B. O. Butler interview recording, 1995 June 29
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Transcript
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Kisha Turner | —stating your full name and when you were born. | 0:02 |
B. O. Butler | B. O. Butler. The B is for [indistinct 00:00:10]. The O, I don't tell. So B. O. Butler. I was born in Greenville County, 1925. | 0:09 |
Kisha Turner | 1925. | 0:22 |
B. O. Butler | Yes. | 0:23 |
Kisha Turner | Can you tell me about Greenville when you were a child, your family, the home you lived in, and the community? | 0:25 |
B. O. Butler | Yes. The home that I lived in was formerly owned by my grandfather on the mother's side and it was just a mediocre type home, family, very family—oriented. | 0:31 |
Kisha Turner | Who lived in the home with you? | 0:51 |
B. O. Butler | My mother, father, and six—two sisters, four brothers. | 0:53 |
Kisha Turner | You said your family inherited this land? | 1:02 |
B. O. Butler | No, not inherited. They bought it from my grandfather. | 1:08 |
Kisha Turner | Oh, bought it from your grandfather. Okay. And did you farm this land? | 1:13 |
B. O. Butler | Yes, we farmed. | 1:16 |
Kisha Turner | Could you tell me about the crops and what your duties were? | 1:18 |
B. O. Butler | We grew what we call, not specialized, but general type farming, cotton, corn, peas, potatoes, and truck crops, and things like that, cows, chickens, and those type of things. Not a very large farm, large enough to take care of the family. | 1:23 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. What did you have to do on the farm? | 1:49 |
B. O. Butler | Oh, various types of things. My older brothers would do most of the work in the field and I did a lot of work around the yard with my mother, milking cows, slopping the hogs, and digging in the flower yard, things of that nature. | 1:51 |
Kisha Turner | What types of jobs did your sisters have to do? | 2:13 |
B. O. Butler | Cleaning house, washing, cooking, those kind of things. | 2:16 |
Kisha Turner | You were the youngest boy? | 2:23 |
B. O. Butler | No, I was the third boy. Two brothers older and two sisters older. | 2:24 |
Kisha Turner | Did you get a chance to go to school? | 2:37 |
B. O. Butler | Yes. I graduated from Rosenwald School in Simpsonville, South Carolina. | 2:38 |
Kisha Turner | Did you attend Rosenwald all the way through? | 2:48 |
B. O. Butler | Yes. | 2:51 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Could you show me about that school, your teachers, your subjects and stuff? | 2:52 |
B. O. Butler | Yes. I was there from first grade through 11th grade at that time. They didn't have 12th grade. And about the teachers, yes, I remember them, especially the principal and his family. They were very close. Wasn't that type of relationship that existed in schools later on, so far as students and the principal, but I admired him because of his leadership. | 2:57 |
Kisha Turner | What was his name? | 3:27 |
B. O. Butler | Roy Phillip Cunningham. He later came to Florence, South Carolina, as the principal over there. | 3:28 |
Kisha Turner | The Rosenwald schools, they weren't state schools, right? | 3:45 |
B. O. Butler | Yes. | 3:51 |
Kisha Turner | They were state schools? | 3:51 |
B. O. Butler | But they were segregated schools, the White school on one side of town and this one on the lower side of town. That particular school was all Black, as I stated, and we had to do for ourselves mostly because the schools were not supported completely by states. Had to rally sometimes and raise money and build little tables and little chairs for children in the kindergarten, not kindergarten, but first grade through. And mostly, we would receive what was outdated or not needed at the White high school. | 3:52 |
Kisha Turner | That includes books? | 4:49 |
B. O. Butler | Mm-hmm. Not a real library, but just a little room that was set up across from the principal's office that we called a library with some books in there, but the books that I'm talking about would be the ones that were used by the State Department of Education. Those books were mostly ones that had gotten old and they were changing to new ones. And so therefore, those books would be boxed and sent to the Black school for our use. | 4:50 |
Kisha Turner | How about transportation in school? | 5:29 |
B. O. Butler | Walk. I walked four and a half miles, one way, every day from the time I was six years old until I graduated. | 5:30 |
Kisha Turner | Did the Rosenwald School attract children from—how broad an area? Was this the only school in this area in— | 5:40 |
