Cleaster Mitchell interview recording, 1995 July 16
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, could you tell me when you were born and something about the area that you grew up in? | 0:00 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I was born in 1922 at a little place called Tolls, about two miles of Blackton, Arkansas and at Tolls, it was never on the map, it was just a little house there. And the reason why they called it Toll because the train took on water and coal there and they called that Toll. That was just a place, it never was on the map. But originally we was from Blackton, Arkansas and that's possibly maybe 20 miles from here. I grew up around Blackton and I knew all of the merchants and everything and I lived on various different farms and we was farm workers, we were sharecroppers and we lived on, oh, we lived on a place called Tom Bonners and my father was for Blackton Gin, who I knew in 1927. | 0:10 |
Cleaster Mitchell | He used to [indistinct 00:01:32] a sawmill, at Luster Sawmill at Blackton and he started working there before I was born, at Luster Saw Mill. But he was a timber man. He made ties and that's how we learned how to make ties, I and my sisters, because my father, he used to take us with him and he learned us how. We used to make ties just like him. The railroad ties is what we are speaking of, yes. | 1:31 |
Cleaster Mitchell | It was all manual work. I know how I learned how to saw, cut timber, to plow, to pick cotton and my whole youth life come up was simply working on the farm or working in a home or something like that. | 2:16 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, had your family always lived in Blackton and Tolls? | 2:42 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yes. They have always lived right in this little town, but in the vicinity from Clanon. We lived in the country and we used to go to Holly Grove sometime, but my whole life in the south, before I went to Chicago, in the south, I lived on a farm. | 2:48 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, your grandparents also lived in Blackton? | 3:26 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yes, my grandparents. My grandfather on my mother's side lived here in Brinkley. His name was Honey Harris and he lived here and died here in Brinkley. My grandmother, her name was Nora and she lived out below Blackton out there. They had a farm. My grandparents on the Smith side had a great big farm out there. They owned land. | 3:30 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, when you were growing up, did stories or experiences that your grandparents had, did those pass down in the family? | 4:17 |
Cleaster Mitchell | They did. My grandmother's great-great-grandparents, they was really slaves. My mother's great-great-grandparents, they were slaves so they told us all about our older ancestors. Their grandparents, they were cotton and they was both born in slavery time and my grandmother's great great parents, they were born to half White people. Their fathers was White and their mothers was half White, so when I saw the pictures of my great-great grandparents, they look White as anybody. You couldn't tell the difference. This is one thing that they discussed with us, sort of how this come about. They told us how come we had light and dark people in our family and how we got to be that way and everything. It come up through the part of slavery, things that went on during a slavery to—it wasn't anything you could do about it really. That was the time that—I didn't know how to tell you. If you couldn't do anything about it, I put it like that, it really wasn't anything you could do at that time. | 4:30 |
Cleaster Mitchell | But they would tell us about this history, what they come up through, how they worked and what it was like for them. At the main time it made it a little easy for us and they quite often wonder how Black people live through this time. It was because we were taught different. We were taught not to hate. They had an answer if something come up that was displeasing or you knew was wrong or something and you know children and they would say, "Well, don't worry about it. The Lord will fix it. Vengence is God." They meant don't—you couldn't pursue it. We didn't know but they know you couldn't pursue whatsoever it was and they taught you in a kind of way that it did not cause you a lot of trouble, because you could get in a lot of trouble then. | 6:47 |
Cleaster Mitchell | What I'm saying, you would have to know the south to know what I am saying and maybe in the other interviews you found out some of the things that I'm telling you is actually true because if we went to a grocery store and a certain lady come in the store, a White lady come in the store, anybody White, if they was waiting on you, they just push your stuff back and said, "Come on, Ms. So and so", and you might be walk 10 miles to get this dime worth or something that your parents sent you at, but that was like the law of the day. You just got back. You understand. It wasn't anything you could do about it. But it did not bother us like it would today. It wouldn't have the same effect on us because we was raised to expect this and everything. | 7:51 |
Cleaster Mitchell | They taught you this and if you were going down the road and maybe before you leave from this area you will go down some real narrow roads was here when I was kids, it's only enough room anyway for—it was just like a wagon road. But when cars come in to where people had cars, those that have the car, if you was walking, they had no respects for you. They just drive. A lot of times you got in the ditch, lot of times the dust just covered you. That's why you see the lot of Colored people walk in with their heads tied up and you see them with an old dress or something over because they had on their Sunday clothes and they were going somewhere. In order to look decent, they thought when they got there they did all these things to themselves. Then they take this off when they get ready to go into church or go into town or something because they knew all of these things happened to them. | 8:46 |
Cleaster Mitchell | It is really something that a person would have to experience sort of themselves to really see how this went, because that was no law actually governing anything. You didn't have no place to go and look at our schools. But see, our schools was one rooms. My school that I went to school to when I was four years old is still standing. It's in use and everything. The church that I went to is still in existence and I often go down there to see it and I think I have a piece of wood off of the school over to the other house. It's a souvenir. But you would really have to know it to see. | 9:56 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Now, we only had five months schooling and out of the five months you probably went three, because if there was work and different other stuff, they just come by and tell you, "Well you have to keep the kids out. They got to work." Or they sent up and said, "I got work for the kids to do," and it wasn't no law to make them let you go to school then, so your parents done what they told them. | 11:02 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, would the plantation owner come to the school and take the children out? | 11:34 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Hell, what they would do, they would come tell your parents, "You go down and get the kids. I got something for them to do. They got to cut vines and do this or do that or work on the fence road." This whatsoever they weren't done and our parents would do it. Now, he would a lot of times—well, most of them rode a big fine horse and they come down there to the school and they would said—my oldest sister was named Mary Lee and said "Mary, Cleaster, if you all come on, I've got some beans for you to chop. I've got this or the other." That was it. You went. See, because we didn't grieve over it really wasn't as bad to us as it seemed because we didn't know anything else. You see what I'm saying? That was the way of life. It was really not a problem. It was a problem to our parents but we didn't know it. See, a lot of times our parents grieved and worried over and prayed for better conditions, but we didn't think very much of it. | 11:42 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, did your parents try to shield you from some of the indignities? | 13:10 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yes, they did. | 13:18 |
Paul Ortiz | What would they do to— | 13:19 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Well, when some things really just really got out of hand, they would sit down and talk to you and tell you, "Now, this is wrong, but the situation is that your father can't do anything about this and I can't do anything about it. This is just a way of life. So we are really trying to do—" They would tell you, "We're going to move," or a lot of things they would tell you to keep you from getting to the point that you come to be hateful and mean and think about doing a lot of cruel things. We didn't grow up with a lot of hate and I'm proud of that because I don't know anybody I hate today. | 13:24 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I know a lot of people we worked, we never cleared a dime. You go up to get—you expect something when you work all the year and they give you a little what they call a due bill. They just written something down on a piece of paper. It was five of us, five children, and my mother and my father, they give them a $10 a month furnish as they call it. That was not money. They give you an order to a store and then you go here and you spend this $10 worth of credit. You had a little ticket, but in the fall of the year they didn't go by that. Everybody went up with these little tickets. They said, "Well, I don't need this. I've got it on my book." They never checked the book by what you had. They settled off with how they wanted it. | 14:20 |
Cleaster Mitchell | If you made 50 bales of cotton, you didn't get out of debt and if you made 10 you didn't get out of debt. That's just the way it was. It wasn't nothing you could do because you didn't sell your own cotton. See, you had no way of knowing exactly how much cotton sold for, how much a pound. They would go sell it for 20 cents and they'd come back, "Well, we didn't get but 7 cents, Mary. That's all we got." You had no course, you didn't have no way you could dispute his word. Now you could say, "Well, I heard in Clanon they was getting 20 cents." "Well, I don't know about that, Mary. I didn't get 20." That's the end of it because—I don't hardly know how to really explain this to you and it sounds terrible when I talk about it to you, but that's exactly what happened. I experienced all of these different things, how they settled off and you could work by the day and if they didn't want to pay you off, he would just come out and say we was on Jack Palmer's plate. | 15:20 |
Cleaster Mitchell | He'd say, "Don't come up here. I'm not paying nobody off today." You was getting 50 cents a day for 10 to 12 and sometime 14 hours. If he decided not to pay you off for that 50 cents a day, he'd get in his car and go to Memphis somewhere. But you know today that wouldn't work with too many people, don't you? But then it worked. You go home and you would cry, you'd be mad, you'd be expecting to go to town and you thought you could do a lot with it. Children planned on like, they say, "Your mother said we going to give you 50 cents." That was a lot of money to us. We was going to buy everything with 50 cents because we was going to get some candy, some chewing gum, we'd get a cold pop, we would get ice cream, and those was the nice little treats that your parents would give you to at least make you feel good about yourself for working 50 cents a day. | 17:01 |
