Lovie Griffin interview recording, 1995 August 15
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Transcript
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Laurie Green | Just give you a brief thing. This is an interview with Lovie Mae Griffin on August 15th, 1995. We met at the Lewis Center Women's Club meeting the other day, and you were starting to tell about your family background, about your parents. Would you like to begin there? | 0:01 |
Lovie Griffin | Yes, I can. Would my birthday, [indistinct 00:00:31] I was born. | 0:26 |
Laurie Green | Sure. Yeah. Whatever comes to your mind. | 0:32 |
Lovie Griffin | I was born in Knoxville, Tennessee July the 19th, 1930. My parents were farmers at that time, and one of my step grandparents, my father's father, he was a farmer. My mother's father was a railroad person. They built Southern railroad and things, Jackson on down to Memphis and places like that. He was never a farmer. | 0:43 |
Lovie Griffin | My father's name was Willie Wright, I think said that. And my mother's name was Amelia Wright. Grandparents, Jim Whiteside and Mae Whiteside, and Ellett Wright and Richie Wright. The other was named out of Moscow, which was big county in Tennessee. Until I was four, I lived in Moscow. But I visited quite often the other grandparents, because my mother's parents had only one grandchild. Where they went, they kept me up with them. But I stayed back and forth out there to remember quite a bit. | 1:02 |
Lovie Griffin | My grandfather on the Wright side, he was the person who ran the mill for the people. He ground the meal of the corn where the—that we used to make corn bread. And he made the syrup out of sorghum, and he worked the machine that squirted the sorghum out and made, they had long pans like this table or longer, and they would build the fire under it and just walk back and forth and cook it and put it in gallon buckets. In those days, everything was put up in gallon buckets. In fact, the top on lets it cool down some. | 1:56 |
Lovie Griffin | He also was a farmer, and he made cotton. He had cotton crops, and he was the—I guess you would say the president of a little burial association for we Black people, and he always kept up with that real well. They lived more near in the town of Moscow. I watched them kill hogs and cried because they had to kill them. And they would cure meat, sliced meat, and do all of it. They would milk, and we'd have the milk for drinking. And all in all, for a person like me, it was joy to me to get back and forth out there. | 2:38 |
Lovie Griffin | But it was also a joy to get with the other grandmother. She was extremely religious, and I loved every bit of her. She only had the one grandchild, as I think I first stated. I hope I'm not repeating myself. And she was a very religious-minded person. | 3:35 |
Lovie Griffin | Although I was an only child, I went to her, it was hard to believe that that grandmother didn't believe in anybody getting by. If you misbehaved, you paid for it, because she could tell you about all of the good Lord. And that was whipping me. She didn't spank you. She would tell you about God don't like ugly, and all these beautiful things, and the Lord would like for you to be a sweet child. And I promise you that can be hard. It's just coming on spanking and getting it over with. | 3:56 |
Lovie Griffin | And everybody was her child. She was never too busy for anybody. So often people would come and ask her to pray for them. I had a tendency to sometimes be a little bit jealous, and she'd give me that sweet little look and smile that meant "You stand there." And they understood. And my grandparents on the Wright side, by then they had finished building the railroad track on into Southern, on into Memphis, Tennessee. | 4:30 |
Lovie Griffin | And they was working, they had a railroad yard back out in Orange Mound area here in Memphis and maybe a hundred or more tracks finally accumulated. They lived in what they called the section homes that all of the persons who worked on the railroad lived in. They always made sure they had homes ready for them when they would get at the major place they were going to be. | 5:02 |
Lovie Griffin | I think I told you about the cornmeal and what have you. They raised fruits of all nature. They would make good wine and made it cure, which was strange. But they always made it work out that way, and they enjoyed it. [indistinct 00:05:52. You can believe you were not allowed touch it, and I never wanted it, thank goodness. And they raised gardens. | 5:29 |
Laurie Green | Did they own their own land? | 6:00 |
Lovie Griffin | Yes. The Wright side who was on railroad property, but my grandparents out there, I forgot to say that they owned their own land. They farmed, they had cotton, and they raised corn as well as he would run the mill for persons and go down there so he could get the mill too. And he'd do the corn and— | 6:17 |
Laurie Green | Grind it? | 6:31 |
Lovie Griffin | Grind it, thank you. Grind the corn so it could be milled for persons, and as they would bring it in, then he would do that as well as oftentimes he would help them with the killing of the hog. He would trap the fish. But he always had a cotton field going also. And it was a nice size. Then they would use some of the cotton, oftentimes even a lot of it got sold. But some of it, they used for making quilts and things that persons always wanted to buy, because they would be better than the ones they could have gotten out of the store. | 6:34 |
Lovie Griffin | They loved music, and they had owned something I always desired to want to be able to play, and that was an organ. The organ was so pretty. I always said if I get grown, then I would ask my grandmother and grandfather if I could just have one something. I wouldn't worry about anything else, I'd have the organ, because it was a pipe organ and it covered one side of the dining room. Whoa. And something that you don't see now. | 7:16 |
Lovie Griffin | But both my grandparents were hurt in a tornado in Moscow. My grandmother was killed immediately. My grandfather, he lived through it for a while. But my grandmother, they couldn't even embalm her. It was where they told us she had to be buried immediately, because she'd broken up. And me being a child, I haven't forgotten this, but I was a child, but I was a grown child at that time. I was 19 years old. No, 20. | 7:44 |
Laurie Green | 1950 or something? | 8:22 |