B. O. Butler | There were other little church schools. The schools first started out by being church schools. Black churches would organize themselves and build some type of a little building, a little two-room building or one-room building somewhere on the church yard, and this is where children would go to school. But those schools, even though they were formed and developed by Black people, but they were supervised by the White school in the areas, the trustees and superintendents. | 5:47 |
Kisha Turner | All right. Since we're on the subject, you were speaking about church schools, what church did you attend? | 6:33 |
B. O. Butler | I attended Rock Hill Baptist, number one, in Greenville County. | 6:44 |
Kisha Turner | And what was your church like? | 6:50 |
B. O. Butler | First of all, it was just a little gun barrel type place with two aisles and—I meant one aisle and two rows of seats on each side. It also had, in the front of it, in the middle, a big Billy-type heater that they burned coal in. I can even remember that in the beginning of it, when I first realized what it really was, that we used to use what is known as gas lamps that swung from the ceiling at certain places down the sides, and this is how it was lighted, especially for night activities, such as revival meetings and the like. | 6:53 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. If you have any questions, just— | 7:46 |
Kisha Turner | Can you tell me about the meetings, the evening services? Would you just come as a family? | 7:47 |
B. O. Butler | Yes. In the beginning, the family was too large to attend service because we went to a church which was about eight miles from our home, and we went by buggy. You know what a buggy is? | 7:58 |
Kisha Turner | You can tell me. | 8:13 |
B. O. Butler | This is a four-wheel vehicle that's drawn by a horse or a mule and with curtain-type overhead canopy. And the family couldn't go at all times. This is once-a-month service now, once a month, every fourth Sunday. And they would alter going to church. One time, they'd carry so many children. The next time, they'd carry so many. I can remember my baby sister and I used to sit in the floorboard of the buggy, my mother and father sat on the seat, and they would put a blanket or something down in there and it'd cover our laps with another blanket to keep us warm and comfortable. | 8:18 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. That's the Sunday meetings you were just talking about? | 9:15 |
B. O. Butler | Yes. I told you that was once a month. Our Sunday was fourth Sunday, but there were other churches in the community that we always cooperated. We go to one church on the first Sunday, and next Sunday at another church on [indistinct 00:09:38]. All these churches had service once a month. | 9:19 |
Kisha Turner | Oh, I see. So did you share the same preacher? | 9:40 |
B. O. Butler | No, a different preacher, different congregation, and a different board of deacons and trustees, but it was a cooperative. When we were having service, they would come and visit with us. When they had service, we'd go visit with them. And I attended Sunday school in several different churches in the community. [indistinct 00:10:08]. | 9:44 |
Kisha Turner | So you did go to church on more Sundays. | 10:10 |
B. O. Butler | Yes. | 10:12 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Do you remember your grandparents well? | 10:17 |
B. O. Butler | Not real well because my grandfather died when I was rather young and my grandmother lived a few years thereafter. But so far as remembering them, you know that I could just describe [indistinct 00:10:35] I'm not able to do that. | 10:20 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Do you remember having any relations with older people in your community? | 10:37 |
B. O. Butler | Yes. There were other families in the community that I remember having relationships with. | 10:47 |
Kisha Turner | Do you remember any of those older people, or even your parents, telling you about how it was when they were young? | 10:52 |
B. O. Butler | Yes, mostly my parents telling me about this. | 11:00 |
Kisha Turner | What kinds of things did they tell you? | 11:03 |
B. O. Butler | Oh, my father would tell about how he was brought up, a large family of individuals. Father was deceased and his mother hired him out to a White family. That way, he would go and stay during the week, just come home on the weekends. And this hiring was for the purpose of this individual giving them so much corn, meat, or other supplies, farm food in exchange for his work. And so this was how the mother was supporting the family. Later on after her death, my father was the oldest one, so he took care of the rest of the brothers and sisters. | 11:06 |
Kisha Turner | And your mother? | 12:03 |