Cleaster Mitchell | All of these things was very important to us. Now it don't mean anything because they get that any day. But then when you didn't get it, then you'll go home and cry and they had a little remedy. But they say, "Oh don't worry about it. I'm going to bake you all some teacakes and I'm going to make some homemade ice cream." See, they would go to work and go all out of their way to do something a little special. That is to keep you from being so down and so mentally depressed. That was what it was. I see it today, but it wasn't anything any of them could do. | 18:08 |
Cleaster Mitchell | At one time, I will tell you, the south was a tough place to live if you didn't grow up here. It was just a lot of things. I've had good experience here and I've had terrible experience here. If you lived in their house—like the Christmas of '36, 1936, my mother worked for all the people in Blackton. She cooked for those families from 1925 up until 1936 and it was on a Christmas day and she was cooking our Christmas dinner and Mr. Roberts came, he was one of the merchants too, and he came out about 10:30 and said to my mother, "Mary, I come out here ask you to go up there to serve for Ms. Roberts," and my mother said, "Well, I can't go today, Mr. Roberts, because I am preparing my children's Christmas dinner, and I always fix them a Christmas dinner and if I had known, I would've tried to make some kind of arrangement to have got started early and maybe I could have come and served dinner for you all but—." | 18:51 |
Cleaster Mitchell | He was so mad. He was riding in his son-in-law's car from—I think it was from Ohio or somewhere. They left. About a hour later he came back out and called my mother to the car. My mother lived in his house. "I want my house, I want you to get out of my house and I want you out of here tomorrow." Those Bennetts still lives down there on that road and after my mother got through with Christmas dinner, she just told him, said, "Yes, sir." When she got through with Christmas dinner, she went out to see Mr. Bennett and he had a house out here right off of Henderson Corner, and this house was—their horses and stuff. It was just a old vacant house out there and the horses and things would go and stay in it when I guess there because we had to go out there and clean it out. | 20:24 |
Cleaster Mitchell | But that's where we moved all because she refused and didn't go because she was cooking our Christmas dinner. See, that that's what you had to contend with. You else done what they say do or else you suffered the consequence. It was always a repercussion. It was always something. Now, if your child said something, they do you any kind of way, if you said something they go to your mother and take the spite out on her. "Well, Mary, I can't use you no more because I was talking to your little old gal," that's what they call you, your little gal, "and she stood up there and looked at me. She didn't set up but she stood there and looked at me and rolled her eyes." See, you see the repercussion? That's what she depend on working for various people. After my father died in '35, then she just had to depend on these people for a living to work. She work, wash, iron, done everything, cook. | 21:25 |
Cleaster Mitchell | See, this is why they teach you what to say, how to say it and sometimes don't say nothing, don't have no emotion at all, because even just your expression sometimes always cause you a lot of trouble. You couldn't react to anything. It was bad. | 22:40 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, you might feel angry but you couldn't show it. | 23:06 |
Cleaster Mitchell | You couldn't show it. No. I've cried a many day. They accuse you of something and if you tried to said, "I didn't do it," they say "You lying, you did do it," and then here you stand and you know didn't do it. I want to say, "I'm going to tell my mother," but you couldn't say that. I cried a lot of times because that happened to you too. Because Ms. Miller, I was working for her, I was just a kid and I must have been possibly about—I think 12. I was about 12, 11 or 12. See, they test you to see when you steal something. So she goes in and she puts 35 cents down on the floor. I goes in and I cleans the room. When I swept up—See, a kernel. You know what a kernel in the wood is? It's wood in the pine wood. Sometime it's a knot in the floor and the kernel will break out and make a hole in the floor. | 23:12 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I had a dust mop going in front of the bed and then when I got here and I pushed it over by the money be heavy than the length, it went down through the house. I never saw it. But she just swore by all means I had took the 35 cents and I just cried and cried and cried. She said, "You are going to get that 35 cents," and she just raised all kind of sand. | 24:42 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I kept telling her I didn't get it. That evening we went in there and I was to change the dresser scarves on her dresser and it got away with her so bad, she just stepped right over the hole and looked and she saw that 35 cents. She couldn't move. I come to see what she was looking at and she said, "What you do? Sweep the trash through the hole?" I said, "No, I don't sweep no trash through the hole. I take it out with the dust pan." "Well, I see the 35 cent down here through the hole." I said, "I guess it just fell in there when I was sweeping." | 25:08 |
Cleaster Mitchell | But see, she had really hurt me so bad about it. You get angry and stuff, but since you know, you come up in this, you expected a lot of this so you didn't let that make you a bad person. Only thing I could say, it did not make you a bad person. | 25:53 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, now earlier you told the story of how when the boss tried to get your mother to leave your family on Christmas day, he had pushed her to the point where she wouldn't go and she said no. | 26:20 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yes. | 26:37 |
Paul Ortiz | Now, were there other times that, perhaps you yourself, that there was a breaking point where you would say, "No further"? | 26:43 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yes. | 26:54 |
Paul Ortiz | What were some examples? | 26:55 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Well, I was working for a lady and she still lives in Clanon and her name is Hetty Beatles and I nursed her son in '36. I took care of him, I helped raised him. I went back to work for her in 40—I think it was in '43, '41, '42, in 1942. I came down with a cold and I went across the bridge to Dr. Bradley. But the catch was Dr. Bradley, I got to tell him to send her a note what was wrong with me. See, she told me, said, "You go over to Dr. Bradley's and see can you get a shot or get something for the cold because I don't want Wayne to come down with the cold." Wayne was just a kid and he played with me and everything. So I said okay. I went over there. I didn't tell him that she said to send her a note. So when I came back she said, "What did Dr. Bradley say?" and I said, "He said that I have a summer cold." "That's all?" I said, "Yes ma'am, that's all he said." | 27:01 |
Cleaster Mitchell | So I went out in my little house, I lived in a little—it was just a little storage house but we had it fixed a little cottage. I stayed out there. The next day I had to wash and I washed and I was hanging the clothes out and Wayne shot me with a BB gun, but he shot me on my spine right there, right up here, right where that knot is, he shot me there. I tell you he done me so bad, I don't know how that felt. He might have been real close on me when he shot me because it was bad enough, my arms just went numb or paralyzed or something and in a few minutes my face was gone just like this and just like the bloodshot. I don't know whether he ruptured a thing. So I just left and went straight to the doctor. I didn't wait to tell him. I just left, went over to the doctor and I went over there and he gave me a shot. | 28:37 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Then she said—Well, I had my own money, it was $2, like 2.50 and I went over there and I just paid him. When she seen me coming back, she said, "Cleaster where you been?" and I said, "I've been to Dr. Bradley." "Did you get that letter?" I said, "No." "What you go to the doctor for?" I said, "Wayne shot me with that BB gun." I just kept walking because I was really sick and I went to the house and then she came to the house. "When you get ready to go to the doctor, you let me know. Don't go over there and make no bill." Oh, she was just talking. Well, by that time that was all I could stand. I just walked right out and got me a change of clothes and I just walked right out and I walked from there to Jack Palmer's place, which is about four and a half miles because my sister was living on his place. | 29:49 |
Cleaster Mitchell | There come a time you can't cope with it anymore. See, too much looked like it went on and I just, I don't know, looked like mentally I couldn't deal with it. But I couldn't say anything to her. But I just left and I never went back. When I went back, I went back to move my things. But I'll tell you what, I have gone to visit her since I've been back here to Brinkley and she have come to my house since I come back here. | 30:44 |
Cleaster Mitchell | At the time I left I could not go in her front door, but when I went back to see her, when I went to Clanon to visit her, me and Ms. McNeil, I walked straight in her front door and sat down in her living room. You see, this is how times have changed. There comes a breaking point, you do, and I was in Marvell and I had gone to the doctor then. | 31:23 |
Cleaster Mitchell | See this finger? I had hurt it on some rose bushes. A dog got at me and I grabbed the rose bushes and he was a bad dog but he run out from the end of the little bathroom, see? Now he run right out on me and I just was kicking and Zella Anglish, she was coming out to help me, but I just cut the whole hand real bad. When she went in there and taped it up, she taped up one of those rose buds in my finger right there and I had a problem. This finger set up an abscess, everything happened to it. | 31:50 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I finally went to the doctor and Dr. Norton lanced it, but he cut it down here and placed a lancet up there. That night, I don't know exactly what the date was, but it was close to Christmas and they were shooting the firecrackers and stuff, and I come out and they didn't allow you to park cars. The Black people didn't park their cars on the main street in Marvell. There was one street then and it's one street now, but no Black people parked up there. I was waiting for the driver to come and get me till when I come out of the doctor's office and two little boys come along and they was with their father. He lit this firecracker and I said, "Don't light that firecracker, don't throw that fire." | 32:35 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I can't stand impacts like guns and firecrackers and stuff. That sort of tickled him and they went over to the sides and they lit the firecracker and when he throwed the firecracker, the firecracker went in the little doorway. I broke to run and they just fell out laughing. The other little boy had a firecracker and he got near me. You see, I had lost it. When he got near me, I had grabbed him. | 33:31 |
Cleaster Mitchell | When I grabbed him, his father took it up and he was just saying, "Puh, puh." He was saying, "Turn me loose, you nigger, you." I just had him. I couldn't let him go. I was so mad, I just couldn't take my hands off of him really. So his father run up and he was just cursing and everything, but I could hear him. But at the time I don't think he made any difference with me because I was already terribly ill and I didn't have but one hand. | 34:04 |
