cows eat the food, it'll go through the bowels and cut their inside and they bleed. And they'll shoot my hogs. And they done some of everything. They come and burnt two or three crosses, burnt up one of my pecan trees, just about burnt it up, in my yard. | 45:49 |
Gregory Hunter | Now, was this—You mentioned the cross. Was this done multiple— | 46:55 |
Gregory Hunter | Okay. Now you were mentioning— | 0:01 |
James Hall | Oh, okay. They burned crosses, and they put a bomb in our mailbox. | 0:03 |
Gregory Hunter | A bomb in your mailbox? | 0:15 |
James Hall | Yeah. And they done all kind of nasty things like that. They did it several times, cut my fence and let my cows out. | 0:16 |
Gregory Hunter | At this time you said you were living—Where was— | 0:33 |
James Hall | I was living out on the farm. | 0:36 |
Gregory Hunter | Where was that? | 0:38 |
James Hall | Shingle. | 0:39 |
Gregory Hunter | In Shingle. | 0:39 |
James Hall | Yeah. | 0:39 |
Gregory Hunter | Shingle. | 0:39 |
James Hall | Our farm was out there, it was north of my—four and a half miles from here, mm-hmm. So we was staying on the farm there. And they come out there and burn a cross, set it up in the tree, let it burn up my pecan tree. And every time we was in town, if they didn't arrest me, they'd try to pull my children, you know? Make like they was running too fast and all this type of stuff. | 0:42 |
Gregory Hunter | So these cops, when they would arrest you and send you to jail, how would you get out? | 1:24 |
James Hall | The NAACP, we had a way of getting them out of jail. Folks in Atlanta and around way up in New York City, they would be sending us money all the time, helping us back here to try to free this country, while we would survive better than what we was. So they was sending us money. And every time they put one in jail—Well, when I was president, We had to go way over to different towns and get the boys out of jail while they was locked them down. So we go and brought them down to Tifton. We brought some out in Tifton. We brought them out in here. | 1:27 |
James Hall | Fill up this jail here and then turn around and was bringing them out, over somebody's money. I don't know exactly all the places the money was coming from. But it was coming out of New York. Ted, what his name? Ted, what Ted name? Ted what? | 2:19 |
Lollie Mae Hall | What Ted? | 2:41 |
James Hall | President's son, Ted. Old Ted— | 2:43 |
Lollie Mae Hall | [indistinct 00:02:49]. Ted Kennedy? | 2:46 |
James Hall | Ted Kennedy. Yeah, I'm talking about Ted Kennedy. Old Ted Kennedy sent us a whole lot of money, too. He sent a bunch of money. | 2:53 |
Lollie Mae Hall | [indistinct 00:03:01]. | 3:00 |
James Hall | No. He sent us a lot of money. And quite a few of the—Some of these cracker around, we were fortunate enough to get some money out of them. | 3:02 |
Lollie Mae Hall | [indistinct 00:03:15]. | 3:12 |
James Hall | So we fought in on up in the town. We just about open up everything like fountains and bathrooms and eating places and all of that. And we got all that kind of settled. And I was getting old. And I decided I'd wean off from it because I was getting- | 3:16 |
Gregory Hunter | How many people were in this [indistinct 00:03:44]? | 3:42 |
James Hall | Oh, we have had as high as 300 across the board. | 3:45 |
Gregory Hunter | And they were all Black? | 3:52 |
James Hall | Yeah, all of them was Black, excusing one or two. We had one or two White was a member of it. | 3:56 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Yeah, some Whites came in here. [indistinct 00:04:05]. | 4:04 |
James Hall | Yeah. | 4:05 |
Gregory Hunter | You mentioned how the Ku Klux Klan and other White hate groups would burn crosses and try to hurt your animals and things like that. What kind of responses could—What could you do? What did you do? | 4:06 |
James Hall | I couldn't do much. I'd tell the Sheriff. Sheriff said we tell lie. Man coming in, burning cross in our yard and we coming out here and told the Sheriff. I told the Sheriff that somebody burned a cross in the yard, and we was trying to find out who he was. And he said, "No, ain't nobody burning cross. You don't know who he was?" I said, "I don't know." I said, "But let me tell you one thing, man. They ever burn another cross out there", I say, "You going to be able to come down and pull the hood off him and find out who he is." This is how—The Sheriff I was talking. | 4:17 |
Gregory Hunter | Who is the Sheriff? | 4:58 |
James Hall | Hudson. Sheriff Hudson. He was the Sheriff at that time. And boy, he got mad at [indistinct 00:05:12]. The wife, she told him off, too. So I said, "Just as sure as you woke up this morning, just as sure as Christ lived, if they keep burning crosses you going to know who they is, because I'm going to kill him." So they didn't [indistinct 00:05:37] soon. They went and pulled some sticks across our—Set them on fire and drive by. And they show up on that. But coming there and setting up for another one, they never showed up no more. | 5:06 |
