John Canty interview recording, 1995 June 12
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Kisha Turner | This is Kisha Turner, interviewer one. | 0:01 |
Mary Hebert | And Mary Hebert. | 0:04 |
Kisha Turner | And? | 0:05 |
John Canty | John Canty. | 0:07 |
Kisha Turner | Could we start out by just stating when you were born, where? | 0:10 |
John Canty | I was born in 1925. | 0:15 |
Kisha Turner | And where? | 0:22 |
John Canty | In Silver, South Carolina. | 0:22 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Could you just talk a little about where you were born, about Silver, the town? | 0:28 |
John Canty | We was about a mile out of Silver and my parents had seven children and I'm the youngest of the seven. | 0:36 |
John Canty | I went to elementary school in Silver, and then later on after elementary school in Scott's Branch. And we walked from Silver sometime to Scott's Branch and back, which is about five miles. And there were no buses at that time. The White had buses, but the Black folks didn't have no buses. This is how, sometime my parents had a car and our neighbors had a car. And sometime we would rotate around, but if they couldn't take us or pick us up, then we would have to walk. | 0:49 |
Kisha Turner | Can you tell me a little about your school, the size of your school? Did the students come from areas all around? | 1:30 |
John Canty | Not at Silver. We had several schools, I guess about three or four miles apart. But I went to the one in Silver, it was a four room school. And during the time we had to go in the woods, pick up wood, start, burn the wood heaters and that's the way we heated through that time. And then the students would have to clean up because there was no money to clean up the school, coming from the federal government at that time. And after I completed the seventh grade, then I came to Summerton in the eighth grade and the school was a little bit better. They had coal heaters at that time and it was much larger. I don't know, as I can remember, I think it's about eight rooms in that school. | 1:36 |
Kisha Turner | How many students, was it crowded? | 2:34 |
John Canty | I can imagine, I think we had roughly about 40 students in the class because they came from around after they finished these elementary schools, they came to Summerton and there was I guess, maybe seven or eight schools that they came from. | 2:40 |
Mary Hebert | Was this when Scott's Branch was new? | 2:59 |
John Canty | No, this was an old frame building that I went to. Then they built this one here since my time and then the new one. | 3:03 |
Kisha Turner | What kind of work did your parents do? | 3:12 |
John Canty | My family farmed and we came from a poor family. In fact, everybody was poor back during that time because I think it was just hard. And I can remember that my daddy and my oldest brother worked for 50 cents a day and it wasn't eight hours a day, it was a day, something like 10 to 12 hours. And as growing up on the farm, we raised a lot of stuff on the farm, vegetables and stuff like that. Of course, back during that time, 50 cents was a lot of money compared with 50 cents today. As a child, if you would get hold to a nickel, or a penny or something, you would appreciate it. But if you had one of these children today, a nickel or penny, they'll ask for some green money. They don't want that change. | 3:22 |
Kisha Turner | And what kinds of things did you do? | 4:15 |
John Canty | Well, I never worked here in South Carolina. After I finished high school, I left, went to Washington and I stayed there until '85, retired, my wife and I. | 4:18 |
Kisha Turner | Talk a little about the reasons you went to Washington. | 4:34 |
John Canty | Seeking a job. During that time, the only thing was around for a Black person to do is on the farm or in the woods, cutting pulp wood and that kind of stuff. There was nothing else. | 4:38 |
John Canty | And if you was a professional, only thing for the professional was either you a preacher or a teacher for Blacks, it was only two things. | 4:55 |
John Canty | And so I had to go someplace seeking work and I went to Washington. | 5:04 |
Kisha Turner | Did you go alone or did you go with someone? | 5:10 |
John Canty | My brother had gone ahead of me, he was there about a year before and then I went. | 5:12 |
Mary Hebert | You mentioned that you were a professional. Did you go to college? | 5:18 |
John Canty | No. No, I didn't go to college. I said professional people. | 5:21 |
Mary Hebert | Oh, okay. | 5:26 |
John Canty | It was preachers or teachers. | 5:29 |
Mary Hebert | Did you do any chores on the farm as a child? Did you help out? | 5:33 |
John Canty | Yes, I done a little plowing, a little picking cotton and a little bit of everything that was on the farm at that time. We didn't have nothing but corn and cotton at that time, we would do that. | 5:38 |
Mary Hebert | You going to school, was that a difficulty for your family? | 5:54 |
John Canty | Yes, yes. It was kind of rough. | 5:59 |
Mary Hebert | Why? | 6:04 |