Cleaster Mitchell | No way I couldn't hit it with this hand. Doctor done lanced it it and bandaged it all up and I just had it. It was two White mens. I never knew what they name was. They came up and they said to this man, he said, "What are y'all doing to that gal? Let her alone," and so they just kept talking backwards and forward to each other, these other two men and him. So that man, he got mad and so they was saying a lot of stuff and then this was a law there Blankenship. You see, what it was, I was so mad I guess I couldn't turn the boy loose so when the other two mens got into it, I think that stopped him from attacking me when the other two mens came up and then shortly after that the little law come up, Blankenship, and he said, "What's going on here?" | 34:36 |
Cleaster Mitchell | See, I'm trying to tell him that this boy spit on me and I'm crying and I'm crazy by this time and I was saying that he spit in my face and he throwed firecrackers on me and everything. So he told him, said—he had a bad mouth too, "[indistinct 00:36:00] away from here and gone, get up here and let her alone." He asked me, he said, "Where are you trying to go?" and I said, "I'm waiting for them to come pick me up. I've been to the doctor." He said, "Well, come here," and he stood there with me until John Henry drove around and picked me up and seen me in the car because he knowed that they were mad. | 35:36 |
Cleaster Mitchell | The other two mens wasn't mad. The two mens got to arguing with the one what was trying to make me turn his son a loose, so the law just waited there with me. He was the little sheriff or something. Then I got in the car and went on off. But you lose it sometime, but so many times you want to lose it, you don't. It was tough when I come along and I imagine it was worser when my foreparents them come along. | 36:21 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, before you began working, doing private household work, did your mother ever tell you, ever kind of sit down with you and tell you about things you should watch out for when you started? | 36:55 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yes. | 37:11 |
Paul Ortiz | What were some of those things that— | 37:11 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Well, one thing they taught you was honesty. They always impressed this in you. "Don't you take anything." They tell you, "Don't talk back." They would tell you to do a good job and all these things. But the catch was, I had been, from the time I was four or five, I went to work with my mother. Yes, see you grow up in this. It's not like waiting, say you 15 now you can go do some work. You done done all of this work time you get 15 years old. You done worked for everybody in town almost. Because I've been self-supportive ever since I was really 12 years old. I've been earning my own living. I know how to work for—At 12, I know how to take care of myself. I could work for anybody at 12 because I was taught. | 37:14 |
Cleaster Mitchell | But they tell you, they would sit down and show you examples about them. Say, "Well it wasn't easy for me and if they saved us and so just don't say anything. You just go on and do your job. If you go up and do a good job and you be neat and you be clean and don't take nothing don't belong to you, you will not have a property." We automatically know you went in the back door. That was something. You didn't have to guess about that. You could work in the house all day. You could never come out the front door. Only way you come out the front door, you swept the front porch off. If you swept the front porch off, you come out of the main door and swept the porch off. But to just come up and come up the main walk or something, no. You was just trained like that. | 38:18 |
Cleaster Mitchell | That was never a qualm with us. We didn't go through—That's how come I tell you it in some ways it was easier than people think it was because it was just understood at an early age what you do and what you don't do. Now, the little town we went to, you go up and spend all of your cotton picking money and everything else, but a certain time you left that town, they didn't allow no Black people there after dark. Now, that's just 20 miles from here. | 39:22 |
Paul Ortiz | That was Blackton? | 40:01 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Blackton, Arkansas. | 40:01 |
Paul Ortiz | Ms. Mitchell, did they have an ordinance or some kind of a law that said no Black people or was it just understanding? | 40:07 |
Cleaster Mitchell | No, they didn't have no sign up there. It was just the attitude. They had the attitude and heard what would happen, you learnt early. They would start to saying—some of them would get half drunk and they would start saying, "We don't want you niggers caught up here after dark. Don't be up here." That was a common word. Nigger was a common word. It was not insulting. You know what I'm trying to say? You did feel bad, but you'd heard it all your life so you didn't go crazy. But you know to leave and if you was going to be there, some White person had to tell them, "This is my help, they are going to be here and I want them to do this and to do the other." Once who you work for said you was going to be there, then they didn't bother you. But otherwise you wasn't up there. | 40:17 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, did you ever hear stories of any Black person who accidentally was caught there after dark or— | 41:30 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Oh, yeah. They had a beer tavern up there, Ms. P's, and it was three of them. It was, I think, RD and Benny Wade and Richard and they work for Fairbay. Well, she used to be a Bank but she married a Westbrooks and so they had bought lots of feed in grocery and Ms. Alves's daddy, Mr. Bangs, he get drunk early. She don't want to worry with him. She would have them to stay out there and watch him in the wagon, keep anybody from bother. Now Benny and RD and Richard, them all lived on they farm, so they left him up there to just see after him watch him. I think some of them, they all got drunk up there, everything. Then they come out there and run Benny, RD and Richard. But when she come out there, they done already run them away from up there. | 41:39 |
Cleaster Mitchell | See, because they come out, throwing bottles and cussing and all that stuff. So they left. Yeah, they attack you. They would attack you, sure. Then if you talk back or anything, if you talk to one, just like if one come up here and said, "Get off of him, I'll kill you." So if you said something back, okay, you leave, it'll be five or six of them go down there and beat you up. See? So you know not to say nothing and it wasn't going to be anything done about it. They take your property and you couldn't do nothing about it. I don't care what it was you had, they wanted it, you couldn't do nothing about it. | 42:50 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, did Black farmers or landowners have a hard time holding onto land? | 43:46 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yeah, because it was hard for them to farm until the government sort of start to coming in where they could get individual money. They know they could go to somebody that had money, some of the other rich merchants and they would borrow money but it was a little catch to it. They would encourage you to borrow the money but they would put so much interest and everything on it. Your first year they would say, "Well, don't worry about it. If you didn't too good, go head on. I'm not bothered." But the results was after a certain length of time they took a lien on your property and they would do it at the ill convenience time. If you couldn't find somebody else to pay it off and let you pay them, then you automatically lost it. That's how they got a lot of folks property. They would hunt you down to loan you some money if you had some land and was doing pretty good. | 43:53 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, thinking about your experiences working at private households, did you ever hear or did your mother talk to you about watching out for abuses from White men in the household? | 45:12 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Oh, yes. That was taught to you very early so, because it was so—well, it was terrible at one time and it wasn't nobody to tell. Sometimes the wife knowed it, but they were scared of the husband too. You could go to the wife and she'd say, "oh, just don't pay him no attention. Just don't pay him no attention." Because she's scared that you go to her because you think you were doing something. Most of the time they know what they was doing, but they wouldn't tell you. But they say, "Oh, don't pay Mr so-and-so no attention. He was drunk. Don't pay him no attention." Sure, they meddled, but that was one of the things that they instilled in you was about being approached by the young mens of— | 45:28 |
Cleaster Mitchell | A lot of people that worked and had jobs, they left on that account, because it wasn't something you could—Like I say, you had no [indistinct 00:00:17]—to go to the law didn't mean anything. Wasn't no law against, you go to them and say anything. | 0:03 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I'll tell you, one time in the south, it's bad to say, White mens was crazy about Black womens. They would come to your house, they would attack you, and, see, my mother and my father and my grandparents all told us, like I was telling you early, about how these people in my family was looking like White people, you couldn't tell. They had long straight hair and they had blue eyes, but when they would say, "This is my grandmother's great-great-grandparents", they just had the pictures to show you. I couldn't believe it. I really couldn't believe it. | 0:25 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Then they go to tell you how in this family, you have some light children and some dark children. They tell you this come through the bloodline, all this happened through slavery, this and other stuff. But it was terrible. | 1:07 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Today, I don't think they'd let it touch them, because the way I heard talk on the TV, they act like they didn't know this went on. I was looking at this guy, was on Eralto, the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi. Did you see that? | 1:26 |
Paul Ortiz | No. I didn't. | 1:46 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Well, I was watching it here the night it was rather late. He was talking about—Well, one of the things he said was they asked about the OJ Simpson case, and he was talking about—He just said an ugly word about Nicole, he should have cut her—he called her ugly name and stuff and said he should have cut her throat, and he called these children little mongrels, so another Black lady was sitting on the end, and it made her mad. She said, "Well, I didn't see you complain about none of those little mongrels your folk has gotten by the Black womens. What about them?" We laughed. I laughed. It was funny. She was so angry. | 1:47 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I could see what she was talking about. You see, if they did it, it was never said a word. A lot of them had children and walked right by them and didn't speak to them. And they know that was their children. | 2:40 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Now some of them—If the person was working for them, and they had this baby, I know in a couple of cases, that baby was actually raised in that house. You see, that's how come I know their wife couldn't do nothing about it. The lady got the baby by couldn't leave and the wife couldn't do nothing about it and had to let the baby stay there. Yes. | 3:00 |
Cleaster Mitchell | All of that—Every bit of that went on. Back then, only it was worser than now, because the thing about it—It started so far back, back then they was tough in slavery times. If they liked your daughter, liked your wife, they just come there and tell you, "Go someplace. Don't come back until such and such a time." You know what was going on but nothing you could do. | 3:28 |