B. O. Butler | My mother was the daughter of this minister that I mentioned about when we, not inherited, but we purchased the farm from. She was formerly a Methodist, but after, married my father. Then she joined the church where he was. And so therefore, we were all Baptists at that time. | 12:04 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Is the land that your parents bought from your grandfather still in the family? | 12:25 |
B. O. Butler | Yes. After the death of my mother, the farm was divided to the six children. I happened to have a home place, the home spot, but the small farm was divided into lots, or not lots, but acreage. Each child got somewhere around four and a half acres. I have the home place, which is included in those [indistinct 00:13:09] acres. | 12:35 |
Kisha Turner | Do you remember, I know you were young, but the Depression Era or any stories that people told you about that time? | 13:12 |
B. O. Butler | Yes. I was born right during the time of—you might have heard the name of the president, Hoover, and at the beginning of—Roosevelt came in in the early '30s, I believe it was. Yes, families had a pretty tough time during the Depression time. | 13:23 |
Kisha Turner | Do you remember any WPA workers? | 13:48 |
B. O. Butler | Yes, I do remember. Yes, I can remember. In other words, they were individuals who went out and worked for the government for a certain amount of money. We even had a name for them that we used to call it, WPA, because we piddle along, because they had a piddle. | 13:54 |
Kisha Turner | Oh, okay. And they just worked, kind of? | 14:16 |
B. O. Butler | Yes, they did road work. I can remember one thing they used to do. They used to use their two-horse wagons that was drawn by mules and they would haul dirt. A family would go out and work a day for a certain amount of money by using his particular wagon and had it set up to where they could load it with dirt in a certain place and then carry it in the roads, places that needed building up, and turn the boards on the bottom, let it fall off in the road, and go back for another load all day long like this. And incidentally, those roads were kept up by convicts. That is those persons that were in prison, they would be on the road working. I used to be afraid of them, walking, going to school, because they'd be in their ditches and with their chains on and their shovels and a boss man standing over them with a shotgun, those type things. | 14:21 |
Kisha Turner | Yeah, the chain game. | 15:27 |
B. O. Butler | Yes. The prisons then we work, the individuals, made them work, quite different to what it is now. You find a lot of them in prison now are living the life of [indistinct 00:15:41]. | 15:30 |
Kisha Turner | How long did you live in Greenville on that land with your father? | 15:45 |
B. O. Butler | I lived there from my birth until the spring of 1946 right during the close of World War II. I left then and went to South Carolina State College in Orangeburg. There, I spent three years because I lost some time by being deferred from the Army. They were drafting in the day. My father had me deferred because he was getting old and unable to do the work on the farm as supposed to. So he went to the board and made this note, and they reclassified me and deferred me as a 3C, I believe it was, to work and help him on the farm. | 15:50 |
B. O. Butler | So in the spring of 1946, when I heard of the Germans surrendering, I wrote to South Carolina State College and I told them I was interested in coming there. And they replied that they could not accept me because the school that I graduated from was not an accredited one. So I went from there— | 16:51 |
B. O. Butler | —to my principal, Mr. Cunningham, I was telling you about a few minutes ago. And he ordered for me a state high school exam. And I went to his house for a couple of days and took it in his living room, and it was sent back to Columbia. Later, they replied by saying that I'd successfully passed it and that they were issuing me a state high school diploma. So then I wrote back to South Carolina State College and told them, and they told me that I couldn't enter for the first semester, it was too late, that I had to come in on the second semester. So in going in in January, 1946, I matriculated with them and, three years, later I graduated for the four years requirement. | 17:20 |
Kisha Turner | Did your brothers have to go into the Army? | 18:37 |
B. O. Butler | One. Two, sorry, the one just older than me and the one younger than I am. Those two went in. | 18:41 |
Kisha Turner | Do you remember soldiers returning to the area? | 18:54 |
B. O. Butler | Yes. | 18:58 |
Kisha Turner | What was it like? | 19:01 |
