Willie Lucas interview recording, 1995 July 07
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Transcript
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Willie Price Lucas | We moved from Oneida to Marvell and that's mainly where I grew up. We were farmers and worked on a farm all my life. Finished high school at Marvell and went to college at Pine Bluff and got married. My husband went in service in '42. | 0:02 |
Willie Price Lucas | My mother was a midwife and a school teacher. My father didn't teach school. He was a logger and a farmer there but my mother strongly believed in an education. I'm the eighth child out of 10. My mother had 10 children and I'm the eighth. She had nine boys and one girl. We all got some form of education. | 0:27 |
Willie Price Lucas | Of course I got married and later went back and got my college degree and I followed in her footsteps as a midwife. I was a licensed midwife for the state of Arkansas from '45 to '72. I taught school here in Brinkley for 23 years until I retired. | 0:56 |
Willie Price Lucas | I have three children, two girls and a boy. Both my daughters finished at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, which was a Methodist school. My son finished at Hendricks College and he majored in PE. When he got out, he taught PE for two years and he said he couldn't make a living at that salary. | 1:20 |
Willie Price Lucas | So he joined, went back to school for an FBI agent. So now he's been an FBI agent for 20 years and he's worked in Indianapolis, New York and Bellville, Illinois. Now, he's stationed in Little Rock. And at present, tomorrow he's leaving for Haiti on special assignment to go in there for a couple of weeks he said. | 1:46 |
Willie Price Lucas | My oldest daughter passed away in '86. She was a English teacher at Hall High School in Little Rock and she taught there for 23 years before she passed. | 2:17 |
Willie Price Lucas | My other daughter lives in Chicago and she's a supervisor for the state of Illinois for the blind and handicapped, in libraries. She's been there now for 30 years. She retired when she'd become of age. Working for the city, you have to be so old before you can retire. | 2:30 |
Willie Price Lucas | We had a farm down in Phillips County and we still have a farm in Phillips County. I try to hold onto a little something that my parents had. And of course, we had to walk to school in those days. We did no transportation for Blacks. They passed by us on the bus and knocked mud up on us every day, but we still had to keep on walking and our school burned down. Well then we had to go to churches and places until they got school back up. | 2:55 |
Willie Price Lucas | That's about it, until I married in '45. '42 lease and we moved over here and I've been here since and my husband went in the service in '42 and he got out in '45 and he came here and started work. It was hard at that time because of segregation. I learned in school that you don't say you go two blocks and you turn, you go that way and then you get down there and you turn and you go that way. I'll try to say so many blocks. | 3:32 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, I was wondering about your experience as a midwife. Did you learn from your mother? | 4:11 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, my grandmother was a midwife. My mother was a midwife and I guess I took it up from my mother, but I had to go to school, a year, to class to learn all about it and everything. After that, I had to go out with an experienced midwife, which was my mother that I went out with to deliver babies. | 4:19 |
Willie Price Lucas | The first one that I went with her that she delivered, they named the child after me. My first delivery was the woman, the lady named her after me. It was a requirement that you go to school a year to learn it, so I did. | 4:46 |
Willie Price Lucas | Of course I was way back in the—It was in the '40s when I started. I think I got my license in '45. But back in those days, you delivered a baby for $5. And sometime you didn't get that. And I remember before then in the late '30s and all my mother would deliver babies and they would pay her in corn with corn. Corn was 50 cents a bushel. Pigs were a dollar. And they would pay her in corn, pigs and you get a half a calf sometime for $5. And that's the way she got her money most of the time for delivering babies back in the depression days, I guess you'd call it. | 5:05 |
Paul Ortiz | What county did she mainly work in? | 5:56 |
Willie Price Lucas | It was Phillips County. | 5:58 |
Paul Ortiz | Phillips County. | 5:59 |
Willie Price Lucas | Mm-hmm. Phillips County is the county I grew up in. | 6:04 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. Mrs. Lucas, your mother had learned from her mother about it. What were some of the different—Could you compare maybe your experience as a midwife to your mother's and your grandmother's when things changed? | 6:05 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, in my mother's days, well they would just engage you to deliver the baby. They got pregnant, they would come and ask you if you would deliver the baby for them at such a time that they thought they were going to where— | 6:26 |