James Hall | So anyway, life has been rough. It's been good and then it's been rough. So we then went to hauling children coming out of high school to different places, trying to get them started to learning how to—Well, they was learning how to do different jobs, training. I used to haul all them Darvinsons down to [indistinct 00:06:30]. They was down there training to get better jobs, you know, and go to college. So most of them found favors in going so much and so until over half of them finished college. | 5:52 |
James Hall | By we working with them, because most of the fellows didn't want to spend the money to carry them down there. And nobody wasn't paying me, but we was in pretty good shape. I'd haul them down there and didn't charge them nothing. | 6:58 |
Gregory Hunter | Could I ask you to go back into early, if you want to, talk about your grandparents and whatever comes to you? Do you remember— | 7:15 |
James Hall | Yeah. I know what mama told me about my grandparents. My mother, her people come from overseas, her daddy. | 7:26 |
Gregory Hunter | From where? | 7:49 |
James Hall | From over—Well, they were floated in here from overseas. They was brought in here by the White man. White man brought them over here in this country or brought her. What had happened, he brought the daddy—He brought the mama over here. And let's see, my mother's mother, the Indian, my mother was a half Indian. | 7:51 |
Gregory Hunter | Yeah, but [indistinct 00:08:44]. | 8:30 |
James Hall | Yeah. | 8:44 |
Gregory Hunter | What [indistinct 00:08:45]. | 8:45 |
James Hall | Half Black, half Indian. | 8:45 |
Gregory Hunter | Where did her father come from? | 8:45 |
James Hall | He come from over—he was already here. He come overseas. They brought her mama and her parents over here. And they had children by, these Black women, and my mother come along. | 8:51 |
Gregory Hunter | Do you know where from overseas, your father? | 9:13 |
James Hall | No. Is it Africa? | 9:15 |
Gregory Hunter | Was it [indistinct 00:09:19]? | 9:15 |
James Hall | Well, it would have be Africa, where else we going to come from? Well, they brought them over here from Africa. And— | 9:15 |
Lollie Mae Hall | [indistinct 00:09:19] it's like [indistinct 00:09:19] a miracle. [indistinct 00:09:19] they brought from Africa but not—We don't know nothing about no Africa. (laughs) | 9:18 |
James Hall | Well— | 9:21 |
Gregory Hunter | You never heard of the name, the Indian name? | 9:37 |
James Hall | No, not particular. But they brought them from across the water. And they brought them here. But her mama—her daddy was a—Well, her daddy was a Indian. His mama was a Indian. | 9:39 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Well, luckily, your grandma [indistinct 00:10:05]. | 10:01 |
James Hall | And their mama— | 10:09 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Slavery time. | 10:11 |
James Hall | —Yeah, slavery time. They brought them in slavery time. And said that then her daddy was a Cherokee Indian, my mother's daddy. | 10:12 |
Gregory Hunter | So your grandfather? | 10:27 |
James Hall | Yeah. My granddaddy was a—He was a Indian, half Indian. And that's my granddaddy. And mama, my mother, she was half Indian. So therefore, my uncle, he got the most—Well, he didn't get as much as she got. But he had hair that long, black as smut. And it never did come in white, stayed black. But when I come along, he was fixing to die. I chanced to see my granddaddy maybe a year before he die. So he was a Indian. And they all come from the Indian tribe. And this is how they come and was mixed up in among these White folks that had cloaked these Negroes in here to work for them. | 10:29 |
James Hall | So it was pretty sad situation. And when I had my great grand—On my grandmama's side, my daddy's side. On my daddy's side, she had two sisters. Said we that we seen them. They come over—They was sold to some of them old gypsies. And they had ships on the water. And they was sold to them fellows that operate them ships, the boss man. And they had to work on this ship, and didn't see home but once a year. Every Christmas, she'd come by my grandmama's and them and spend the night. And the next day they'd pick her up and put her back on that water. | 11:55 |
Gregory Hunter | But wait, where would they get up—the ship at, where? | 13:02 |