B. O. Butler | It was a joyous time. I won't forget the morning that my brother came in, the older brother, and we had this porch that went all the way around the house and I had picked cotton. We would weigh it and put it on that one side of that porch. We have a bail. Then we'd load it on the wagon and haul it [indistinct 00:19:31]. So he came in one morning while we were all sleeping and [indistinct 00:19:37] taxi cab drove in the yard and he came to the door and, oh boy, was it a joyous time in that house that night. My mother was just jumping and shouting for joy, but it was a wonderful time. | 19:03 |
Kisha Turner | Did they ever tell you about any things that happened to them? Were they overseas? | 19:57 |
B. O. Butler | Yes, he's told me. | 20:04 |
Kisha Turner | Some things? | 20:05 |
B. O. Butler | Mm-hmm. | 20:05 |
Kisha Turner | You graduated in three years, so I'm sure you were very involved in academics. What other kinds of things did you do while you were at South Carolina State, social kinds of things? | 20:11 |
B. O. Butler | Well, let me say this, first of all, I mostly worked my way through school. I applied at the Dean's Office and he sent me to the ladies' dorm, where the lady in charge of the lunchroom, and she gave me a job waiting tables in the dining hall. I did that for awhile and I also attended three summer sessions in order to be able to get out in three years. So later on, I worked some at the poultry farm, feeding and cleaning chicken houses. Later, I helped with the farm work, milking cows and caring for them right down on the farm. | 20:25 |
B. O. Butler | I was in the area of vocational agriculture. So therefore, we would sometimes have what was known as a vocational ball where we'd all gather in the gymnasium and have a nice little dance ball in the gymnasium. And I won't forget all the activities. That was kind of exciting to me to go to the football games, and the basketball games, and those type activities. I also participated with the college choir and this was very rewarding. | 21:16 |
Kisha Turner | What did you say your major was? | 21:58 |
B. O. Butler | Vocational agriculture. | 22:00 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. And did you plan to go back home? | 22:02 |
B. O. Butler | Yes, I did. I figured that, when I'd get out, I would go back home, but at that particular time, the vocational department would be visited by the State Department of Education. They would interview graduates. And the year that I graduated, they came to the state college and they would give you your first job. They would interview each student and, after that, they would assign you, write you, and tell you what school they was signing you to for a vocational agriculture, as a teacher. | 22:06 |
B. O. Butler | We were also taught in the vocational curriculum that, in many instances, the ag teacher had to serve as principal of a school. So when Mr. Anderson from the State Department of Education interviewed me, he wanted to know from me who would I prefer working. I told him in the Piedmont section. He says, "Why?" I said, "Because I grew up in that area and I feel like I know more about the farming conditions there than I would anywhere else." | 22:44 |
B. O. Butler | But later on in the month of July, I received a letter from him stating that I'd been assigned to St. Paul Training School, which is down the road here, about three miles. And I was very upset over that. I did not want to go in. First of all, I said I wasn't even going. My mother insisted that maybe I should go and be interviewed, see what it was like, and even take it for one year and, if I didn't like it, then I could move someplace else. So I took [indistinct 00:23:58] and I came to St. Paul in July, 1949, and I was expecting them to say vocational ag teacher. | 23:21 |
B. O. Butler | When I got there, the chairman of the trustee board told me that I would be ag teacher, but I had to serve as principal of the school also. I was very young and I did not want to do it. So I said, "I can't do that." So when he says, "Well, you were recommended very highly by the State Department of Education and the South Carolina State College Vocational Department and we feel like you can do it. Why don't you just give it a try?" I said, "Well, I'll think about it and let you know." | 24:13 |
B. O. Butler | So I went back to Greenville and, again, my mother said, "Well, why don't you just try it a year?" So I said, "I'll try it a year," and I fell in love with it, and here I am today. That school, well, it existed for three years after I came there. And after that year, the integration of school system in this county was supposed to have taken place, but they were transferring most of the high school individuals from St. Paul to Scotts Branch, which is just across the street here. And while I was in summer school at South Carolina State College working on a master's degree, I was informed that I would be transferred from St. Paul Elementary School to Scotts Branch High School, and that took place during the fall of 1955. | 24:44 |