Willie Price Lucas | But in my days, I had to have what they call a blue card. They would issue them to me from the health office. And I would give them to the patients when they come and engage me to wait on them and they would have to take them to the doctor. And the doctor, every time they'd go to the doctor, the doctor would fill out this card, put their blood pressure and whatever else on that. | 6:40 |
Willie Price Lucas | If they had any dangerous signals like feet swelling or high blood pressure or something like that, they wouldn't recommend that they have a midwife to deliver. That was the difference. But back in my mother's days, they just delivered a baby. But then when I come along, you had to have that okay from a doctor. | 7:06 |
Willie Price Lucas | That was if you delivered—If doctor said it was okay for a midwife to deliver when they went for the last checkup, he would mark whether they safe or unsafe for a midwife to deliver. If anything happened, then he was responsible. He had to come if I called him. That was my backup. He had to come. | 7:30 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, during your mother's day, well I guess also in your experience, what role did you as a midwife play in Phillips County? Did you play a leadership role in the community or? | 7:55 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, back in my mother's days, a midwife was just almost the same as a doctor because where that World War I broke out, well then doctors were scarce and everything else. So therefore the midwife was just like a doctor back then in those days. | 8:19 |
Willie Price Lucas | I don't know, you just didn't have no problem. You just knew you was a midwife and they'd just come and wake up 12 o'clock at night and you hear this wagon coming down the road and she just get on up out the bed because she know it wasn't nowhere else for them to be going but coming after her and they'd come in the wagons. They didn't have any cars and she would come in sometime and raining in the wintertime and her clothes would be frozen stiff on her. | 8:42 |
Willie Price Lucas | She'd be standing up and I said, "Lord, I'll never be a midwife." And blessed goodness, before I knew it, I was one. | 9:09 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, what were the tools of the trade back then? What did you have to work with? | 9:19 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well you had—Well, I'd say a suitcase, briefcases to carry. In this briefcase you had a set of towels and you had masks. You were required to have a mask and you had a pan which consists of scissors. Those scissors, you carried your own pan because that's what you had to sterilize your scissors with. | 9:29 |
Willie Price Lucas | You would put that on and boil your scissors and sterilize them in order, so when you cut the naval cord, umbilical cord they call it, then it wouldn't set up infection anything. And you had to carry this tape, umbilical tape, that you tie the cord with before you cut it. But the only thing about it, you didn't use gloves. They didn't require you to use gloves. I don't know why. | 9:54 |
Willie Price Lucas | Because one thing, you didn't do any examining. You didn't give any medicine, you weren't allowed to give medicine at all. In that thing, you carried everything necessary. If they didn't have anything to put on a child, you had something in your bag that you could dress the baby with. Back then, in those days you had what they call a belly band. I don't know, but wasn't really the name they call them now, but they don't use them anymore. And that's why you see so many babies have those hernia, because the band kept the navel from protruding. | 10:23 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, how old were you when you first began to go with your mother on her deliveries? | 11:12 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, I married when I was 20. I'd say I was about 27 years old. | 11:25 |
Paul Ortiz | When you grew up and your mother would—You knew from your mother's experiences that you didn't want to be a— | 11:42 |
Willie Price Lucas | Yeah, that's right. | 11:48 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, did your mother ever talk about her, some of her most difficult deliveries situations that she ran into when she— | 11:53 |
Willie Price Lucas | No, the most difficult ones were breach births and breach is where they come backwards instead of head first. They come folded up and the rear first. And that was the most difficult and most dangerous. But she never lost a patient. But it was just more difficult. | 12:03 |
Paul Ortiz | Mr. Lucas, was your grandmother alive when you were growing up? | 12:33 |
Willie Price Lucas | Yes. My grandmother didn't die until 19—'Yeah, might have been '47. 1947. She was 105 years old, never wore a pair of eyeglasses. My mother delivered my two girls and my grandmother nursed him. She said that she tore baby carriage up bumping, shaking her going to sleep and all since she had to shook her. | 12:40 |