James Hall | I don't know. I can't figure it out. It couldn't of been in Albany, because it had to be up the country further. I been known to try to ask about where did were getting off at. But they'd get to the water, my grandma said. And they'd catch the train and come home. So it must have been up country a little piece up there somewhere. So she'd catch a train, come home. My granddaddy would put her on the train the next day and send her back. Sometimes they'd let her spend two days with us, you know? So that's the most of the time they would let her stay. And she was a slave. She was in slavery. She was working for them crackers in slavery. | 13:09 |
James Hall | She didn't worry about it. She'd come there and times you'd get home, she'll start to help his mama cook. Mama always was slow anyway, cooking. And boy, she'd get in that kitchen and you talk about cooking and cooking. She'd just cook the whole time she was there. And wouldn't let us children come in the kitchen. "Get out here." She'd raise her hand with her the whole time, you know, trying to keep us out of the kitchen, out of they way. But anyway, it's a long story. It's been—I wished I could a had—Tell a little bit more than I did. I was trying to think about— | 14:15 |
Gregory Hunter | What kind of food did y'all eat? What did y'all eat for breakfast and lunch— | 15:03 |
James Hall | Oh, with breakfast? Oh, we'd eat. Okay, we eat ham meat for breakfast mostly. If not that, we eat middling, bacon, hog bacon, pork bacon. | 15:09 |
Lollie Mae Hall | And it was a hog— | 15:29 |
Gregory Hunter | What'd you say, Millet? | 15:29 |
James Hall | Huh? | 15:29 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Middlings, they'd call it. | 15:29 |
James Hall | They used to call it—They'd call it middling. | 15:29 |
Gregory Hunter | Middling? | 15:30 |
James Hall | Middling, yeah. | 15:32 |
Lollie Mae Hall | No, that's what they bacon out of that part. | 15:33 |
Gregory Hunter | Oh, that's the part of the hog? | 15:35 |
James Hall | Yeah, that's part of the hog. Yeah, that's what make the bacon bacon. | 15:41 |
Gregory Hunter | And what else did you have? | 15:41 |
James Hall | And ham, we could eat ham for breakfast, then we'd eat ham for supper. Lord, you could smell it from here downtown when it start cooking. That's the best smelling stuff you ever saw in your life. So anyway, we was raised up off of a lot of pork. And once in a while, my granddaddy and another old man, once in a while they'd get out and some old—See, back in that day, they didn't have no fences for cow. Cows run everywhere. That's cows. And they'd get out there and kill them one. And bring them in at night and butcher them and we'd have beef. Some of the ones you can have. But we had beef back in that day. | 15:42 |
Gregory Hunter | What other kind of food? | 16:37 |
James Hall | Huh? | 16:37 |
Gregory Hunter | What other kind of food? | 16:37 |
James Hall | Plenty of fish. | 16:37 |
Gregory Hunter | Fish? | 16:37 |
James Hall | Yeah. Go to a mud hole and get—Go to the mud holes and get ten pails of fish. Yeah. Back in that day, I don't know how come the fishes growed so fast, but something happened to them. But you can't go there and get them now. But back in that day, we'd go down to that little mud hole. And we'd count a number two foot tub full. And get it half full of fishes and tote them back up there to the house. Most of them, though, wasn't—They was some—A whole lot of them was big ones. But most of the time the catch was about as big as your two fingers. And we had to clean all them cat. | 16:43 |
Gregory Hunter | Cat? | 17:36 |
James Hall | Catfishes. We'd be way in the night cleaning catfish. But we'd get them, and boy, we'd eat up some. | 17:37 |
Gregory Hunter | Most of the food you ate, the hogs is from your own hogs. It's from things you raised yourself. | 17:48 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Yeah, raised cows. | 17:54 |
Gregory Hunter | Cows. | 17:54 |
James Hall | Cows, hogs and— | 17:54 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Milk and butter, chicken legs. | 17:54 |
James Hall | And fish. We eat a lot of fish back in that day. | 18:01 |
Gregory Hunter | So did you have to buy anything from the store? | 18:02 |
James Hall | Yeah. We had to buy coffee, sugar— | 18:06 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Flour. | 18:06 |
James Hall | —And went to buying— | 18:06 |
Lollie Mae Hall | And making me a lot of corn, was to raise the corn. | 18:06 |
James Hall | Yeah, went to buying rice and for so long we used to bake rice. | 18:06 |
Gregory Hunter | Where did you buy these things that you needed? | 18:24 |
James Hall | Huh? | 18:25 |
Gregory Hunter | Where did you buy the stuff that you needed? | 18:25 |
James Hall | Oh, little country store. Most times a little country store about big as this room here. Some of them wasn't as big as this, about this size. | 18:26 |
Gregory Hunter | [indistinct 00:18:34] or [indistinct 00:18:36]? | 18:33 |