Lovie Griffin | Mm-hmm. And I was 20 years old, because my baby was already born, my first child from me and my husband. And I was always nosy, and I just had to see my grandmother to make sure that my grandmother was there so there was no mistake. Maybe it's just not my grandmother. But I raised the casket up, and all I could do was scream, because like they said—And they ran and grabbed me and closed it. First was at the funeral service, funeral home. They closed it back up, because for a long time I could see her all broken and torn. And I said I thought something silly for a few short minutes. | 8:29 |
Lovie Griffin | I know father, that father never loved her, but I could never quite figure out, wonder why this had to happen. But then that was explained to me by this other grandmother. God had no special person, no special person, no anything that's different from the other. These things are a part of life. They happen for a reason. And she went back in the Bible and explained these things to me and showed his chosen ones and things that happened to them. And I never felt like that again. | 9:17 |
Lovie Griffin | My grandfather, he was knocked in the, he had a hole in the head. One arm was broken in two places, the other arm broken in one place. | 9:50 |
Lovie Griffin | My cousin that was, they didn't ever want anybody to keep, because she was a deaf mute and they was afraid that we wouldn't take care of her like they wanted her taken care of. And looked like the good Lord just took and set her across the road by hillside. And she was just kind of shook up, not even bleeding or nothing, just looked like it just kind of shook her up and sat her over there, and that's where she was, and we found her just sitting there. That was amazing. And often says we wonder why. We were grateful, because He had His reasons for whatever that had happened. | 10:02 |
Lovie Griffin | And then we went on and they would hunt, they would use the skins to sell. Like I said, they would sell their meat from the pigs and the cows, and then if they didn't have the money to pay for it, people in those days would help each other. It didn't matter whether you had any money or not. Everybody helped everybody. My grandparents had about eight children, and my father was the baby one of the boys, and my aunt was the baby girl right behind him. She's still alive here now. She's still in Memphis. Margaret Wright. | 10:42 |
Lovie Griffin | When we go out home, it just doesn't seem like the place it was, because it has never been put back together. It's something missing. You can't see the big barn where the cows were and the horses and things because it tore all of that up. And their house was a large house. They had a cellar, and my grandmother always canned. They made kraut and things that people don't know about. They made krauts in a crock, like a churn, which it was a churn, where you would churn the milk, but the dasher was not in it. They would cut it up and cure it, and they had a cellar that they kept the vegetations in after they would can them and do. | 11:27 |
Lovie Griffin | The amazing thing, very amazing thing, that whole big house well was torn out of the ground and everything but that cellar that sat right at the edge of the porch, the back porch. You step down off the porch and go around and raise up the top and go in it. When all of this was over, you could go right around to that cellar and raise it up and everything was in place. Now, that was the most amazing thing. And I just often wondered about it. And you will wonder when you go through things like that. It hurts when you think about it. But then if you learn from the way we did, anything He does is good and very good, no matter how you see it. Then some, they can make you understand to accept it and not be foolish. | 12:16 |
Laurie Green | You said you lived there until you were four. And then where did— | 13:19 |
Lovie Griffin | Memphis. | 13:23 |
Laurie Green | To Memphis? Okay. Did you have any impressions about what it was like in Fayette County with the Jim Crow bill? | 13:23 |
Lovie Griffin | Yes, I do. Quite well. Even though I didn't stay out there, periodically when I'd go to visit, I would go out there to visit school. The school was set up by a little church. Little school [indistinct 00:13:52]. Maybe one teacher would be trying to teach three or four classes, trying to help everybody to learn or something. It wasn't like the school that, well, the others had. And these things always stuck with you. So yes, you remember them. Whatever you doing, you worked hard at it. How my grandfather was able to become where he knew so much, he could read so well, and my grandmother and grandfather on both sides, I don't know, because they never told me. But it was a strange thing, both of them and my grandmother. And of course, naturally if he could keep up with figures for a burial association for everybody in town that was Black, then naturally, he had to be able to handle books and what have you. And he could.I could never quite figure that out. But it was amazing thing. | 13:36 |
Lovie Griffin | But it wasn't because it was easier. I'd go out there and you walk down the sidewalk and oftentimes they would get—That happened in Memphis even, too. They would lock arms when I was a girl going to school. To keep you from passing by, they would make you step out in the street, because they wouldn't let you by. And then you'd have to step out in the street and come around them and get back up. I'll admit that I got in trouble one time, a few of us, because we decided that day, I am as good as you are. And we locked arms and we put our books in front of us, and we said, "Today, I shall not walk in the street." And we took them books and we walked smack into them, books and all. | 14:48 |
Lovie Griffin | And the lady called the officers and they fussed a little bit. But mother having been working out in Memphis when that was happening, having worked for some extremely rich people, it was just like they didn't do anything, because they did not let anybody mess with us. They said, "They are human. She raised mine, and she's raising hers, and anything she does is very well. She's most respectful of her family, and we have to learn why some of us were like that." They were never that way. They were more than rich. They were multi-millionaires. They were from a cotton family, the person that she was working for. And my father then had started working at Firestone, the tire builder. And they came into their yard one time and arrested my father because he looked like somebody that did something, whether he did or not. | 15:42 |