Willie Price Lucas | Yeah, she was 105 when she passed. See, my mother's people grew up in slavery time. My great-grandmother. No. My grandmother, my grandfather's mother, I guess that would be my great-grandfather. She was a sold slave. They put her on the block and sold her. She was—What did I want to say? She ruled the slaves in the field. They had to work under her. | 13:26 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh like the driver. | 14:05 |
Willie Price Lucas | Something of slaves in that field. And of course my grandmother and my grandfather, well their father were White. They were Irishmans. And back in those days, they had no choice. Whatever they decided to do with them, they did it. | 14:07 |
Willie Price Lucas | And so they kept my grandmother, which was my mother's mother, they kept her head shaved because her hair was just like White folk's hair, in other words, I hate to say that. | 14:24 |
Willie Price Lucas | But anyway. And she never was a sold slave because her father kept her at the house to take care of her little sisters and brothers. But at that time, she didn't know really that they were her sisters and brothers. And see their maiden name was McIntosh and that's Irish. That's my mother's mother. She never was a sold slave, but her mother was a slave back down there in Mississippi. | 14:38 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, did any other of your grandmother or your great-grandmother's experiences, stories about them pass down to you or to your mother about what life is like during those days? | 15:12 |
Willie Price Lucas | They just had a hard time living and working on farms. Some of them went to school. My mother was a baby out of their family and she had a chance to go to school and that's why she finished school and taught school. She also was a seamstress and she sewed for a living a lot and married. | 15:30 |
Willie Price Lucas | But they had to pick cotton. They had to chop cotton, they had to work in the fields and all back in those days. They witnessed some of that cruel of punishment. My great-grandmother punished one of my mother's sisters by tying a dress over her head and letting her down in a well of water. | 15:59 |
Willie Price Lucas | I had my mother talk of that, but that's about the only thing you know that I know happened. No, because they got freed before they all got grown. See, my mother was born in 1882. You see how old she—She was the youngest, she was the baby. Her family, I think, is about 14 of them. And see how old she would've been if she'd still been living because she was in her 80s when she passed. | 16:26 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, when did your mother's family leave Mississippi? | 17:05 |
Willie Price Lucas | They left Mississippi about 1916. They left Mound Bayou and they moved to a little place called Oneida, Arkansas. | 17:16 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, they were living in Mound Bayou? | 17:33 |
Willie Price Lucas | Yeah. | 17:34 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. Did they talk about life there? | 17:35 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, not really. They were just farmers just coming. Just farmers. They didn't—See, my mother was married twice and her second husband, she met him after she moved to Arkansas. | 17:39 |
Willie Price Lucas | That's where she was living at Oneida. He was living at Hughes, Arkansas. So I don't know how they got together that far apart. But then she married him in 19—Must have been about 1919 because I was born in '21 and I had a brother that was born in either 1919 or 1920, just older than I was. So they got married probably 1919, '18 [indistinct 00:18:32]. | 17:58 |
Paul Ortiz | So she had moved out of Mound— | 18:32 |
Willie Price Lucas | She had moved from Mound Bayou because she had sisters and brothers living in Arkansas. Living down at Oneida. And then out here, Marvell, she had a brother living in Marvell and had couple sisters living at Oneida. So she moved her—Something happened to her husband. I don't know what happened. He left and never returned. And so she moved over here with—She had six boys and she moved over here with her sister. | 18:33 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, so your grandmother was a midwife also? | 19:08 |
Willie Price Lucas | Yeah. | 19:11 |
Paul Ortiz | Back in those days, was it primarily women who were midwives? | 19:13 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, as far as I know, I'd never heard of a man being a midwife. | 19:20 |
Paul Ortiz | Back during those days, did they use home remedies to help in the birthing process or sickness? | 19:29 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, the only thing that I can remember that they used was quinine. Quinine was used if they were in labor and have them little old piddly pains and they give them some quinine, it would cut them off, if it wasn't that time. And if it was that time, they would heat them up and they'd go ahead on and they'd make the labor pains come closer and harder. | 19:41 |
Willie Price Lucas | They would go ahead on have the baby. Some midwives would give them patients castor oil, but I never did that. No. That's about all that they were allowed to give, is something like that. Because when I started, I learned a few more little techniques in it, things you could do using a hot towel to keep them from tearing, things like that. | 20:09 |