Cleaster Mitchell | See, our parents told us all of that. Then this come up through that, so they took it for granted when they saw a Black lady that they could just approach her, that it was not an insult to her for them to approach her, but my mother taught us what to do and everything. She'd have to leave us at home a lot of times and she said, "Okay, y'all stay in the house. Y'all see a lot of White men or something coming up here, fasten the door, stay in the house, and if they knock, don't let them in." | 4:00 |
Cleaster Mitchell | See, she had alternatives for you, for you to sort of protect yourself and stuff, but— | 4:35 |
Paul Ortiz | What would she tell you, Mrs. Mitchell, if you got in that situation, and you were working in the household, a private household, and, say, the husband indecently approached you, what was your recourse? | 4:43 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Well, when I got up—I didn't have the experience out of no grown person when I was really a kid. I had it out of another kid, but not out of a grown person and I could sort of handle this one. | 4:55 |
Cleaster Mitchell | When the grown person approached me, I just told them not to do it, don't do it, don't put your hands on me, because I'm not here for that. Then if they kept, I said, "Well, I'm going to tell your wife." I had a lot of alternatives, when I got up grown, where I could really speak up for myself, and then I had a lot of things I'd tell them. | 5:16 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Like I told Mr. Brown down here, see, he just took it for granted, because I worked there for Miss Hetty, he could just walk right in and he'd just walk right in and I was putting up some glasses in the little shelf thing and he'd just walk right up here and just—He just walked up and I had been, he just put his arms around. | 5:44 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I was so mad, I told him, I said, "Listen, I've been knowing you all of my life, Mr. Jim, you never knowed me to meddle you, flirt with you, or anything. I've been working here with Miss Hetty almost four years. You never see me approach Mr. Billy or nobody, have you?" "No, I was just—" I said, "No, you wasn't playing, but don't you do that. Long as you live, don't you put your hands on me no more" and I said, "I'll tell you why, because if a Black man done that to a White woman, you'd be the first to get out there and find a limb to hang him to, so if you would hang the Black man about doing it, you'd think I'm going to let you do it to me?" | 6:09 |
Cleaster Mitchell | From that day to this one, I had no trouble out of him. That really stopped him. He, "I wouldn't do—" I said, "Yeah, you would. You can't tell me what you would do." | 6:53 |
Cleaster Mitchell | But, see, when you got older and you was one on one, then you sort of told them that that wasn't—No. Uh-uh. | 7:04 |
Paul Ortiz | That happened during the 1930s? | 7:14 |
Cleaster Mitchell | This happened to me in 1943. Yeah. This was in 1943. This happened to me. You see, I'm 73 years old. In '43, I was still—I was a young person in '43, but I was definitely grown. | 7:17 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Now when before all that with the boys, the little boys, they used to call themselves getting fresh, trying to get fresh, I'd take care of them too, because I didn't care so but I didn't have much respect for them. I'd take care of them quickly. You know? | 7:38 |
Cleaster Mitchell | See, they was afraid to go back and tell they parents if they meddled me, and I said something to them that they didn't like, they was scared to go back and tell they parents, because they taught them against Black people, and, see, they didn't want to say, "Well, I was doing this" because they say—You know how they taught Black people is this, and Black people is that, and Black people was everything, so if they go to tell their parents, see, they would know right away they was doing the very thing they told them not to do. | 7:55 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I had the advantage of that little bunch down there. See, I could tell them what I thought, I know that, see, but every bit of this went on. That was no joke, but a lot of people that—The children and stuff come up now. They don't know anything about that. They wonder about—Black people is a strong nation of people because a lot of people don't really see how they survived under these conditions but in 1930, during the Depression, you did not see Black people committing suicide, and they learned how to feed themselves. | 8:29 |
Cleaster Mitchell | We didn't really—You know, we didn't go that hungry. We learned how—My parents knew how to pick certain weeds and things that eat—They called them wild greens. Has anybody ever said anything about wild greens in any of your interviews? | 9:21 |
Paul Ortiz | I think so. Wild greens. | 9:38 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Wild greens. | 9:41 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 9:42 |
Cleaster Mitchell | They grew in the field, in the yard, everywhere. We knowed all of the different ones you could eat. We would get them and cook them and cook them just like you do regular greens and they was very good. | 9:42 |
Cleaster Mitchell | But it was the way that we stayed healthy, we stayed fat, we didn't have doctors. You see, the Black people really didn't have no doctors really that they could—For a long time, long time, you didn't have a doctor that you could just walk in their office and they wait on you. You know? Because most of the babies was delivered by midwives and if you got sick or got cut or something, you didn't see no doctor. Your parents had to doctor on you. | 10:00 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, did your parents use home remedies? | 10:43 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yes. Like I said, they doctor on you. Things that you'd go to the hospital for now. If you broke your ribs, they knew how to bandage you up and everything. If you had pneumonia, they knew what to do. They would make a muster plaster and plaster you up, and they would take cornmeal and heat it and make a plaster and they put it in for pleurisy and— | 10:45 |
Cleaster Mitchell | See, like this scar here, if you'd have seen that, you wouldn't have believed it. This was on the top of my foot. This glass would clean through my foot. You can't even hardly see this scar. There it is right there. That was up on the bottom of my foot but as I grew, it went up on the top. | 11:31 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Now I don't know what they done about the lockjaw business because none of them ever had lockjaw but they doctored on you for the average something that happened to you, because you didn't have no doctors really and if you did, you were so far til you got cut or something, you'd probably bleed to death. | 11:53 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Now if you got cut real bad, they would just run and get the sugar and just pack it full of sugar and bandage it up and sugar will stop bleeding. It ceases the end of veins. It closes up. It's waxy. See, the blood is hotter than just [indistinct 00:12:42]. That's the best thing for if you get hurt real bad, and you're not close to a doctor. That is the best thing to do until you get to a doctor, if you don't know how to stop a bleeding otherwise. | 12:20 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Sure. They made their own medicine, cough syrups, everything. | 12:59 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, earlier you were talking about how Black people survived even the hardest times. When you were growing up was there a sense of neighborhood, community, share [indistinct 00:13:24]. | 13:08 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Oh, yes. It was. Everybody shared with each other what they had. Some had one something and some had the other. Like some people raised a lot of potatoes. They would share with the people who didn't have a lot of potatoes and maybe this person raised corn, had lots of corn, and they would give you corn and we made our own cornmeal, see, and they took it to what they called a grist mill and you made your own meal and they would—They'd share everything, their food, and if they had lots of cows and you had lots of children, they would let you have a cow to milk. They wouldn't give you the cow [indistinct 00:14:17] but you'd have a cow to milk where you could have milk and stuff for your kids. All you did was took care of the cow. You know? | 13:24 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yeah. It was different. It was really nice to—That's one way you survived and it made you very close. That's how come everybody in a sense thought they was sort of kin to everybody, because if a person was a certain age, we had to say auntie and uncle. You couldn't just walk up and say, "Hey, Brown" or, "Hey, so and so." You always had to give them that respect. You know? | 14:28 |
Cleaster Mitchell | That's something that's lacking today is no respect. It's just the respect is gone but we respect—Yes. We did. | 15:00 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, now the neighborhood you are describing was in Blackton or— | 15:11 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yes. We lived there for a long time, and let me see where the next—We lived in Blackton, around Blackton, longer than we did any other place. | 15:18 |
Paul Ortiz | '30s and '40s? | 15:31 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yes. I was still round there in the '40s. We moved down off the little mall but I was only down there a few years. But in that community, it was the same way, because it was just a Black community. See, that was the catch. All the communities where we lived was Black, and now White could move to our community but we could not move to their community but I know we had several White families to move in our community. | 15:33 |
Cleaster Mitchell | But they were in the same shape we was, extremely poor, and at that time, if you was extremely poor, regardless to what color you was, if you was really, really poor, then you was treated like you was poor, so they had to live in a little shotgun house like we did. | 16:20 |
Cleaster Mitchell | My mother fed them. See, they could come to our house and eat and their children would come to our house and eat and his little wife, she really was nothing but a kid, you know, but she had two children and my mother worried because she said she didn't know how to take care of the children. My mother would take her and show her how to care for her kids and sew for them and take things and my mother made everything. She made all your clothes, and so she would make things for her little children and show her how and teach her how to cook, because my mother was an extremely good cook and she would teach her how to cook common food that you could eat. You know? | 16:45 |
Cleaster Mitchell | She just put on some peas and boiled them, put some lard in them, and don't put—Maybe some salt or something. But my mother would teach her how to cook and stuff just like she did my sisters. Maybe the little children wouldn't have survived if my mother didn't help her. You know? Because if they was sick, my mother would doctor on them and stuff and they was down there with us about two years [indistinct 00:18:11]. | 17:38 |
Cleaster Mitchell | But the catch was if they pull up a little bit, they have to get out from down there. They can't stay, because then they won't be recognized. You see, they got to get to where they can sort of be recognized. It's tough. I look now— | 18:13 |