Lovie Griffin | And she called the husband crying, and said that they had picked Will up and of course he took and called down—He told her, "Don't cry, honey, don't get upset. I'll take care of it." He called and telled them, "Don't touch him. Don't let me see a scar on him. Don't ever put your feet in my yard and arrest anybody. Now you follow him and you see him come there three times a week from work when he get off in the morning at 7:00 to catch the cross town bus and come around and work for them." And he would do that because he worked from 11:00 to 7:00. And then when he'd go home, he would be able to sleep some. My mother worked as a maid for them and a part-time cook sometimes when they would go out of state to their other home, because they had one main and they had one Scotland and another area overseas. | 16:44 |
Lovie Griffin | So as I say, they were very rich. Their name was Smithwick and they were cotton people and various [indistinct 00:17:46]. They had one child— | 17:36 |
Laurie Green | Smithwick? | 17:47 |
Lovie Griffin | Smithwick, one name. And our home was worse when we would go out home, because they were still doing that, you walk around and get on the side so that they can come by without you touching them. And gradually, it started when they started having meetings and the government started becoming a little more active in it and trying to talk to the person through the things, because they were very quick to want to beat on a Black person. And that's no lie, because I lived during that time. I just never had to witness any of that, but I witnessed it but not directly to my body. It's kind of something you saw oftentimes I sat down and said, if I wrote a story in my life, people would believe that I was the biggest liar in the world. | 17:49 |
Lovie Griffin | And I'll tell you something else. During that time I was in Catholic school. A doctor registered me in Catholic school. He and his wife, they said I was too determined to learn and do. So they were Catholic. His name was Dr. James Poes and he and his wife, Mrs. Poes, they were Black, and they carried me over there and got me registered in and told them they would be responsible for my tuition, because it looked like I was determined to want to learn and make somebody out of myself. Perhaps I can say part of it was I never cared for alcohol, and it never bothered me. It never interested me. I never bothered about tobacco, and my family raised tobacco. It was one of the things that they raised out home. And the people would roll their own cigarettes and what have you. But I was just never interested in them. | 18:46 |
Lovie Griffin | So it's a time that you would not have enjoyed living through, had you been one of us. And of course the officer there, he was ready to kick and beat, whether you caused anything to do or not. So I would say honestly, a couple of my uncles left town because they did with them, some people thought they could raise their foot up and they tried not to let foot ever be able to walk again because they grabbed their foot, said "I can't stand it no more." And you could go to service and you could fight beside of them, but they didn't want you to walk beside of them in the very beginning. And so they just moved. | 19:48 |
Laurie Green | Can you explain that a little bit more? | 20:24 |
Lovie Griffin | During the time that they- | 20:25 |
Laurie Green | About your uncles. | 20:32 |
Lovie Griffin | They was determined that they were tired of being kicked around and shoved around, and they just simply wouldn't accept it anymore. They decided, I will not walk out in the street for you. I will not accept you hitting me without hitting you back. If you're going to kill me, you just going to have to kill me, because I'm tired. I'm very tired. And I'm not going to do it anymore. I'm not going to accept it anymore. And they voiced it. And oftentimes it was officer, his name was Mr. Greer. He was the sheriff there. Oftentimes he would arrest them and he's putting on drunkenness, because you weren't supposed to have [indistinct 00:21:17] to understand the things you drunk. You do these things, speak up for yourself. It didn't occur to them that you were not drunk, you just were tired. You worked for them, that was all right. You could raise their children, and it's perfectly all right. And children oftentimes loved being around their maids and chauffeurs and things, but they couldn't understand that. | 20:33 |
Lovie Griffin | But some of them, they have even left their children with mom and she would take care of them. Life was strange. But yet the Jim Crow part, you go down the street, just picture. That's Bellevue, and you and I are walking down the street and you're Black and I'm Black, and here come two White, or three White person. They make a change like this, and they walk. That means either you walk up on the edge of the person's yard, or you walk out in the street, but you will not have me on the sidewalk. You don't belong there. They believe in kicking people. And some of our people was rebellious. They were tired. | 21:40 |
Laurie Green | On your uncles— | 22:35 |
Lovie Griffin | And my father. | 22:38 |
Laurie Green | Did your uncle get beaten up? | 22:41 |
Lovie Griffin | They got beaten up, but they—Everybody claimed they didn't know how, and even the ones of us who saw it, I guess was afraid to say what really happened. But it only happened that one time, because they was determined, I'm not going to accept it. | 22:44 |
Laurie Green | That was by the police? | 23:06 |
Lovie Griffin | Mm-hmm. Because he felt like you didn't even know how to talk to you, you were nigger this and you were nigger that. And I was a little fella going back out there to visit with the other grandparents, and I promise you, that's one of the reasons why it was not fun for me to visit out there, because it was bad enough and twice as bad out there. | 23:07 |
Laurie Green | Oh, okay. Now these— | 23:28 |
Lovie Griffin | That's in Fayette County. | 23:29 |
Laurie Green | This with your uncle, this happened out in Fayette County or Memphis? | 23:31 |
Lovie Griffin | Most of that happened, they counted the part of it happened in Memphis. Good old Memphis. Sweetheart, I promise you, it was not always sweet. | 23:34 |
Laurie Green | And why did they wind up leaving? | 23:46 |