Willie Price Lucas | I got my license for a practical nurse and that helped me out a whole lot too with my midwifery, but see, that came after I had gotten my license. | 20:51 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, before the state requirements for licensing, how did you learn how to become a midwife before there were the schools and the certificates sent? | 21:10 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, I guess by just going with somebody else, just picking it up from some of your relatives or somebody that was interested in going around with them and all. But now, like before my mother along in the 40s, she had to go take classes. | 21:28 |
Willie Price Lucas | She lived at Marvell but she'd have to go to Helena once a month and they'd have classes. That was teaching you all the dangerous signals and everything else that you should know about a patient. Because see, if they had swelling in the feet, you didn't deliver them because that was kidney problem. Some of them feet would just swell. Well, that was caused by kidney infection and you didn't dare deliver one with kidney infection. And they would teach you all that things to avoid. | 21:49 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, what was your most difficult experience as a midwife or your most harrowing or what do you think? | 22:37 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, with the blue card and they had to be approved by a doctor, the only thing I was delivering twins and one we thought was dead and one wasn't. And the lady says, "Stop fooling with that one and try to take care of the one that's alive." | 22:49 |
Willie Price Lucas | By that time the baby gasped. And we knew it was alive too because they'd be in a sack and that sack didn't burst and therefore it was in there with all that fluid, what you called water bag or something. That's most my scariest experience was working with that one. | 23:10 |
Willie Price Lucas | But to me, it just was just natural. It wasn't anything. I didn't get afraid and nothing scared me or anything. I could still be doing it, but they got all these health clinics now and they said they didn't need the midwife anymore because they had enough health facilities, health clinics to take care of all the OB patients. That's why I'm not doing it today. I would still be doing it. I loved it. It didn't bother me one bit. | 23:40 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, where were most of your deliveries at? Who was the typical— | 24:15 |
Willie Price Lucas | Most of my deliveries were at home. But they were in the rural, most of them in the rural areas lived out in country on farms. Most of them was in the rural areas. I had some in town city, but the majority was from rural areas. Okay. | 24:22 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, earlier you were saying that during your mother's time, you remember hearing the wagons coming up and people would contact her. How would people contact you when they wanted you to— | 24:43 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well see, when I started doing midwife work, we had telephone. And then when they call and ask me if I would wait on them, then I would tell them, "You have to come see me and I have to talk to you and I have to give you a blue card and you would have to take it to the doctor every time you go and let the doctor, after he examined you and everything, fill it out. He'd put the date on there and everything when you visited him." | 24:55 |
Willie Price Lucas | That was the difference. I had to have proof and then my mother didn't. They just would come to her house and say, "I'm pregnant or going to have a baby and I'd like to get you to deliver it for me." That was it. Because she had been some doctors when World War II was going on, they sent them to my mother. | 25:21 |
Paul Ortiz | The doctors? | 25:51 |
Willie Price Lucas | Yeah, they would send them to her, to deliver. I guess they didn't have any money and they wasn't going be paying. I had some to do me that same way here in Franklin. They owed the doctor and doctor said they wasn't going to wait on them because they owed him, they didn't pay him. And then they would call me and ask me if I wanted to wait on them. They didn't pay me, maybe they'll pay you. I have some that still owe me. At that time, it was $15. | 25:52 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, did you deliver primarily for Black mothers? | 26:30 |
Willie Price Lucas | Both, Black and White. Yeah, I delivered quite a few White, but like I said, it was kind of the poor of Whites that didn't have much money. Not rich, White in the same way with the Blacks. Not the rich Black that could afford to pay. Well, they paid and so the White, but I delivered a lot of White babies. | 26:34 |
Paul Ortiz | So if they were rich, they would probably go to a doctor? | 27:04 |
Willie Price Lucas | Go to a doctor somewhere. | 27:07 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. Mrs. Lucas, did you or your mother feel like doctors were kind of intruding in the area into childbirth? Because midwives had always been, it seems like, have been doing that for years and years and years. Did you feel like—Here comes the doctors and— | 27:12 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, you mean nowadays? | 27:35 |