Cleaster Mitchell | See, to get recognition, they would be—I worked for one that was poorer than I was but to get some recognition, some status among the White people, then he got somebody to work for her, but she didn't have any more than what I had. | 18:37 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, was it different working for somebody who's as poor as you were? | 18:58 |
Cleaster Mitchell | No. I had more fun working for the one who was as poor as I was than the one who was rich. | 19:05 |
Paul Ortiz | What was different? | 19:11 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Well, because the one who was poor was more down-to-Earth. We had something we could talk about and things and she knew what hard work was, and she didn't worry about you. You worked but she didn't worry about you killing yourself, because, see, some of them you worked for, they worked all day and said, "When you get through with such and such, I want you to do so and so and so. The time you get through with this, I'll tell you, you know what I want you to do? I want you to do such and such a thing. When you get through with this, do so and so." It was something all day long. See, they made sure, if you was getting a $1.75 or whatsoever it was. | 19:12 |
Cleaster Mitchell | In '43, I was working up here, you know I was only making $2.50 a week? I washed, I ironed, I took care of the baby, I worked the garden, I mowed the yard, I took care of the chickens, I pumped the water for the animals, I done everything. I got $2.50 a week. | 19:58 |
Cleaster Mitchell | But at that time, I knowed how to maneuver. I worked in the field, I'd get through with my work and I'd go to the field and I would work. A lot of times when I'd get off in the evenings, there was one lady close, I'd go over there and chop maybe like 9, and I'd chop until eight o'clock or nine, and I would get paid by the hour, and I would make extra money. | 20:27 |
Cleaster Mitchell | On my off day, I would go and work. I always found a way to earn myself something, to take care of my own self, support myself. I'd get off in the evening, I'd go and I'd pick cotton. I could pick 400 pounds of cotton. I'd get off—When I got through with my work, got early, I'd go—There's a farm right there. I'd go over there and I'd pick 100, 150 and I got to maybe $2 100. See, that would be—That was a lot of money them. I got my room and my board there, and I didn't have to spend my money for anything. | 20:56 |
Cleaster Mitchell | You know, could I ask you a question? Where are you born? I mean, what's your home? | 21:40 |
Paul Ortiz | I was raised in Washington State, Bremerton, Washington. | 21:46 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Now all of this seem real foreign to you, don't it? | 21:52 |
Paul Ortiz | It does. I've been doing interviews for two years now, but each—Even though, there's general themes that are the same, every person has a unique story. | 21:57 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yeah. That's true. | 22:10 |
Paul Ortiz | It's still—I'm still amazed at— | 22:12 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I went to Illinois in '45. I left here and I went to Chicago in '45. I stayed there 30 years before I came back here but now I really liked the south. I liked the quietness of it and everything. When my husband retired, I wanted to get somewhere was a little more [indistinct 00:22:49]. And Chicago had gotten so bad, because when I first went to Chicago, you could walk anywhere, do anything. It was a lovely place to be. But the last years I was there, it was real bad. Now it's different. When you come back now, it is different than it was in some cases but now I want you to know there are a lot of things still happens right here in this place. | 22:24 |
Cleaster Mitchell | But you do have—You know, it's different with me now. I've got a lot of grit in my craw now, and I think it changed me about how you speak up for yourself, but you have opposition right here now. This is not an open society here, today. You ever looked at Brinkley, how Brinkley is. Have you learned anything about this town since you've been here? | 23:19 |
Paul Ortiz | About the [indistinct 00:23:57]? | 23:56 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yeah. | 24:00 |
Paul Ortiz | —and segregation. | 24:00 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yes. Yes. It is still segregated here today, but I'm different. A lot of them are not different but I'm different, so things they used to try, they don't try all the time now, because Mr. Rush up here [indistinct 00:24:23] he tried some of his 1930 tactics on me, and it didn't work. | 24:00 |
Cleaster Mitchell | See, they used to say, "Get out of here. Get out. Get out. Get out." You know? That's all you could do was get out, so he made the mistake to me to, "Get out. Get out" and he had a problem. I said, "Get that—You get Chief Bethel over here and [indistinct 00:24:44], because if you put me out of here, you're going to have a whole lot of help. I ain't going nowhere." | 24:31 |
Cleaster Mitchell | See, [indistinct 00:24:51] I wouldn't have said that to him. I would have went on out the store but after all, I done got grown now and I've learned that's another side of life and you don't just have to— | 24:50 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I'm not a—You know, I don't like to keep up lots of—Today, today, I avoid a lot of things, because of segregation. I can see it, I know it, I know it when I see it. A lot of times I avoid it, because I would like to think now that I am too intelligent to stoop to a lot of those little levels, and I just rise up above it and go head-on. | 25:05 |
Cleaster Mitchell | It's not easy now all the time. It's not easy. | 25:37 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, earlier, you were talking about school and the fact that the White land owners were taking children out of school to work the fields. | 25:43 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yeah. | 25:57 |
Paul Ortiz | Now how much opportunity did you have to go to school? Where were you going to school at? | 26:00 |
Cleaster Mitchell | You honestly want the truth? I do not read or write today. Now all of my sisters, they succeeded me in going to school. I had [indistinct 00:26:22] and so it was very hard. You know, the problem, I had this problem, so I couldn't adapt easy as as my sisters could, and so I went to school with them but I guess— | 26:07 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Well, what I learned to do early was to camouflage and I just—I supposed to be in the fifth grade, I was in the fifth grade but in the fifth grade, I couldn't read or write in the fifth grade but I just—It's a lot of people just have that ability to do it, and so I just said, "Well—" I got away with it, because if I didn't want them to know that I couldn't read or write then they necessarily didn't know it. | 26:41 |
Cleaster Mitchell | No. I could have been in the first grade, but you see they had a seven month school, the White had seven months. The Colored had five months but out of these months, you did not go to school those five months, and you might have went three. | 27:21 |
Cleaster Mitchell | When they started to get into free books I think in '32 or '33, the [indistinct 00:28:08] all of—This before your time. Come on. Hi. That's my sister Maddie. | 27:49 |
Speaker 3 | Hi, you. | 28:19 |
Paul Ortiz | Nice to meet you, Maddie. | 28:19 |
Speaker 3 | [indistinct 00:28:20]. I'm Mrs. Mitchell's sister. | 28:19 |
Paul Ortiz | I'm Paul. Pleased to meet you. | 28:19 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Well, now you can ask her something when you get ready. She know more about this segregation than I do. | 28:24 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I think it was down in '32, they started to get to issuing free schoolbooks to the schools but you had one teacher had to teach from the first grade until the eighth. The school had two little doors to it, the boys is on one side and the girls were on the other, but I wish I had a picture of my school. I would give it to you. It is still there. The church I attended is still there. The regular school is still there but they done rebuilt the church but the original school is still there, and they have service. They have church in that school. It's sitting in the same place and everything. They still have some desks. You know what the regular school [indistinct 00:29:45]? It's still in that school over there now. | 28:35 |
Cleaster Mitchell | She knows what I'm talking about. They had the five month school but you couldn't go to school. | 29:55 |
Speaker 3 | It was only in the summertime and three months. | 30:00 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Then we couldn't go all the time. Some days, you went a half a day. Some days, you didn't go at all. You know how it was? See, you might go 20 days out of this month, the next month, you go 15. You see what I'm saying? [indistinct 00:30:26] what was going on. If they needed you to do something, or something, then you took your kids out of school. | 30:05 |
Cleaster Mitchell | We walked—In '35, we walked about, what? | 30:38 |
Speaker 3 | About seven, eight miles. | 30:42 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Seven or eight miles to school. There were children that was going to school that was four, and five years old. The oldest ones a lot of times helped carry them but you'd leave early and you'd walk to school and you'd walk back. We had no busing or nothing. When it was cold and bad, they'd make you a thing, what they called a little fire bucket, and the two older ones carried it. When you'd get too cold, you'd stop and warm your hands and have some coals and stuff in it to warm your hands. | 30:46 |
Cleaster Mitchell | But it was—The original road is still down there where I'm talking about. What else? Let me see. | 31:21 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, I was wondering, you talked earlier about the church and I was wondering what role did the church play in your family's life when you were growing up? | 31:40 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Well, I'll tell you, that was the lifeline of the community was the church, because they never had telephones, a lot of them couldn't write, and everything but they would gather up on a Sunday. That's when they prayed together, they visit together, they talked, they caught up on everything was going on, and I guess they shared recipes and that was a glorious time when they got together on a Sunday and a lot of times that we were going to have— | 31:50 |
Cleaster Mitchell | We used to have a Bible class called BTU [indistinct 00:32:29] going to have that. A lot of them would stay out under the shade trees there and they would visit and talk and everything and then we would go in later and have this Bible class and we'd play with all the other children. | 32:26 |
Cleaster Mitchell | When things was bad and they prayed and when things was wrong, they'd go there and pray, so they was really shared in all kind of ways with each other but the church, the church was the heart of that community, because if anything went wrong, somebody would go to the church and ring the bell and somebody would go to the church to see what was the problem. Then we would go, if somebody died or something happened or something. That was the way we got the news out. | 32:44 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yeah. The church was really—It was very special. I think it does have a very special—I told you I still go down there. It still has a very special place regarding my sister today. We still go back to visit this church and we always try to do something for this little church down there to— | 33:29 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I really don't know why it really stays there because everybody's gone. There's not a family in that community now. | 34:02 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, that's in Blackton? | 34:15 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yes. In Blackton, Arkansas. | 34:18 |