Lovie Griffin | My father got a job, and we had to move his family here, which is mother and him and myself. He moved down here, and as I said, he started working at [indistinct 00:24:02] Bruce until Firestone finished building over on Firestone Street, the tire and rubber company. And he started working for Firestone. Then he went in service. He had worked at Family Depot which was—And he went in service and when he came out, he was a marksman. He didn't realize that he was so busy getting perfect marksmanship, and one of the fellows said, "Do you know what you're doing?" And he said, "You putting yourself right straight overseas." He never received a furlough home like everybody. | 23:49 |
Lovie Griffin | He received [indistinct 00:24:39] the railroad passed up the sides on the hill from our house and the captain left him, told him come and visit us. He was able to visit us some hours, and he met the train the next morning. He knew exactly where to meet the train and get back on it. And they headed him for Germany. And I just took care of him [indistinct 00:25:02] backstage but that's where he was. And he was a marksman. He thought, "Well, since I can do it." So I [indistinct 00:25:09]. And by the time he realized this is what he was doing and he had gotten four medals on marksmanship and the captain told him, he shot dead on, he said, "Too late now, Will." He said, "We already know. No matter what you do, we know that you know marksmanship, and we know that you are." | 24:38 |
Lovie Griffin | Things like that. But I thank God that the people was around Daddy was pretty nice. The persons in service with him. He didn't get one of those persons that some of the others I saw get. They were as bad as some of the people. They wanted to make up their mind to kick on you, and that's when the people started rise up, even rebellious against MPs and things like that, because they didn't know how to talk to you. | 25:32 |
Lovie Griffin | Jim Crow, Moscow was right in the center. The middle, and surrounded by it. And it took a long time for it to get straightened out, but it took some of them getting killed. Nobody ever knew who killed who. But it did. Some of them got hurt, beat up pretty bad themselves or something. But then they would get angry and [indistinct 00:26:22] some things that they found out they'd be ready to take it out on somebody else again. As they use the terminology Uncle Sam, he stopped some of that. They started to send in papers with people coming in and talking to him and trying to help him do this. But at that time, we were living, already had been living here for a while, but instead of going back out home, which is Moscow, Tennessee in Fayette County, and Fayette County is not the best county in the world, but. | 26:00 |
Laurie Green | [indistinct 00:27:01]. | 26:56 |
Lovie Griffin | Thank you. And it's still a sneaker, but it can't be as obvious. | 27:01 |
Laurie Green | My [indistinct 00:27:06] was just out there. They still have a lot of segregation in [indistinct 00:27:13]. | 27:06 |
Lovie Griffin | Extreme lot. That's right. Somerville. That's where the courthouse, main courthouse, that's where all your license had to come from. And I had to get a duplicate copy of my parents' marriage license and things so that he could have it in service. They showed all of their [indistinct 00:27:34] there of being extreme bad [indistinct 00:27:35]. Hi, darling. And since you have read a little up on it, they did not lie to you. Fayette County was ridiculous. And Jim Crow, it still is to a certain extent. And if they let it, everybody would have to completely die out. I don't know where they all would go, because it's been so many years and so many more young persons are there. But as you had your experience, it is ridiculous still. And you say it, it is truly the poorest county in the state of Tennessee. | 27:13 |
Laurie Green | Can you talk a little bit more about your uncles? Did they live both in Fayette County and in Memphis when the events that you were talking about took place? | 28:12 |
Lovie Griffin | They were living in Fayette County, then they moved to Memphis. But the events I was talking about happened in Fayette County, and periodically when they would go out to visit, these things would happen. But they were not [indistinct 00:28:38] people, but this was in Fayette County when this happened. | 28:21 |
Laurie Green | Did they leave town and come to Memphis because it was too much of a problem for them to stay? | 28:41 |
Lovie Griffin | Because they were trying to see if they couldn't do better for themselves. | 28:47 |
Laurie Green | Oh, I see. | 28:50 |
Lovie Griffin | And that's how he managed to get the type of job where he was the tire builder and he was the only Black tire builder around, and he was so good at it- | 28:51 |
Laurie Green | This is your father? | 29:01 |
Lovie Griffin | Mm-hmm. | 29:02 |
Laurie Green | Okay. First of all, in Fayette County with your uncles, did that take place—How old were you when that was going on? | 29:03 |
Lovie Griffin | I was a youngster all during the time and even it was still happening to some extent when I became grown, but it was worse when I was in my years like 10, 12. | 29:13 |
Laurie Green | So this was 1940s? | 29:27 |
Lovie Griffin | Yes, it was. It was the worstest. | 29:27 |
Laurie Green | Okay. And then your father got into Firestone after the war? | 29:33 |
Lovie Griffin | They built the Army Depot. I just gave you a little of that. The Army Depot that was on Airways and he was one of the builders. By the time he got through, a lot of them were being called into the service, and he was sent to Germany during that time. That's when he went in service. | 29:40 |
Laurie Green | And then he went to Firestone? | 30:00 |
Lovie Griffin | Mm-hmm. When he come back home. He was working at Firestone before he went in service, but when he went in service, he was able to come back and get his same identical job. That what you asking? | 30:01 |
Laurie Green | Was that the '43 when he was starting [indistinct 00:30:28]? | 30:20 |
Laurie Green | Was your father in a union at Firestone? | 30:27 |
Lovie Griffin | Yes. When they got to the place where they had the Standard Union, they were in it. The union at that time did its work for them. It was the best paying job in Memphis. | 30:30 |
Laurie Green | Did the union address whether Black and White workers were—Do you remember this, whether they were able to get equal pay or equal jobs? | 30:49 |
Lovie Griffin | I was never able to truly find that out. But we assumed, by the papers and things. I was always interested in reading everything I'd see, as you probably noticed. I know that they were not. They could do the work, but the other fella got just a bit more all the time. But you did the hardest work, and you could be the best at it, but you didn't get more. And not even as much. You scuffled for it. It was no such thing as equality, either your ability. And it was a long time, and you want to know something? It's hard right here in Memphis and you sitting here to get equality. Even right here, it's still a bit of a problem. | 30:59 |
Laurie Green | What high school did you go to? | 31:49 |
Lovie Griffin | St. Augustine. | 31:50 |
Laurie Green | Okay. | 31:50 |
Lovie Griffin | Grade school and high school. I finished my grade school there and went on into high school there. I went to, for college work, I went to school at night for a while, and I was going to more on and getting a standard work knowledge. Then I started to work and being able to go to Memphis State and get some background built up. So I had become a beautician years before then. And also, I majored in it, cosmetology, I also fixed hair. Then I started teaching it and I worked in the city school system. | 31:57 |
Lovie Griffin | I started subbing, and my subbing almost end up being almost every day in the week. Then I'd leave there, go home, see about the children, and go to the beauty shop and work. | 32:46 |
Laurie Green | Where'd you teach? | 32:59 |
Lovie Griffin | [indistinct 00:33:03] Washington, [indistinct 00:33:06], North Side, Douglas. I don't remember Melrose one time. But those others, that's where I subbed and you, when someone can't be in, they'll call you and ask you could you possibly come in. And even though cosmetology was my major, I worked from 9th to 12th grade work. And sometimes I would be—Oh, Hughes. We had a Hughes Junior High at that time also. And I thought of that. | 33:02 |
Laurie Green | Okay. Now, in addition to the kinds of—Are there other stories that you have that you recall from you or from other people about more about how people as individuals would resist the way things were? They stood up to people and that kind of thing.. | 33:55 |
Lovie Griffin | Believe it or not, as I first said, was talking about the Smithwicks, the cotton magnate, the person that had all the money. It was amazing, because they never, even though they were working for them, extra work for them, you could never be made to feel uncomfortable. You were in home. If my mother kept a child for anybody, they said, "Don't forget the baby, because we know that you're not going to leave your baby with anybody and come." And so I stayed there, Peggy and all of us. It was Peggy and them was Carters and they were Jew, and we would just stay there and we played together. I didn't mean Jews, they were Catholics. And we would be there and mother would keep us, the mom and dad was going somewhere. They always had the kind of faith in her, it was just like they acted like she was their sister they was leaving their child with, even though she was working for them, she left the house under their care. And Smithwicks were the same way. They spent the summer in Germany or Scotland or somewhere. They had several villas. I promise you. | 34:13 |
Laurie Green | You want me to put my name on there? | 35:29 |
Laurie Green | Okay. And what do you remember from the Civil Rights Movement? | 35:31 |
Lovie Griffin | Marching. | 35:36 |
Laurie Green | How did you get involved? | 35:39 |
Lovie Griffin | Determination. I always was like that. And I'm being honest. I'm not speaking to just hear myself speak. If they had a march and [indistinct 00:35:52] or someone was going to talk, I would be, after I got older, I would be sitting right there. | 35:42 |
Laurie Green | [indistinct 00:36:00]. | 35:57 |
Lovie Griffin | I would be right there with the group. If they said the meeting would be such and so place, then we would all get together. And then if someone come to, we started some kind of way, everybody stood together. And quite often, some of them worked for the kind of persons who refused to allow certain things to be done to us, because they were going to come and see why. Because we weren't interfering with anybody. We were just showing that we were tired of being pushed around and knocked around. And the persons who say they don't know anything about it, God bless them. They didn't miss nothing. | 36:01 |
Lovie Griffin | Yet they missed a whole lot. But it was more than—It was no pleasure to be treated like you were a slave sometimes. Talked to like, I don't mean kicking you around it that way, although they did their share of that too. You could be kicked. And Memphis was no haven, because from the time I was four, I spent more time in Memphis and very much less time at my hometown Moscow. And of course, you got a little [indistinct 00:37:09] of about Fayette County, so you know they still same cops now to a great deal. And gradually, so many of the persons, it's something strange that some of the Jim Crowishness was left out when you were working for extremely rich people, because if they say, "You better not do that." Then you better not do that. If they tell the police, "Don't you touch so-and-so." You touch so and so, you paid for it, 'cause they would be right there to see you. And see, this made it sometimes easier. | 36:38 |
Lovie Griffin | My father had a nickname, they called him Tit and a couple of the officers that came and arrested him out the yard and he could make a yard look like a picture. Flower beds and the grass. 'Cause he kept ours looking pretty like that. And they passed by him after that incident happened and they had to bring him back in. | 37:40 |
Lovie Griffin | He came and got him later, bring him back, and then they would just pass by, "Hey Tit." Call him by his nickname because they'd heard others calling him. "What's up, Tit?" And Daddy did say a couple times, "Go to hell." I said, "Daddy." He said, "Oh I forgot you were walking around here with me." He said, just picking after they are trying to make you do something that they can have an excuse to mess with you, because they know just figuratively speaking, if they did so, and anybody who say that the White men here didn't never say so, they're lying. Because when you were working for those rich ones, you had a whole lot more than you were able to get otherwise. I promise you I would not tell you no lie. | 38:03 |
Laurie Green | Okay. Now, did you yourself have, before the civil rights movement or [indistinct 00:38:58], did you yourself have experiences like that where you needed to stand up? You told me about one, about the walking down the street. | 38:54 |
Lovie Griffin | That happened periodically. And just going someplace where they felt like you weren't supposed to walk on certain streets, and we went down them anyway. Children can be rebellious sometimes. But it so happened that I didn't realize most of the time, those places were the areas where they were very rich. Where nobody was going to mess with you anyway. Because all of them had some of us working for them and they weren't bothered because they—Well, actually, the police were never fitted in with the rich man. That was just quite obvious all the time. | 39:07 |
Lovie Griffin | We would go to our little meetings and a lot of times they would stop us and some of our friends and things, they would want stand them up and they know they might take the stick and get your legs and not follow. Let me check if some of the young men to be with us. And I recall saying, "We didn't do anything. We were just walking along. As a matter of fact, we was going down Beale, we going to the Methodist hospital to go to work." The Methodist hospital was a 10 floor building, with one little oblong building. I worked on the 10th floor and I'd get off of work at St. Augustine, I mean out of school at St. Augustine, and I would walk up Walker Avenue from the school to Bellevue and walk home over to Union and go to work. | 39:50 |
Lovie Griffin | I served in the 10th floor kitchen where they fixed the food for the patients that evening, the last meal. That's where I worked and the other persons were able to leave a little bit earlier because they had some of us who were—Then we had someone who had had trained us for it. I used to be, when mother was babysitting, I was the, I guess you would call it the person who was accompanied to the child because the persons were so nice, they were all like that. And I would be there with their children, and if their mama was going to be there, they said, "Bring Levy." Mama said, "Well, [indistinct 00:41:25] come anyway." | 40:39 |
Lovie Griffin | It's kind of cute to think about it now because Levy was hers, and she was not going to love it. And she was going to take a chance on her being at home by herself. And they were so sweet. Things that I didn't have and learning material that I wanted, every so often, I got a lot of stuff because they helped me with it. And I appreciate it still as of today that they would be getting lessons and we all got lessons together because they would be going over theirs with me and showing me in the—And I guess I was a person who always wanted to know and wanted to learn. I went at that in a big way. | 41:27 |
Lovie Griffin | I went to San Francisco and did that during the summer months with my uncle, visiting my uncle and aunt. I would go to school like that some. I was always trying to learn a little bit. And I still do. I just stopped since I've had a lot of illness. I still, have just stopped going to school, because I was finishing college along with my children. They were at universities and colleges and I was going too, to different ones. I was taking night classes in order to be able to properly work with them and do. English was something that I loved, because I didn't like slang and I didn't like the other kinds of slang. And I preferred proper English and no [indistinct 00:43:04] and stuff like that. No. | 42:14 |
Laurie Green | They had to [indistinct 00:43:08] my husband that— | 43:07 |
Laurie Green | Now, you were saying that the guys that you would be walking down the street with on occasion would get held up by the police? | 43:07 |
Lovie Griffin | They stopped them, they'd run. All us were walking along there talking and they would stop them. And the terminology was nigger. | 43:16 |
Laurie Green | I read something about in the late '40s that there was a lot of Black community protest against police harassment like that. | 43:27 |
Lovie Griffin | Right. | 43:35 |
Laurie Green | Do you recall that? | 43:36 |
Lovie Griffin | Yes, I do. | 43:37 |
Laurie Green | Can you tell me about that? Because you're the first person that I've talked with that's been able to bring up this subject. | 43:38 |
Lovie Griffin | But this is part of it. They meddle you. They would come and mess with you in order for you to say something, and this was their excuse, for sweetheart, they didn't mind hitting a person if those sticks was on their side when they get out of those cars. And come across in front of you and start harassing you, knowing that you might say something and this is what they was expecting. This gave them an excuse to hit you. | 43:42 |
Laurie Green | Was that to both young men and young women? | 44:11 |
Lovie Griffin | There were some young women who got hit because they would start something, and I guess we were determined to say, "This is my brother. This is my cousin. We not doing anything." "I didn't ask you a so-and-so thing. I told you to get your—Down the street." I said, "No, we all together. We have to go home together." "You don't tell me what you have to do." I say, "Officer, I just told you we have to go together because we're on our way to work." And I said, "Those people we work for," I said, "Mrs. Smithwicks would be looking for us because they are helping us." That made a difference too. Names was something else. And Mrs. Reed out on Poplar, it used to be all extremely between us and all that area too out there by [indistinct 00:45:07] and all that. | 44:14 |
Lovie Griffin | Now the person's moving out further and there was such sections of extremely rich called Red Acre, and you had to have so many, many, many thousands. You could not build a house in that area because you couldn't buy one no matter how much you got if you didn't fit. It no matter about your color. Then naturally it wasn't for us, it was them. They couldn't fit in with them either. | 45:06 |
Laurie Green | Were there any organized community protests about how the police were treating people? | 45:32 |
Lovie Griffin | That's right. They would meet and then they turned it in and the pastors, the church people would get together, our churches, and then they would go and report it. They said, "Well, we going to take care of this and this is not going to happen again." And maybe for a short while, things got better. But for sure, by the time they thought everybody had forgotten about it. ,And then there was some, they were what they call rednecks because they had an attitude no matter what. They were going to tell you even if it meant. And they did get hit back sometimes, even if they might have hit you with that night stick, that a whole lot about people hit back. Because they said, "I'm tired of being kicked. I'm tired of being pushed." | 45:39 |
Laurie Green | Were you part of any of these community meetings? | 46:28 |
Lovie Griffin | Uh-huh. | 46:30 |
Laurie Green | Did you go to them? | 46:31 |
Lovie Griffin | Yes, I did. I was a curious person, because I didn't appreciate—I always appreciated distinction. God's made us all from one mold. For the lady, and one for the men. And then he made children to come back. And that's what I was always taught, even by my grandmother. And she was a part of the— | 46:32 |
Lovie Griffin | —to Black Mollyglospas but, family, they call it Mollyglospa. | 0:02 |
Laurie Green | Can you spell that? | 0:06 |
Lovie Griffin | You know what— | 0:06 |
Laurie Green | Molly—? | 0:08 |
Lovie Griffin | I made up my spelling, because they never could get it, anybody who told me. | 0:09 |
Laurie Green | Okay. | 0:13 |
Lovie Griffin | That was the way they pronounced it. | 0:13 |
Laurie Green | Well, I'll do that too— | 0:14 |
Lovie Griffin | Mm-hmm. | 0:17 |
Laurie Green | —I'll make it up. | 0:17 |
Lovie Griffin | And Indian persons would never agree, even though they [indistinct 00:00:25] too, in areas. But this was just a—I guess, a tribe, that maybe these people just sort of gradually died out. And then the Mohawks and all of that, you can hear about it, but that was when I learned something, as I grew up, about the Black Mollyglospas. They had beautiful hair, and they were dark, and their skin was so smooth, like if you touch it, you might scratch it, or something. | 0:20 |
Laurie Green | Was your mother a full-blooded Indian, or was she—? | 0:52 |
Lovie Griffin | No, she was mixed to [indistinct 00:00:59], but part of it come from her parents, where they had gotten mixed, and she had that blood in her, not because that she was a full-blooded, it was—the mixing came in— | 0:56 |
Laurie Green | A couple of generations ago. | 1:11 |
Lovie Griffin | Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. | 1:12 |
Laurie Green | Now, do you remember, you were saying that you had been to some of these meetings. This probably was the forties. | 1:12 |
Lovie Griffin | Yes. | 1:22 |
Laurie Green | If you went to a meeting, do you remember where the meeting was? | 1:22 |
Lovie Griffin | Most of the time, at churches. | 1:25 |
Laurie Green | Which churches did you attend, [indistinct 00:01:33]? | 1:29 |
Lovie Griffin | A lot of times, the East Trig Avenue Baptist Church. | 1:33 |
Laurie Green | Oh, which one? | 1:37 |
Lovie Griffin | East Trig Avenue Baptist Church, they would have them there. And then sometimes we would have it at Greenwood CME Church, that was on Bellevue. Reverend Grafton was the pastor there, and Reverend Brewster was the pastor at the East Trig. And Reverend Brewster came from [indistinct 00:01:58], that's where his home was. | 1:38 |
Laurie Green | Who was the pastor at Greenwood? | 1:59 |
Lovie Griffin | Reverend Grafton. | 2:02 |
Laurie Green | Grafton. | 2:02 |
Lovie Griffin | Mm-hmm. And of course, naturally, both of those persons are deceased. Mm-hmm. | 2:04 |
Laurie Green | Okay. | 2:06 |
Lovie Griffin | And they would just say, we're going to get together, and we have a meeting. The meetings, a lot of times, somehow, somebody, they always managed to find out about it, a lot of them. And they'd come in. But they got so [indistinct 00:02:23] so quick to be kicking and knocking, and all that. It wasn't as easy for them as it had been, previously. And yes, that was in early in the forties, [indistinct 00:02:36] a little bit. Things aren't so hard now, but it was a long time before they got better. The forties held a lot of hurt, a lot of heartache, a lot of tears. It wasn't easy. | 2:09 |
Laurie Green | You mentioned before, because I keep going back— | 2:54 |
Lovie Griffin | It's all right. You're not bothering me. | 2:57 |
Laurie Green | —because you're telling such interesting stories. When you started talking about the Civil Rights Movement before, you were saying that sometimes you had to stand together to get the story straight. And I was wondering if you could give an example about something that you were involved with when you guys stick together— | 3:00 |
Lovie Griffin | The three of us—where even if you were walking on the street sometimes, to even walk, you had to stand together. And yes, I had gone to meetings where they would call for the meeting, and then we'd have to stand there and take the abuse. But sometimes, they knew they couldn't hit us, but the abuse, tongue lashings, could hurt. And they figured, if I get you angry enough, and you fight back, I've got all I need to kill you. This is— | 3:18 |
Laurie Green | Can you give an example of one time [indistinct 00:03:50]? | 3:45 |
Lovie Griffin | Mm-hmm. In about '45, something like that. I think I was 16, and they had a meeting. And they had been coming around, they would be kind of [indistinct 00:04:06], periodically. And they would tell us that we might have to break it up. That, I'm not going to have you all getting together, because it's been causing confusion. Although, you're not doing anything, but they were saying that you were causing confusion— | 3:53 |
Laurie Green | So, you were outside with your friends? | 4:22 |
Lovie Griffin | And there's other times, we would be outside, and they'd say, break it up. Too many of you standing around together is up to no good, with too many of you standing together. | 4:25 |
Lovie Griffin | And of course [indistinct 00:04:36] I was in Catholic school then at that time, still. [indistinct 00:04:41]. And I took music, and everything [indistinct 00:04:46], and she was determined to make you understand distinct English. She was a German. And there were several of them, Germans, and they taught hard, and hopefully that you would maintain what they gave you. And no slang language. | 4:34 |
Lovie Griffin | Rules, and that, everything had to be distinct, and I—not [indistinct 00:05:11], you know? Now, take your time and make your sentence. Even though we know better, just practice makes a little more perfection. And yeah, they would have the meeting, and sometimes we would be standing around, and they would be ready to show up and be ready to really get after us. And you— | 5:00 |
Laurie Green | Hold on just one minute. Okay. Let's see—a lot of this, you've been talking about these various meetings in the 1940s, which— | 5:39 |