Paul Ortiz | Well sure, but even back, say in the '40s. | 27:48 |
Willie Price Lucas | Now, what was—Repeat the whole question. | 28:03 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. Well, now you had talked—You talked about how your grandmother was a midwife and your mother was also a midwife. Back during those—I'm sure back during your grandmother's day, there really weren't that many doctors especially who would deliver for Black mothers. Did your mother or did you feel like at some point, that doctors were kind of invading your turf, so to speak? | 28:03 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, I don't think so. Back then in my mother's days, when she was delivering babies, doing midwife work, I don't think it had any problem. But doctors looked like, to me it was glad for them to get a midwife to deliver because we just didn't have any money in the first place. Just like I said, they pay with corn and hogs and whatever, cows, whatever they had. She would take that for money. | 28:34 |
Willie Price Lucas | But see the doctors, he didn't need that stuff and he was glad for him to go to a midwife, get a midwife. But I have people today saying they wish the midwives were still active because they'd rather—But see, you've got so much stuff now, you've got this hospital over there in Little Rock University where they take you, if you don't have any money, you don't have anything, then you can go to the hospital and you don't have to pay anything. All you've got to do it, is just get there. Then they got all this other stuff on your own welfare and getting all that money and you can afford to go to Little Rock. | 29:12 |
Willie Price Lucas | Most of them now, they go to—Doctors will send them to university in Little Rock. That's supposed to be the free hospital, university hospital in Little Rock. If you've got money, you have to pay. But if you don't have any, they take you anyway. | 30:10 |
Paul Ortiz | That means there's less midwives? | 30:33 |
Willie Price Lucas | Yeah. Less—They just stopped renewing the license. They quickly wrote me a letter and they said they wouldn't renew my license because they have enough facilities to take care of the OB patients. | 30:35 |
Willie Price Lucas | But they don't deliver them here at the clinic. But they will send them to Little Rock, they'll take care of them. They get their prenatal care here, but then when it come for them to deliver, they send them on Little Rock. We used to have a hospital here, but we haven't had one here now since about 60 something. | 30:52 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, when you began your career, what kind of prenatal care was available to poor families? | 31:19 |
Willie Price Lucas | When I started midwife, doing midwife work, well they would just go—They'd have to go to the doctor. But see it just wasn't as expensive then as it is now. See you, walk in doctor's office now what it's about down here, doctor farm, it's $18 plus whatever he does on the medicine or whatever. | 31:34 |
Willie Price Lucas | But to walk through the door, you've got to pay like $18. Now, that's cheap. That's here in Brinkley. But if you in somewhere else like Little Rock or somewhere else, then it's much, much more. But people have these—Poor families have Medicaid cards and so all they have to do is show the Medicaid card and they don't have to pay anything to go in. And so they get their prenatal care for nothing. | 31:56 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, were there types of prenatal care during the, say the '30s and '40s? Was that? | 32:29 |
Willie Price Lucas | No. Not in the '30s, there weren't. Now, I got married in '42 and I don't know. I had a lot of pain in my side and other than that, I don't think I would've ever—My mother would've never taken me to a doctor. My husband was in service. I never would've gone to a doctor if I hadn't had so much pain in my side. | 32:39 |
Willie Price Lucas | And that's just the way it was, if you didn't have any problem or anything, you didn't go to a doctor. But see, I was having a lot of trouble. And so she finally decided to take me to the doctor. Of course, with my second one, I didn't have any problem and I didn't go to the doctor. Well, my third one came along about eight years different in his age and my two girls, because he was born in '51 and my daughter was born in '43. | 33:06 |
Willie Price Lucas | Of course I fell out the back door. And when I fell, I guess I did some harm and I ended up in the hospital. So I had to go to the hospital and that's where they delivered my baby. Last one was in the hospital. | 33:50 |
Willie Price Lucas | But if I hadn't have fallen, I guess I wouldn't even go. But it was just, if you did all right, you didn't have to go. But if you had problems, then you'd have to go to the doctor. That was back in the '40s. | 34:09 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, what would happen if, say a mother just had maybe minor—Maybe not necessarily complications but maybe minor pains or other ailments. Back during those days, would she call the midwife and ask for advice? | 34:30 |