Paul Ortiz | What is the name of the church? | 34:19 |
Speaker 3 | [indistinct 00:34:22]. | 34:20 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Pine Ridge. Yeah. Now this is about two and a half miles out of Blackton. It's not right up in the little town. | 34:22 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. | 34:32 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yeah. It's two and a half miles out there. | 34:32 |
Paul Ortiz | What denomination is it? | 34:35 |
Cleaster Mitchell | It's Baptist. It's Missionary Baptist Church. | 34:36 |
Speaker 3 | [indistinct 00:34:44] | 34:40 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I don't need— | 34:47 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, you moved to Chicago in 1945. | 34:52 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yes. | 34:52 |
Paul Ortiz | When you were about, what? 22? | 34:52 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yeah. 22 years old. | 35:07 |
Paul Ortiz | 22? | 35:07 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Mm-hmm. | 35:07 |
Paul Ortiz | What led up to your decision to make that major move? | 35:07 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Well, I'll tell you one thing, I was tired of working for nothing. We had made a crop and never cleared a dime. I just said to myself, "It's got to be something better, got to be something different, something you can do." That was one thing I think my mother taught us. She used to always say, "I would know how to make a living if I was in England." I guess that was a—England must have been a popular thing. You know, the foreign country, maybe that was an easy name for her to name was England. She said, "If I was in England, I'd know how to feed myself. I know bread in any place." | 35:13 |
Cleaster Mitchell | She'd tell you, "Don't be afraid to try something" or to do something different. You know? And so that was one of the things. I said, "Well, I'm not going to starve to death, so I'm gone" and I got on the bus, I got on the Greyhound bus, and I went to Chicago and I got there on the Easter Sunday morning of '45. I stayed there 30 years. I worked and I learned how to do a lot of things. [indistinct 00:36:41] something that I dreamed about when I was a kid, and I liked to design things. I just went and had an opportunity to put into action, my thoughts and my dreams and I designed hats, and I had my own store, custom-made hats and everything. | 36:10 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I did get the chance to do a lot of things that I liked to do. Yes. | 37:10 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, did you have relatives in Chicago? | 37:16 |
Cleaster Mitchell | When I first went there? | 37:20 |
Paul Ortiz | Yes. | 37:21 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Well, my sister went first, the one was in here, she went first, and then I went. She went and I think it was in February. She must have went in February, and I went in April I think, because I think Easter Sunday was in April. Yeah. She was there but that's the only somebody I had there was her. | 37:22 |
Paul Ortiz | You talked with her about moving or had she talked to you about her— | 37:52 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Oh, we first both left and went to St. Louis. We both got on a bus and went to St. Louis and didn't know nobody. When we got there, and we missed the lady that was supposed to meet us didn't meet us, then it come to us that another lady, we knowed her name and she was in St. Louis and we looked in the telephone book and found her and called her up. Her name was Doll Harris. She came down and got us. We didn't have but $7.50. We had $7.50. | 37:56 |
Cleaster Mitchell | You know, we made it fine. We were just—We were job-crazy. We got there and we [indistinct 00:38:54] about a job. She said, "Just give yourself a chance. You're going to get a job" and we went down to 8th and [indistinct 00:39:01], got our Social Security card, and she went to work at one laundry and I got an advertising job and then we both wound up working at the same laundry. She worked about a month, and she left and came to Chicago, and then I came up—I left and went back, come back on the other side of Blackton up here, and then I left and went to Chicago in April. | 38:45 |
Cleaster Mitchell | It was so many people was leaving the south at that time, because it was during the war. A lot of people had left. See, a lot of them had left and went to shipyards and different other things and a lot of people left the little small jobs they had and went to bigger jobs and all these little jobs, you didn't have no problem getting no job, working at a hotel or laundry, restaurant, or—Nothing. All those little jobs was just there for you. | 39:30 |
Cleaster Mitchell | You didn't have to—You really didn't have to have a lot of education to find a job to take care of yourself. You know? To make yourself independent, the way you could—You learned how to survive easily. | 40:07 |
Cleaster Mitchell | When I first made $20 a week, I was just shocked, because I had just left a job making $2.50. That was a whole lot of money. See, that's how I looked at it. Yeah. When you— | 40:26 |
Cleaster Mitchell | You know, [indistinct 00:40:50]. People save money, because you don't see how nobody saves anything out of $2.50 a week. Things were much cheaper and then they had a little something they'd fix and they'd put it in and they would keep it and they just wouldn't spend it for nothing. You had to be critically ill or something other for them to spend it. | 40:45 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, after you and your sister went to Chicago, did any other family members move out? | 41:30 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Every one of them. | 41:38 |
Paul Ortiz | Every single one of them? | 41:40 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Every one of them. | 41:41 |
Paul Ortiz | To Chicago? | 41:42 |
Cleaster Mitchell | That's right. Even I brung my mother there. I bought a home in Chicago and I came and got my mother and my kids and brung them there. That's where my mother died is Chicago. Then when we all started coming back, it was the same difference. | 41:43 |
Paul Ortiz | In the '70s? | 42:07 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I came here in '74. | 42:07 |
Paul Ortiz | '74? | 42:07 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Mm-hmm. I came back in '74. My sister came back in '84. | 42:09 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, I was wondering, earlier, you were talking about how what really pulled Black communities through difficult times was resourcefulness and also the sharing of things. | 42:20 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yeah. Yeah. | 42:34 |
Paul Ortiz | Were there people in the community that weren't so— | 42:36 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yes. | 42:40 |
Paul Ortiz | Quick to share or— | 42:40 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yes. It was some of all kind. Some of them was selfish, they lived to themselves, and what they had was theirs, and they didn't share nothing with anybody. Some of them was so selfish they did not even share with their own families. You know, but what was nice when you run up on somebody that was selfish and didn't share, nobody really pointed him out and said, "He's a bad guy" or he's this or that other. They'd just say, "Well, don't bother Mr.", whatever his name was or, "Don't bother him." "Go to Mr. So and so and so and tell them I said that [indistinct 00:43:39]." | 42:44 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Because it always got around who shared and who didn't share, see, but if they had somebody in the community did not share with their own family, other people shared with them. See, the church families shared within. See, they would get together and say, "You know, Miss so and so and so really needs this. She's sick and this and that" and they'd get through. | 43:39 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Then there was always we had something in our church. It was like the consecrated offering we called the [indistinct 00:44:20] when anyone got sick or something, and they always had somewhere to go, it might be a small amount but it was always something that that church could share with someone and then when we were small, we didn't know really how the sharing came, because they didn't talk about it. You know, if they'd done something for somebody, it was like a big secret. They didn't say like, "Oh, I gave them such and such a thing, and I've done this." That was very, very personal. They would get together and do something but you never heard them say a word, then 20 years later, you'd find out that this happened. | 44:08 |
Cleaster Mitchell | You know, yeah, it was a lot of people that didn't—Well, it wasn't a whole lot but you did have some that—Then some that lived pretty good, they had an attitude towards and they were Black too and they had an attitude towards Black people. They said, "Well, they ought to get up and do this, they ought to do that", because a lot of them, parents left them a little land and different stuff, and they come into. If you had some land, you was considered rich. You could have some land and you was really rich, if you didn't have a dollar, you was rich. | 45:15 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Nobody was voting. We didn't know nothing about no voting. Like you go to the poll to vote, we didn't vote. But they had something and I wish I could understand it today. They'd make my father go up there and they'd pay something called poll tax. Have anybody ever told you about that since they've been here in an interview about that poll tax? | 46:02 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Now I was grown, I never did figure that poll tax business out, but I know a lot of children did not get—When they took census, they didn't turn their children in, because you paid a quarter to how many children you had. A lot of people would not turn their children in when they was taking census, on account of they thought they was really trying to make them pay— | 46:28 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Oh, well, I can ask you this question. Did they sense you into what poll tax was? | 0:03 |
Paul Ortiz | Well, now, what I've been told, Mrs. Mitchell, is people would say that it would be something designed to keep Black people from voting and they would charge—It was what they called retroactive. So if you didn't pay it one year, then they would charge you for that year. So if you maybe hadn't paid it for 10 years, you owed every single year. And if you didn't pay the tax, you couldn't vote. And since the tax was so high, it kept most Black people from voting. That's what I've been told about it. | 0:10 |
Cleaster Mitchell | That probably was the gimmick, but they didn't have any place for you to [indistinct 00:00:59]. See, their wife didn't go down, their husband went down. And they had it based on how many children you had, according to how much money you paid, but it really was a way to, if that's what they were using, it was to keep you from voting. Then I guess that was what it was, but it kept a lot of people from registering. When they took census, they never turned in all of their children. Then when they got older and come looking for birth certificates and go back to get your—when you were born, a lot of people wasn't registered until 10 years later. You see what I mean? | 0:54 |
Cleaster Mitchell | So could they only go by when you took census. That's his oldest record they could get, but in the family Bible, you look in there, he's 10 years older than what he have a record of him, but that's in your family Bible. But they would have children wouldn't say, they said "No, here come that census, man. Y'all go around there because see—" They had thought that, when the census people came, that they were trying to find out how many was in the household so they could know how much to charge them when they go to pay poll tax. | 1:51 |