Lovie Griffin | They were constant. It kind of matched, it was probably the stories you heard, where they said people would pass the word along, are you going to come to the meeting? | 5:49 |
Laurie Green | Oh. | 5:58 |
Lovie Griffin | Only it was not quite as bad, because at this time, it was almost like, every time, and they were passing it along- | 6:05 |
Laurie Green | Right. [indistinct 00:06:11]—you were saying that people were passing along the word to go to the meeting? | 6:11 |
Lovie Griffin | I'd say it wasn't—yeah, I can remember them telling me about that. My grandparents talking about when they'd get together for these meetings, and there was something else that you might not have heard, but that you can think about. Many times, the persons who [indistinct 00:06:31] the sharecroppers on these large farms, didn't nobody mess with those persons, they were sharecropping, they give so much out of what they raised to the person who owns the land. | 6:15 |
Laurie Green | Right. | 6:44 |
Lovie Griffin | And they were not really messed with, either. Not if they found it out, because for them to have huge quantities of land, they had to be pretty rich. And most of the time, they were not as nasty. And see, I was going out— | 6:45 |
Speaker 3 | [indistinct 00:07:01] to the office. | 7:00 |
Lovie Griffin | —in the sixties, as things began to change over, it still wasn't a massive change, but it gave people more thoughts, and people began to stand up for themselves a lot more and not be afraid. You'd say, going to have a meeting, and we'd try and get an understanding of where we could be normal, and not like slaves. You say we're supposed to have freedom of speech, but yet if we tried to speak out, then we are put back, as you say, put back in our place. What is our place, or something like that? And people weren't quite as bad. | 7:05 |
Lovie Griffin | But there are those who just, excuse the expression, redneck now, as they were back then. But you don't have to deal with them, because they've got too many persons above them that are Black like me, who are captains, and what have you. So, it does make it, to some extent, easier, a whole lot easier, to have someone to stick up for you. When you've got to do everything for yourself, it's different. | 7:44 |
Lovie Griffin | They said it was like that for my husband and his family in Arkansas. But there's things, like my in-laws had an extreme amount of land in Arkansas. And one of my sister-in-laws, every time that she went up and had a child, they bought a acre of land for the child to build his home on. And they had about 10 of them. | 8:15 |
Lovie Griffin | And part of the county looked like, because you know, partially [indistinct 00:08:41] because they would build it near the town, and my in-laws were—my father-in-law sold mink skins [indistinct 00:08:54] he trapped mink and sold them to them. And they would get them from him. And he caught the first 100 pound fish I ever knew anything about, my father-in-law caught him. And then, you talk about something looking big and nasty. You can just imagine, fish weighing 100 pounds, serious-looking something. I don't know, the major things [indistinct 00:09:23], just trying to get some major things across, as I recall, although I can recall a lot of other stuff. I know that you can't get everything, but— | 8:36 |
Laurie Green | Yeah. | 9:33 |
Lovie Griffin | And I still see, yesterday, sometimes I see yesterday around here. Not here in this building, but I mean, per se. | 9:33 |
Laurie Green | Right, right. | 9:45 |
Lovie Griffin | You see yesterday, look like it's trying hard to creep back into now. The attitudes of persons. And you wonder about that. Because I feel like everybody should respect every human being. I never seen any different. [indistinct 00:10:06] a person is a human being. | 9:45 |
Laurie Green | Mm-hmm. | 10:08 |
Lovie Griffin | Race, creed or color has nothing to do with it. In that, I always remember that—But I did learn some things, keep my mouth shut a little bit. But, if you going to call me out my name then, I'm [indistinct 00:10:28] you're not talking to me. [indistinct 00:10:32] my name, you know. It's just that easy. [indistinct 00:10:37] name. I said, Margaret is my first name. I said, you know what [indistinct 00:10:47]. I said, because that's your name. [indistinct 00:10:55] and I was Margaret. [indistinct 00:10:55] one of my aunt's was redhead. Sandy redhead with gray-green eyes. We was Brown folks, but you know one thing, we had—like a [indistinct 00:11:17] most all Black people are—we have different complexion. | 10:09 |
Lovie Griffin | And sometimes you find yourself saying, if I hadn't been Black, what would I have been? Because I think I like being what God made me. Because [indistinct 00:11:38] a decent human, to have feeling, normal feeling for someone else. And a few of us who might not is not worth losing the time to worry about it, it's better to just be grateful, and let it go one day at a time. I tell them, often times, things are extremely hard and I find myself saying [indistinct 00:12:02] religious song, but I keep that part for prayer, one sentence: one day at a time, sweet Jesus. That's all that I ask, teach me to pray, show me the way. One day at a time. | 11:24 |
Lovie Griffin | And I [indistinct 00:12:24] if I was going to make it through or not, because I always remember one day at a time. Every once in a while [indistinct 00:12:33] like that. I'm grateful for that and my grandmother because she never let you forget, you did nothing on your own. You did what you were blessed to do, by the mercies of God. [indistinct 00:12:48] because we had the—if you want to look at it that way, because we didn't get up by ourselves. From little fellas on up, someone helped us to grow up, someone trained us. Someone gave us, someone offered you things, someone gave you a job. So, we got to look at it another way, you're still blessed. And everyday is a beautiful day. Even though sometimes you might go home and cry. Like I said, [indistinct 00:13:20] but I never thought [indistinct 00:13:23] that I'd ever be able to go into the Methodist hospital. | 12:23 |
Laurie Green | When did you work at the [indistinct 00:13:29]? | 13:27 |
Lovie Griffin | When I was in high school. I was in 10th grade when I started. They had just one building. They did. | 13:30 |
Speaker 4 | [indistinct 00:13:43] my grandchildren. | 13:42 |
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