Willie Price Lucas | Oh yeah. They'd come to you and ask, "What must I do? I'm hurting here. I have aches or something with." But most of the time she still didn't give any medication or anything. She would refer them to the doctor, tell them to go to the doctor because you were never allowed to not even give an aspirin. You weren't even supposed to give anything. They just had normal childbirth. Nothing. | 34:54 |
Paul Ortiz | Was that different or was that the same or different during your grandmother's time, Mrs. Lucas? | 35:25 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, they weren't allowed to give anything. If they did, they gave it on their own. But they weren't never allowed to give anything. Up until I was 72, I wasn't allowed to give anything. | 35:33 |
Willie Price Lucas | I couldn't give an aspirin or anything for pain. Therefore, a lot of them, that's why they went to the hospital if they could afford it. Because they thought when they got there they were going to get something for pain and then when they come out, they'd have the first one over there and they'd come back home and the next time they said, "Well, they didn't do anything for me there. I might as well have midwife." I'd get a chance at them the second or third or something like that because of that. They thought they were going to get some help to stop those pains, but they didn't. | 35:49 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, during the '40s and '50s, what kinds of medical facilities did Black people have access to in Phillips? | 36:30 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, I didn't know of any no more than you just—They just had a doctor and you just go to the doctor and that's it. They didn't have any clinics or anything you could go to? But that was just, oh, you get sick, you just go to the doctor. If they had a hospital somewhere, if you were that sick, they would send you to the hospital, recommend you go to the hospital. | 36:46 |
Willie Price Lucas | But other than that, that was all the facilities they had. Bayou, well it was for the Black and White. That's all they had back in the '40s. They didn't start these clinics and things until in the '60s. They start all these health clinics and stuff. | 37:14 |
Paul Ortiz | Were there Black— | 37:41 |
Willie Price Lucas | See, back there, the doctors would come to your house. They'd make house calls. But see now, no house calls. Call a paramedic and they come and you not doing right there, put you in the ambulance and take you on to the hospital. | 37:42 |
Willie Price Lucas | Let's see. No house calls. Doctors make no house calls. My husband had a stroke. He couldn't do anything at the house. Had to call the paramedics and they came, got him and took him to the hospital. | 38:04 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, what were race relations like during those days in Phillips County? | 38:29 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, they were all right as long as you didn't try to attend any of their functions or the schools or anything else. They were—You were supposed to be considered a good person. If you just tendered your own business and you, "Yes, sir." And, "No, sir." You was all right. | 38:36 |
Willie Price Lucas | But if you tried to attend any of the functions or socialize with them, anything you might come up killed or anything whipped, caught and whipped and this, that and another and all. I'll never forget my mother farm joined Mr. Clapworth's farm down in Marvell. Well, they never gave anybody any trouble. He would always come down and he'd talk to my mother and grand mama and granddad and all. | 38:56 |
Willie Price Lucas | When he died, he told his [indistinct 00:39:33]. "I want you all to make a room," they had his funeral at his house, "for all my Black neighbors so they can come to my funeral." And they did. They had a special little old room now for them to sit, but you had to sit off to yourself. You couldn't sit in the crowd. You sat off to yourself in that little room, but you could go. | 39:29 |
Willie Price Lucas | Because he thought a lot of them and he thought they were good people and he wanted them there and so therefore, they could go. But other than that, you just didn't go. It's like when we moved here, it wasn't integration here. We had two kids and we had to send our children clear across town to school, when we had a school right here. You could stand on the porch and talk to them over there on the steps. It wasn't until my son, he graduated in, well '69, he went over there the last two years of high school. | 39:58 |
Paul Ortiz | To Brinkley High School? | 40:33 |
Willie Price Lucas | To Brinkley High School. We went the last two years over there and we had all kinds of threats, that if we sent our children over there to school, we might as well dig our grave and stuff like that. We had this before they made them integrate and then they did it two grades at a time. | 40:35 |