Cleaster Mitchell | So I don't know about it, but it was always strange to me that—They never made any qualms about—I'll tell you what they made us do in 1940. Let me see what election year this was. Our boss came out and made all of us pay campaign money for the election, but we never voted. See, now, he tell us, "Well, I'm going to vote for you. You can't vote for nobody. Well, I'm going to vote for y'all, but you got to pay it." That was for campaign money, help him raise his big campaign money, what he's going to pay into the campaign. If he's going to pay $500, then all these people working on his farm is going to pay that because he's going to take so much out of everybody's thing. | 2:30 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, what would he say? Would he say something like, "Well, this is best for you?" | 3:55 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yeah. He said, "Well, president election is coming up, and we want to do this and that, and I'm going to take $10 from each person. And that is to help elect President Roosevelt," whoever he was voting for, "and that way, it will go on record that you all voted for him," but that was not true. That was a gimmick to get our money, but I found out that wasn't voting because you can't go and vote for nobody. But now, every bit of this stuff went on. Somebody else is going to run up and tell you some of the same things. | 4:02 |
Cleaster Mitchell | A lot of things went on, like the welfare. They had a little thing, what they call the commodity, where they just gave you something like the motomeal, and oatmeal, and sometime peanut butter and stuff like this. They had it at Clarendon. My father walked from Blackton to Clarendon for wintertime. And they would go up there to get the commodity. And if they was just mean enough, they would say, "Well, we're not going to issue it out today," but all these folks that walk from all these various places, from Monroe, [indistinct 00:05:58], Blackton, and just all these little places, they would go to the train station there and they would let them stay in the train station out of the weather. They would go out and get cardboard boxes and they'd get pick up [indistinct 00:06:15], some stuff to try to be warm in the bus station or the train station. | 4:54 |
Cleaster Mitchell | And the next day, they might open it up and serve until 12 o'clock or something and say, "We're not going to give out no more until Wednesday. Some get some and some don't." But see, that's what bothers me when they talk about giving all this back to the states now because I know what the states does, but you see, they were giving away—The White people was getting, the elder White people and stuff that was poor, too, they were getting something like $12 a month. That was money, whole lots of money. Then my father, and I really don't know, it's probably about 25 miles from Blackton to Clarendon, and he'd walk all the way back with this whatsoever they give him, and then you go once a month up there to get it, taking two days. | 6:20 |
Cleaster Mitchell | But I guess we'd learnt what hardship was and it never really bothered us. Hard times is something that never bothers me. I don't fret about it. Being broke, it never bothers me, but I guess I never had a great desire to be rich, for one thing. I wanted to live comfortable, but I never did want to be rich because, if I was rich, it would be so many things I would do until I would soon be poor, because it's a lot of things I would like to try to correct if I were rich. Oh, how people live or they have—or what. Even until today, you can't— | 7:26 |
Cleaster Mitchell | So I know that I wouldn't be rich very long if I come in possession of a lot of money. And there is some people that's just naturally going to be poor. And see, those are some of my mother's words. She say, "Oh, don't worry about money. It's always going to be some poor people in the world." Then she would show you where the Bible say, "Be mindful that the poor should be among you always" and she would always show us where we was one of them to where, you see, it didn't bother us. We just said, "Well, we're one of them that the Lord have poor." You see, you didn't go crazy. They had beautiful techniques that they done that help you kept your insanity. | 8:34 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, did you ever marry? | 9:28 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Oh, yes, I got married. See, that's how I come I'm a Mitchell. I got married to a beautiful man, Robert Mitchell, and we were Deals before. Our family name, we was Deals, D-E-A-L, Deals. | 9:31 |
Paul Ortiz | And were you married in Chicago? | 9:55 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I got married in Helena. | 9:58 |
Paul Ortiz | Helena. | 9:58 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Helena Courthouse. | 10:00 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. And how did you meet your husband? | 10:03 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Oh, I met my husband—I was picking cotton. I came down and I met a cousin of mine and we was in the field, picking cotton, and I was picking in his field and didn't know it, see, and that's how we met, really. I'll tell you about this farm we lived on, Sir Jack Palmers. He was working for Jack Palmer, but I was in his field when I met him. And it was just casual meeting. He came by and said some kind of flirty word or something. And I probably said something very smart back to him and didn't pay it no attention, and went on and I didn't pay it no attention until about maybe five or six months later, that I really found out he was serious about talking to me, but then we courted, that was in '40, and we kept company, and I left and went to Chicago, and he came to Chicago, and we came back and got married, come back to Helena and got married. My mother was living in Helena and we came back and [indistinct 00:11:38]. Is you cool? | 10:06 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, yes, ma'am. | 11:39 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I'm going to turn off the—Uh-oh. See that? I show you about these—I'm going to turn— | 11:41 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, you tried to turn it off? | 11:54 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I'm turning this fan off. See, I had the fan and the air condition on. | 11:56 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. And then did your husband move with you to Chicago— | 12:09 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yes. | 12:14 |
Paul Ortiz | —at the same time? | 12:14 |
Cleaster Mitchell | No, I went to Chicago and he came to Chicago when I left. Then he came up. And then after we got to Chicago, we decided to get married, and then we came back to Helena and got married, and we had one son, and he was born in 1951. | 12:18 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, when you think back now over your life, what have been the things that have changed most? Well, let me back up. Maybe I should ask first, when you moved back after living in Chicago for so many years, you moved back to Brinkley? | 13:06 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Mm-hmm. | 13:30 |
Paul Ortiz | What had changed in Brinkley and what hadn't changed? | 13:34 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Well, let me see, what had changed and what hadn't changed? Well, segregation had changed to a certain point. It was not so openly. It still is concealed, but it's not so openly. Things had changed that I could vote when I came back here, I could go to the same doctor anybody else could go to, I could drink out of the same fountain anybody could go to, I could ride on the same bus, I didn't have to get out of line when I bought something and somebody else come in, I could use the same facilities. | 13:39 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I could go into the same restaurant and eat, because there was a time you couldn't go to the restaurant. They had a little hole. You go there and they put your food out. You go to the back and they give it to you out the little back window. You couldn't go, but now, when I come back, you could just go in any nice restaurant and sit down and eat and enjoy yourself, and then they had removed the sign out of the bus stations and train stations where it said White only. They didn't say Black over here and White over here, they said White only. That meant don't come on that side at all. | 14:40 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Well, yeah, a lot of things had changed when I came back. And then when I came back, I didn't necessarily have to work for anyone. I didn't have to come back. And I really didn't come back to get any job or stuff. I knew something to do outside of—I didn't have to come back to do the things that I used to do. And that part of it had changed, but I knew that a lot of it have not change because— | 15:29 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Honestly, some of it, I can't ever see it just changing, just vanishing, going away, because when hate is conceded deeply into people and rooted in people, it is very hard to do anything with that. What's in a person's heart, you can't do anything with that. If you got that kind of thinking the inside of you, nothing will change that, but the Lord. And some of them is going to forever think that way, so that don't bother me, but I wouldn't let the Ku Klux Klan set his tent up in my backyard. Now, he couldn't do that. He'd have to go someplace else with it, but I know when they come and just done everything, anything they wanted to, and there was nothing you could do about it. | 16:25 |
Cleaster Mitchell | It's really trying to come back just like it once was. This government is changing and you can see what they're asking for and everything. And they say, "Give it back to this, and give it back to that, and give it back," but when they would change it all around, it would be back just like it was, but what would be bad, it would be so much worser because, even for me, I have seen another side of life and what was that I accept before, it would be hard for me to do that because, at that time, I did not know any better. | 17:38 |
Cleaster Mitchell | See, I didn't see the brighter day. They just told you about the brighter day, I'll say that. I couldn't see going to Chicago and going to—I've traveled a lot, lots of places. I couldn't see that. It would be very uncomfortable for me now if it went back to where it once was because it would be miserable, because if it went back like it was, you still wouldn't have any protection, would you? You wouldn't have anything and you speak up, you'd just be in the worlds of trouble all the time. But the catch is, if it turns this time, it's going to be all over. | 18:32 |
Cleaster Mitchell | See, you're starting up at the upper now. Now, it's coming all the way down and it's not going be easy because people will die now. People that never thought of dying for something, they will die now before they do it because you got a whole generation of people here don't know nothing about what I'm talking about. So you see, they're not going to lay down for it and the generation that live through it is not going to accept it. So it's going to be very hard. | 19:25 |