John Canty | Financial reasons. Yeah, that's why I couldn't go to college, because we didn't have the money. And then after I got out and started working, later on I got married and then I couldn't go. | 6:06 |
Kisha Turner | Could you talk a little about the differences between Silver or Summerton and Washington? | 6:21 |
John Canty | Oh, there was quite a bit of difference. Leaving a small town like Summerton, going into a big city like Washington, everything was different. Even the people were different. The White people was much more acceptable to Blacks than here, because they were more acceptful. You could talk to them and go around and associate with them and so forth. White here, they didn't do that. All they wanted was you worked for them, that was it. | 6:30 |
Kisha Turner | What part of DC did you move to? | 7:13 |
John Canty | When I first went there I lived in the northwest section and then later on I moved to Northeast. And at the time my brother and I rented a room. I guess the room was large as the dining area, living room and the kitchen. We rent that room for $6 a week and we had a stove unit and we done our own cooking. My brother, the man cooked when I first went, but then I learned how to cook later. | 7:15 |
Kisha Turner | How old were you when you left? | 7:54 |
John Canty | 17. | 7:54 |
Kisha Turner | 17. And your brother, how much older was he? | 7:57 |
John Canty | He was 23. And when I first went there as going from the country, believe in telling the truth and I couldn't get a job because I was only 17 years old. This was the beginning of the war and everybody, they wanted people to work and they just wanted me to tell the lie that I was 18. And so I would go out and I would come back every day. My brother said, "You find a job?" I said, "No, they say you have to be 18." He said, "Well, just tell them you you 18." So I went back, I told them I was 18, they hired me. | 7:58 |
Kisha Turner | Where were you hired? | 8:29 |
John Canty | I went on a construction job at that time. And when I left the construction job, I had several jobs. I drove a truck for a while, taxi cab and worked at Eastern Airline a while, Washington terminal where we repair trains, I was a repairman. And then after that I went into government. | 8:44 |
Kisha Turner | Could you talk about your government work? | 9:11 |
John Canty | I start off with the Navy as a clerk, and then I went on to National Aeronautic and Space Administration as a clerk, and then I worked up to supervisor. At that time there was a lady over the section, she was a White lady that over this section. And the next one was in charge with another White lady. They'd been there longer than I had and there was only four of us working that section. It was two Whites and two Blacks, another Black girl. | 9:13 |
John Canty | And as this White lady was leaving, she wanted somebody to be the supervisor. So she asked Ruth, which was White, and Ruth turned it down. And then she told the administrator to give me the job because Ruth was going, she was looking for a job also out and Amelia went on to the White House. So later on she got Ruth a job over to the White House. And few months later they called me and asked me if I wanted to come over there. So I told them no. | 9:48 |
John Canty | And so they said, "Come on over and talk to us." I said, "Okay, I'll come." And so they set up an appointment and we had lunch together and everything. And so they explained to me about the work there and everything. And so I said, "I don't know, I'll think about it." At that time the supervisor came in and he talked to me and he said, "Ruth and Amelia told me all about you and said if you want the job, you have the job." I said, "Well, I don't know. I'll think about it." | 10:23 |
John Canty | So I went back to National Aeronautical Space Administration and about two weeks later they called me and said, "Come on over." But when I went over I decided I would take the job temporarily. And I said if I don't like it I can go back to National Aeronautical Space Administration. So they detailed me over there for a while and the detail wound up to be 18 years. So I worked for Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan. | 10:57 |
Kisha Turner | What were your duties? | 11:31 |
John Canty | I worked in presidential personnel. I kept all the records and resumes and all that stuff in a section. Anytime the president needed somebody, if he needs a lawyer or something, they just call me and say, "We need a lawyer. Give me five or six names, seven, eight names, 10 names or whatever." And I would just give them a little name there. I had as many 42 people working for me at one time. It swelled down to about four. During the change of administration, you have a lot of people coming in and nowhere to put them, so they just throw a bunch of people on you and say, "Put them to work." | 11:41 |