Willie Price Lucas | So by the time they got around to my son, he only had two years. He was 11th grade. But my daughters, they had already graduated from high school and they didn't know anything about integration because they went over here to school called Marian Anderson, which was all Black. Well, that was it. Now everything seems to be going smoothly. | 40:59 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas back when things were not going as smoothly back during, say the '40s and '50s, you mentioned earlier that there were a lot of things that Black people could not do. You mentioned also the physical threats to your life. What were some things that— | 41:28 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, on the physical thing, the only thing they said if you send them to their school or something, you're going to either come up killed or they come up missing or something like that. | 41:55 |
Willie Price Lucas | But I [indistinct 00:42:15], my husband went in World War II and he was a mail clerk. When he got out of service, he came here and he took the exam. They had open exam at the post office. He went down and he took the exam. Veterans supposed to have had first preference. He made the highest mark of anybody who took it, took the exam and they didn't hire because he was Black. And the man right across the street worked at the post office and he spoke up for him and they ran him and got on him, so he lost his mind. | 42:10 |
Paul Ortiz | He lost his mind? | 42:59 |
Willie Price Lucas | Lost his mind. They sent him down to Florida somewhere. Stags, his name was. Lived right across the street in Brick House. And he's the one came over here and told us that Lucas, he wanted to know what did they tell him about the job? He said because he made the highest score of anybody. | 42:59 |
Willie Price Lucas | Because see, he did that then when he was in service and then he was a college graduate, finished college and everything. He just knew all about it. But they didn't give him the job. Carrying mail. And today, they don't have a Black mail carrier down there in that post office. We don't have one. They've got a Black postmaster, but they don't have—Of course I don't know how long he'd be here, but they got one now because they had some boycotts and all that stuff to get things integrated and that's how it got started. | 43:21 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, was there organized violence against Black people in Phillips County like the Klan or? | 44:16 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, not that I know of. They said that there was some KKKs here in Brinkley, but as far as being able to identify them and know about it, anything, we didn't. | 44:27 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, you mentioned the boycotts to open things up. When did they occur and who organized them? | 44:44 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, some of the Black ministers were really the leaders of it. Like we had dress stores downtown well they didn't hire Blacks or anything, so they boycotted that store because they didn't hire Black people. And that's when they really started to putting a Black here, there and yonder. | 44:56 |
Willie Price Lucas | And they didn't have any Blacks in the banks or things like that. So therefore when they started that, well, then it opened up the way for them. They started to hire. Now all the three banks in Brinkley, they have Blacks tellers in the banks. But up until then, they didn't have any. Right now, everything seem to be on the up and upside in Brinkley. Well, people with their own businesses and everything in Brinkley now. | 45:20 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, during the boycotts, were those in the '60s? | 46:06 |
Willie Price Lucas | Yeah, it was in the late '60s. It was in the '60s. | 46:15 |
Paul Ortiz | Was there a NAACP here? | 46:21 |
Willie Price Lucas | Yeah, we still have NAACP chapter here in Brinkley. | 46:25 |
Paul Ortiz | Mr. Lucas, was that already organized when you came here or? | 46:31 |
Willie Price Lucas | No. | 46:35 |
Paul Ortiz | So you helped organize it? | 46:35 |
Willie Price Lucas | It was organized after we moved here. Well see, I moved here in '45. I've been here since '45. My husband had been here all his life. | 46:38 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, you were mentioning Black businesses. Now were there Black businesses in Brinkley back when you moved here? | 0:08 |
Willie Price Lucas | The only Black businesses they had when I moved in '45 was undertakers. They had undertakers, Black undertakers. | 0:17 |
Paul Ortiz | Where would you and your husband do your shopping at during those days? | 0:35 |
Willie Price Lucas | Where did we shop? | 0:43 |
Paul Ortiz | Yes, ma'am. | 0:44 |
Willie Price Lucas | Here in Brinkley. They had all kind of dress shops and shoe shops and things like that here. You could go in there and buy whatever you wanted. They didn't bother you buying anything you needed. They just weren't any Black grocery stores and all. But now they have Black grocery stores. Got one right up here, Booker Thompson on the thing, and one or two more around. | 0:45 |
Willie Price Lucas | We have our own shopping mall. Blacks, little, it's not really a shopping mall. They have laundromat, cleaners and offices and things out there. We have Black contractors now, Black upholstery shops. There's quite a few Black businesses now. | 1:16 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, what were the biggest changes or what have been the biggest changes that you've seen in Brinkley from 1945 to present and what have been the things that haven't changed in terms of the Black community? | 1:51 |