James Hall | No, we moved them where Connor is here. But when we was in Lee County, there was a little old store set inside the railroad, a little bit bigger than this room here. | 18:36 |
Gregory Hunter | Did you pay with money or did you trade? | 18:49 |
James Hall | Well, my daddy, they let him trade on credit, but he had to pay, you know? They go up there and get anything he wanted on credit. And then a set time, he'd have to go and pay it. So he paid his debt. Them Negro know to pay or them cracker beat them to death. | 18:52 |
Gregory Hunter | Excuse me? | 19:21 |
James Hall | Huh? | 19:21 |
Gregory Hunter | What did you say? | 19:21 |
James Hall | Back in that day them crackers would beat him to death. | 19:22 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Well, if they didn't get they money, you wake up [indistinct 00:19:34]. As [indistinct 00:19:34] whatever it is. Pay you a day before they lay us out. That's why you paid your debts. They had the money you [indistinct 00:19:41]. | 19:23 |
James Hall | I'll about a mile or two from where I was born at, the Old Lamboard, they stayed over there. | 19:50 |
Gregory Hunter | Who was that? | 19:52 |
James Hall | A big White section the White folks stayed over there. | 19:53 |
Gregory Hunter | Yeah, what was—Could you describe what the community was like and where you lived? Did most Black people live together? Or did Black people live separate from White people? And was there interaction? How did people get along? | 19:59 |
James Hall | Well, they got along pretty good later years. But they stayed—man had a ten time for him. He'd just build a bunch of shacks, you know? And build them close together. | 20:17 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Seen that on the farm, too. | 20:33 |
Lollie Mae Hall | They wasn't in no hurry. | 20:45 |
James Hall | No, they wasn't a bit, thick as it was. They'd build them there houses in the ten time. Them folks was working ten time. And they'd build them shacks. And the old shack just had one room and a long kitchen. And something like that. Sometime they had two rooms, just depends on the family. And that's how they'd survive. And then the White man, he stayed up the Old Feller. And sometime there's two and three of them build up there not far from one another, you know, like that. | 20:46 |
James Hall | So they didn't build theirs and jam up like they did the Black. But Black man really caught it. But no, they had moved the Negroes. And all the Negroes now has done moved to town. They had this one, they didn't—Over 20% of Black folks stay in the country, if it's 20%. | 21:23 |
Gregory Hunter | Why did most people move to the town? | 21:56 |
James Hall | They couldn't get nothing to do, the crackers. | 21:57 |
Lollie Mae Hall | The land belonged to the White people. The [indistinct 00:22:04], tractors and all this— | 21:59 |
James Hall | And they took it. And chemicals and stuff. | 22:04 |
Lollie Mae Hall | —And chemical. | 22:04 |
James Hall | They made— | 22:09 |
Lollie Mae Hall | They'd have to hold the crops. | 22:10 |
James Hall | Didn't have to have nobody. | 22:11 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Cotton picker, he got sickle and all that stuff. They didn't no people then. | 22:13 |
James Hall | They don't need no- | 22:17 |
Lollie Mae Hall | So that's what causes Black folks to have to migrate. | 22:17 |
James Hall | So they stay in town. And some of them go back out and help them on the farm. | 22:22 |
Lollie Mae Hall | [indistinct 00:22:28] need a few that— | 22:28 |
James Hall | Yeah, they got a few out there. Mostly now they using Mexican. All them foreigners, they done took over out there. When they go together and the crop, watermelon and all that stuff, you might see a Black man out there, once in a while. Yeah. | 22:29 |
Lollie Mae Hall | [indistinct 00:22:56] all the Black folks don't want to work no more. | 22:55 |
James Hall | So they— | 22:55 |
Lollie Mae Hall | About a long time they find something else. | 22:55 |
James Hall | So the average Negro now, they fight hard. They fights hard now to try to have something and save something. Buy them a house in town or rent them a house in town and fight to stay there. And this is how everybody having to do it now. Of course, we didn't have to move to town but we did. So anyway, we stay here. And we got two houses out there on the farm that we could stay in, maybe, one of them. But we stayed here in town. | 23:05 |
Gregory Hunter | What were some of the best times and some of the hardest times in your life? | 23:43 |
James Hall | Oh, the hardest time in my life were back—coming out of Hoover days. We had it pretty rough then. | 23:45 |
Gregory Hunter | What was rough [indistinct 00:24:03]- | 23:59 |