John Canty | And you can believe me, there was a lot of work each time they changed the administration, they start out new. Because each president takes his files and stuff with him and you have to start from the groundwork. I was the only one for a while, Amelia and I were the only two that stayed through some of the administration together. But then when Carter came in, she left and I was the only one that actually stayed through there in president's personnel the whole time. And I guess the reason why they kept me, because I could help them, the new people as they come in, because they didn't even know how to order supplies. And so I had to help them with everything. | 12:27 |
Mary Hebert | Were you Civil Service? | 13:13 |
John Canty | Yes. | 13:15 |
Kisha Turner | Oh yeah, I have plenty of questions. Could you tell me about the community you lived in, in Washington or any organizations you were involved in? | 13:20 |
John Canty | I lived in, let me see. All the communities that I lived in was nice. In fact, up until about the middle '70s, most parts of Washington was nice. And used to find better houses in some section than others, but the whole of Washington DC was nice until I guess about '77. And then it just—I'm sorry, I back up. About '70, and then it just started falling apart. We always lived in a nice section of Washington and the last place we lived, we stayed there for 29 years. When we moved in that neighborhood, I think we was about the fourth Black that moved into that block. | 13:28 |
John Canty | And some of the people moved out, the majority of the people that stayed in that, you got to know everybody on the block. Not by name, but you know faces, just about everybody on the block. It was a close knitted area because we had a civic organization in there, takes in about I guess four blocks. And anything that happened in your neighborhood, people was there to watch for you and they would report it. | 14:31 |
Kisha Turner | What was the name of the civic? | 15:01 |
John Canty | Fort Totten City Organization. | 15:04 |
Kisha Turner | This was in Northwest? | 15:08 |
John Canty | Northeast. | 15:10 |
Kisha Turner | Northeast? | 15:10 |
John Canty | Yeah. That's where we spent the last 29 years. | 15:10 |
Kisha Turner | Okay, Northeast. | 15:10 |
Mary Hebert | Did you have any direct contact with the presidents that you worked for? | 15:17 |
John Canty | Yes. | 15:20 |
Mary Hebert | What were they like? What was Johnson like? | 15:22 |
John Canty | Johnson, I didn't have a really close contact with Johnson, but I was told some things about him. Say he was a little snotty. | 15:27 |
John Canty | And some things that the people, the cooks and stuff told me about him, that he would be in the bathroom in the morning and he'd call one of them, said, "Bring me a glass of orange juice." (all laugh) | 15:39 |
John Canty | One night—You don't have too much problem with the presidents, you have problems with the lower people are trying to get up the top. Because one night when the carpenters was working late and Johnson was the type of guy, he would walk around and cut out lights. He didn't like no lights to run at night, air condition and stuff like that, he'd cut out everything. He walked around and see whether everything was left on, he cut it off. | 16:01 |
John Canty | So as he was walking around this night, the carpenter was back in the carpenter shop, working, and he said he cut the lights off. And the president said, when he cut the lights off, the carpenter said, "Cut them damn lights back on." (all laugh) And Johnson cut the lights back on and he looked in the president face and he said, "I'm sorry." He said, "That's okay," and he went on. | 16:25 |
John Canty | So things like that happened and they would never say anything to you, but some of these other guys would probably say something about you. And Nixon was a very nice guy, as far as getting things and the thing that you want, you can always get it out of him. He remodeled the whole White House and the executive office building they had when I went there. They had old carpet and old shades and curtains. | 16:55 |
John Canty | And so he took all that stuff out and put in new. He was just a person that if you wanted a raise, you could get it. If you wanted anything to work with, you could get it. Because under him we got television sets and radios in our office. Then when dear Mr. Carter came in, he said, "You can't work and watch television and radios." And he said, "I'm going to start it off in the mansion," so there was five sets there. He said we can't watch five sets and he got rid of three of them. He said we can only use two sets and then we had to get rid of ours. | 17:34 |
Mary Hebert | How did Watergate impact your office? | 18:21 |
John Canty | It didn't. Everything worked smoothly as what it was, going on. Everything worked smoothly. | 18:24 |
Mary Hebert | There wasn't any investigations into your— | 18:37 |
John Canty | No. And Ford, he was a nice guy but he just carried out Nixon's term and that kind of thing. Carter wasn't bad, he was a very nice guy. We would have lunch with Carter every Tuesday, he would have us on the White House lawn and they would fix things like hot dogs, baked beans and potato chips and you have a couple of bands out there. We staggered our lunch hour, some people go to lunch at 11:00, 11:00 to 12:00, some go 12:00 to 1:00. And that way everybody will be working, so they'd be out there for a couple hours and still. | 18:39 |