Willie Price Lucas | Well, the things that happens to, we still have things that the Blacks can't go to. For instance, we have a golf course and I don't know, thing, swimming pool and all that stuff out here. That's for White only. Black can't go to it, clubhouse where they go. | 2:14 |
Willie Price Lucas | And if you in a class say of 1995, graduated senior, well the Blacks can't go out there to that club. They have the little entertainment and stuff for the White seniors out there and the Blacks can't go out there. That hasn't changed. So they have that separately and all. | 2:38 |
Willie Price Lucas | But now other than that, you can go to their churches if you want to. They have a things to come in. You can go to the church and they have funerals there. You can go to the church to the funeral if you want to, or you can go there to a wedding or things that you used to couldn't do and all, but other than that, they welcome you now to anything just about. They have Jaycees, you can join that, and used to couldn't join anything like that. Have little league ball teams, Black and White play together. And it used to be just all White or all Black, one or the other. So we've had a big turnaround in the living conditions and associations here in Brinkley. | 3:05 |
Willie Price Lucas | It's real nice. They look after each other. If you go somewhere and like the gentleman live across the street, if we not here or he just check over here and see about our house. If anything go on. He see somebody come over here that he thinks they shouldn't be over here, he'll come over and see what they want and of course, he's White and of course, we do the same thing and all. | 4:04 |
Willie Price Lucas | So we just, it's just so much better. We just kind of live as a family now or looking after each other, seeing what's something we think going on or we think they're sick or something. Check on them. That's real nice. You'd enjoy living in Brinkley. We've never, no more than that school thing, we've never had any problem because we've been, hadn't been but three Black families on this street. Oh, in years and years, way back about, probably 1916 or somewhere along that. Because my husband's family, they cut down trees and built that house next door in the woods and he carried water from them when they was putting down the highway out there. | 4:29 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. | 5:28 |
Willie Price Lucas | Mm-hmm. | 5:29 |
Paul Ortiz | So we've been here. He's been here that long. | 5:30 |
Speaker 3 | Good evening. | 5:32 |
Paul Ortiz | Hi, sir. How you doing? | 5:35 |
Speaker 3 | All right. | 5:38 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, good. | 5:39 |
Willie Price Lucas | So they been around. | 5:43 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas, throughout your life, what have been the things that have inspired you the most to keep striving to reach and attain your goals? | 5:46 |
Willie Price Lucas | I don't know. It's like I say, I believe in education. And when I could send my children to school and got an education and got out and graduated on their own, looked like I had accomplished what I set out to accomplish and I haven't had any problems since. And as I said, we believe in education and we got an education and we saw that our children had an education and so after they got that, well, we were satisfied. | 6:03 |
Willie Price Lucas | So we worked till we got retirement age. So my mother, I married before I finished school and she went down to Pine Bluff and she said, "Ooh, if I had gone to this school, they would've had to put me out. I never would've left." And that hurt me so badly. That caused me to go back to college and finish my college degree. | 6:40 |
Willie Price Lucas | I finished one year and I went back to school and got my college degree because that just hurt me when she said it, so after that I just went on. But that's what I was striving for and I wanted to graduate before my daughter's did and sure enough I graduated in '63 and my daughter graduated in '64. | 7:15 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. | 7:41 |
Willie Price Lucas | So I finished. | 7:43 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Lucas. Were there any other experiences or stories that you wanted to share that you haven't touched on? | 7:52 |
Willie Price Lucas | No, I believe that's about it. No, I told you all about my family and they education and married life and all. That's about all I know. I don't know if my husband had anything he wanted to add up or not, but daddy believed in education and his mother passed when he was about four. And soon as he got old enough to take care of himself, he was just from one school to another. He went to school in Fargo. He went to the academy in Cotton Plant and he went to Shorter College and then he went to Pine Bluff and then he went to Philander Smith. He just, all those schools over there. So that's about it. | 8:00 |
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