James Hall | So much it was kind a rough on clothes. You couldn't get much to wear. You couldn't get no clothes to wear worth nothing. | 24:03 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Always saying they hit rock bottom for some reason, course, I was a little small. I didn't know too much about it but I remember it. | 24:13 |
James Hall | Yeah, it running real rough. They kept Mama patching all the time. | 24:21 |
Gregory Hunter | Patching? | 24:27 |
James Hall | Yeah, patching clothes. Putting patch on your clothes where it done wore the knee out and all that stuff. She spend several hours patching in run of a week. And— | 24:28 |
Gregory Hunter | What was some of the other difficulties? | 24:43 |
James Hall | When we stayed on the farm that makes a little different. | 24:46 |
Gregory Hunter | What was the difference— | 24:50 |
James Hall | We were raising our cows and hogs and meat and stuff like that, everything we wanted to eat, we could raise it right there on the farm. Therefore, far as that part of it, we never did suffer for food. The only thing we suffered for, clothes. | 24:50 |
Lollie Mae Hall | And money to buy clothes. | 25:11 |
James Hall | And money. Well, yeah, so we suffer for money to buy clothes with. | 25:11 |
Lollie Mae Hall | There wasn't no jobs. | 25:21 |
James Hall | There wasn't no jobs available to get money. | 25:23 |
Lollie Mae Hall | We lived on the farm. A lot of them is [indistinct 00:25:28], what's it called, [indistinct 00:25:29]? Wasn't no money. So only the White man's blade he stole from the commissary. | 25:26 |
James Hall | We worked for—Run of the day we got 25 cents a day, a couple of years. | 25:29 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Men, who used to work for 25 cents a day. | 25:44 |
James Hall | 25 cents a day. | 25:45 |
Gregory Hunter | What kind of jobs? | 25:45 |
James Hall | Farming. Out there it was hoeing corn and cotton, peanuts. Yeah, plowing. The didn't make—what it is they have to eat it. Yeah. | 25:49 |
Lollie Mae Hall | [indistinct 00:26:02] too. But we still didn't have nothing. | 26:02 |
James Hall | But you know, White was a family and they stood together. They ate good. White was a family that's stuck together. | 26:06 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Ate good. They ate pretty good. | 26:20 |
James Hall | Yeah. What they do, they invited me work in public work to guard them. The children make 25 cents a day. And the mama and the daddy made .30 cents a day. And the only- | 26:21 |
Lollie Mae Hall | I don't know. [indistinct 00:26:41] back home. | 26:40 |
James Hall | I know that what it was. | 26:40 |
Lollie Mae Hall | I don't know [indistinct 00:26:41], something like that, though. | 26:40 |
James Hall | That's right. The pay means your 25 cents a day and my sisters. | 26:40 |
Lollie Mae Hall | By then everything was [indistinct 00:27:00]. | 26:59 |
James Hall | Huh? | 26:59 |
Lollie Mae Hall | I think by then some of them times [indistinct 00:27:02]— | 26:59 |
James Hall | Oh, they coming so even more. But when 19—I can remember— | 27:02 |
Lollie Mae Hall | I remember my daddy, plowed for a $1.00 a day. | 27:07 |
James Hall | In 1928— | 27:12 |
Lollie Mae Hall | He's too little to make a whole week. | 27:17 |
James Hall | —We work for 25 cents a day. And the sun, you had to be there when the sun rise. Be sitting in the field when the sun come up. That's right. And you sit there until the sun goes down, you all. But only reason families survived, they put this money together like it was five or six of us children that were working. And it was all of us working 25 cents a day. Then we'd work a whole week. Sometimes we'd make a whole week. When the week come, we'd pool that money. And my daddy, they could go into town and buy enough groceries to last you all the week and then some, with that money. | 27:19 |
James Hall | But they didn't have nothing to buy no clothes with. So this is how to survive. Yeah. But it was rough. It always came at night. You could fool around right now and get in a mess. The day we living now, yeah, you can get hungry now. It's even folk dying of hunger. They're not capable of trying to cut corners and work and make some money to survive on, then that's tough. | 28:12 |
Gregory Hunter | What were some of the best times? | 28:54 |
James Hall | Huh? | 28:54 |
Gregory Hunter | What were some of the best times? | 28:54 |
James Hall | Oh, best time? When we were taking in—Best time me and my wife had when we clear 5 or 6 or 7, $8,000 a year or maybe more, $15,000 to $20,000, like that. | 28:56 |
Gregory Hunter | You fought it. | 29:16 |
James Hall | Yeah. | 29:16 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Yeah, could have got something better. | 29:16 |
Lollie Mae Hall | I call this rent land. | 29:16 |
James Hall | Yeah, we- | 29:21 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Just buy a little then [indistinct 00:29:30]. | 29:24 |
Gregory Hunter | What did people do for fun? | 29:31 |
James Hall | Huh? | 29:33 |
Gregory Hunter | What did y'all do for fun in the earlier days? | 29:34 |
James Hall | Farming? Do for farming? | 29:36 |
Gregory Hunter | No, for fun. | 29:38 |
James Hall | Oh, we up and down the road like—The dirt road out there. | 29:41 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Fly through the bushes to the neighbor's house. | 29:45 |
James Hall | Yeah, and sometimes the neighbors stayed right down the road there a little piece. And they had children. And they didn't do nothing but make [indistinct 00:29:54], all day. | 29:48 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Got a find the women, visit. | 29:54 |
James Hall | Yeah, the women— | 30:06 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Men mostly stayed coupled off to themselves. Families didn't have to live [indistinct 00:30:07] together. And a lot of [indistinct 00:30:10] they don't have. | 30:06 |
James Hall | So they—Children run up and down the road from one house to the other. Have all day playing, ripping and playing. And mama, she'd be up there sitting on the porch with the lady talking, running their mouth all evening. And then about sundown, "All right, children, let's go home." They'd go—All of them pack up and go ahead. | 30:11 |
Gregory Hunter | Mrs. Hall you said that women visit each other often. What did they do? | 30:35 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Well, they didn't—well sometimes they quilt together, stuff like that. Well I didn't—In my day that wasn't going on. But I hear tell of it way back then. I'm quilting at my house by myself. Didn't give quilting parties in my time. | 30:44 |
James Hall | In my day, mama and them was quilting. | 30:58 |
Lollie Mae Hall | We'd gave them as many as 25 quilts [indistinct 00:31:06]. | 31:02 |
James Hall | Wintertime, they do a lot of quilting. It's cold weather, they come on. Meet up at one house and they quilt. This one would quilt today, and tomorrow they go to Sister Sam house, they'll quilt one. Go to Sister Jane's house, quilt one. Then like that, that's how they circled around. | 31:06 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Yeah, that's what I heard. It never did happen in my day. | 31:26 |
James Hall | Yeah, life here been something. | 31:26 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Women got [indistinct 00:31:35]. [indistinct 00:31:42] or something. After they cook and feed the children, worry about someone else. | 31:26 |
Gregory Hunter | Did you ever travel places, long distances? | 31:49 |
James Hall | Travel? | 31:52 |
Gregory Hunter | Yes, sir. | 31:57 |
James Hall | As far as I went to down in Florida, boy, and back home and that and Atlanta to work and back home. | 31:57 |
Gregory Hunter | Why did you go to those places, for what? | 32:02 |
James Hall | Get a job, I didn't have anything around here. | 32:06 |
Gregory Hunter | What kind of work did you get out there? | 32:06 |
James Hall | Oh, I finished concrete. | 32:08 |
Gregory Hunter | In Florida or [indistinct 00:32:12]? | 32:10 |
James Hall | In Florida, carpenter, a plumber, build houses. This is me and my brother's occupation. We build—I don't know how many houses we ain't build. We build houses, carpenter, laborer. Did I [indistinct 00:32:37]? We got a house out there on our farm that— | 32:12 |
Lollie Mae Hall | You got two houses out there. | 32:39 |
James Hall | We got two houses out there. But we laid the bricks. Me and my brother laid the bricks on one of them. Don't how the other one laid. And you can't look at—They look better than these but it's still here. | 32:43 |
Gregory Hunter | And where can you go to, the spots in Atlanta? | 32:54 |
James Hall | Atlanta? They did concrete. Lord, it was pull concrete. | 33:00 |
Gregory Hunter | When did you go to these two places? What years [indistinct 00:33:07]? | 33:04 |
James Hall | Oh, this was, I'd say, it's been 20 years ago. And 20 years ago would be '37. No, it'd be more than that. It'd '47. It was around '45 or '48, somewhere right there. | 33:15 |
Gregory Hunter | What impact did World War II have? | 33:40 |
James Hall | Oh, impact? Oh, when it come along, me and brother, Reddis, to go to the Army— | 33:45 |
Gregory Hunter | You registered to go? | 33:51 |
James Hall | Yeah, we had to sign up to go. And then you got to fill out an application. And if you go too many folks to feed back home, they don't want you. They'll make you stay home and feed them folk. And that how come me and my brother didn't get there and go. | 33:53 |
Gregory Hunter | Oh, because you had too [indistinct 00:34:13]. | 34:11 |
James Hall | Yeah, too big a family. So we had to stay here and take care of them. | 34:13 |
Gregory Hunter | Did it seem like a lot of people from around here? | 34:17 |
James Hall | Yeah, there's a heap of folk live here from around here and went. | 34:19 |
Gregory Hunter | Did that make it difficult to find work anywhere? | 34:23 |
James Hall | Well, the field—We didn't lose too many, like getting killed over there, not from around here. We was blessed. Every once in while they'd ship one in that got killed over there. But it didn't happen too often. We was blessed not to have like 40 and 50 and 100 like that at the time. Like I hear them talk around on TV now. | 34:26 |
Gregory Hunter | How did people take care of themselves out in the country when they were sick? | 34:59 |
James Hall | When they were sick? | 35:03 |
Gregory Hunter | Yes, sir. What kind of health care was there? | 35:03 |
James Hall | Oh, ooh, get in the wagon and come to town. | 35:06 |
Lollie Mae Hall | We only had one doctor mostly [indistinct 00:35:13]. | 35:10 |
James Hall | We had doctors, then, one or two doctors here. And they hauled them over here in the wagon to the doctor. And get them out. And the doctor make like he done doing something to him, put him back in the wagon. He'd go back home. | 35:14 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Mostly home remedies do it. | 35:27 |
James Hall | Yeah. We used a lot of home remedies. | 35:33 |
Gregory Hunter | Like what? | 35:35 |
James Hall | Like 10 times of Castor Oil, that's all. | 35:36 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Some offer herb tea, stuff like that. | 35:38 |
James Hall | Herb and medicine. We used a lot of herb medicine. | 35:38 |
Lollie Mae Hall | That new [indistinct 00:35:50]. | 35:38 |
James Hall | Yeah. | 35:50 |
Gregory Hunter | Were there people who knew how to use these? | 35:53 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Yeah. [indistinct 00:36:11] look like [indistinct 00:36:11]. You didn't hear of nobody dying with no cancer and all that stuff. That's something that come up later, since I come up in the world. And you could hardly ever have a neighbor to die. | 36:10 |
James Hall | Old yellow weed, that's still close. Strongest butter that's bitter. Shoot, mama would give us that stuff at the end make us bathe in it. | 36:24 |
Lollie Mae Hall | You'd have to- | 36:28 |
James Hall | Oh, yeah. You feel—Next morning, fever gone. | 36:29 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Uh-huh. We had to walk to school all the time. My feet, they wet and cold all the winter. But we didn't hardly ever come down with a cold. Do they give some [indistinct 00:36:46]. | 36:34 |
Gregory Hunter | Speaking of school, what was school like? Did you go? | 36:46 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Well, we had to walk three or four miles to [indistinct 00:36:53]. | 36:47 |
James Hall | Six months, that's all we would go to school, five and six, yeah. That's what it was. | 36:57 |
Lollie Mae Hall | [indistinct 00:37:01] make it up to nine months [indistinct 00:37:05]. | 36:59 |
James Hall | Yeah, no, we had no nine months. | 37:04 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Well, I went some. | 37:05 |
James Hall | You was not. No, I didn't go to no nine months. We went like six months. | 37:11 |
Gregory Hunter | And what was school— | 37:15 |
James Hall | Instead of four, it was good. The teachers—them there teachers I went to, they make you get they lesson. | 37:19 |
Lollie Mae Hall | In that school, they had a school that had one teacher. | 37:25 |
James Hall | Yeah. But they'll make you get that lesson. Don't worry about that. | 37:28 |
Lollie Mae Hall | All up through the sixth, seventh grade, in that one school, with one teacher. Every day. | 37:35 |
James Hall | Yeah. | 37:51 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Well, they like their lessons. | 37:57 |
James Hall | They were tough. | 37:57 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Lesson, [indistinct 00:37:58] you [indistinct 00:37:58]. | 37:57 |
James Hall | I had a—When I was coming up and got to be a yelling boy, I went over to Isabella to stay with my friend. | 38:00 |
Gregory Hunter | Where is Isabella? | 38:10 |
James Hall | Isabella, it's only right across down there. Yeah, there's another community. So I went over there to stay with him that night. And we played and played away in the night. And then I decided I wanted to come home. And I live about four miles, between four and five miles across. I come home by myself that night. Man, it was so dark. I couldn't even see the ground hardly. But I just knew where the road was. And I was by myself coming home. So I got there. A place called Isabella, there's an old coat house over there. No, it's a hotel was there. And old-timey hotel but they'd done banned it. | 38:12 |
James Hall | And the doors was open and everything. I got along there, a big old white dog run out the hotel and went on and jumped over the fence over in the garden. The man had a garden out there. He jumped over in the garden, go ahead, carve that Thanksgiving. You said there's plenty of [indistinct 00:39:22] today, anyway. Ooh, that dog scared me so bad, he about that tall. He hopped over the fence, and he moved on out into the garden out that a way. After a while he disappeared. I'm a keep walking. He disappear. Lord, I got around a curve over there and a star out the element, it's shot down right down by me. Boom! | 39:02 |
Gregory Hunter | A star? | 39:58 |
James Hall | A star. You know, the star in the heavens. The heavenly star. | 39:58 |
Gregory Hunter | And it came down? | 40:02 |
James Hall | It came down in from of me and shot like a boom. | 40:05 |
Lollie Mae Hall | It making that noise and you looking up where you see. | 40:09 |
James Hall | It isn't shot down ahead of me and made a big noise. I said, "Grante." I put on brakes to wait til it got—but it wasn't never feel suffering when they shoot down like that. So I went on. I kept traveling. I had a long way to go to get home. I was scared as I don't know what. But I had to get home. So I went on. I got to—Fixing to get to another highway, Public Road. I saw a big fire at a fellow's house up there. And they was up there, a man and a young fellow done died. And they sitting around the fire on outside wondering what to do with it. So when I got there, whew, almost 60 year old mens, about three of them now. | 40:14 |
James Hall | They told me, "Lord, we sure enough glad to see you." I had been a carpenter all my days. But we used to make trains, me and my brother. We'd make trains and we put whistles in them and a sawmill. And they'll blow—We'll fix the whistle, why, it blow all night. We get our ball and heat it up and get that steam going and a little old hole in our whistle, small. And he the funniest all night. He blow all night. So when I got there, the boy was dead. Then somebody had to make him a casket. I made him a casket and put him in there. And I dressed him up. And I dressed him up and put him in this casket I built. | 41:21 |
James Hall | And boy, when I got through building that casket—All right. When I got there, they said, "Here the man. Here the carpenter." Then said, "Get me some lumber." They went to tearing the lumber off the barn. | 42:22 |
Lollie Mae Hall | Good. [indistinct 00:42:50]. | 42:47 |
James Hall | And brought me the lumber, Lord, and handsaw. Boy, I sort that stuff out. I was strong back in that day. I cut that casket out and build it. And then I said, "Get me some cotton." They had cotton they'd got out the field where the—You know, folks used to save cotton. And they got me the cotton and all. I dressed that casket out. And, "Give me a sheet." They get me two sheets. I put one sheet on top of that cotton and got it put in. Then I told him, "Give me a pillow." I got a pillow and I put the head bolt up there for a pillow, you know. And when I got through, everybody viewed that body, said that's the prettiest fellow that we ever seen that the man build a casket and lay him out, a boy. | 42:51 |
James Hall | So I got this thing built and all. Yeah, come on and sit down. | 43:51 |
Speaker 5 | Thank you. | 43:59 |
James Hall | And I got the thing built and laid the boy out there and he was pretty. They're going to have the Baptism next morning. Because you see, we didn't have no way of embalming him. So we had to bury him the next morning. So next morning, me now, is three old mens was there, and they wasn't worth a nickel. Scared, they scared to go home. So we on the way home. I was about 17 years old, right at it. So I had to come on home with him and drop him off there. Then the other one, I had to make a little circle to get him home. I dropped him off there. Then I had to take the chute home by myself. | 44:00 |
James Hall | And when I got near home, there's a cemetery in the back of the farm that we were working there. And I was out along there, and it was a man across the road right in front of me going towards that cemetery. So he went on. He come across me and boy, I'm so scared, I stopped and waited til he got out from me. And after a while he disappeared. Then I had about half a mile then to try to make it home. So I made it home. And I never was caught back in Isabella by myself at night. Boy, that was scared-est trip I ever had going off to play. I ought to left there before sundown and got home. But I didn't do it. So that thing happened with me. | 44:53 |
James Hall | You ain't chewing tobacco, is you? | 45:59 |
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