Kisha Turner | I was wondering when you mentioned when they offered you work at the White House, you were unsure about taking it? | 19:28 |
John Canty | Yes, because I liked National Aeronautic and Space Administration then, I didn't know what I was getting into. And when I first went over there I saw all the security people over there and everything looked so tight and I said, "I don't know that I want be around these people." But it worked out. | 19:38 |
Kisha Turner | How long were you at NASA? | 20:00 |
John Canty | I was at NASA from '60, went until '67. White House in '67, stayed until '85. | 20:04 |
Kisha Turner | What made you return back to Summerton? | 20:20 |
John Canty | Well, DC was getting a little rough and I thought Summerton would've been a better place. It is as far as the crime and things like that, but there's other things, it's a little different. Sometimes I have mixed emotion, I wish I had stayed in DC. And some of the things that I was involved in, in Washington is church. I was a trustee in the church and was involved in several committees and different things in the church. I even done a little cooking for the church. | 20:25 |
Kisha Turner | What church? | 21:08 |
John Canty | Purita Baptist, that's 1335 Maryland Avenue in DC over there. | 21:08 |
Kisha Turner | Okay, yeah. | 21:11 |
John Canty | And I was involved with the Masons. [indistinct 00:21:26] | 21:19 |
Mary Hebert | NAACP? | 21:21 |
John Canty | NAACP. | 21:21 |
Kisha Turner | Could you talk a little about NAACP? | 21:32 |
John Canty | Well, I was just a member and I would go to the meetings and some of the planning, but I don't remember exact what went on during that time. It wasn't involving in nothing special because everything was moving along pretty good in DC. It wasn't like down here. | 21:37 |
Mary Hebert | Were your parents involved in the NAACP here in Summerton? | 21:59 |
John Canty | No. My parents, my father died in 1951 and my mother died in '56. | 22:04 |
Kisha Turner | Do you remember your grandparents at all? | 22:19 |
John Canty | Yes. My grandfather died when I think I was nine years old. And my grandmother, she died, let's see, '34, guess I was about 16 when she died. | 22:21 |
Kisha Turner | What do you remember about them? | 22:35 |
John Canty | I remember we used to go there as kids and they used to have these good biscuits. Back during that time, cooked biscuits with buttermilk and my grandmother, she used to make some of the best biscuits. | 22:37 |
Kisha Turner | Now, did they live close to you? | 22:57 |
John Canty | Yes, about a mile and a half. But I was too small to go by myself. My parents would have to take me, especially in my grandfather's time. My grandmother, after he died, she went to Richmond for a while. She stayed there with her son, I guess for four or five years. Then she came back and lived with us about two years, and then she died. | 23:02 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Did they tell you any stories about— | 23:33 |
John Canty | I don't remember any stories. | 23:36 |
Kisha Turner | Did you have sisters? | 23:39 |
John Canty | Yes. | 23:40 |
Kisha Turner | What kind of work did your sisters—Did they stay or move on? | 23:41 |
John Canty | Well, all except one went away. One was married and she's married to a farmer. He's out on the river road [indistinct 00:23:55] park, and the other sister went away and two of them didn't stay. They went to New York for a while and they didn't like it, they came back. And one sister went to Washington and she died in Washington. | 23:46 |
Kisha Turner | Can you tell me a little, what you remember about your neighborhood, your neighbors and your involvement with them? | 24:14 |
John Canty | Here? | 24:22 |
Kisha Turner | Yes, here. | 24:23 |
John Canty | During the time us growing up, we had neighbors. As kids, we used to play together and we'd get into bedevilment, and at that time if I was visiting your house and I did some devilment, everybody get a beating. | 24:29 |
John Canty | Your mother could beat all the children, my mother's children, everybody, all the neighbor's children, but that don't happen anymore. And during the time, if you go back and say, one of the ladies that used to live there, her name was Lucille Guess. | 24:49 |
John Canty | Well, she used to beat the children and I used to get beaten, too. But I wouldn't go back home and tell my mother that Miss Lucy had beat me because I'd get another one. That's about it. And as growing up, I'll tell you a little bit about Summerton. Summerton had a Black policeman here when I was small. Down at that time, if we close up at 9:00 and they would blow a whistle, you had to get off the street 9:00 if you were in Summerton. | 25:05 |
Kisha Turner | Everyone? | 25:50 |
John Canty | Everybody, yeah. This Black policeman couldn't lock up nobody but Black people. And they have a little jail there, I think it was something like 8x8 or 10x8 or something. And that's where they would put the guys in if we get into some devilment or be caught on the street after hours, they was locked up during that time. | 25:51 |