Cleaster Mitchell | But I can see Mr. Newt Gingrich and a whole lot of them, they at it daily. They want to change all the amendments. They want to do everything that have stood for all these years and they think people—I really don't know what—See, you can see all these other people now just coming up out of the woodwork. What good is it to have all of these malicious and all of this stuff? Everybody's so cruel-minded now. See, we used to thought that people were cruel and different other stuff, but we got people now that's just as cruel-minded as those people is, and you would have a harder time surviving, and we did. It'll be much worse. I don't know. But I don't even know why they are trying to—What is the purpose? Now, you're young. Do you understand it? | 20:09 |
Paul Ortiz | I think I agree with you. I think that they're trying to roll back to the way things were, but for them, because they're in power, things were good for them because they were in power. | 21:34 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Yeah, that's true, but they're living better than they ever lived, too. Now, you get anything you want. You've been in this office for years and every taxpayer has supported your salary. You make millions of dollars doing nothing. You go and they give you $50 million to speak at the university and everything. So what are you kicking about? You got your own [indistinct 00:22:23]. Now, you want to change the whole world. | 21:48 |
Cleaster Mitchell | But I know a lot of it is going to change. See, I know a lot of it's going to change, but it's not going to be easy as they think it is. They're going to have some ethnic cleansing. They're going to have a lot of stuff right over here in this place, just like they got over there. That is terrible. See, I cry and I pray for those people over there, just like I know those people, because I just know it's horrible and I'd hate to be—I think about what I come through with, but I didn't come through anything like that. See, that's worser because, see, like that man came and put us out the house, my mother went on down the road to somebody else, but those people can't even go to nobody else. Now, how did we get into all way over there, talk about those people? | 22:31 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, I know I've taken a lot of your time. I just had— | 23:43 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I've enjoyed it, though. I have never really given an interview and it's a new experience to me. I have talked to a lot of people, though, but just to sit down and give somebody an interview on what I know, my point of view or something. And then I tell you, you cannot put in a lifetime of experience in an hour's time because there have been so many things have happened. You see what I'm saying? But to just get some of it mentioned or some of it written somewhere or something, that is something. | 23:47 |
Cleaster Mitchell | A lot of people never had that opportunity to just get recorded on anything, just to get his thoughts or his views about something put out on nothing. He died and he lived here and nobody know what he thought, but just his family. | 24:34 |
Cleaster Mitchell | And I bet some of those people would've had some of the most beautiful stories to have tell. And we was great people, I can tell you that. It was some great Black people in this world. They were smart, they were intelligent, and they had a lot of sense. We knowed how to care, we could make syrup, we could can anything, we could cook and couldn't read a recipe, we could save our own meat, we knowed how to peel potatoes and keep them from one year to another. | 25:01 |
Cleaster Mitchell | But you see, all of this is just mother with—they come up out of slavery when people—They had lots of things. And it was a lot of smart Black people. And most of the patents and things that come up out of—like the cotton gin, see, a Black man invented it. That stoplight, a Black man invented it. And they had a man greasing the wheels on the train and he had a job every night. I don't [indistinct 00:26:25]. See, that axle grease, that stuff he come up with to grease that train, he invented that because I guess he got so tired of just have to do whatever they had him doing every night with that stuff. But see, that's what is hard to see how these people knew so many things, yet they were uneducated people. You ever seen a broad ax? | 25:47 |
Paul Ortiz | Yes, ma'am. | 26:56 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I had one and I picked it up here the other day. I said, "Well, I wonder how in the world did I ever hew a tie with this thing?" | 27:00 |
Paul Ortiz | [indistinct 00:27:10] heavy. Well, the irons are heavy. They were heavy. | 27:12 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Oh, yes, they iron, real iron, they were heavy. And some of them, the gas iron was much heavier than that. | 27:14 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay, I've never looked at a gas iron. How did that work? | 27:26 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Well, they used to burn natural gas in it. I guess it was a little thing. And it had a little thing you lighted and a little blaze come out of it, but it was real heavy. Some of them weighed 16 pounds and some weighed—so different weights of iron according on what you were pressing. | 27:29 |
Cleaster Mitchell | And my mother used to clean clothes, press suits, and she had a cloth, and they'd dampen this cloth, and they'd put it over here, and then she pressed the suits and stuff, just like it do when they come out of these cleaners, but she had a gas iron and you'll see some of them in an antique shop or something. Up in—got a little thing up in the top and, when they lighted the little—It ain't a spark, it's a little bluish blaze, where the gas burn comes out of the back of it. And all of this stuff just [indistinct 00:28:30] on. They don't use it anymore, but it's still around. And if all of these things hadn't been, they never would've had what they have today. They just improved on a lot of stuff, what other folks made. | 27:51 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Mitchell, throughout your life, what have been the things that have inspired you the most to keep on striving to attain your goals and all your accomplishments? What have been the things that have really pulled you through? | 28:46 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Self-ambitious, a lot of courage and dedication, and a lot of willpower. See, anything I want to do, I've always had this from a kid, I always told myself, "I can do this and I can do the other." So I'm self-motivated. Don't nobody have to motivate me to do anything. See, I'm a dreamer. I got ideas and dreams and things. And if I stirred it long enough, I will automatically know it would work before I tried. I don't know, I'm just ambitious, an ambitious person. And I'm not so ambitious, really, for myself. I'm a great team worker. I like to work in a lot of community things and do things to help other people and children. I work in this scholarship. I work because I know the disadvantage of having no education. I know the disadvantage. So anybody that is trying, I want to see them make it. If they can, I want to see them— | 29:07 |
Cleaster Mitchell | See, education is something that no one can ever take from you. So you can buy a house and they can take it for taxes if they want to or somebody can find a way to fraud you out of it, but in education, no one can take an education from you. It take physical—it has to be some disease or something or you got to get hurt to take an education away from you, but anything else you have here, somebody can take that. Clothes, anything else, don't care what it is. They'll steal your car, they'll do anything, but education is something that you take with you everywhere you go. It's like your church. Your church is in your heart and you take it with you everywhere you go. You just go to the building to worship, but the church is in the heart. | 30:45 |
Cleaster Mitchell | So I'm saying that that's why education is really important to me, because I know, once a person gets an education, I don't care how down in the dumps he get, he have something that he can help himself with, that education. It's a lot of angles to it. And I really did have a desire to be educated, but I had a hard time because of what—See, like I said, I had [indistinct 00:32:38], but nobody then knew anything about this. They didn't know how to help the child. They just whooped you when you couldn't get your lesson. They said you wasn't trying. | 31:47 |
Cleaster Mitchell | And then I had a vision problem all my life. And anything I had to have right up here, they said, "Get your head out of the books." When I started wearing glasses, I was, what, 24 years old, but I should've had glasses from the time I was probably three or four. My sister and I, at 27, we exploded a dynamite [indistinct 00:33:23] and she lost her eye, and then I got shot up pretty good, too. And I guess we overcome all of this and stuff. | 32:51 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I think it's a lot of things that really, really makes me want to—I tell you, I'm a dreamer. I can really—Now, see, sometime I lay down. A lot of times, I write a whole book, I write a beautiful story, but that's just a story I've written in my mind because I don't type and I don't have—I don't think it would sound if I put it on tape. I don't think, when I play it back, it would sound to me like it is when I am doing the story. You see what I'm saying? Because when you listen to your own voice, it's strange. But I don't know, really, I really don't know what all makes me, as the folks say, tick. I don't, but I am an unusual person in some kind of a ways. I don't mean no mystery, nothing, but I am unusual about a lot of things, about how I think about things and my view on things. | 33:43 |
Cleaster Mitchell | Now, anything that I am interested in and I want to learn, I can learn it. See, I'm a good Bible scholar and that is amazing. I'm about a good a Bible scholar as anybody that really reads and takes it and reads it like this. I acquired this. I wanted to know this, so I applied myself to it because that was knowledge I really wanted. I wanted to have that knowledge about the Bible, but other books don't fascinate me as much as the Bible does. So that's why. I know how I got motivated into that. | 35:12 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I'm a good seamstress, but you see, I don't read the pattern, I look at the pattern and make it see, but a lot of people has to look at it. So that's whereby learning a lot of things. I learn a lot of things by—Well, my priest set an example. I don't have to really look at the word or the letter. I can spell anything, but I don't have no sense of pronunciation. I can name the eight parts of speech and I can give you the definition to them. A lot of things I can do, but when you see to a person, another person don't accept that of you. If you don't read or you write, it's hard to cope, I can tell you. You might know a lot of things. A lot of things I know, and I listen, but some of it you can put in words and some you can't. | 36:09 |
Cleaster Mitchell | I do a lot of public speaking. I go to the schools and I speak at Brinkleys High School and I speak in a lot of churches. I go to conventions and a lot of things because, early, I applied myself to this, to public speaking. And see, I never was afraid. I never was afraid to do it, but it's because I didn't have fear. Most people have the fear and say, "Ah, I can't do this." Crowds excite them and stuff. It doesn't bother me. But now, if I had had an education, I might've not have been as good with this as I am without the education because I see a lot of people are highly educated and they lose that train of thought and they cannot capture an audience. They can't hold a subject. They can start off talking about it and then just lose it. But it's how you perceive yourself doing it. And if you don't ever put it down on paper, if you record it in your mind, then it's there. See? So is there anything else you want to ask me? I think I done told you. | 37:36 |
Paul Ortiz | [indistinct 00:39:14]. | 39:13 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund