Marion Jamison, Jr. (primary interviewee) and Annie Jamison interview recording, 1994 July 13
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Charles Houston | That should be—It should be working now. It's turned up to maximum sensitivity. Maybe we could just start by having each of you state your name and your birthdate, please. | 0:03 |
Annie Adams Jamison | All right. I'm Annie Adams Jamison. My birthdate is November the 23rd, 1933. | 0:28 |
Charles Houston | Okay. Mr. Jamison? | 0:37 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Marion Jamison. My birthdate is March 13th, 1934. | 0:41 |
Charles Houston | Okay. Could you begin perhaps by talking about your grandparents? I know that both of your families came to own land in the area. | 0:47 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes. Well, I guess I'm a little unfortunate in that most of what I know about my grandparents came through my parents. I only remember one grandparent slightly and that's the father of my mother, Dr. Sims, Senior. He was reared by some old White owners that lived in the area of Gadsden and I, they took him and he worked on their place as a young worker. During this time, they would pay him a little money and also provide for his needs. | 1:06 |
Annie Adams Jamison | What he did was unusual was that whatever they paid him, he kept it and made himself survive on what they were doing for him, otherwise. He would take his little money and save it until when he was able to leave their place, he had enough money to go out and purchase land of his own and that's how he got his beginning. He married Betty Campbell. She became Betty Campbell Sims. And they're the parents of my mother, Dorcas Sims. And my mother married Frank Adams Sr. | 2:06 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 2:43 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Now, my father— | 2:44 |
Charles Houston | I'm sorry. | 2:46 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Okay. | 2:47 |
Charles Houston | How does she spell her name? | 2:48 |
Annie Adams Jamison | D-O-R-C-A-S. | 2:49 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 2:53 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Dorcas Sims Adams. Now my father's father was John Adams Sr. My grandmother was Millie Brown Adams and they had quite a few children in their early marriage. Unfortunately, my grandmother, Millie died very early. My father, Frank Adams was the oldest child and because of losing his mother, he became almost like a mother to his other siblings. He had very little chance of getting an education. We could say maybe that he might have gone through what will equal the first grade. At that time, they said school was only about three months out of the year because most of the other part of the year was spent on the farm. And I came from a farming area. | 2:53 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I know when he stopped to take care of his siblings, he was like a mother to the other brothers and sisters. Of course he was to care for the brothers and there were six brothers in that first marriage and two sisters. The two sisters losing their mother and they were the younger children, they lost them. So he never was able to see a sister grown. But at this stage, he is what records we can find. He's supposed to be 102 years old. Out of those siblings, he lived to see all of them grown and became, to me, very prosperous. But they all are deceased now. He's the only one living. My grandfather married again, had another son, which would be seven sons. And that son is deceased. | 3:57 |
Annie Adams Jamison | My dad and mom had 11 children. But I usually count eight because they lost three of them when they were very young. I never got to know them because I'm the 10th child. The ones they lost, the oldest of the ones that they lost at that time was just three years old, therefore I never got to know them. The eight of us were very fortunate in that our parents worked very hard as farmers. My mother worked side by side with my father on the farm. But she mostly kept housing, kept her children. And to know that they struggled as hard and wanted their children to have the best and they said the best would be they wanted to educate them. Out of the eight children that they saw into adulthood, five of us finished South Carolina State and five of us got our master's degree from South Carolina State College. | 5:02 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The other three finished high school, one sister went two years into college. I think with people, beginning as they did, I thought they did real well with their children in those days. But we were fortunate to be able to always say that our father and mother owned their own land and their own home. We came from a very rural area. I remember in my early life we walked to what was Gadsden Elementary School. That was about two miles from my home. This was maybe like a six room school. But it had, from the first through the 10th grade. In most classrooms you had at least two grades. We would go to that school early in the morning and it was responsibility. We really wanted to help get the fire started in the morning and just get the room clean and the desk straight. | 6:09 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And then from then, we had real teaching. We came from a community where the children knew that everyone in the community would be extended families because they were to respect them. If they didn't, you didn't want this to get back to your parents because they were the ones that you were supposed to obey, just like your parents. We came from that type of close community. The same thing happened in the schoolhouse. You didn't ever want to get back home that you disobeyed a teacher or you didn't do what a teacher said. This is the way we went to school and learned. To think of my father as a person who didn't have any formal education, he always sent us to school and would say that I'm sending you to school to pass. | 7:08 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And what he knew about that was that it was an A or B, he never went past that. So it meant to us to do your best, to do your best. He wanted us to have as much as we could in the field of education. From there, I finished the seventh grade in the Gadsden area and I went to Booker T. Washington High School in Columbia. | 7:59 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Graduated from Booker Washington. I came to South Carolina State College. And you would think that I met my husband at State, but I didn't. He was there and he was a class ahead of me, but I did not really meet him at State. But after I graduated from state, my first job was right here in Orangeburg School District 5, and he was in ROTC and he'd gone on to do his term in the service. And when he came back from the service, he worked in Walterboro for a year or two. And then he came here to work. And that's when I met him. We were teaching at the same school. | 8:29 |
Charles Houston | He was teaching high school? | 9:15 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Nuh-uh, Middle School. | 9:18 |
Charles Houston | Middle school. | 9:18 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Uh-huh. Sharperson Junior High School. | 9:18 |
Charles Houston | Now you left Gadsden in the seventh grade, but you could have stayed on and gone to school there. Yet your family's— | 9:25 |
Annie Adams Jamison | What happened was that at the time they were changing the schools around where you would have from maybe from the first through the seventh grade at Gadsden School. When I first started at Gadsden, it went through all of the grades. Then they started putting part of the grades at Gadsden, another part of the grades at Hopkins and they were moving them up. So knowing Booker Washington, Booker Washington being the popular school in Columbia, that's where our parents sent us from Gadsden to Booker Washington. | 9:33 |
Charles Houston | But you could have gone to Hopkins, which was also in Columbia? | 10:08 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No, Hopkins is about seven miles from me, but it's still about 11 miles from Columbia. | 10:10 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 10:19 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But it was convenient for us to go there. One or two sisters stayed with cousins in Columbia, but I had a brother at that time working in Columbia. So I went every day with him and came back. | 10:20 |
Charles Houston | So you didn't live in Columbia either? | 10:31 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No, I didn't, but the older sisters did. Older sisters and brothers. I was one of the four siblings ones that didn't stay. I had that same cousin, if it was a conflict or a program at school, I could spend the night with that cousin. But since my brother was working there daily, I could go with him and come back. | 10:32 |
Charles Houston | How far was it from Gadsden to— | 10:50 |
Annie Adams Jamison | It's about 19 miles from Gadsden to Booker T. Washington. | 10:51 |
Charles Houston | So did you drive the distance, I guess? | 10:56 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes. I went with my brother. | 10:58 |
Charles Houston | Okay. When you were growing up in Gadsden, your parents owned their own farm? | 11:02 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes they did. | 11:07 |
Charles Houston | How big a farm was it, do you recall? | 11:08 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well, I would say from the time I knew the farm, he had about 125 acres. Because he had three pieces, three main pieces of property. | 11:10 |
Charles Houston | This was land that he inherited from— | 11:26 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well, from my mother's father, gave each of the children. He divided his land among them. | 11:29 |
Charles Houston | Okay. And he had— | 11:37 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That's what he started off, with just the land my mother, father had left for his children. | 11:39 |
Charles Houston | And then he expanded that? | 11:45 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes, he did. He expanded that— | 11:46 |
Charles Houston | It's 125 acres. | 11:48 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No. It's close to 200 acres now. Because I was about to say, after I got up a size, he acquired some more. | 11:49 |
Charles Houston | Do you know how much he inherited? | 11:57 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The piece at—Where [indistinct 00:12:05] is about 41 acres and it's 36 at the house and a Pine Bluff that's about 21. 40, 50, 60, 70, 80. About 90. | 12:02 |
Charles Houston | About 90 acres. | 12:17 |
Annie Adams Jamison | On about 90 acres. | 12:23 |
Charles Houston | Okay. Were there other Black landowners in the community were you— | 12:25 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Believe it or not, in communities like that, a lot of the people are related. Most of them came from parents or close relatives of the grandparents. They did the same thing for their children, left the property to them. | 12:29 |
Charles Houston | So there were lots of Black landowners? | 12:49 |
Annie Adams Jamison | There was a lot of Black land owners in the area. | 12:50 |
Charles Houston | And many of them related to you? | 12:53 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Many of them related to me. We are still in the area where the cousins living around. One of the plot of land that he acquired belonged to Mr. Mike Arad, who was at that time like the magistrate for Gadsden. And he was White, but I guess my daddy working there and doing farming with his gin house and everything, when he got ready to sell it, he sold it to my father. | 12:55 |
Annie Adams Jamison | We have seen a lot of people who lived on White people property when I was young, acquired property of their own. So in that neighborhood now, mostly we have just Blacks in one area. They are only land owners now. Most of the land that they're living on now, once they would live on quite a few spots of land that belong to Whites. But through the years, they've been able to acquire some of the land for themselves. A lot more people have become landowners. | 13:35 |
Charles Houston | Okay. My understanding is that it was generally difficult for Blacks to acquire land. | 14:13 |
Annie Adams Jamison | It wasn't. | 14:23 |
Charles Houston | But it sounds as though a number of Black people, even from the time you were born, let's say in the 1940s were acquiring land? | 14:25 |
Annie Adams Jamison | They were acquiring land. It seems that the old, old White people, I don't know if you would call it plantation, but they had a lot of land there. They must have died out and they had small families because you didn't have a lot of their children passing down. The land passed down to them. I assume this might have been one of the reasons why it was sold to Blacks. | 14:35 |
Charles Houston | Rather than their operating plantations with your— | 15:01 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well, I guess I shouldn't say plantation. But at that time, they would do all of their farming through these White people that had the area. They would buy their fertilizer and they would let them have that on time. And then when they make their cotton, they would owe them so much. At this time with little education, you know and I know that a lot of people taken advantage of because they couldn't figure out themselves really how much they would owe them for what they had acquired for them in order to have the farm, see. | 15:06 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But the main person there had the kind of business where they would get everything for their plows, or you could say the equipment and then all of the fertilizer so that all the stuff that re-fertilized the soil and everything, they got it from the same person or the same business. And then at the end of the year, they wouldn't acquire very much from their farming because they would owe it all back to them. We can say way back there, you could see yourself that it was much fair dealing with them, but they couldn't understand it because of the lack of education. | 15:39 |
Charles Houston | Yeah. Sharecroppers frequently got taken advantage of. | 16:17 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes. They got taken advantage of. | 16:23 |
Charles Houston | Yeah. I understand that you came, Mr. Jamison, from the same background, that is from a family of landowning Black farmers. | 16:24 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yes. My grandfather didn't know his parents from what I can understand. He knew his mother but he didn't know his father. But he was very ingenious in business. I don't know how much formal training he had, but he could read and write. I'm sure he had some formal training. Starting with just a meager amount of money, he developed quite a sizable business in Orangeburg. His business was, dealt primarily with helping Black farmers by purchasing seed and equipment that they would need on the farm and allowing them to have it until they made their crops and they were able to repay him for it. My grandfather's name was Henry Jamison. | 16:37 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | My grandmother who married him was Cornelia Mora Jamison. And she knew her father quite well. She cared for him until he died. He was a former slave owner and never married and had children for many of the women that were on his plantation. His plantation is about 12 miles from outside of Orangeburg, between, I think it's in Calhoun County or part of the land is in both counties. | 18:02 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | When he passed or at his passing, well before he passed, he gave his children land which was unusual. He sent his girls to school. A lot of would send their boys to school but not educate their girls. But my grandmother went to Claflin. She was born in 1865. Claflin opened in 1869. As a young girl, she attended Claflin and was well-educated. My mother's parents, I don't know their grandparents, but they were Willie and Mary Jane Glover. And my mother was Blumah, B-L-U-M-A-H, Lee Glover. And she was born and reared in the Orangeburg County area. My father was Marion Jamison Sr. | 19:08 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | As a very young child, I was surrounded by chickens because my father did poultry farming. One of the few men who started in the area of poultry farming and he raised poultry for eggs and sold eggs to both colleges, Claflin and State. | 20:30 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | When I became lad of 11, he decided to go into the grocery business and that's where I got my business background. I went to work with him and grew up in the grocery business from that age, I attended South Carolina State College, received a degree in education, a science education. Received a commission in the US Army. Served in Korea and returned and taught for several years. Went back to the School of Pharmacy, Xavier University of New Orleans and completed my pharmacy training. From 1966 or '67 until now, I've been practicing a professional pharmacy. | 21:05 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The same building [indistinct 00:22:37]. | 22:35 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | (laughs) Oh, yeah. Oh, she's saying it's the same building where I worked. I've been in that store since I was 11 years old because this is the same building. | 22:36 |
Charles Houston | Oh, that was your father's store? | 22:45 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | That was my father's store. | 22:46 |
Charles Houston | Okay. When you grew up in this area, this was originally farming country. This is now the— | 22:53 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, this is always farming areas. | 22:58 |
Charles Houston | Although you're over the city line, this is now really part of Orangeburg. It's part of the City of Orangeburg. | 23:01 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Right. They considered it part of the City of Orangeburg. Even though we are in the county. | 23:06 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 23:12 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah. | 23:12 |
Charles Houston | Were there other Black landowners as there were in Gadsden? | 23:15 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yes. In fact, in this area, all were Black land owners. I only knew four rental places in the whole community. All the others owned their own property. | 23:19 |
Charles Houston | That seems very unusual. | 23:37 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It is very unusual. We often talk of it with extreme pride about how proud the community was because they were all landowners and they all shared. And particularly butchering time, the neighbors would come and all would share the work and share the meat. It was common to a sharing type of community. Like my wife said, they would share discipline with the children. Everybody knew everybody's child in the community. If someone saw you doing something that wasn't quite what they expected of you, you would hear about it and then you would pray that it would stay right there. | 23:39 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But I think that's a big factor that's lost today. They would whip you if necessary. If they thought it was warranted, they would give you a good whipping. But usually, all they had to do was say, "Boy, I see you. Mind now what you're doing." And all that, that was it. | 24:34 |
Charles Houston | The farmland then that your daddy, your father operated was land that came into your family through your mother? | 25:04 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No. | 25:16 |
Charles Houston | Through your mother's— | 25:17 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Through my grandmother. | 25:18 |
Charles Houston | Your grandmother. Excuse me. | 25:19 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | My grandmother and my grandfather because my grandmother's father gave them land. And then my grandfather expanded on that land. | 25:20 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 25:31 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Same thing happened to us— | 25:34 |
Charles Houston | Same thing. The same pattern with you, I guess. | 25:35 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Same thing. | 25:36 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Same pattern. | 25:36 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Same pattern. Right. | 25:36 |
Charles Houston | Right. Now, were these land acquisitions, do you think, about, the same time? Because we're talking about similar generations. Both your grandparents were the acquirers of—Well— | 25:37 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well, I believe should Marion's Grandma Neally might have come along a little behind Papa, you think? | 25:53 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, I think so. Yes. It may have. | 26:01 |
Annie Adams Jamison | My grandfather, Dr. Sims, might have been a 20-year ahead of his grandmother. Keneally Moore Jamison. Thinking about the age, what the age would be right now. | 26:04 |
Charles Houston | Okay. So your grandfather was 20 years older. That would've been 20 years— | 26:22 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Than his grandmother. She came from a plantation. Her father was White. | 26:24 |
Charles Houston | Yes. Right. | 26:29 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well see, my grandfather probably didn't know. The unusual thing about it, I don't think he really knew his mother and father's mother and father. But he knew all of his brothers and they were different places. You see, he happened to have been with this White family when they took care of him. But he never lost sight of who his brothers and sisters were. He knew all of them, but he was able to purchase some land himself when he left them. But see, hers was inherited because her White father saw that his children and I understand from Marion that all of the children he had were Black children by Black women. | 26:30 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | He never married. | 27:11 |
Annie Adams Jamison | He never married and he never had any children, that they knew, by White women. So that's how he left what he owned to his Black children. But Marion didn't mention that they took most of it from him as far as money was concerned. | 27:12 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | He had family brothers. Particularly a brother and— | 27:29 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Some of those people left out. | 27:33 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Well, he willed a certain amount to his Black children. But the will was changed and they never got the portion. | 27:37 |
Charles Houston | Oh, I see. | 27:47 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The finance, yes. | 27:47 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They never got the portion of money or land that they were supposed to get. | 27:48 |
Charles Houston | But your grandmother did? | 27:51 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No. | 27:53 |
Annie Adams Jamison | She got some of it. | 27:53 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They gave her a—Well, the land that he gave her when she started out, she got that. But after he died. | 27:56 |
Charles Houston | I see. He willed her land, but she never got it. | 28:04 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Land and money and she never got. Well, I guess you can understand from what I was told, she was willed something like $5,000 back. Way back. | 28:08 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Which was money. | 28:25 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Which was a million dollars now. I think they gave her $500. I don't know how they did the land, but one of the lawyers that bothered him so until he told it before he died and another just lost his mind. | 28:26 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Marion's oldest uncle always tell us about it. Said some terrible thing happened to all of them that got together and did that transaction. It seemed like something terrible happened to all of them. Then one told what they had done, see, before he died. | 28:46 |
Charles Houston | So you actually had contact with this side of the family? Sorry, these were the uncles of your grandmother. | 29:00 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Uncles of his daddy. His daddy. His daddy's oldest brother was the one who—See, his daddy was the baby of Ms. Keneally Jamison. But the oldest boy was Theodore. | 29:09 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Knew his grandma. | 29:18 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Knew his grand—Knew those White folks. Yeah, he knew those White folks. | 29:19 |
Charles Houston | Okay. He knew what had happened. It was he who told you. | 29:23 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Right. Okay. | 29:26 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But he was the one that in, I don't know if it was in the conversation or one of the Whites that did the transaction somehow came to him that this fella either told him or told it in his presence what they did with that land when Old Man Moore died and left it to his Black children. Okay. | 29:29 |
Charles Houston | There was nothing really. There was no lawsuit to be filed. (Annie laughs) [Crosstalk 00:29:52]. | 29:47 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Oh, no. You couldn't do anything. No.You were lucky they gave you what they gave you. | 29:52 |
Annie Adams Jamison | You couldn't start anything with them because they were the officials. Then I think at the time this one told it, most of them that they probably could have done something with. They were already deceased. | 29:58 |
Charles Houston | Well, the only way your grandmother acquired land was by the direct gift that her father made to her of land while he was still living. | 30:12 |
Annie Adams Jamison | While he was still living. That's right. | 30:19 |
Charles Houston | But that land that he tried to devise to her, he was unable to give to her because his relatives defeated his will. | 30:20 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Right. Defeated. That's it. | 30:26 |
Annie Adams Jamison | By having contact with the town officials. Yes. | 30:26 |
Charles Houston | Yet in this area, virtually all of the Blacks except for families that you knew were landowners. In your area there were many, many, many landowners. So it would be interesting, if you know, to recount how was your grandfather was able to save enough money to buy—Well not just save enough money to buy land, but how he was then able to get somebody to sell— | 30:30 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Transact to get it. Yes. I really probably need to try to find out who were the Whites and what area they were living in right there in Gadsden. Because he could have, I guess, purchased it from them. I don't know. See, I don't know. This part, I don't know. | 31:01 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But what happened in many instances like that the White, particularly White slave owners kid for their Black children. | 31:17 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes, they did. | 31:30 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Now, I have a first cousin who comes from Elloree, which is 20 miles south of here. He comes from a clan called Williams. Their last name is Williams. And his grandfather accumulated land in a similar manner. We talking about a lot of land now. Well, let me finish this first. But he was the slave master owner realized his intelligence. | 31:33 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Same thing with my granddad. | 32:21 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | The slave master had a child by a Black woman that he considered his daughter. He knew it was his daughter and he arranged for this young Black boy that was smart to marry her. And gave them so much land and I think this is where Blacks got a lot of land. | 32:27 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I asked why I told you about my grandfather, that it seems that they must not have had children of their own because I understand that they respected him as being a very thrifty or smart young man to be able to save this money. I don't think they took out anything evil against him for what he had done. I think they respected him for that. That's why I said I don't know if they were able to purchase the land, he was able to purchase the land from them or from whom. But I understand there was no ill-feeling because he had done this for himself. | 32:52 |
Charles Houston | What the story you just related suggests that land passed into Black hands largely through a blood relationship with White. | 33:29 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Whites. That's right. | 33:40 |
Charles Houston | Is there any evidence, just based on observation, that landowning families were of mixed race background versus non-landowning families. For example, I think there were only four families— | 33:41 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Not owning land, he said— | 34:04 |
Charles Houston | Not owning land. Would you say that there was a difference in terms of the— | 34:05 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No, because these people in this community owned small pieces of land. Something like maybe five, 10 acres. That land, I think, was purchased land because— | 34:08 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But the Fredericks had to buy some of theirs. They didn't have that much of them. Just about 10 acres. | 34:25 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah. Okay. And of course they had—And people who, like the Fredericks, Mr. Fredericks, worked on Claflin. He made a salary and he was able to— | 34:34 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Purchase land. | 34:44 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Through the sacrificial methods that they practiced, they could buy land. He worked on the campus and he had five sons and which means that they could work a small farm and he could still do his work at the school and they could do the farming. That's how many of the families worked. Many of the fathers were journeyman tradespeople and most of them had large families. Those families, when he was gone on his trees, the family kept the farm going. | 34:45 |
Charles Houston | The families who were able to buy land were perhaps able to buy it because the heads of the households were journeymen who were able to earn salaries from the colleges. | 35:39 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | From just—Not only colleges. Build any building that needed done. They were trained to build a building. | 35:52 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But Marion, weren't they trying to build building and doing this work for White folks even then? | 36:03 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Oh yeah. | 36:09 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That's what I'm saying. | 36:10 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Black people didn't have any— | 36:10 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Most of what they accumulated really came, like he said, from their relationship with Whites. That's what he said. | 36:12 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But now— | 36:18 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But not just like you say inheriting by giving it to them. Mm-mm. | 36:20 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No. They worked for it. Because all of your trained people, builders were Black people. They were trained so they could earn their keep and see the family that was on a small farm, the farm maintained them. | 36:23 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes, I understand that. | 36:46 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | The money that he made was money to extend that farm, to buy more land. That's how they were able to do it. | 36:47 |
Charles Houston | Okay. You said most of these farms in this area were five to 10 acres. They would have been with large families. Would these have been farms where they were growing a surplus for market for sale in the marketplace? | 36:54 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Basically, they planted then corn, cotton. There was no soybean. | 37:10 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And big gardens. | 37:16 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And big gardens. And everybody raised chickens and hogs. | 37:18 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Watermelons and cantaloupes, tomatoes. | 37:22 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But it wasn't a marketable— | 37:25 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I know. But I'm saying everybody, that's how they could eat. | 37:27 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Cotton was the standard. And most of the migration to the north was as a result of the boll weevil that interrupted the cotton productivity. Those large families, the farm could no longer sustain them because it wasn't conducive enough. | 37:29 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Now, your grandmother had more land than that because the oldest area back here— | 37:45 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Oh, yeah. My grandmother had one. | 37:47 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Migrated to the north. They sold this area. See they sold a lot of the land. All that back there. | 37:52 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Much of the land, like I said, that Henry Jamison and Keneally Jamison owned, my grandfather bought to extend it like your grandfather. | 37:57 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah. | 38:09 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | He may have gotten some land due to forfeiture because like person would come and he gives them the seed and the horse and the wagon and what have you. And then at the end of the year they can't share anything or can't pay. | 38:13 |
Annie Adams Jamison | They'll be willing to give him their land. | 38:27 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They'd pocket land. I would assume that's a practice. | 38:30 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That was a practice. | 38:31 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | I would assume that some of his land may have come as a result of that. | 38:33 |
Charles Houston | Do you know how big his farm got to be? | 38:37 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Well, it wasn't in one piece. That's a problem. I know he had some land at what? Roseville is 10 miles down the road? | 38:39 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Mm-hmm. | 38:49 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | I don't know how much. He had land up at Jamison. I think he had some land up the north road. | 38:51 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well, see all of his children migrated to the North except Marion's father. | 38:58 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 39:04 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The baby boy was the only one who really stayed here on the home spot. | 39:04 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | During the Depression when he had a stroke and was ill. Well they had migrated before then because they didn't want to follow him. | 39:11 |
Charles Houston | When did they migrate? | 39:24 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Let's see. Now, the Depression was '29, '30. So it must have been maybe five or six years before then that they would've migrated. Because I knew that they came back when he died. That's how I can remember that. I can remember them coming home talking about the boys came home. | 39:27 |
Annie Adams Jamison | He must have died in the '30s. | 39:54 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | He died '31, I believe. He died— | 39:55 |
Annie Adams Jamison | You can't remember that because you weren't home. | 39:59 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No, I'm saying I remember them talking about it. | 40:00 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Okay, Okay. All right. | 40:00 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They came home to his funeral. | 40:04 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And we do have that picture of them. | 40:06 |
Charles Houston | That's right. | 40:09 |
Annie Adams Jamison | When they came back with their mother. | 40:10 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But I think Uncle Hazel might have been here because he had a marital problem and he came back home. But Uncle Jordan and Uncle Theodore and Uncle Mike were all gone. | 40:15 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Now, I'd like to tell Mr. Houston, I think there was another thing about the family during those times, not only did you belong to everyone in the community, but I think you were taught in the family. I know that how so many of us were able to get our education where one would help the next one after he got out. My baby sister, I helped her. Then the sister above me helped me. With Mama, no, still continuing. But it really helped them because they had so many children. But we were taught they to share and help one another. I think that was a beautiful part of teaching back in those days too. I think it made for an excellent closeness for family members. | 40:29 |
Charles Houston | In terms of migration, you suggested that the reason people migrated was that first of all, it was difficult to make a living farming. | 41:17 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Cost. | 41:26 |
Charles Houston | Particularly because of the Depression, which had I guess agriculture earlier than the Depression. The industrial— | 41:27 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | The boll weevil. Boll weevil. | 41:36 |
Charles Houston | But both your families as landowners would've had a real advantage over others. | 41:41 |
Annie Adams Jamison | You're right. You're right. | 41:51 |
Charles Houston | When they migrated, had they received more, your uncles received more education? | 41:56 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | I don't think any of them completed their education as was available at the time. | 42:07 |
Charles Houston | Okay. Which would've been what? | 42:17 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Okay. The oldest brother started school in 1896. That's when they started state. | 42:18 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah. But he was in the first—He was just too young. | 42:28 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | That's what I'm saying. That's when he started school. He probably went to something maybe like ninth grade, eighth and ninth grade, which meant then that you had a tremendous education. But that was not as far as the school went. He didn't complete school, but he was well-educated for that period of time. | 42:34 |
Annie Adams Jamison | My mother did the same. | 43:00 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Uncle George took the brick masonry trade. Now when the state college, during that period, and most of your Black schools, Tuskegee, were taught many trades. They had blacksmith, they had iron works, they had brick masonry, carpentry, plastering. | 43:02 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | One could be fairly well-trained in the area of trades and could make a decent living. I think most of them migrated to places where, particularly those who had acquired the trades like Rudy's daddy and Jim and went to certain areas like New York or the cities where building was going on and they could make money— | 43:42 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Find work. | 44:13 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They could make money continuously. Because in an area like this, where there was basically agricultural, there's not that much industrial type work going on or buildings. You get a building and then six months you're working and six months you're not working. So they went to areas where they could work continuously. Some of them took their families, some of them left their families at home. That's how they got their start. | 44:16 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Because Uncle George had a tremendous strain. | 44:45 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Mm-hmm. Yeah. He took what image? | 44:53 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Dennis. | 44:58 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Uh-huh. Horse— | 44:58 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Putting those horseshoe on those horses? | 45:01 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, but—No. Making the gear. | 45:06 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Okay. I know what you're saying. | 45:07 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Tanning the leather and making the saddles and the whatever leather work and stuff that was done for horses. But, let's see, when the automobile came, they figured that's a dead thing now. But if you had trained like that and get in where they do horse racing and stuff like that, you're talking about [indistinct 00:45:36]. | 45:10 |
Annie Adams Jamison | They're wonderful. | 45:36 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | You can just almost tell them what you want because so few people are trained. And the same thing in this area now was plasterers. Very, very few. | 45:36 |
Annie Adams Jamison | At one time, most of the plasterers were Black. | 45:50 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Everything was Black. | 45:53 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That's what I thought. | 45:54 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | All your building people were Black. There wasn't a licensed bricklayer in the state of South Carolina until 1950. Would you believe? | 45:55 |
Charles Houston | That's surprising. | 46:03 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And then they started smelling the money when they started building condos and stuff. That's when they got involved. | 46:06 |
Charles Houston | The tradesmen in this area, in the Orangeburg area continued to be Black, so even through the Depression? | 46:16 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They were the only people trained. The Whites could find something else to do and they didn't want that dirty work. | 46:24 |
Charles Houston | What percentage Black would you say this area was? Were there more Blacks than Whites in this area? | 46:36 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It's, I think, always been about 50%. | 46:41 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 46:43 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And it's still about that. But not here in our—Gadsden, proper majority of the people— | 46:48 |
Annie Adams Jamison | —in the Gadsden area, now. Homes around, I guess, to get out of the city now, we have quite a few of them down there, but Gadsden is predominantly Black. And it's nice to see that the people, like you say, who didn't have land before, they have taken pride in acquiring land. And they keep up around their places very nice and this is really wonderful. But most of them, they're families in groups, and families in groups, and families in groups. It's amazing how they haven't spread out, that it's still a big mixture. A lot of the children from previous parents and grandparents still live mostly in the area. | 0:01 |
Charles Houston | Because Gadsden was predominantly Black, were there White farmers living among the Black farmers? | 0:43 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes. Oh, yes. And the Blacks worked for them, because a lot of the Blacks did not have— | 0:54 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | A lot of them were sharecroppers. | 0:58 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Sharecroppers and lived on the Whites' farm. | 1:00 |
Charles Houston | A lot of the Whites' were sharecroppers? | 1:03 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No, no. | 1:04 |
Charles Houston | A lot of the Blacks were sharecroppers? | 1:04 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The Blacks were sharecroppers that worked for these Whites. It's amazing how you would have just two or three Whites down there that owned so much land until they had these little houses everywhere. And then they would have these Blacks living on their farm, they would take care of their farm and they would let them have a little place of their own and they would be sharecropping for them. | 1:05 |
Charles Houston | It sounds like there was more of that in Gadsden than there was— | 1:26 |
Annie Adams Jamison | More sharecropping, oh yes. | 1:30 |
Charles Houston | In this area? | 1:31 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Now, in this area, we have to define the area because we are talking maybe east of Orangeburg, that's the area I can speak of. Because where the Howard school is. | 1:34 |
Annie Adams Jamison | What was woods, do you say? | 1:58 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No, that was pasture. | 1:58 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Okay, I know. | 2:02 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | There was a White family that owned a great deal of land just to our right here. But going up this way from the railroad and even beyond, there were only Black families maybe out to where the cemetery is. No, where the cemetery is, there was some White families out there. But all of this land in here was Black owned. | 2:03 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Even though it was not farming land, most of it was not farming land. | 2:40 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Well, most of it was small farms. Because see, when I was a child, I knew for two miles this way and maybe a mile this way, I knew everybody that lived in the area. And there wasn't that many people, but I knew. And we often talk about it now, the streets like Linda Street, where you going back to Belleville, you couldn't go through that. That was all that Sally's pasture. | 2:46 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That's what I thought. | 3:15 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | We went from State College back to Swinnon Grambling store. And so all those roads, including Frederick Street, Mingo Street, Jamison, Coleman, all those little streets— | 3:16 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Were not streets. | 3:30 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Went to his pasture and were dead ends. But the Black families were to that fence and the Coleman's had their place, the Jamison's had that place. Old man Jake Jamison. | 3:31 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Now, Ms. Walker acquired hers from your granddaddy? | 3:49 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, Ms. Walker just got a lot. | 3:51 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That's why I said, but she got it from your granddaddy? | 3:53 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Right. And then you'd know everybody, Ms. Sophie Aiken and I told you John Paul and Billy's cousin, another Pauling, and Henry Williams and his family, their farm back out to where Nick's school is, that's where their farm was. So you just knew everybody in the community. | 3:54 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Because there wasn't that many, really. | 4:21 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But see, the farms weren't large, but the families were maybe 10 acres of land or something like that, small farms. | 4:22 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Which back in that day, was a big farm. 10 acres was a lot of land because my granddaddy had— | 4:35 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, 10 acres was it lot of land. If you were farming, it wasn't a lot of land. | 4:42 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No, for them. | 4:47 |
Charles Houston | Well, I suppose what I'm trying to get at is the difference between an area where there were a lot of Blacks who were tenant farmers and an area like this where there were fewer tenants. | 4:53 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | In the south, I can generalize. | 5:10 |
Charles Houston | Sure. | 5:14 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Most of your Black people were tenant farmers or sharecroppers. And you can easily see that after slavery ended and they were given 40 acres and a mule, how easy it was for that to be taken away from them, because they had no training about what business was involved in paying the taxes or buying seed and fertilizer and so on, they just weren't equipped. So before they got it good, the man had taken it back from it. And there was nobody to help them or to oversee that they weren't taken advantage of. | 5:15 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Unless the Blacks had some White of some status to intercede and help them, then they lost their property and they were reverted right back to slavery in a sense of being sharecroppers and tenant farmers who worked. And at the end of the year, the man said, "Well, you didn't quite make it this year, but maybe next year you can break even." So he's in the hole as far as he knows, to start the year. And no matter what he made, he was always in that untenable position of not coming out. So unless he had someone to care for him and see after him, then he was in a pretty bad situation. | 6:11 |
Charles Houston | But as a landowner, the people here would not have had to have their children working in the fields, for example. I mean, as— | 7:06 |
Annie Adams Jamison | As much man, he's telling— | 7:16 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | I understand where he's coming from. And then the blessing of this community was the two Black colleges. | 7:18 |
Charles Houston | Okay. And how did that make a difference? Because I guess people here did have their children working in the fields? | 7:27 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Oh yeah. | 7:33 |
Charles Houston | I mean, you were saying that— | 7:34 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Even if they had five or 10 acres, you worked in the fields. | 7:35 |
Charles Houston | The children did. But did they work in the fields at the expense of their education? It is my understanding that where a farmer is a sharecropper and a non—landowner living on the White man's land, that if the White man said, "I want those children in the field—" | 7:38 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Oh, they had to go in the field. | 8:02 |
Charles Houston | They had to go in the field. But if a person owned his own land— | 8:02 |
Annie Adams Jamison | At a certain time, his children went to school. | 8:07 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Even if he owned his own homestead. | 8:08 |
Charles Houston | That's right. | 8:10 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Because many kids who lived in this community went to the various farms that were owned by Whites, basically, to pick cotton, or some went as far as to the tobacco areas to work in the tobacco farms and some went even north to work on farms. But those kids, when it was school time, what your parents would tell you then, you need to get out and get your money to get your school stuff. But when the school bells rang, they went to school, most of them went to school. And many of them went beyond grammar school, went on and finished high school because it was convenient. And many went to college because of the convenience. They didn't have to board, they might walk four or five miles or what have you. And that happened with Mary, and Mary was a real late comer. | 8:11 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, she lived out there all the way up. | 9:15 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | We got a bunch of children that are beyond these four, that we have in some way, been instrumental in getting their education or helping them or what have you. So they always refer to us as daddy and Mama. And this child that we are talking about teaches now on State. Mary walked five miles— | 9:21 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Into town. | 9:46 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | To State College. | 9:49 |
Annie Adams Jamison | To Claflin. Well really, she got her a job from high school, she walked that five miles to school every day. But then she realized she wanted to go to college, so she got her a job and she got in the Upward Bound program at Claflin. Then she was getting money for Upward Bound, a little extra money. And then she got her job on the side and she rented a house right back there and moved her mother into town so she could go to college. And she worked her way, she worked with Marion right at that drug store and worked her way through college. She's gotten her master's and beyond. She worked on State in speech department, she teaches at the State. But she just had it, she just was determined, she was going to do for herself. | 9:54 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But many kids had that had the advantage of not having to go elsewhere to go to college and paying room and board and so on, which they wouldn't have normally had. But that was eliminated, so all they needed was tuition. And it makes a difference. | 10:39 |
Charles Houston | Sure. | 10:57 |
Annie Adams Jamison | It makes a difference. | 10:59 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It makes a difference. So in that regard, the colleges really facilitated the community and many kids who were in the Orangeburg area could go. | 11:00 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Because they could walk to school or live close enough to just not have to stay on campus. | 11:11 |
Charles Houston | The colleges have made a big difference in terms of the number of Blacks who were able to afford land because the economy of the colleges and Orangeburg supported a community of Black craftsmen who were also small farm owners and operated. But it also enabled many Blacks to improve themselves through education. | 11:19 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Proximity, the schools to it. | 11:43 |
Charles Houston | And would you say, was Gadsden different, being more rural than— | 11:46 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yes. | 11:52 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, Gadsden was much more. | 11:53 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, because they had to go to Columbia, which is 20 miles. | 11:54 |
Annie Adams Jamison | About 19 miles from Columbia. And most of us then would have to stay. Like I told you, all of our sisters and brothers before me stayed with the cousins in Columbia to go to high school. And then daddy informed and they sent them here to State College. And the first thing you got at State College was a job, so you could help send yourself to school. | 12:00 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But that was the key. | 12:21 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But then like you say, it was just a few because they were saying that daddy was sending his children, nobody else was able. But now, just most of them sending their children to school. And that's what I'm so happy to see. | 12:24 |
Charles Houston | And when you were a child in, you say the early '40s, do you have a sense of how many people in your community, how many African Americans lived on their own land or in their own homesteads, versus how many were sharecroppers or tenant farmers? Any sense of that? | 12:36 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I would say it was maybe 30/70. And then 30 was the one who had them perform, the others were— | 13:02 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | I don't think it would be more than 30/70, it might be more like 25/75. | 13:15 |
Annie Adams Jamison | 25/75. | 13:18 |
Charles Houston | Was there a difference in terms of those who migrated? Did you find, was it the poorest people who migrated or the ones who had some resources? A lot of people in your dad's family migrated. I mean, all of your dad's brothers except your father. | 13:22 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well, I really think that they migrated because they were used to having their own and students used to certain things. And when the depression came up— | 13:38 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And they were trained. | 13:48 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, they migrated more than the people in Gadsden because the people in Gadsden, this was their standard of thing all the time, you see. And they weren't used to what these that migrated were used to, so they were used to sharecropping all the time. There was no sense going north. Now, some went north, but not to the number you would say here. Because they really weren't used to that much a difference. | 13:49 |
Charles Houston | Right. In your early life, what were some of the signs of segregation, of the Jim Crow South that you recall seeing? | 14:19 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | The things that you'll remember as a child is that you— | 14:31 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Have Black water and our White water, when we were able to get to Columbia. And then to get to Columbia from Gadsden, most time you had to go on a train because it didn't have buses that came through. And where you had to sit on the train. And then finally, a few people got cars and they would take the neighbors to Columbia. And that's when we got so we could go and mama would take one of us one week or three of us one time when it was almost time to go to school. But the facilities were just terrible. I know the only way we could use a restroom was to go to the courthouse. | 14:38 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Federal building. | 15:17 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And it was so far here from the stores until it just was awful that you were in a store and couldn't use the restroom. Then the water was in the store, but one was marked Colored water and it wasn't on Black, it was Colored water and White water. | 15:18 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Was the Colored marked? | 15:39 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes. Wasn't Black, Black is a new thing? It was Colored water. | 15:40 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But they just had a sign up there, Colored? | 15:46 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes, and another one was White. | 15:49 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | The one that was refrigerated, it was the one for Colored. | 15:52 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Just the opposite. | 15:54 |
Charles Houston | No, I understand. | 15:54 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But the fact that you would have to try to get your children ready for school and go up there to get them to fit things for them, and your children just have to wait that long to get to a restroom, it was just terrible. | 16:03 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And you're spending money in the store. | 16:21 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And you're spending money in the store. And then when you get to that restroom, so many Black people in there until you probably have a problem on yourself before you could get to the bathroom anyway, to the commode. But it was just sad of that kind of thing. Now in the schools, you didn't have too much of it when you were in the early grade schools because that was all you knew. I don't even know where the White children went to school in Gadsden. | 16:24 |
Charles Houston | Is that right? You mean they would've gone to school, but out somewhere else? | 16:49 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Somewhere else. | 16:51 |
Charles Houston | It would've been bused. | 16:52 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I never knew. | 16:53 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It just bothered you because you had your little Black school to go to and that was it. | 16:54 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And you were in a Black world and I think for the time being, you weren't thinking anything so wrong, you understand? So you were just happy to go to school and get your lesson and your teachers were there, and they didn't tell you anything about, "We not getting what the White children getting," that finally came along. I just didn't know where they went to school, but I know they didn't go there. | 16:59 |
Charles Houston | When you say you were in your own world, not in the countryside, did you not have much contact with Whites? | 17:25 |
Annie Adams Jamison | We did not. That's how I'm telling you, we didn't have many Whites in our community. | 17:30 |
Charles Houston | Okay, so they were absentee landowners or a few landowners who had Black tenants working on the farm? | 17:35 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, and I was telling you that most of them then did not have many children. And I guess they sent their children to these private schools. And so they just ruled us and had not me per se, but the people that lived on their farm. You just didn't see any Whites. I would hear my daddy talking about Mr. Harry Campbell, who was the Magistrate, is that what it was? | 17:43 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Right. | 18:09 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And then from Mr. Harry Campbell, it became Mr. Mike Arrat and they just had everything there in that general store. | 18:10 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They ran the general store and the post office and that's about all you saw. | 18:20 |
Charles Houston | Okay. And was a law enforcement official, like a county—No? | 18:38 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No. | 18:41 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | You never saw him. | 18:42 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I never saw one. And all the problems, those people— | 18:43 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They were there, but you never saw them. | 18:47 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And all problems the Black people had, they would carry those problems to Mr. Harry Campbell or Mr. Mike Arrat. And that's how White people knew all of their business because that's only person they had, who they felt would intercede for them. | 18:48 |
Charles Houston | What kinds of problems did Black people have that they would carry to these people? And now we're talking about the early '40s, I guess? | 19:03 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes. | 19:10 |
Charles Houston | Late '30s, early '40s? | 19:10 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, I guess they would carry, like they don't have enough kerosene for the—I mean something that simple, they would have to take that to them. I guess what they were doing in the Black churches, they would carry that problem to them, just anything. They had one doctor that came out of Columbia, Dr. Campbell. | 19:10 |
Charles Houston | Was he related to Harry Campbell? | 19:34 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No, this is a Black man. | 19:34 |
Charles Houston | Oh, okay. | 19:34 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Doctor. That's not his name, got Campbell on my mind. Man, his wife was in your medical thing when it first opened, but he was dead a long time ago, who I told you was. But anyway, he would come down there to Gadsden once every two weeks. And the people who was sick, he would have to see all of them. Mama knows, talk about it. He was just dedicated to helping his people. But he died a very young man because he gave so much time. | 19:43 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And so we didn't have any way of that. I don't think they had any way of getting to a doctor. So all of that type of thing, they had to take to the White man, who was sick and what he can do with them and do for them. And whatever he did for them, they were— | 20:12 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They didn't go to hospitals. | 20:27 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No, couldn't go to the hospitals. | 20:30 |
Charles Houston | Were there any disputes ever in the Black community? Were people— | 20:33 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | There would be fights and things like that. | 20:37 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, and they would go have a little— | 20:42 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Most of the time it would be settled. | 20:46 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Among them, fighting each other. | 20:48 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, it would be settled in. | 20:48 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Or cutting each other, something like that. You'd hear about it, because they had little night spots. That's what you used to call them, night spots. | 20:49 |
Charles Houston | You mean like juke joint? | 21:01 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes, that's right. | 21:02 |
Charles Houston | Okay. And so when disputes would arise between Blacks, whether it was in juke joints or say two farmers or something. | 21:04 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Right. And even at that, if they couldn't settle it among themselves, they would take that to the White man and he would settle it for them. | 21:10 |
Charles Houston | Now, what about landowners? Did they do the same thing? | 21:17 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I have never heard of any of them taking each other's land. That's why I think what transaction they ever made, it must have been pleasant to sell it to them. And it had to be legal because I've seen my daddy [indistinct 00:21:37] for their land and thing. It probably just let them buy it and they became land owners. | 21:21 |
Charles Houston | But I mean, were there ever disputes between two Black landowners, if two Black landowners fell out about something? | 21:44 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, "My hog on yours," they take that to the White man, too. | 21:53 |
Charles Houston | Is that right? | 21:56 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes. Because one will go there and telling him that, "If you don't get him to stop making his hog break out on my land and doing this and doing that, I want you to make him give me that hog." Things like that, just little things like that. I know that's what you're talking about in arguments, yeah? | 21:58 |
Charles Houston | Yeah. | 22:13 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well, they would take that to the White man too, because he was the overseer for that area. So they would take all of that to him. | 22:15 |
Charles Houston | Okay. I guess the other side of that is in the Gadsden area, what were the institutions in which Blacks came together as a community? I mean, I assume the churches— | 22:26 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The church. And my mother started what was called a Judy House. I don't know why they call it that, but that was a church, after church on Sundays where all the community people could get together. I started to say children, but she had the adults in there and the children. And it would be like a festival. And she would go there and during regular time, we would be taught Sunday school. And then we would have a big thing, I guess we were equal to people now mayday, about twice a year where they have these big old barrel, cold lemonade and cake. | 22:42 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | You don't forget those days. | 23:23 |
Annie Adams Jamison | You don't forget those days And see, everybody had to walk because you didn't have anything but a wagon, or you could walk to it. But everybody in the neighborhood was at that. And that was just a big thing. | 23:24 |
Charles Houston | Now, you said your mother started. | 23:34 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, my mom. | 23:35 |
Charles Houston | Called it Judy House? | 23:36 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Judy House. | 23:37 |
Charles Houston | J-U-D-Y? | 23:38 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I guess that's the way I would spell it. I don't know what, but they didn't call it the Christian school, they didn't call it the church after church. They called it the Judy House. But it was religiously related, that's what it was. | 23:41 |
Charles Houston | And sometimes— | 23:53 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It was after church. | 23:54 |
Annie Adams Jamison | It was after church. | 23:54 |
Charles Houston | Right, but sometimes Sunday school would be held during Judy House? | 23:56 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, it was really a teaching like that. I guess like Bible school is now, it would have different groups. One group, a little older, would sit up to the front and one over this side and then the children would be in the back. | 23:59 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Where was the Judy House? | 24:15 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The Judy House. | 24:16 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | What building was it? | 24:18 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Huh? | 24:19 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | What building? | 24:19 |
Annie Adams Jamison | You know over there where Carrabelle's sister, Ms. Janey lived? | 24:19 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | What kind of building was it? | 24:24 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I don't know how they got that building in the community, but it was like a big one room school. | 24:26 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | All right. | 24:31 |
Charles Houston | But that's all it was used for? | 24:33 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That's all it was used for, the Judy House. And as far as I know, it could have been a school before that, but I don't know about it because I was young. | 24:34 |
Charles Houston | Whose name was it on? | 24:41 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Don't know that. | 24:41 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | That part, they had them. My daddy tell you land. | 24:41 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, my daddy probably could tell you whose land that Judy House was on. | 24:47 |
Charles Houston | And the Judy House, your mother started it, so was she like the head person? | 24:54 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, she would tell others what to do for this group and for that group. | 25:00 |
Charles Houston | What kinds of groups did they have? | 25:05 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Aide group for teaching classes. | 25:07 |
Charles Houston | And the classes met only on Sunday after school? | 25:11 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Sunday after church, Sunday afternoon. And looked like to me, some of the picnics would be on Saturday at the Judy House. I don't think all of them were on Sunday, but seems they would have them several times during the year. It wasn't just no one time, it was outing for the children, for the people in the community. | 25:14 |
Charles Houston | Was there one Judy House for each church, or was there one Judy House— | 25:35 |
Annie Adams Jamison | One Judy House for a community. | 25:38 |
Charles Houston | For all of Gadsden? | 25:40 |
Annie Adams Jamison | For all of Gadsden who would come. | 25:42 |
Charles Houston | And so, would people come only from the church that— | 25:44 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No, from everywhere, everybody in the community. And see, all of us in the community don't belong to the same church. | 25:46 |
Charles Houston | How big was the community, would you say? | 25:53 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Man, tell them how big it is, because it extended up there. Now they've cut it off and says Hopkins. | 25:54 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It must be a 20 mile radius. About a 20 mile radius. | 26:08 |
Annie Adams Jamison | It might be a 30 or 40, man. | 26:15 |
Charles Houston | And were there lots of churches there? | 26:18 |
Annie Adams Jamison | A lot of churches, yeah. That would fit into that Gadsden area, yes. About six or seven. | 26:19 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No, I think I'm— | 26:25 |
Annie Adams Jamison | There's more churches than that now, but when it was Judy House, it wasn't any more than five to seven churches. | 26:32 |
Charles Houston | Okay. Well, you said there were classes at the Judy Houses and— | 26:40 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well, I was calling for age levels. | 26:43 |
Charles Houston | Okay. The age levels went up to, do they adults? | 26:45 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes. | 26:51 |
Charles Houston | And what kinds of things would they do? | 26:52 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Because I remember all of my brothers and sisters being able to go to the Judy House at the same time we were going. And like I told you, my older sister's 20 years older than my baby sister, so all of us were going to the Judy House. And used to serve as a little outing for the fellas to get with the girls, too. Because I'd always laugh at my brother, Doc, he used to do his courting coming up from the Judy House on Sunday afternoon. But they could get with the other girls and the boys in the community, coming from the Good Judy House and walking to the Judy House. | 26:54 |
Charles Houston | Did you remember any of the classes? I mean, would it just be Bible lesson for all the age groups or would they be— | 27:22 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I think it was, but you know what? Mama had a pencil where those people who were working with us would teach us how to write. So I don't know if you would call that a part of helping the school a little bit too. | 27:30 |
Charles Houston | Yeah. So there was part of it that was very much school-like, but another part of it that was totally all social, it was the lemonade and the cake and the two— | 27:47 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I was related really more, like you say, probably helped the education system, but it was more religious and social. | 27:55 |
Charles Houston | Okay. Were there other ways in which Black people came together? I mean, socially across church lines where— | 28:02 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Other than— | 28:12 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And we would have church first and third Sunday at some churches, and other churches was the second and fourth so that you could always visit another church. And they did a lot of that. | 28:13 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But the lodges were pretty prominent. | 28:24 |
Annie Adams Jamison | We didn't have one in Gadsden until [indistinct 00:28:32] started that one, because I finished college. | 28:27 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Okay, but then a lot of areas, lodges were important. | 28:34 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I think they had one down east Stover. And the people from Gadsden who wanted to join would join. But there wasn't one right there in the Gadsden area until after I got grown. | 28:38 |
Charles Houston | Okay. But do you remember which lodge people traveled to the— | 28:48 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That's what I was telling, I don't remember a lot of them in Gadsden going to it. And I know my brothers— | 28:54 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No, I'm talking about Masonic lodges, now. | 29:00 |
Charles Houston | Okay. I was thinking about the Masons or Odd Fellows. | 29:02 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, right. Basically, they were Masons in this area until very recently, the Elks came about and whatever. | 29:06 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I think that's why the Judy House was so popular, because we didn't have anything other than the church where we would meet. And of course, we got a whole lot of cross visiting churches. It was a beautiful thing because you were happy that you didn't have to go to your church, St. Mark, on second and fourth because you wanted to go to Benevolent one Sunday, Red Hill the next one. And most of the churches were Baptist churches, but they just had so many. | 29:21 |
Charles Houston | Your family would go to its own church twice a month, but then on the alternate Sundays when there was no church, did they sort of rotate around among the other churches? | 29:47 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Rotate around. | 29:56 |
Charles Houston | You didn't always go to the same church. | 29:59 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And then they had what they called the Missionary Society. And the Missionary Society would have anniversaries at all of those different churches. And then one church would invite all the other churches, and that was a form of getting together. | 30:00 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And revivals. | 30:16 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And revivals. And they would have feedings. | 30:16 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And unions. | 30:17 |
Annie Adams Jamison | You talk about feedings, they would have feedings at those Missionaries Society anniversaries. | 30:17 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And unions. | 30:24 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, they would have the union. And the fifth Sunday would be union at a different church, because all of them were Baptist churches and they would come together then. | 30:28 |
Charles Houston | Yeah, I'm not sure I understand what the missionary societies are. | 30:37 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The Missionary Society is just really a— | 30:41 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Group of women in the church. | 30:44 |
Annie Adams Jamison | A group of women. And then there's some men in the societies, too. That's why I said Missionary society. | 30:45 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, some of them. | 30:51 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Dean was the [indistinct 00:30:56] Dean was the head of Missionary Society number one. | 30:53 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But I think they fall into certain age groups, too. | 30:58 |
Annie Adams Jamison | You didn't join Missionary Society until after you got a certain age in your church. | 31:00 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | You'd be a certain age and then you were Missionary Society number one. And then the younger people, another age group would be in another missionary. | 31:07 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But they all are old now to me. Missionary Society number one and number two at St. Mark. But I think they had those different societies in the church where they could have affairs throughout the year so that they could visit each other's churches. Because see now, missionary Society number one would have all of their anniversaries, I would say beginning August through December. And Missionary Society number two would have theirs February or March through June. And so you would stay visiting each other's churches or get togethers, I say. | 31:16 |
Charles Houston | But anniversaries march through June, so when you say anniversaries, you mean it would celebrate? | 31:49 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah. St. Mark's would be the first Sunday in June for Missionary Society number two. And the very first Sunday in October was Missionary Society number one. But in between that, then you have to had to go to Bulo, you had to go to the [indistinct 00:32:11] you had to go to Pleasant Grove, you had to go to Mount Moriah, you had to go to Red Hill, you had to go to Damascus, that many churches. | 31:56 |
Annie Adams Jamison | So you could see out of every month, you had a gathering at a different church. That's why I said that was that much of getting together. | 32:20 |
Charles Houston | Okay. And what would the span of the age groups be? I mean, how old did you have to be to get into— | 32:27 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Oh, the one shouting and having the services were, I would say the age would range from 25 or 30 until then. But they would bring their whole family. I say all the children and all would be there for the feeding. That's why I said it was a gathering. | 32:33 |
Charles Houston | So the Missionary Society was an organization that formed within each church. | 32:52 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Within each church. | 32:56 |
Charles Houston | Of some people who fell into the age group of 25 and over. And the purpose of the Missionary Society was what? | 32:58 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Visiting each churches and churches sharing religion and I say socially getting together. | 33:08 |
Charles Houston | Okay, so it wasn't like they went around and did charity work for people in the church who were sick, let's say. They wouldn't— | 33:18 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No, they got more of that now from the Missionary Society where they take care of families. But now the Missionary Society, each church would take care they own members now. | 33:28 |
Charles Houston | But originally, the time you recall, it was basically an organization— | 33:37 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Churches getting together to fellowship, that's what it really was. | 33:42 |
Charles Houston | I see. | 33:44 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And now like San Marco, when they go to Bulo, the usual thing, they would take up collection from each choir or from each church, at each society that visited. And they'll make sure if Bulo paid them $10 or $12 when they were here last year, they want to make sure you take enough so we can give Bulo their thing back. That's how well the people got along together. | 33:44 |
Charles Houston | That's interesting. | 34:11 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And that's how they kept their treasurers going so they could have these affairs. | 34:11 |
Charles Houston | So the Missionary Society function was largely social. | 34:14 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I would say social. | 34:18 |
Charles Houston | It was a way— | 34:18 |
Annie Adams Jamison | A church cooperation. | 34:19 |
Charles Houston | Okay. A society would go to another church for its anniversary. Each one would host an anniversary anniversary celebration to which all the other societies would come? | 34:21 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That's right, all the other churches would come, yes. | 34:35 |
Charles Houston | Okay, that's interesting. | 34:39 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And the same thing is done with revival. | 34:41 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Revival's the same thing. Your choir— | 34:44 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | The same practice. | 34:45 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And now they revival all the way from Gadsden and East Stover to Columbia. | 34:48 |
Charles Houston | Now, revivals are traditionally held in the Fall. And it seems to me, when I think of revival in my own church, it's October— | 34:53 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They start much earlier. They start the church. | 35:03 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I was always in, so that we'll have baptism the first Sunday in September. | 35:08 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | I think some start in August. | 35:10 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I go to Bone the first week in August. | 35:14 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Some start in August. | 35:17 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I go with my brother. | 35:17 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | There may be some in July. | 35:18 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah. But that's [indistinct 00:35:25]. | 35:20 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Most of them culminate September— | 35:25 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And early October. | 35:29 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And early October. | 35:30 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Now, this could have been in the country because of the heating system in the churches back then. But now they got every convenience in the world in the church. But I guess they just keep up the time that they used to have it. I never knew why they would have them July, August and September, I don't know. | 35:32 |
Charles Houston | But would members from one church come to the revival at another church? | 35:52 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Oh, yes. You have a full house every night? Because I'll see you invite two choirs. The church was full. | 35:58 |
Charles Houston | And of course, the people who belonged to the churches of the choirs that were singing would all come to— | 36:05 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Oh, they were all coming. | 36:11 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And they announced this church was not having a revival and they've been invited to another church. The word gets out that we got to go, so-and-so is having a revival and we got to be there. That's how it goes. | 36:14 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Two churches having it the same week, we go to one on Tuesday night, one on Wednesday night. Don't get it mixed up, they would announced that in church. But it was just a beautiful thing, but see now, the churches have gone to all of them. They don't visit each other on regular church services as much as they used to because they all have church every Sunday. | 36:28 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But I can see where that old thing used to be really that kept communities in contact. They kept communities communicating with each other and visiting each other because they didn't have time, I guess, to go to each other's house. But when they had every other Sunday and you could go to another church, you got to see so many people in the community. | 36:49 |
Charles Houston | There was the Judy House, there were the missionary societies. And would those visitations, the Missionary Society visitations take place on Sundays? | 37:10 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes. | 37:26 |
Charles Houston | And then there were the revivals, and those would take place sometimes during the week. | 37:28 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And it would last the whole whole week, the whole week at each church. | 37:32 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Every night, it was a night service. | 37:35 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The missionary societies used to always help sick members in their individual churches. And now they do wonderful things. I just looked at a church, it was as small as St. Mark. And it's really not that small, but some of the things they have ventured out to do now, do you know that they probably won't have over about 10 or 12 kids graduating from high school in those churches? But they have an education committee in that church now, or education society. And each child finishes high school, gets $100. And the one I think they do it, some of it buy scholarship, they give them $500. And I just think that's wonderful for the churches to honor children that way. Even the churches here in Orangeburg don't do that. | 37:36 |
Charles Houston | And this is the work of the Missionary Society? | 38:22 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No, no. This is the education committee in our church in Gadsden. | 38:30 |
Charles Houston | And you also mentioned, well, the education committees are more recent developments. | 38:34 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, those are recent developments. Yeah, the missionary society used to do more of feeding and financial donation, that's what they did. And back in those days, I guess $5 and $10 was a lot of money to take to someone because they was sick or they had a burn out. Now, if they had a burn out in the church, they would take up a collection for them. | 38:41 |
Charles Houston | When someone was burned out? | 39:01 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes, someone was burned out, they would take up a special collection for them. | 39:05 |
Charles Houston | And you mentioned also unions. Is that— | 39:09 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | That's a part of the Baptist whatever— | 39:11 |
Charles Houston | Organization. | 39:17 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But most of the rural churches have two Sundays of service. And then they may have Sunday school four Sundays, but only ministers there to preach on two Sundays. But if a month has a fifth Sunday in it, then that's when you have union. | 39:19 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And how about now, they morning day. They have gone to had a church every Sunday including the fifth, so the unions is on Saturday. | 39:42 |
Charles Houston | And what is the union? I don't understand. | 39:54 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Union is nothing but a cooperation of all the churches. | 39:55 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | A uniting of churches. | 40:00 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That's what it is, uniting of church. | 40:01 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | A uniting of churches of the same denomination. Of Baptist or those who have unions. | 40:03 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Various churches in the community got together. And they have union in different areas, too. They call it district. | 40:09 |
Charles Houston | So it would be like one mass gathering of all the Baptist? | 40:18 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, and most of the people who go are the officers they elect for the union. All of them go. | 40:21 |
Charles Houston | I see, each church sends a delegation. | 40:29 |
Annie Adams Jamison | There you go. It's just like a convention, really, but they get together that often. And I think most, we would probably have a fifth Sunday maybe three or four times out of a year, and that's the only time they meet. And now they meet on Saturdays. | 40:30 |
Charles Houston | Who were the leaders in the community now? It sounds like all of the community, it sounds like the focus of the community identity, the way in which the community came together was through these various church functions. | 40:47 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The churches was the leading institution in the Gadsden community. | 41:06 |
Charles Houston | And the lodges came along later, so even at that time before I guess, the late '40s, before then, it was really the church. | 41:11 |
Annie Adams Jamison | It was the church. | 41:20 |
Charles Houston | Who were the leaders then, in the community? | 41:22 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well, Dr. Sims was the head man at St. Marks. | 41:25 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Basically, it was the senior deacons. | 41:29 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And they called him the chief deacon. | 41:32 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | The senior deacons at the church. | 41:35 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And they looked to that person for guidance in the church, I think just about as strong as they did the pastor. | 41:36 |
Charles Houston | Now, you mentioned—Sir? | 41:44 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | I'm about to say more so, because sometimes the pastor was not of that community. | 41:47 |
Charles Houston | That's what I was about to ask, because you said that the churches met a couple of times a month and in some cases, I guess the pastors living there and traveling to other churches, or they were coming into town from somewhere else. | 41:51 |
Annie Adams Jamison | They looked to him also, but I was thinking about respect him as far as physician, by just about as much as the pastor. But they looked at him more so for guidance, I guess, and questions that they had because he was there all the time. The pastor I remember as a young child was from Hopkins, but see, papa was right there in the community where the people was. | 42:02 |
Charles Houston | Now, I may be betraying my own ignorance, but when you say senior deacon, we're referring to the oldest deacons in the church? Or are you referring to the one— | 42:27 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Probably the head, the top deacon. | 42:39 |
Charles Houston | In each church? | 42:41 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And they called him the Chief deacon. | 42:42 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Chief deacon. | 42:43 |
Annie Adams Jamison | They called him Chief Deacon. And then he was elected among his peers. But I think most time, the reason Marion said that is that most time they elected the person who'd been on the deacon board the longest, so that's why he said senior deacon. | 42:44 |
Charles Houston | Okay. Now, if there were problems in the community involving, let's say economic matters or a fight between two people and they couldn't resolve it, you said they would take it to the influential Whites in the community? | 43:04 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah. | 43:17 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Usually the Magistrate. | 43:17 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The Magistrate was the person they took that fighting to. But now, if they had an argument with each other about something about their personal family or something, they'll go to— | 43:20 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Parents that they respect. | 43:27 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Respect, yeah. They'll go to somebody for respect, who was Black. My mama knows, had them always coming to them by marriage and living together and this and that. But I think it was just a matter of respect for of people in the community. | 43:30 |
Charles Houston | Could you give me an example? You said people in the community would bring problems to your mother? | 43:48 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes, and my daddy. | 43:49 |
Charles Houston | And to your father because they respected them? | 43:49 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah. And I had just tell you an example, there was a young man, he was my cousin. But he said he and his wife were having marital problems. He carried her back home to her mom and dad. And he came to my daddy had asked my daddy, what should he do? Because he figured he was finished with his wife. My dad had told him, "Son, you go back and get your wife and tell her you beg her pardon. Because teeth and tongue will fall out. So this isn't going to be the first time you and your wife fall out, you all going to fall out again, but love each other." | 43:50 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And just from that, he went right back down to his wife and they've been living together ever since. That's a simple thing, but it wasn't simple because he was young and he thought that to take her back to her parents, that he was finished with that issue. What should he do next in life? And daddy told him to go back and get her because teeth and tongue will fall out. I mean, he talked with them a long time, but simply, that's basically what he told him, that this isn't going to be the first time you fall out. You going to fall out because two people living together going to have differences. So since your teeth and tongue in the same mouth and they fall out sometimes, he said, "You go back, get your wife and you all live together." | 44:30 |
Charles Houston | So there were— | 45:11 |
Annie Adams Jamison | For a problem like that. Because to me, that was a very, very close problem for him to feel like he needed to sit someone down to talk to them about it that was older. | 45:15 |
Charles Houston | And if it was a family problem like that, you would take it to a third family. I mean, if it's a problem between two families, you would take it to a third well respected family. | 45:26 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Generally, there was a family in the community or there is a family in the community that most of the community look up to. And her parents just happened to be that family in her community. | 45:38 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I don't think daddy and mom were the only one, but they were one. | 45:52 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They would come with questions about farming and planting. | 46:00 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Oh yes. And he tells everybody when to plant things and he still plants things by the signs of the moon. And they said that their farms have done so well by everything, his granddaddy to everybody or Uncle Frank to everybody. So they always ask him when it's a good time to plant. | 46:04 |
Charles Houston | What about problems with animals, the same thing? | 46:24 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Same thing. And then there was— | 46:26 |
Annie Adams Jamison | —animals and think they had problems with that. They would give them something. But they would come and ask mama what to do with the babies before they take them to the doctor. Or she would tell them, "Carry them on to the hospital and let them—" | 0:01 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And most of the time they never got to the doctor. | 0:13 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No. | 0:15 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Because of economics, or basically because of economics or traveling means, but those people knew. | 0:17 |
Annie Adams Jamison | What to give them. | 0:30 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | What to do. | 0:32 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And I think because mama knows we're not able to get into hospital, they had a wonderful resource of knowledge that they just gathered because of problems. Because I know that there were things that she could make. | 0:34 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They didn't gather a— | 0:54 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Like a cold or for anyone. | 0:54 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It was passed down. | 0:54 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well, anyway, she could fix a cough syrup from taking that cherry bark off the tree. And I don't know what all she would put in it, but I know it would be better than anything now I can fill a prescription for now. | 0:56 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Back then when the children had fever, my brother Clark and [indistinct 00:01:13] had that fever. And they cured them by steaming, what they call it? Was it Jansen weed? Jansen weed, and bathed them in it. They didn't see any doctor. And my sister said, that's what's wrong with her leg right now. My sister fell through the wagon and that nail went in that leg like that. And they took a spiderweb and soot from the chimney and something else they put in it. And that's what they put it on her. With this white clean cloth and put it over there and it's supposed to have drawn the germ and stuff out. But that's what [indistinct 00:02:06]. | 1:07 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Now the spider web and the soot stops the bleeding. | 2:06 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well, anyhow. That was continuously put on there to draw it or something. Something she put on there to draw it. | 2:09 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They put a baked piece of fat meat on it. | 2:14 |
Annie Adams Jamison | After it stopped the clotting. | 2:16 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | After they staunched it. After the bleeding stops, then they would use a piece of fat meat, salted meat. | 2:20 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And everything had to go with a sterilized white piece of cloth. | 2:25 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And then they would use cow chips. That was the antibiotic. And you wonder the rationale, but that's what it was for, the soot. | 2:29 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well, the hard times caused them to learn all these things and they— | 2:43 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But now our problem as Black people is that the rich heritage of things that we had all the way from Africa, it stopped. It never got passed down because they knew everything. | 2:46 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Everything. | 2:59 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | For any situation, they had a solution. | 3:00 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And the one now that we say that are educated, they even are ashamed to tell you these things. And it's just, to me, it's so wise and rich. And they don't want to tell you that they knew of this all, or their family probably did that. I just think it's so silly. | 3:03 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But it is. I guess we've come through such hard times until— | 3:20 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Until the hard time things looked terrible or bad. | 3:29 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Looked terrible, yeah. I think that that's the idea. | 3:31 |
Annie Adams Jamison | To say that they were able to survive. And I guess White folks with the same thing that we didn't die from died and they were in the hospital. | 3:34 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | That's right. Died in the hospital because they didn't—until the penicillins, the sulfurs and then the penicillins, they didn't have any antibiotics so they didn't know what to do with them. | 3:43 |
Annie Adams Jamison | See we improvised. | 3:51 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But we knew. | 3:51 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Sometimes I tell them was a third sense because it don't look like the ordinary sense they had to do that. | 3:55 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No, because we knew penicillin before penicillin knew penicillin. Because they used to tell you to drink cow chip tea. Cow chip tea. That's the cow dung, when it dries, it has a mold in it. And you know penicillin comes from mold. And they would make a tea out of that and it would work. But nobody knew. If it works, you don't question it. You don't try to determine— | 3:59 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And you don't know who started it [indistinct 00:04:34]. | 4:32 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Don't know who started or why it got started. | 4:32 |
Annie Adams Jamison | It was passed down. | 4:32 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But it worked. | 4:32 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Now there was a little green thing that grew right around the wells. It was a little bush and it had a little thing on it that looked almost like a little Irish potato, or white potato. And they would take that little thing off of that green bush and chop it up and put it around a baby's neck. And they didn't have any problem with teething. Isn't that something? | 4:39 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But see all those things I were lost because personally [indistinct 00:05:11]. | 5:05 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And now the poor baby crying, I don't care how many times you take him to the doctor and he has the diarrhea and everything with teething now. But the [indistinct 00:05:24] back then didn't have that. But it was natural, see. I think it was natural. | 5:23 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But those things we didn't have sense not to ask for the various remedies that they had and for the knowledge that they had. Now when my wife had her twins, her mother told her that the twin boy was going be smart. | 5:23 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And I asked her why. | 5:46 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | When he was born, in the birth process. | 5:46 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Because she said, I told her that Mark came feet first. And she said, "Uh-oh. Don't you worry. He going to be a smart child." He was just four. I was telling her that because I thought it was terrible. | 5:53 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And it was terrible because the doctor thought he was going to lose him. | 6:05 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah. He thought he was going to lose him. | 6:07 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But there is some significance to it. | 6:10 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But I didn't ask then. | 6:13 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But we don't know what it is. But we know she knew what she was talking about. So many of those things are lost because we— | 6:14 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No document. | 6:25 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Of course, now there was the old rationale of parents and children and old people and children that children were to be seen and not heard. So you didn't question where you felt that you might run into a little— | 6:25 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Because they would think you thinking that they don't know what they're talking about, see. So you never did a lot of things [indistinct 00:06:49]. | 6:43 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Or it was grown people talk and they were talking, and they tell you, "Boy, go play." And that means you get out of this conversation because—Well, you not in there but you're listening. But they don't want you listening. | 6:48 |
Annie Adams Jamison | They didn't tell you, "Boy, get out there." Just roll their eyes and you got out there. | 7:00 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But there's so much knowledge there's just loss. So many herbs and things that they knew exactly what to do with. | 7:05 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The people now, women have so many problems now with their menstrual cycle. And there was a thing they used to give us called a woman tea. And I don't know what the bush is now. Isn't that something? | 7:15 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And there's something— | 7:26 |
Charles Houston | But it would take of cramps and pain? | 7:26 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Don't have any problem. Yes, yes. I never had any. | 7:26 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And what's that other thing that the women have problems with? Not false [indistinct 00:07:42]. When do we eat the dirt out the chimney. | 7:32 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Morning sickness. | 7:52 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Morning sickness. And they still don't have anything for that. | 7:54 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Uh-huh. But they used to give them clay. | 7:55 |
Charles Houston | Out of the chimney? | 7:58 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Up under the house, where that dirt has been in there. They get that clay for them in there. | 8:00 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | See a lot of the chimneys, they didn't have a mortar and such. The old houses, they used a clay type for the mortar. And clay, they used to get clay out of the banks for poultices and stuff I think. But they would eat some of that clay. But just things too numerous to name that are lost. | 8:05 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Horehound tea. You have to drink so much of that. | 8:34 |
Charles Houston | What was it called? | 8:36 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Horehound tea. In the health food store, they still have that now. | 8:37 |
Charles Houston | It's called Hohound? | 8:40 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Horehound. | 8:41 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | If you ever had quinine, quinine is how they start you. | 8:44 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well, see that thing [indistinct 00:08:53]— | 8:48 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It'll stand the hair up on your head— | 8:48 |
Annie Adams Jamison | —the health food store isn't as good as [indistinct 00:08:56]. | 8:48 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No. That was fresh. | 8:48 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That's why I said it fresh. | 8:56 |
Charles Houston | And it's H-O-H-O-U-N-D? | 8:58 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Uh-huh. | 9:00 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It's H-O-E, isn't it? I think it's H-O-E-H-O-U-N-D. I believe the E is on the end. | 9:00 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Hohound. H-O-U-N-D. And what was that thing they was spread, put the leaf in your in your head now? | 9:08 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They had an elephant leaf. | 9:08 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Uh-huh. It's not elephant leaf. It look like elephant leaf but it's bigger. And mama used to grow them in the garden. If you ever had a headache or your head started feeling bad because you out there sun too long, put one of them things to your head. It's like putting ice to your head. | 9:18 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Things we remember. | 9:37 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I remember those. I remember those things. But they did their own medical stuff. They really did. | 9:40 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | You're talking about stop clotting some blood. That spiderweb and that [indistinct 00:09:51]. And you have some nasty injuries. | 9:46 |
Annie Adams Jamison | [indistinct 00:09:54]. Well, you can look at it now and see how deep it was. And I guess it would've led to death if they didn't know what to do for it. But you didn't have any doctor down there. | 9:53 |
Charles Houston | So it sounds like the community was cohesive and it was held, bonded together in lots of different ways all through the church. | 10:04 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Oh, yes. It was like people shared everything they had. I remember you just didn't do without. You just sent to your neighbor to get it. I know there was a lady right around my mama, her mother house. | 10:13 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | She sent [indistinct 00:10:24]. | 10:23 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah. She was sent for everything. And was sent a different child, two or three times, for her to get everything for a meal. Some flour this time, and salt this time, and pepper the next time, and piece of meat the next time. But anyhow, that's how we share. That's how they shared in the community. | 10:24 |
Charles Houston | So was this done with the expectation that if you borrow from somebody, they would borrow from you and [indistinct 00:10:47]? | 10:40 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah. There wasn't any— | 10:46 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well, the older one was shared, but Viv just didn't have any way of being able to share back with anyone because of her condition. She didn't want [indistinct 00:10:57]. | 10:48 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But that was a common practice, a matter of sharing. And like I said, if they butchered a hog, the community came and everybody helped to do that. | 10:57 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Help do the work. And everybody got some of that. | 11:09 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | [indistinct 00:11:11]. Everybody went home with a piece of meat. And if you had a good garden, somebody got peas and somebody got tomatoes. | 11:11 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Y'all know y'all can send around here and get peas. I got plenty of peas this year. I got plenty of collars. They would grow their own veggies. | 11:19 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Collards and potatoes and what have you. | 11:26 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And those things that go on the ground. What are, rutabagas? Uh-uh. Turnips. | 11:28 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Turnips, yeah. | 11:33 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And sweet potatoes. Ooh. They would have banks of potatoes. Bank of sweet potato. And you haven't seen a sweet potato in the last 20 years because you can bake them until for seven hours and you will never get any sugar to run out of them. Those old potatoes that they would grow themselves, when you bake them. | 11:41 |
Charles Houston | You get sugar on the [indistinct 00:11:55]. | 11:54 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That syrup comes out of them. | 11:55 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It would stick to your hand. | 11:55 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes, they would. And that was what you called a sweet potato. | 11:55 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | I've got some this year that I'm going to see whether they're supposed to be. They come from Puerto Rico, whether that's the old potato. Maybe the man sold it to me for the old potato. See, they don't bear as well. They don't make the plentiful potatoes for the commercial market. But man, you could stick one of them fellas in that chimney when it got hot in them ashes. And when you take it out, it sticky. The syrup will stick the hand. It just runs out. | 12:01 |
Annie Adams Jamison | You would let that wouldn't let that syrup stick to your hand when you first take it out. | 12:30 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, it would burn it up. | 12:33 |
Annie Adams Jamison | You would've burn your fingers. Oh, my. That would be a big burn. | 12:34 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But you could lick that hull. | 12:37 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Because it was sweet. That was a little syrup coming out of the potato. | 12:44 |
Charles Houston | I've never seen a potato like that. | 12:45 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No, you haven't. | 12:46 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | You could take potatoes— | 12:46 |
Annie Adams Jamison | You buy them white looking things that don't have a thing. You could bake them for six hours in no syrup can come out. | 12:46 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No, there's nothing in them. But these potatoes would keep because of the sugar content. It would preserve it. And you would put it in a bank, in a straw bank, and cover it with dirt. And they'd keep the whole winter. | 12:46 |
Annie Adams Jamison | They would pile them up like this. | 13:08 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | You put them bank. | 13:08 |
Annie Adams Jamison | All them together like that. You put straw on them, and then they would put a pole in the center for some reason. And around that pole they had something like a coca sac or something. And I think that was for the air to go down in there. | 13:14 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, that was in that. | 13:28 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And then after they put on straw it, they would put the dirt on top of it and stay all winter. | 13:30 |
Charles Houston | These were uncooked potatoes. | 13:33 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Uncooked potatoes. | 13:34 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Raw potatoes. | 13:35 |
Charles Houston | They just put them outside. | 13:35 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah. And they would only let you go to that bank and open it at certain spots so you could get potatoes out of it all winter. Because they would keep all winter. | 13:35 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | That was they're way of preserving the food for everybody. | 13:48 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And it's nothing better than a baked potato the way the syrup runs out of it and some collard greens. | 13:52 |
Charles Houston | Well, making me hungry. | 13:54 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | If you've never had a potato like that, you never had a potato. | 14:00 |
Charles Houston | No, I've never had a potato. | 14:02 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Never had a sweet potato. You're talking about a sweet potato, that's a sweet potato. That's how it got it's name. | 14:06 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Like I like tomatoes. And I don't eat them unless I get it out Mary's garden. Because no one in the grocery store, after you fix your own and eat it, it tastes like sawdust. | 14:11 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They don't have any taste. | 14:27 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And so they don't like me because I ate too much when I was young, I think Mary say. Because the mama had what to call it, I know now, it was a little salad tomato bush. And I would just stand up and eat them just like you would eat a apple. See? So I think I just got that [indistinct 00:14:40]. I don't mind scratching now a tomato out of Mary's garden. But I told Mary, "There ain't no sense in scratching for sawdust." So I don't worry [indistinct 00:14:51]. | 14:28 |
Charles Houston | Was it different here outside of Albany, which was probably not quite as rural as Gadsden? Different in the sense that the community in Gadsden was held together by these various church functions and people were reliant on each other and on themselves to solve problems that came up in the community. Unless of course it was something you took to the White man, which was in a sense— | 14:55 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But it was more of a business resolution when you took it to the White man. | 15:27 |
Charles Houston | Was it the same or different here? | 15:33 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Basically, as far as his altercations and what have you, most of those were resolved. But if it were not, we were right at the sheriff's department. | 15:39 |
Annie Adams Jamison | So they to be involved. | 15:57 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | We were more urban. The thing that I remember so well about the community, is that the homeowners. It was so unusual that this whole community, each person had his own. And of course the neighbors shared like they did in Gaston. Whatever they had, fruit or vegetables or meat, they shared. And they shared in raising your children. Rearing your children. | 15:59 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Whatever [indistinct 00:16:49]. | 16:48 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Whatever you want, was the same. | 16:48 |
Charles Houston | And what about the way in which the community came together? I mean as a community, did you have the same kinds of institutions? Was the Judy House unique? | 17:00 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No. | 17:11 |
Charles Houston | Or was there a Judy House? | 17:11 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | I've never heard of Judy House in any other community than that one. | 17:13 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I don't know [indistinct 00:17:19]. | 17:18 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It's very unique. Now you had the churches and you had the various services and what have you. | 17:19 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I had a few centers too way back in the day. | 17:25 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Now this community, when I was a little fella, we had that park and the community kept it up. | 17:35 |
Charles Houston | Which park was that? | 17:44 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Harmon. | 17:45 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | This is Harmon. Harmon Park. | 17:46 |
Charles Houston | And it was a Black park. | 17:47 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It was a Black— | 17:52 |
Annie Adams Jamison | It still is. But helped reopened it. It went down. | 17:55 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It was a Black park. And my grandfather and Dr. Dunton, who was in the president on Claflin, got together. And I think it was six acres of land initially that was given. And it was just for the community to use as a park. And they had beautiful flowers. | 17:55 |
Annie Adams Jamison | [indistinct 00:18:18]. | 18:17 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Beautiful flowers and a building. And they could do like the Judy House. You could make that lemonade and stuff. I remember as a child going. And then every so often we said we going to clean it up. And the elders in the community would bring tools and we would clean up. It wouldn't stay clean very long, but an attempt was made, even when I was a little fellow to do it. And then it just went to pot when most of the elderly people who were homeowners up in this community passed on. | 18:21 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And grew up until he [indistinct 00:18:57]. | 18:56 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It grew up to wilderness. It's right directly across the bypass here, 21 bypass. | 19:01 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Right next to the drug store. It's just the street between here and the drug store. | 19:06 |
Charles Houston | On the other side of the street that I crossed when I was in college. I thought that was land that you donated for a park? | 19:11 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Oh, no. My grandfather. | 19:16 |
Charles Houston | Your grandfather donated for land. | 19:18 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Was one of the people. I think it was three. Was [indistinct 00:19:25] and old man Jackson and somebody. But you know where you're going to find it? In that book that Gore has written. | 19:21 |
Charles Houston | I'm sorry. The book that— | 19:33 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Dr. [indistinct 00:19:36] Gore. You said you supposed to [indistinct 00:19:38]. | 19:35 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | [indistinct 00:19:38]. | 19:37 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Now I got one of the deed things downstairs if you want see it. But he would be able to see just the names and everything. But if you wanted to see the deed, I can get it for you. But see, I have had a time getting in it back open. But I think the county council got tired of meeting and they keep it up for me now. But since I've gotten reopened, because when I first started I just got tired of seeing the children in this area having no place to go to play when they were out of school and no program organized for the summer. | 19:42 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And so when I first started, I was working with the kind beautification committee, and I got the community people to help me clean it. But I finally realized that we didn't have the equipment to keep it up. And then the young children wouldn't help with it. The established [indistinct 00:20:32] because I don't know where that comes from. But anyway, the county now keeps it up on a short term lease. Mary Brown signs it for them and they keep it up for us. And since that the organization, I have organized in the community, we bought some play equipment pieces down there and we put a shelter down there. | 20:17 |
Annie Adams Jamison | When it became a part of the city limits, they had a man working there over the city recreation. He came down there and he did everything he could because it was a part of the city and put a shelter down there with restrooms in it and put up lights in the park. Then he went downtown and read the deed because somebody must have asked him a question about it. And he realized he couldn't take it so he went back to the park and took everything down. | 20:54 |
Charles Houston | There was something wrong with the deed, so— | 21:21 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The city can't own it. When those old people wrote it, they were thinking about this day and time that nobody can ever take it from this community. He came to the Maron, when they first must have told him that he had put all this on someone else's property. He came to Maron and asked Maron, the first thing he asked Maron, "Would you lease it to the city for 50 years?" He said, "No, I don't lease it to the city." He said by that time, nobody would ever know what happened and what he wrote down there would be changed completely after 50 years because nobody could recall it. | 21:23 |
Annie Adams Jamison | So the county does it and keep it up for us on short term lease every three years. But I had to work. It takes of working with people to get this kind of thing done. But the county keeps it up and it's in the city limits. So I just think that they will. I'm just very grateful to them that they keep it up for us. We can have functions down there now, and the children go down there and they can keep the basketball [indistinct 00:22:27] up for us for our children. | 21:58 |
Charles Houston | Did you want to take a break? | 22:30 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No, no, no. | 22:31 |
Annie Adams Jamison | He's standing up. | 22:32 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | I'm just used to standing. | 22:33 |
Charles Houston | Did the church play a similar role here then? I mean, you had the park, which was different than in Gadsden. | 22:39 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Gadsden as far as unity in the community, no. Not like Gadsden. | 22:47 |
Charles Houston | Not as unified? | 22:56 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | The church wasn't as big a factor. I think you had the same unification, but I can't recall that the church was at— | 23:00 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I think [indistinct 00:23:13]. | 23:10 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | In the rural areas you had basically churches as far as everything, entertainment and so on. And we were a little different close to the schools and colleges. And we had programs and we could go to swimming and so on. | 23:13 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Play areas. | 23:35 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, play areas, and we had recreation. It was the city's response to it. | 23:36 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And I think just looking [indistinct 00:23:51] area since I've been here, I think they had churches that one was trying to outdo the other, if that spells anything to you. And because they had different denomination and one was trying to have a bigger [indistinct 00:24:04] or a bigger church. | 23:50 |
Charles Houston | You mean here there was competition. | 24:00 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | There was competition of the church. | 24:06 |
Charles Houston | You mentioned that the colleges had programs that kind of brought people together. | 24:09 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | When I was a kid, because I don't want to generalize because I went to Felton, which made a difference with me from most of the kids in the community. See, I was private school, I was fortunate enough, or unfortunate enough, to go to a private school, and most of the kids went to public schools. So I have a little different perspective because I was always a part of the colleges. | 24:24 |
Charles Houston | Felton was a school on the college. | 25:00 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It was on the college, on state [indistinct 00:25:04]. | 25:03 |
Annie Adams Jamison | It was looked on as private, but it really is a public school. | 25:09 |
Charles Houston | And it was at Claflin? | 25:09 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No, but you paid to go to college. | 25:10 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, you had to pay. | 25:12 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | So that made it private. | 25:12 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But I was part of more of a select school. | 25:14 |
Charles Houston | And it was at Claflin? | 25:15 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No. | 25:15 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No, state. | 25:15 |
Charles Houston | It was state. | 25:15 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And that's the school we told you works with the School of Education at State College, where they give both [indistinct 00:25:31]. | 25:25 |
Charles Houston | It was a teaching school. | 25:30 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Teaching school, right. | 25:32 |
Annie Adams Jamison | [indistinct 00:25:32] teaching experience. | 25:32 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And see now, when Claflin still had a private school too, because by the night and that crew went to Alway and then went to Claflin. But Claflin, I think, I don't know when they discontinued our school, but it wasn't long after that. | 25:34 |
Charles Houston | Well, would you say that these private schools then pull the community together? Or did they help divide the community into separate groups? I mean, what was the community— | 25:53 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It definitely didn't pull the community together. There were members of the community. Most of the kids, or not most, but a goodly number of the kids who went to Felton were kids whose parents were college teachers and so on. It didn't have any means of unifying the community, the schools, because most of the non-college people sort of stood back from the colleges. | 26:11 |
Annie Adams Jamison | You know how students look on students who can do or can go to those places. | 26:54 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But I'm thinking about the colleges in the broad aspect of the colleges to the community. | 27:03 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Offered facilities and different aspects that they could associate with or enjoy that we really didn't have in Gadsden, so we had to have something like a church or the Judy house. | 27:08 |
Charles Houston | I assume some of these resources, events, facilities that you had here that you wouldn't have had in Gadsden has something to do with the competition between the churches. What were some of the alternative ways in which the community identified itself? I mean, how did the community identify itself as a community? Or was it a matter of there being many groups within the community like the college group? | 27:27 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Well, there were basically two groups. Those who were college affiliated by work or by attendance, and those were not. | 28:03 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And I think even Maron knows back in, even in his day, they had started scouting. You see that's something almost [indistinct 00:28:29]. They've had scouting programs and things like that, but those children would get together. | 28:21 |
Charles Houston | You mean— | 28:36 |
Annie Adams Jamison | [indistinct 00:28:37]. | 28:36 |
Charles Houston | And when did that start? | 28:38 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Oh, it started before me. | 28:41 |
Annie Adams Jamison | If it wasn't in the '30s, it had to be the early '40s. And see, by having a college that had no know how to organize those kinds of things, y'all had scouting a long time. | 28:45 |
Charles Houston | What were some of the ways in which the churches here competed? | 29:01 |
Annie Adams Jamison | They in the biggest building. | 29:10 |
Charles Houston | So did they have church here every Sunday for example? | 29:17 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah. | 29:20 |
Annie Adams Jamison | They did. | 29:20 |
Charles Houston | So you didn't get the kind of cross colonization. | 29:20 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | That's true. All of the churches here had every Sunday church. And I would say that most, almost all of the people in the community were educated to a point that they could read. You see, a lot of those country churches, you had people who couldn't read. They had to line out the hymns and what have you. But that was different and you had a more, what kind of service? | 29:26 |
Annie Adams Jamison | They could participate better, I would think that. | 30:18 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | The service was just on a little different level, I would say. Because of the amount of education that you had in the various churches in the community. | 30:21 |
Charles Houston | On a different level. What would've been some of the manifestations of that? | 30:32 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Some of them not good to me. Well, since you were in a community with two colleges. Well, then you had two high schools. The educational level was pretty good for Blacks. | 30:38 |
Charles Houston | Two Black high schools. | 30:57 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Because Claflin had a Black high school, and then we have Wilkinson. And two Black colleges. So your education level was a step higher. And sometimes I feel that Orangeburg got kind of caste because of that. | 30:59 |
Charles Houston | Was one considered to be more elite than the other? One of the high schools? | 31:23 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Well, I kind of feel that if you were paying to go to school, you were more elite. | 31:29 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And that's sad to say that. But we have a caste system among Black that has more level, much more level than just saying Black and White. | 31:42 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But that's everywhere. But it's particularly bad here because of the two colleges. And the chasm is so wide between those people who are not college related and those who are. | 31:52 |
Charles Houston | So were there no occasions or instances where people from the two groups came together or did they pretty much keep apart socially? | 32:08 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They kept apart socially. They kept apart socially. | 32:18 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And I think even when the community people were invited, they knew they were invited, but they felt different. And I think that's why they didn't have the participation or they didn't participate like they should have. | 32:24 |
Charles Houston | Would you say that that landowners fell in one group or the other? Did the people [indistinct 00:32:44]? | 32:38 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No. I really don't think so. I think people who were just not college connected, regardless of the status, didn't feel a closeness to the schools. And I don't think the schools tried to bridge the gap. | 32:43 |
Charles Houston | And many of those would've been landowners. | 33:05 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Many of those would've been landowners. | 33:07 |
Charles Houston | Was there a difference in as much as the colleges then were at the time that you were a young boy and then a teenager, and in high school, were the colleges then within the city of Orangeburg? | 33:11 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah. | 33:27 |
Charles Houston | And this then was the county? | 33:29 |
Annie Adams Jamison | State was in the city of limits. | 33:29 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Potter State's always been in the state [indistinct 00:33:35]. | 33:34 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Okay. Well, because I just have to say now, all of it just got in the city within the last five years. | 33:35 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But most of it was always in the— | 33:42 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That front part of campus. | 33:43 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | The front part of campus. Because see, that back part, it was farm. | 33:43 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes. | 33:48 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Was the farm part. | 33:49 |
Charles Houston | Was there any difference among, within the Black community, between those who lived in the town and those who lived in the countryside, was there a difference between sort of a chasm between those groups? | 33:51 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No, I don't think so. Well, I didn't feel it. And I think most people in my immediate community, you wouldn't feel it because these people were landowners and they were very proud people, ownership type pride. And that many Black people who lived in town were poverty people. So that really, if anybody were caste, we were. | 34:07 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Since I [indistinct 00:34:45] the caste system. Like I said, Black people, to me, basically they had three things. That was their pride and their family and the church. I don't see why we are trying so hard to destroy all three of them. Because I feel that with pride come what we are trying throughout this country to build back up this self-esteem and respect. And you got pride, self-esteem and respect already in there. And if you respect yourself, then you respect others. So much of that is gone now. But I think that maybe what Maron is saying, the landowners and all of that, and the colleges was a thing that they started the caste system on. | 34:43 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But we are now at a point where, to me, they think so little and not strong thinkers that we got our caste system on what we think another person has. And that's money. And we got a caste system on that thing. And they don't even know if the person, because if you don't talk all your business, they think you got something. You don't have a dime. I don't know how Blacks got on that wavelength, but they're casting themself on finance. | 35:30 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | That's always been a part of it. Finance has always a part of it in any cash system. Because finance gives you those things that [indistinct 00:36:22]. | 36:11 |
Annie Adams Jamison | [indistinct 00:36:23] think. | 36:19 |
Charles Houston | And if it's land, it gives you independence and some autonomy from White control. From what I've been reading, I get the impression that the early 1940s was a time of racial awakening for Blacks in South Carolina. Was in the statewide chapter of the NAACP was, the statewide conference. Excuse me. | 36:24 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Much of what progressed from the '40s on was due to World War II, the exposure that many men were, and women, were able to get just from traveling, going to foreign countries, seeing things. And the women, many of them, were moved into jobs where they learned skills and made more money than they ever thought they'd make in their lives. And it was just a revolution. | 37:00 |
Annie Adams Jamison | It was a revolution of unlearning. Because I think once they served with that, that they realized what they were doing for our country, where they would be treated. And I just think it was an awareness that came along with [indistinct 00:37:54]. | 37:41 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Much had to do with it. | 37:54 |
Charles Houston | Now by that, you were still in—When World War II broke out, you were obviously still living in Gadsden. | 37:56 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Uh-huh. | 38:03 |
Charles Houston | And you were here. Now, what evidence was there of the impact of the war in your communities? I mean, did you have relatives going off to serve in the war? | 38:03 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Is that [indistinct 00:38:17]? | 38:15 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah. | 38:17 |
Charles Houston | Are people going off to work in factories either in South Carolina or in the north? | 38:18 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And my daddy had, my oldest brother was at State at that time and he was in the first group that volunteered to go to the service and serve. | 38:23 |
Charles Houston | Your oldest brother? | 38:31 |
Annie Adams Jamison | My oldest brother, Mike Adam, Junior. That's that, to me, brought, I mean part of the thing that kept the community together, because when people had children away in the army, everybody worried about it. Not only just the parents, everybody worried about. And it was such a thing that where they thought a lot of people were getting killed until people went to all length to keep their children from going into the service. They would go to that same White man that I'm telling you about to see if he could do something to keep their sons from going to the service. And in many instances, he helped a lot of them not to go. | 38:32 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Well, there were certain regulations. If you were farming, there were certain stipulations that would keep you out of service. | 39:16 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Keep you out of service. If you were the only one who could help your parents, they would do that. But even with that, with some Black people, they paid him no attention. So that's why I had to go to the White man to get that kind of help, you see. | 39:23 |
Charles Houston | So you had a brother who was here and in— | 39:40 |
Annie Adams Jamison | South Carolina State. | 39:44 |
Charles Houston | —at South Carolina State. And who joined the military to serve overseas. And were there other people that you know of from your community who were kind of touched immediately by the— | 39:45 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Papa Johnny Harry went. I know he went. Person named Doug went. There were several people that went, but I was very young. And I remember more mama worrying than where he went or where he was. I just didn't know. But I remember mama worrying and praying every day. | 39:57 |
Charles Houston | What about people leaving to work in the war industry? | 40:23 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | There were good migration to areas where they could get work in the cities or in the industrial plants making raw materials. | 40:31 |
Charles Houston | Were those in South Carolina or were they out of the state? | 40:48 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No, South Carolina didn't have any factories as such. It might have been some in the large areas. I know many people got work in the military facilities, like the naval base in Charleston, Fort Jackson, which is a big army base. | 40:53 |
Annie Adams Jamison | [indistinct 00:41:21]. | 41:18 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | There was a base Sumpter. They even had temporary little base up here North. | 41:22 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And one right there at East [indistinct 00:41:31]. | 41:27 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | [indistinct 00:41:32]. So people got jobs there. Steel, there was a steel mill company up near Columbia that a lot of people worked at making material. | 41:32 |
Charles Houston | How did these things affect, you said that the war was a turning point of sorts in the awakening of Black consciousness or an African American self-awareness here. What were some of the manifestations of that and how would working in these factories well affect it? | 41:49 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Women, primarily, because women were making $5 or $6 a week in a White household taking care of children and doing every other washing thing. | 42:14 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Watching kids. | 42:26 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They was washing and ironing. And then you get a job in the factory making $40, $50 a week. It's great difference. | 42:26 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And then, like I said, awakening of the conscious of really what was happening to them as Black Americans. Because they could see it then. By being exposed, they could see some of the things. I think that caused [indistinct 00:42:59]. | 42:45 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | The exposure was a great thing. | 42:58 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, the exposure was— | 43:00 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | For the men and the women. | 43:00 |
Charles Houston | So was it mostly women then who were kind of leaving the community to go work in the— | 43:03 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The men. The men left here. | 43:07 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | The men went in the service, but the women were left basically to do the jobs and the plants to make whatever military items were needed. | 43:09 |
Charles Houston | There was actually a good number of Black men from this community who [indistinct 00:43:30]? | 43:25 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | From all communities. | 43:29 |
Annie Adams Jamison | All communities. | 43:29 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | All communities. | 43:31 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I tell you so much that they were trying to keep them from going. | 43:33 |
Charles Houston | Now, do you remember any, during the '40s and moving into the '50s, do you remember evidence, local evidence, of a change in attitude among Blacks as a result of this broader exposure and better income during the war industry years? Or any problems, racial problems? | 43:38 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | I think that was really, World War II was greatly a result in the establishment of the Civil Rights Movement. Because so many people were exposed to how they were treated, and even in the service. Blacks were segregated. And then say you sent to the fire nine segregated. That's a tough thing when you were fighting for the same country and they send you to a war segregated. And when you think about that, and those who were able to survive, and some of them injured and got back and started thinking about how they were treated, I think that was how the Civil Rights Movement got started. | 44:01 |
Charles Houston | What was the evidence? I mean, do you recall? What's the earliest evidence of the Civil Rights Movement that you recall here? Was there a time at which you became aware of the NAACO, for example, or racial problems? | 45:08 |
Annie Adams Jamison | When those kids went down there to Chris. | 45:34 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | I'm trying to think now that we started— | 45:34 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But it had happen in Greensboro, North Carolina. | 45:36 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Now that's '63. We started before then. | 45:37 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well, we started before then because now the first [indistinct 00:45:43] on the campus was when we wanted a voice in the student government and the presidents told us we couldn't have one. They expelled my classmate because he was president of student body. And I mean, that's just among Blacks, see. Because I think, like you say, the consciousness was coming and it did not stop. | 45:40 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But I must have been in the 11th grade, something. 10th or 11th grade, somewhere along there, that I could feel the movement coming. And that's '50, 1950, 1949 and '50. I could tell it as a youth that there was some differences. Things were changing. | 46:02 |
Charles Houston | Now that that's about the time that the military was desegregated. The military was beginning to desegregate about that time. Do you recall any particular events or instances? | 46:25 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Not any specific things, but I can remember Blacks grouping, meeting at churches, that kind of thing. Enough for me to, at that age, to remember— | 46:41 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But if we just fought this war, because Orangeburg was very active. And many of the meetings were held at my church, because Reverend Matt McCullom was a—He had been in the service. | 0:01 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That's when Isaiah Quincey Newman would come down there, and Ms. Modjeska Simkins would come down there and a lot of meetings were held at Trinity, because Mr. McCullom worked there. | 0:20 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | My church was very active. | 0:25 |
Annie Adams Jamison | He was the pastor of Trinity. | 0:25 |
Charles Houston | Who was the pastor? | 0:25 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Matthew McCullom. | 0:25 |
Charles Houston | Reverend Matthew McCullom. | 0:25 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It's spelled M-C-C-U— | 0:25 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Two L and one M. | 0:25 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | —C-O-L-L-O-M. Right. | 0:25 |
Charles Houston | And meetings were held at his— | 0:40 |
Annie Adams Jamison | His church, which is right across from State College. | 0:41 |
Charles Houston | These were meetings having to do with the— | 0:44 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Organization and strategies, I guess. I'm just assuming that. | 0:47 |
Charles Houston | Right. | 0:53 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But they were civil rights meetings. | 0:53 |
Charles Houston | Okay, and this was around 1950. Okay. | 0:56 |
Annie Adams Jamison | It looked like for a while, right after that, it kind of died down for a little bit and went, like you say, down here and then countrywide and then it got started back up again in Orangeburg. | 1:05 |
Charles Houston | Okay. I mean, do you recall the Brown decision in '54 being announced here? | 1:18 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah. | 1:28 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Oh, yes. | 1:29 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Oh, yes. | 1:30 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Oh, yes. And Thurgood Marshall came to Columbia. You were very conscious of it. | 1:30 |
Charles Houston | He came to Columbia, when was this now? This would have been— | 1:39 |
Annie Adams Jamison | When they started the part here in South Carolina, when the meeting on— | 1:43 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Clarendon County. | 1:47 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, the Clarendon County case. | 1:48 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | County case. | 1:50 |
Annie Adams Jamison | He came to South Carolina. | 1:50 |
Charles Houston | So that would've been as early as 19— | 1:52 |
Annie Adams Jamison | In '50 and '51, must be. | 1:56 |
Charles Houston | Right. Okay. And then in '55, there was the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Were there things also happening at the local level? I mean— | 1:57 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That's when Fred was expelled from State College. | 2:14 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Well, there was a lot of activity in Orangeburg, I guess because of the colleges and the meeting places and so on and the educational level or whatever. But it was a busy place and I can recall activity, a lot of activity. | 2:16 |
Charles Houston | Was there any racial tension here? | 2:36 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yes. | 2:39 |
Charles Houston | Between- | 2:39 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Oh, yes. | 2:39 |
Charles Houston | I mean, new racial tension other than— | 2:41 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | I think so. | 2:44 |
Charles Houston | Okay. What— | 2:45 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | I think it filtered down to students and what have you. They kind of got involved in it and of course, the others of the community became concerned. It just kind of lit up. | 2:46 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 3:07 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I really think maybe White folks realized they had to work together, to form some strategy as to what they had to do and what they didn't have to do and what they didn't want to do. But I think that was maybe the time when they realized they had to find someone from their group to work with someone from our group. | 3:07 |
Charles Houston | And when was this approximately? | 3:30 |
Annie Adams Jamison | In the early '50s. '53, '54. | 3:31 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 3:34 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Because when they had those youths and— | 3:37 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Because the Whites started putting economic pressure on Blacks who they felt were active in the groups. | 3:40 |
Annie Adams Jamison | A couple people lost their jobs. But then when they started, like you said, the Bus Boycott and then those kind of things started coming by and they realized that money was going to be not going into any cash register. I figured that was one of the things why they then had to form them a committee to work or see what they could do, what they didn't have to do. | 3:49 |
Charles Houston | So Blacks initiated a boycott here against Whites? | 4:15 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No, I'm just saying they became conscious of the different boycotts that were having in other places and the unrest, you could feel it. | 4:17 |
Charles Houston | Right. Now you mentioned that some class that a classmate of yours was expelled because there was a student movement to voice a greater— | 4:24 |
Annie Adams Jamison | They wanted— | 4:35 |
Charles Houston | —greater student control. | 4:38 |
Annie Adams Jamison | We wanted more input into what kind of restriction they were putting on students, and we needed a voice in what they would set up for students, students privileges and things on the campus. And Fred was president of the student council and they figured that, if they got rid of him, I guess the students wouldn't have all these meetings where they wanted to plot things and meet with some of the officials and be on different boards. Like the—like when Marion was on the Board of Trustees at State College, the student council president met with the trustees every time. See, that back then, in those days, that didn't happen. | 4:41 |
Annie Adams Jamison | So those were the things. They were just asking to be heard and to be a part of what they were planning for students because we were the students. So they expelled Fred and we had a march on the campus and they were going to get rid of so many students because when they expelled Fred, they felt that that closed mouth and that didn't close [indistinct 00:05:51] and the students were unhappy because they expelled him. It just was unrest on the campus. | 5:30 |
Charles Houston | Do you remember Fred's last name? | 5:59 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Uh-huh. Fred Moore. | 6:00 |
Charles Houston | Fred Moore. | 6:01 |
Annie Adams Jamison | He's an attorney now in Charleston. | 6:02 |
Charles Houston | This was like 1957? | 6:06 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Uh-uh. I finished in '56. So it was '55, '54 or '55. I don't know if he had to go to Howard two years or one, but he finished Howard University. | 6:07 |
Charles Houston | Okay. Do you remember what the issue was? I mean, if there was a particular issue that sparked it or if students just— | 6:20 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Students were meeting, the student government was meeting so that we could plan with the college officials things, laws that they were having concerning us. | 6:25 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 6:37 |
Annie Adams Jamison | We needed more voice in what they were doing concerning students' rights. | 6:37 |
Charles Houston | Okay. Were these White college officials? | 6:42 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No, they were Black. | 6:43 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 6:43 |
Annie Adams Jamison | President Turner was the president then. Benner C. Turner. | 6:46 |
Charles Houston | I mean, in terms of visible change in racial attitudes, I mean, those visible changes came more in the '60s in terms of— | 7:06 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Right. | 7:23 |
Charles Houston | Yeah, yeah. | 7:23 |
Charles Houston | —in terms of activities. But there was a sense that— | 7:23 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | There was evidence in the '50s. | 7:27 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 7:27 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Oh, yeah. | 7:27 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | There was evidence in the fifties | 7:27 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And things were changing. | 7:32 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Again, I think much of it had to do as a result of the war, there were a lot of dissatisfied people who felt, and rightly so, they felt that they were cheated. You go to serve for your country and put your life on the line and— | 7:34 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Come back home and shut up. | 7:53 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | —you were treated as a black sheep. And the Whites expected to treat you just like you were treated before you left. | 7:53 |
Charles Houston | Right. | 8:08 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And you were not ready for that. So I think that's where it all started to boil it. | 8:08 |
Charles Houston | Okay. Yeah, there was Little Rock in '57. I mean, was there any sense that any events that marked an increase in racial tension as a result of— | 8:16 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | I think particularly in Orangeburg community, because this was sort of a group of people here who were up on everything that was happening nationwide and so much of the strategy involved, and it was determined here. | 8:33 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 9:01 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I think because of tension that we had to stay away from certain things in order to get some things. I say this in life, the Blacks were, even though we were separated in the theaters, they were afraid to go to the theaters during those years when it was so conscious over the nation. They felt that something would happen to them because they were constantly meeting and they knew the White community knew this and they felt that something would happen to them if they would see them at certain places. But that's when they were doing all the planning and plotting. | 9:01 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | [indistinct 00:09:39] | 9:38 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Because they had a lot of meetings in Orangeburg. | 9:38 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, a lot of meetings were in Orangeburg. | 9:40 |
Charles Houston | Where would these meetings take place? | 9:42 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Most of them at Trinity Church. | 9:44 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Most of them at Trinity Church. | 9:44 |
Annie Adams Jamison | At church. Uh-huh. But they had meetings at some of the other churches. But I think it might have been because of Reverend McCullom, but not only that, because it was the closest to the campuses too. | 9:47 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, that's right, dear. | 9:55 |
Charles Houston | Now Trinity Church, that's Baptist? | 10:02 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No, United Methodist now. It was Trinity Methodist Church then, but it's United Methodist now. | 10:05 |
Charles Houston | Yeah. I think I almost went to Trinity, thinking it was the thinking it was the Catholic church you mentioned. You said there was a Black Catholic church in— | 10:15 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Oh, yes. | 10:23 |
Charles Houston | I went down Russell Street looking for Trinity. Is that how you get to it? Go down Russell Street? | 10:24 |
Annie Adams Jamison | You can go Russell Street. | 10:33 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | You can Russell or you can go on 601. | 10:37 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Or you go on Russell and now State College, you just turn— | 10:37 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It's right across the tracks from State College. | 10:38 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Right across | 10:39 |
Charles Houston | Yeah, that's the one I was in. Somebody gave me directions. | 10:40 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Right across the street. | 10:43 |
Charles Houston | They told me it was Roman Catholic. | 10:44 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Now you got to go a long way to go to Holy Trinity. | 10:47 |
Charles Houston | Holy Trinity. | 10:50 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Holy Trinity, yeah. | 10:50 |
Annie Adams Jamison | It's back out there in the White community. | 10:54 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah. | 10:55 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But see, the Catholic church and the Catholic school was right there, what is now Trinity Yard, because it was separated. See, the Catholic church was segregated too here. We had a Catholic church out there where the Catholic church is now for everyone. Then they had the Black Catholic church right here on Treadwell Street. The school was right there where Trinity Yard is now. Trinity Kindergarten is a part of what used to be the Holy Trinity School. | 10:56 |
Charles Houston | So there was a Black Catholic school here in town, as well as a Black Catholic church. And they were— | 11:30 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, but the school came much later after Claflin. We were talking about when I went to school because— | 11:36 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Oh yeah, much later. | 11:46 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Much later that the Catholic school started. | 11:47 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 11:52 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Maybe in the '50s though. Yeah. | 11:53 |
Annie Adams Jamison | It had to be because the little Terry children weren't the first one to go there. | 11:54 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Hera went there. | 11:59 |
Annie Adams Jamison | It had to be in the '50s. | 12:03 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | It had to be the '50s, yeah. | 12:03 |
Charles Houston | But getting back to Trinity, you were saying that in the '50s, Whites knew that that change was coming and they were going to have to deal with Blacks because they were constant meetings at Trinity Church under Reverend McCullom. | 12:07 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Cooperation with the Civil Rights Movement. | 12:22 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah. | 12:25 |
Charles Houston | Okay. That— | 12:26 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Because now he wasn't really the head person. I think— | 12:26 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | The NAACP, I think was a basis of the— | 12:29 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That's why I was about to say, he was a member of it. And like you said, this was a community where I guess you could get some kind of cooperation. So they met at his church. He was the pastor there at Trinity. | 12:33 |
Charles Houston | Okay. Were there any Black initiatives coming out of any of these meetings that you can recall? Any kind of local initiatives or— | 12:49 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Much of the strategy that came out of that was on a state level. | 13:02 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 13:09 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Because most of the offices and stuff that came, I guess Trinity just happened to be the right place for them to meet. | 13:09 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Of course, now Orangeburg wasn't the only place they met. They met in Columbia a lot. | 13:17 |
Charles Houston | Right. | 13:18 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Uh-huh. | 13:18 |
Speaker 1 | [indistinct 00:13:28] | 13:18 |
Charles Houston | Oh, I'm fine, thanks. Please eat. | 13:30 |
Speaker 1 | [indistinct 00:13:32] | 13:31 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | You say you're going to talk to Jim Summerton? | 13:33 |
Charles Houston | Yes. | 13:35 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | All right. He can— | 13:36 |
Annie Adams Jamison | He'll give you all of it. | 13:37 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | He can give you all of it. | 13:39 |
Charles Houston | Okay. Well, I'm sure lots of things that I perhaps should be asking that I can't think of at the moment. Are there any things that we haven't discussed in terms of your experience during the period of Jim Crow from growing up in this area in the late '30s, '40s, '50s? | 13:41 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Well, the only other thing— | 14:09 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | With our age group, the separatism was so great and parents tended to keep you away from situations that might turn into something undesirable. So you really didn't have contact with Whites. | 14:09 |
Charles Houston | Even here in the city, I mean, being so close to the city? | 14:32 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | You didn't have any contact with Whites. Now I played with White kids when I was a little, like we would swap pigeons or something like that when we were little fellas, 10 or 11 years old. But there's an unwritten law that goes way back to slavery, I imagine, where you can associate and play as children together. But when you get a certain age— | 14:36 |
Annie Adams Jamison | It's a White world— | 15:10 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | —then there has to be a severance and a complete severance. Then you go to two different worlds. If you once start venturing in the other world, then you asking for trouble. That's basically how it worked out. So I probably saw more White people than the average person because, like I said, at 11, I started helping my daddy in the store and there would be basically White salesmen. No customers of course, but White salespersons that I met and learned to deal with and so on. | 15:10 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | So I probably had more exposure from that aspect. But the average person, they didn't even come in contact with—You saw them on the street or something, or saw them in the stores and you knew your place. Maybe the superintendent of the school would come once or twice a year and you'd see him or some White person in some other capacity, and administration would come to your public schools and you'd see them. | 15:59 |
Annie Adams Jamison | [indistinct 00:16:35] | 16:34 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But you didn't have any contact with any [indistinct 00:16:40] children in school. So you were separate. You were— | 16:35 |
Annie Adams Jamison | It was a totally different world. | 16:47 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | You weren't equal, but you were separate. | 16:50 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I think the Southern state did themselves an injustice because it comes all the way down now until South Carolina can still feel it. But Marion wanted to go to pharmaceutical school. He applied to the University of South Carolina, but see, by being separate still, they didn't want him to come. | 16:56 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They didn't want him to come. | 17:12 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The offered him out state. | 17:15 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | There was no way for me to go because— | 17:16 |
Annie Adams Jamison | [indistinct 00:17:18] | 17:17 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | I couldn't go to—they got two schools, one in Columbia, one in Charleston, but I couldn't go there. | 17:18 |
Annie Adams Jamison | They would offer him out of state. | 17:25 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They had it. | 17:25 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And he would go somewhere else. | 17:26 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They paid out of state. I don't know what they called it then. I forgot what they called it. But they paid you to go elsewhere. | 17:27 |
Charles Houston | Right. | 17:41 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Now that Marion went to Xavier to get his pharmaceutical or pharmacy degree, then see, now they want to know why you don't let your children go to college here because they were a good students, especially from the high school level. But the children wanted to go back to their dad's school. They wanted to go to the daddy's school. Now, if they'd let him go to University of South Carolina, they would probably have wanted to go to the daddy's school, I think. | 17:42 |
Charles Houston | Right. | 18:04 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That's what I said, well, that's where they did themselves— | 18:09 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | A different day. | 18:10 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah. Yeah. It's a different day. But I'm just saying, that that was something because of their regulation then that probably comes back to haunt you as you say now. | 18:11 |
Charles Houston | Right. | 18:20 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But I just believe the Black kids miss a whole lot in this day and time if they don't get that first degree from a Black [indistinct 00:18:31] school. It's something you could never tell them about, I tell you that. | 18:23 |
Charles Houston | Right. | 18:35 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But some people who don't see it that way because they feel that we should be able to go. But until things get different from what they are now, they can fool themselves that it's okay and everything is all right, but it's not. | 18:40 |
Charles Houston | You mean, integration? | 18:55 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yes. | 19:00 |
Charles Houston | Right. | 19:00 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And of the treatment of the students. | 19:01 |
Charles Houston | Right. So your parents limited your contact with Whites? | 19:10 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | For sure. | 19:13 |
Charles Houston | In your case, it wouldn't have been difficult because there were— | 19:14 |
Annie Adams Jamison | There were so few. | 19:17 |
Charles Houston | —mostly Blacks. | 19:17 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, that's right. | 19:17 |
Charles Houston | But there were more Whites in this area. And you said you actually had some interaction with them as a boy. Would that have been with the children of landowners or farmers locally? | 19:21 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, yeah. Landowners. | 19:35 |
Charles Houston | But then as a youth, it was limited to contacts through your dad's store? | 19:37 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Right. | 19:45 |
Charles Houston | And I suppose observations you'd make going with him into the city. | 19:46 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Mm-hmm. | 19:50 |
Charles Houston | You said there were lots of Black tradesmen. Were there Black tradesmen in town whom you visited for things? I mean, would you go to a Black tailor or to, I don't know, a Black barbershop? | 19:52 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Black everything. | 20:04 |
Charles Houston | Okay. But would those have been in a Black part of town or would they have been out here in the country? | 20:06 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | In the Black part of town. | 20:11 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 20:13 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Right across the street the State College. | 20:14 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah. | 20:15 |
Charles Houston | Oh, that's same area that's on the other side of the tracks [indistinct 00:20:19] | 20:15 |
Annie Adams Jamison | There used to be a Black theater across there, a Black soda shop, two or three Black barber shops. | 20:18 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Black five and 10. | 20:25 |
Charles Houston | There still are barbershops. | 20:26 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah. | 20:26 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Black five and 10. | 20:27 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Five or 10 store. A little restaurant right on the corner. | 20:28 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Restaurant. | 20:33 |
Annie Adams Jamison | All that. | 20:33 |
Charles Houston | So Blacks didn't even go to the Jim Crow balcony of the White theater? There was a— | 20:33 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They could, but most of them went to their own. | 20:39 |
Charles Houston | To the Black theater. | 20:43 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But the White man owned it. The White man owned the theater. | 20:43 |
Charles Houston | Oh. | 20:47 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But it was operated by Black people. But the other businesses were Black operated and owned. | 20:47 |
Charles Houston | Okay. Was there a difference in the movie? Would the same movies be at that theater? | 20:55 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Oh yeah. You'd see the same movie. | 20:58 |
Charles Houston | At the— | 20:59 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No, not the same time. | 21:00 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 21:01 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No, it'd probably go to one of the—There were theaters. | 21:01 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Even the White one downtown, they didn't have the same movies at the same time. | 21:08 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | No, and they wouldn't have the same movie. | 21:12 |
Annie Adams Jamison | That's what I said, they wouldn't have the same movie at the same time. | 21:13 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | They would never have the same movie. | 21:14 |
Charles Houston | But, so you— | 21:14 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But movies are not like movies today. They come out and kids say, "Oh, I got, waiting, I'm going to see this." You just go to the movie. | 21:16 |
Charles Houston | Right. You saw what was there. | 21:24 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah, you're going to see a cartoon. You're going to see a serial. | 21:25 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Everything. | 21:25 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | You used to have a serial, which was a continuous thing. | 21:27 |
Charles Houston | Like Buck Rogers. | 21:35 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Oh, right, yeah, yeah. You see that and you see the news and you saw it all for nine cents. You get a quarter, you were in heaven because you could go to a soda shop next door and buy some ice cream or a soda. But yeah, well, all your towns basically of the size of Orangeburg, you've got a Black section. Okay. And same thing is true in Columbia. Where was it? Assembly Street? | 21:36 |
Charles Houston | Mm-hmm. | 22:10 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Where— | 22:11 |
Annie Adams Jamison | We had to stay on Assembly Street. | 22:11 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Where all the Black people— | 22:11 |
Annie Adams Jamison | You had to go on Main Street to spend your money with them White people and go across Main to go to the restroom. But you come back on Assembly Street and wait in the cold or in the heat until somebody pick you up and carry you back again, on the corner. | 22:15 |
Charles Houston | So you mean, one of your relatives [indistinct 00:22:33] | 22:30 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Or somebody in the community who had transportation. | 22:33 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Yeah. By [indistinct 00:22:36] | 22:35 |
Annie Adams Jamison | They would carry everybody. | 22:35 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Person who took you there— | 22:38 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Who took you there, come back and pick you up. | 22:39 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Then you would shop and then they'd come back. | 22:39 |
Charles Houston | Right. | 22:41 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But see, he probably would carry dad and mama, but he would carry Ms. Sonos too. So everybody would do different shopping, you see? | 22:43 |
Charles Houston | Right. | 22:52 |
Annie Adams Jamison | But you have to wait till he finished his and everybody else finished theirs before you could go back. | 22:53 |
Charles Houston | Right. And you'd do this once a week? | 22:55 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Huh? | 22:55 |
Charles Houston | Do this once a week? | 22:55 |
Annie Adams Jamison | They would do that once a week. | 22:55 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Or every other week. | 22:55 |
Annie Adams Jamison | They would buy enough stable things. Sometimes you go once a month because they grew so much stuff on their own. | 23:04 |
Charles Houston | Right. | 23:07 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Of course, they didn't take you to Columbia for to do shopping for school but once a year. | 23:07 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | So you didn't have no money to buy nothing no how. | 23:12 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Uh-uh. | 23:16 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Once a week. | 23:16 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No, you didn't go no once a week then. But when you think about it, they had everything on their own because they grew wheat and they had their own flour and had corn and used to go to the mill. | 23:17 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | The only thing they had to buy was rice. | 23:28 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Then see, when they go to the mill for corn, they had the grits too. They got the meal and the grits out of the corn. | 23:30 |
Charles Houston | Okay. | 23:42 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Then they got the flour, their own flour. | 23:42 |
Charles Houston | You would do that in Gadsden? | 23:42 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Yeah, we did that there. | 23:42 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | You got your milk and you got your butter and you got your hogs and you got your chickens and you got your eggs. You got your vegetables. | 23:42 |
Annie Adams Jamison | My daddy had what they called the meat house. They would cure their own meat. | 23:45 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | The smokehouse. | 23:45 |
Annie Adams Jamison | They called it the smokehouse. | 23:45 |
Charles Houston | Right. | 23:45 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | So you had everything you needed. Clothing, rice, you bought. Fruit like bananas and oranges. | 23:57 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And sugar. | 24:07 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | And sugar. That's funny because they had a lot of syrup mills, they made syrup, but they never made sugar. | 24:08 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No, they didn't make sugar, but they made syrup. | 24:14 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | That's funny. I don't know why. Of course, it has to be a refining process. | 24:16 |
Charles Houston | Right. | 24:20 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | But I believe you could do it. | 24:21 |
Annie Adams Jamison | If they had done it. | 24:23 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | With Black ingenuity, you could do it. | 24:24 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Oh, yeah. | 24:26 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Because we can do anything. | 24:29 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Anything. They say that man hit [indistinct 00:24:41] six home runs. | 24:39 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Seven, six [indistinct 00:24:41] | 24:40 |
Annie Adams Jamison | Back to back. | 24:40 |
Charles Houston | Well, this has been very enlightening for me. | 24:43 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Okay. | 24:46 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I'm glad you enjoyed it. I hope it has helped you [indistinct 00:24:49] | 24:46 |
Charles Houston | It certainly has helped a great deal. | 24:46 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | If you need to make another trip— | 24:50 |
Annie Adams Jamison | And you learned that, yeah, come back. | 24:51 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | —need to expand. | 24:52 |
Charles Houston | Well— | 24:54 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Or you need some— | 24:58 |
Annie Adams Jamison | If you're still here when I get back, now come back to see us. | 24:58 |
Charles Houston | When are you— | 24:58 |
Annie Adams Jamison | I leave on Friday this week, but I'll be back next Thursday. You still be here? | 24:59 |
Charles Houston | Oh yeah. Well, I'll be here at least until the 23rd. I mean, we're scheduled to go to Beaufort County on the 23rd. | 25:04 |
Annie Adams Jamison | The 23rd. Okay. | 25:09 |
Charles Houston | But there's a possibility I may be staying over. | 25:10 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | You'll enjoy Beaufort County. | 25:13 |
Charles Houston | Well, I know I will, but there's so much to be done here that if I can stay, I will. I'll turn this off. Also, if you have time now, I'd like to do the family biography form, but I can come back and do that later if you'd rather. | 25:15 |
Annie Adams Jamison | No, if you want to now. | 25:28 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | If you would prefer to do it now. | 25:30 |
Charles Houston | Yeah, actually I would. | 25:31 |
Marion William Jamison, Jr. | Okay. | 25:32 |
Charles Houston | Let me just turn this off. | 25:34 |
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