Kisha Turner | It was a 9:00 curfew? | 26:13 |
John Canty | Yeah, 9:00 curfew. And can you imagine 9:00 in the summertime? (laughs) It's still daylight. | 26:17 |
Mary Hebert | Why did they have a curfew, do you know why? | 26:27 |
John Canty | I never figured out why, but maybe just to get the Black people off the street so they could get them back in the country or wherever they was from. Because Summerton, this little town had so many people would be in here on Saturday nights and Friday nights, you couldn't hardly walk on the sidewalk, you had to get out in the street sometimes. It was just that crowded. | 26:31 |
Kisha Turner | People were coming in for entertainment? | 26:57 |
John Canty | Yeah. | 27:00 |
Mary Hebert | What kind of things would they do? | 27:02 |
John Canty | Well, there was stores, they'd do a little shopping. And then some of them would go on the Railroad avenue where they had them little nickel little joints down there and just all in Summerton. | 27:05 |
Mary Hebert | Was Saturday afternoon like the day off, cutoff's noon? | 27:18 |
John Canty | Yeah, Saturday's the day off. Some of them work until 12:00 on Saturday, then they got off and into town. | 27:22 |
Kisha Turner | Did the White folks at to leave town at 9:00, too? | 27:33 |
John Canty | If they was in the street, but see, most of the White folks lived there, they would go home anyway. And if they would get caught out, the police would say, "Go home." They wouldn't lock them up and the Black police couldn't lock them up. | 27:37 |
Kisha Turner | Do you remember taking trips as a child? | 27:53 |
John Canty | Yes, I can remember one trip when I was nine years old. My mother, well, my aunt lived in Marion and we was taking the train. I've never been on the train before and we was taking the train to Marion early that next morning, I think it's something like 6:00 in the morning. I don't sleep none that night and when I did go to sleep, I guess it was probably about 3:00. And then I had this dream that my mother had left me and I woke up. I didn't go back to sleep, so I caught the train. I think it was something like a two and a half hour ride from here from where we had to get a train in Pinewood, which is maybe ten, 12 miles from here. I think it was about a two and a half hour trip to Marion, which is about 76 miles. We had go to Sumter and then stop and then get in Marion. | 28:01 |
Kisha Turner | To Marion? | 28:56 |
John Canty | To Marion, it was only about 76 miles. And that's the only trip that I had as a kid. I passed up a trip going to Philadelphia, my mother had brothers in Philadelphia and they took my mother back and they wanted me to go, too. And so I said, "No, I want to stay in here so I can ride around in the car with my daddy." | 28:57 |
Kisha Turner | So your mother went to Philadelphia? | 29:35 |
John Canty | Yeah. | 29:37 |
Mary Hebert | What was travel like? It was segregated at that time. Could you describe? | 29:38 |
John Canty | Oh yes. Back in the late '40s and '50s, traveling was bad. I'm going to the automobile now, because we came down many times from Washington here and some of the trips were taking us along to 13 hours down here. And because the speed in the little towns was 35, 25 and took five miles in the country, every little town you go into, you don't dare to go past over that speed limit because they would give you a ticket. And if you didn't have the money during those days, they would lock you up. I can remember coming down, stopping places to get something to eat and we had to go to the back to get something to eat. Then they wait on you, they take the time to wait on, you be standing back there sometimes 30 minutes if you're hungry or wait for something to eat. | 29:43 |
John Canty | And then once we was going to Florida, I think this was in the early '50s, my wife's family is in Florida. So we was going down and we stopped in the station and gassed up in Georgia. I think I gave the guy a $10 bill. He asked for something like 20 some cents a gallon and this car didn't burn much gas, and I think it gas came to about $7 and something. The guy gassed the car, I gave him $10. He looked to change and threw it in the car. And we stopped at another place in Georgia to a restroom, we wanted to go to the restroom. They had three restrooms. They said White men, White ladies and Colored. So the Black men and the Black ladies had to go to the same restroom. | 30:55 |
Kisha Turner | What about sleeping accommodations for along? Did you just— | 32:01 |
John Canty | Sleep in the car if you get sleepy, but I never had that problem because the longest trip was from Washington year to Florida. We'd get up early in the morning and being young, you could just drive, drive, drive. | 32:04 |
Mary Hebert | With having to go the back to get food at a restaurant, did that happen in Washington? | 32:25 |
John Canty | No. During that time after you come into Virginia, from Virginia on down, this was the system. But from Washington on up— | 32:30 |
Mary Hebert | It's different. | 32:45 |
Kisha Turner | Do you remember in DC, seeing the alley, the homes? | 32:49 |
John Canty | Oh yes. | 32:54 |
Kisha Turner | What was that like? | 32:54 |
John Canty | They had some of these homes that sit back in the alley and they was pretty shabby at that time. I was afraid to go into some of those alleys at that time because a lot of them, if you didn't know somebody in there, they didn't want you coming in there. Especially if they think you looking for some of the womens or something. | 32:57 |
John Canty | And now they have a lot of alleys in Washington, they have some fabulous homes back in those alleys now. Because the one in Georgetown, I think that's Clicks Alley. I believe that's right off from George Washington University Hospital. They have some nice homes back in there and then over southeast there, 6th and Independence Avenue back in that alley, they have some nice homes. | 33:23 |
Kisha Turner | What kind of things—Oh, go ahead. | 33:57 |
John Canty | And I remember some parts of Maryland was bad too, because when I first went to Washington, they had street cars. We used to go for a ride on Saturday and Sundays and nothing to do, get on the street car and just ride one in, line up. | 33:59 |
John Canty | There was a park there, what's the name of that park there? Huh? Glen Echo. Glen Echo sits in Maryland. We had a street car go to Glen Echo, Maryland. And so they would tell you, the operator would tell you when you get out there, don't get off. It was an amusement part, but they didn't allow no Blacks out there. And as long as you stay on the street car, you was okay. But you get off, they you would do you in. | 34:16 |
Kisha Turner | Were there any other parts of Washington like that? | 34:49 |
John Canty | When I first went to Washington, there was some parts of Washington you couldn't go, but then the people would call the police on you if they'd see you in there because the Blacks, they figured you didn't have no business in there unless you was taking your wife in there to do maid's work or something like that, or you were going there to cut grass. If they'd see you in there, they'd call the police on you. | 34:54 |
John Canty | Spring Valley, that's over past American University all back down in there. And the Brightwood section off of Georgia Avenue down in there, Waterview Hospital near Silver Spring, Maryland. Then my wife retired from Silver Spring Hospital, Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring. | 35:17 |
Kisha Turner | Could we talk a little about, did you go to church here when you were young? | 35:52 |
John Canty | Yes, I went to church up in Silver, Friendship AME church. I wasn't involved in anything much because I was young and back during that time they didn't involve with young folks much. You just go there and sit, listen to the singing, go home, other than Sunday school. And then when I left and went to Washington, joined the Baptist church. | 35:56 |
Kisha Turner | Why did you change? | 36:27 |
John Canty | Because the Baptist—Well, back up. My wife wanted to get in church and I wasn't particular about going. So she went and she joined this little Baptist church and then she kept telling me about, "Why don't you get into church?" So I went around, then I joined the church. | 36:31 |
Kisha Turner | Was there any reason you were kind of reluctant to join the church, or you just— | 36:53 |
John Canty | Being young and wild, I was in my early 20s. | 36:58 |
Kisha Turner | Were your parents very involved in the church here? | 37:11 |
John Canty | Yes. | 37:13 |
Kisha Turner | Your mother and your father? | 37:15 |
John Canty | Yeah. My father was a student in the church and I think my mother taught Sunday school at some point. | 37:19 |
Mary Hebert | Do you remember Reverend DeLaine? | 37:23 |
John Canty | I remember seeing him a few times, but I don't know too much about him. | 37:33 |
Kisha Turner | Are you tired? | 37:50 |
John Canty | No. | 37:50 |
Kisha Turner | Oh, okay. When did you get married? | 37:53 |
John Canty | In '48. Married 47 years, it's coming up to. | 37:54 |
Kisha Turner | You met in Washington? | 38:01 |
John Canty | No, I went to Washington in 1943 and, yeah, last '42. In '43 I was drafted into the Army and I came out in '46. I went back to Washington, stayed a year. Then my daddy kept telling me about coming back home, so I came back here for a short while and that's when I met her. She was up from Florida, visiting her aunt and I met her. Then we got married within three months and then we took off, went back to Washington, because it wasn't nothing yet for me to do. | 38:02 |
Kisha Turner | You mentioned your father wanting you to come back here. Did your parents have problems with you leaving in the first? Did they not want you to leave? | 38:49 |
John Canty | Well, he wanted me to come back and help him on the farm. I came back to see the farm was about the same thing it was when I left, so I couldn't stay long. | 38:58 |
Mary Hebert | Did he own the land that he farmed? | 39:05 |
John Canty | No. | 39:05 |
Mary Hebert | He rented or was he a sharecropper? | 39:11 |
John Canty | Rented. | 39:13 |
Mary Hebert | He rented? | 39:13 |
John Canty | Yeah. I guess it's just like owning it because the guy that he was renting from, it was a doctor and he lived in Indiana. And he never come down to check or nothing, I think he just took whatever my daddy sent him and we must have stayed on that place, I guess maybe 30 years. | 39:14 |
Kisha Turner | So the owner didn't have anyone here? | 39:44 |
John Canty | No. | 39:46 |
Mary Hebert | You mentioned that you were drafted into the Army. What was bootcamp like? | 39:51 |
John Canty | Well, always is terrible and especially when you are drafted. If you volunteer, you're expect things, they tell you what's going to happen. But the bootcamp, first I went to Fort Jackson and it was kind of miserable. First went there, they kept me up there for about a week and I didn't know which way I was going. All my friends and everybody that I knew had gone to the Army, Navy or something and I was just there. | 39:56 |
John Canty | And so, one day the guy called my name and I went over. He asked me, he said, "Can you drive a truck?" I said, "Sure, I can drive a truck." He said, "Well, jump on this truck here, we need some drivers." And they asked several other guys, the guys said, "Yeah." We got on a truck, guy took us somewhere where they was building a sidewalk and give me a wheelbarrow and said, "This is your truck." We'd haul dirt around there and I wasn't even in the Army. | 40:33 |
John Canty | Then later on I came back and they told us, said if they ever call you to one of those buildings over there, you in the Army or Navy or somewhere. So shortly after I got back, they called my name and sent me over there. And the guys always say, "If you want to go in the Army, say Navy," and said they'll reverse it all the time. I said, "I'm not taking that chance because I don't want to go in the Navy, I'm going to say in the Army." So I said Army, he said okay. | 41:09 |
John Canty | And I thought they was going to give me some time off like they was giving some of the guys two weeks back home. And when I got up there, the guy said, "No excuse, you're in Army. You can't go back home." Send me direct to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. And I stayed there for a while and then I went to Greensboro, North Carolina. You know anything about Greensboro? | 41:35 |
Kisha Turner | I live in Winston. | 41:59 |
John Canty | Okay. Well, right at Market Street, it used to be an Air Force Base come right up to Market Street and that's where I was stationed at right there, that's where I took my training at. And it was cold up there during the Winter time and they used to take us out, do calisthenics and we had to strip down to our waist. I guess it was like 20 degrees and it was really rough up there. Then one thing about it, they wouldn't give us an overnight pass because we was in training, we had to be back in camp by 12:00. So we'd find a way to bypass that. When I first went in, they had two duffel bags. Now they don't have but one. So some of us put the duffel bag in the bed and put the helmet at the head and a pair of shoes at the foot. So when they come around for inspection, it's "oh, he's in bed," (laughs) we'd be in town. | 42:02 |
Kisha Turner | What did y'all do when you went out on the town? | 43:01 |
John Canty | Chase the girls, you know. (laughs) | 43:05 |
Mary Hebert | How did the White community react to having a large number of Black soldiers stationed near? | 43:09 |
John Canty | In Greensboro? There was no reaction from the White. I mean, I think they enjoyed the soldiers being there because a lot of them used to like to see us drill and stuff like that, just come out and watch. | 43:27 |
Mary Hebert | How were you treated by the White officers that ran your unit? | 43:28 |
John Canty | We was treated nice by the White officers. | 43:32 |
Mary Hebert | Did you go overseas? | 43:37 |
John Canty | Yes. | 43:38 |
Mary Hebert | Where'd you go? | 43:39 |
John Canty | My first stop was Hawaii, Okinawa, Saipan, Guam. | 43:41 |
Mary Hebert | What kind of job did you have in the Army? Were you with one of the— | 43:53 |
John Canty | I done various jobs. I drove a truck for a while, I helped put on runways. I worked as a male clerk and what else? Oh, I was a mine detector. I had to go out and search for mines and that was a dangerous job. | 43:59 |
Kisha Turner | Is this what most of the Black soldiers were doing? | 44:24 |
John Canty | No, it just depends on your outfit. They had a little bit of everything in our outfit, in my battalion there. Electrician, mine detectors and carpenters, some of everything. And Whites had the same thing. Then if you get tied up in an infantry outfit, well, that was the fighting group. Sometimes you would have to fight if you get too close or something, but those guys had to go out there looking for Japanese, that was the job. | 44:30 |
Kisha Turner | Did you ever get caught up in any? | 45:06 |
John Canty | Yeah, we got bombed one night. We had a raid one night and we kept jumping out of the bed every time they come over, Japanese come over, we kept jumping out the bed. And so one night this guy say he wasn't going to get out of his bed no more, he got killed right in the bed. [indistinct 00:45:55] | 45:08 |
Mary Hebert | Were you attached to a service battalion? | 45:55 |
John Canty | Yeah, 1908 Engineers. | 45:58 |
Mary Hebert | The Engineers, okay. Do you think that the Japanese were trying to attack the engineering battalions and the service battalions and the quartermasters? | 46:01 |
John Canty | No, they were mostly after the airfields. When they come over by planes, they were mostly after the airfield and if you were anywhere near, then you was certain to get hit. And at that time, the Japanese, they would fly right down on the water and the radar couldn't pick them up until they rise up and then that happened, it was too late. | 46:23 |
Mary Hebert | How did the White soldiers react to just the enlisted men having Black soldiers nearby? | 46:54 |
John Canty | Oh, they was nice and— | 46:59 |
Mary Hebert | —changed when you got back to California? | 0:02 |
John Canty | Yes. | 0:04 |
Mary Hebert | So they were no longer friendly with you? | 0:05 |
John Canty | No, no, they started separating. | 0:08 |
Mary Hebert | Did your service in World War II change the way you looked at America when you came back, and segregation, and those kinds of things? | 0:11 |
John Canty | Oh, yes. Yes. You have to look at it this way. You go over there and you put your life on the line for this country, and then you come back and you're treated so bad. | 0:18 |
Kisha Turner | Did that compel you to get involved with— | 0:37 |
John Canty | Yes. So that's one of the reason I got involved with NAACP and other organizations. | 0:42 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Did you find that with some of the other people you were in the army with, did it change their attitudes? Did you see it in a lot of— | 0:55 |
John Canty | Oh, yes. Yes. It changed a lot of attitudes. | 1:02 |
Mary Hebert | Okay. | 1:02 |
Kisha Turner | Did you have some more? | 1:15 |
John Canty | You asked about some of the organizations that I'm involved in. I have a list of things. I'll have to give you a list. | 1:16 |
Mary Hebert | Okay. Okay. | 1:19 |
Kisha Turner | Which were you most active in? | 1:19 |
John Canty | Huh? | 1:27 |
Kisha Turner | Which were you most active in? | 1:27 |
John Canty | I'm active in NAACP, the Brigsdon Main Culture Center, and the Professional Form Laws, and I'll have to give you the list. | 1:30 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Okay. | 1:40 |
Mary Hebert | Did your parents show you how to resist segregation in any way? | 1:43 |
John Canty | No, because they didn't resist nothing that happened. And in fact, when you resist during that time, back like in the '40s, you were putting your life on the line. Because most the White people, if they say a Black person done this, well the policeman will come pick you up. They're not going to ask you what happened. They're going to take the White word. So there was a lot of people went to jail for nothing. | 1:46 |
Kisha Turner | So your parents just told you kind of keep clear of things? | 2:24 |
John Canty | Yes. | 2:28 |
Mary Hebert | Did they teach you how to act around White people? Or was it something that you grew up with? | 2:33 |
John Canty | No. No, it's something that, it grows in you. And I find that in a lot of the people that stayed here. We have a Veteran of Foreign War group. And when it first organized, I was the only Black in it. And then other Blacks start coming in. But you have a lot of veterans around here that won't come in. Right now, this group is half White and half Black. And it's hard to get the Blacks here, and some of them to come in. And most of the Whites that came in and they find out that the Blacks were coming in, some— | 2:42 |
John Canty | I don't think we have anybody, in some of them, any White in some of them, that stayed in the Black organization. Most of them have gotten out. Most people is in this organization, their White. They're from, they migrate here from different places. They most of them live on the lake, Ohio, because have been there in different places, New York. And the Whites find out that the Blacks would be in, they just drop out. | 3:23 |
Mary Hebert | So attitudes haven't changed that much in the White people in Somerton? | 3:54 |
John Canty | No. No. A lot of them are friendly. A lot of the fellas, the guys are friendly. But if you go and you speak to a White woman, she might look at you and smile. She might say good morning. | 3:58 |
Kisha Turner | Did you have children? You have children? | 4:11 |
John Canty | No. | 4:11 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Do you have any more questions? Okay. | 4:11 |
John Canty | Yeah. I got to get up and take my wife to [indistinct 00:04:32]. | 4:28 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. | 4:31 |
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