Kisha Turner | So they closed down St. Paul? | 25:50 |
B. O. Butler | No, St. Paul continued to operate as an elementary school. | 25:52 |
Kisha Turner | Oh, as an elementary school. | 25:54 |
B. O. Butler | They built a high school. | 25:56 |
Kisha Turner | I see. I guess, let's see, we can start. Okay. Since you went back to South Carolina State to get a master's degree, could you tell me in what? And how was Orangeburg during that period? | 26:02 |
B. O. Butler | Well, I thought it was booming. I went back to get a master's degree in education through the vocational education department. So this is what my degree was. I received a master's degree from South Carolina State College in the spring of 1956. | 26:13 |
Kisha Turner | Of course, you were out of school by this point, but how did you feel about the activities taking place in this area with desegregation, school equalization, and those kinds of things? | 26:35 |
B. O. Butler | Now, this is something that I came into—I told you I came into this system in 1949. And I think it was about '54 when this suit took place, right? So it was sometimes very, very disturbing because my experience has been that there was so much meanness involved. You've heard about the case of the Delaine's house being burned? | 27:02 |
Kisha Turner | Mm-hmm. | 27:45 |
B. O. Butler | That's the spot right over there. See that red barn there? | 27:45 |
Kisha Turner | Uh-huh. | 27:49 |
B. O. Butler | That's the spot right there where that home was. | 27:50 |
Kisha Turner | Really? | 27:53 |
B. O. Butler | Uh-huh. The school's across the street, his house was here, and that was while I was at St. Paul. His house was here and the house burned. And I didn't see it, but I was told that the fire department, the fire truck went down, came and parked across the street over there, and sat up on the sides of the truck, and watched it burn down. | 27:53 |
B. O. Butler | There were any number of different things that took place along that time, very disturbing. And that was the Whites had vowed that they would not allow their children to go to school with these little Black girls and boys. And so therefore, after [indistinct 00:28:44] they just did not see where they were going to be able to continue as they were, they abandoned the old White high school over here. It went across town, just before you cross over 95, and built a private school. And there's where they moved and they took with them quite a bit of the equipment and materials from the school they carried with them over there. | 28:23 |
Kisha Turner | Do you remember hearing about the White Citizens Council? | 29:17 |
B. O. Butler | Oh, yes. I remember when the superintendent at that time, you might've heard this name, and you'll read the story concerning HB Benjamin. One morning uptown, a lot of letters had been mimeographed and distributed all around the streets so people could come across [indistinct 00:29:48]. And they were supposed to have been from the Ku Klux Klan. And I understand that the FBI came in and investigating and tried to find out—They could take it and find out where they were printed and what machine was used to do it. | 29:20 |
B. O. Butler | So they kept checking around and finally found the typewriter that did the typing. And where do you think it was? In the loft of the superintendent's house. But there were many mean things. And one other situation that was not funny, but it will make you chuckle sometimes when you think about it, there were statements made that, before they would allow their little girls and boys to go to school with those Blacks, they would die and go to hell. And would you believe that, somewhere along the line, some of them, wasn't very long after that, they died. I don't know where they went, but that statement was [indistinct 00:30:58]. | 30:04 |
Kisha Turner | We can stop. Okay. We were talking about White people's reaction to Black people's struggles. | 30:58 |
B. O. Butler | Another situation that happened was that a lot of individuals that lived in this area, everyone who lived in this area lived on farms, and some of them were plantations, where one big White farmer would have a lot of houses built around the farm and area, and people would contract with him and live on his farm. It got to a place that it was so bad that these individuals would, if they found that these individuals had anything to do with the petition that was signed to bring us about, that they would fire them from their jobs and have [indistinct 00:31:58] plantations and couldn't live there any longer. There were any number of just mean situations that happened like that. | 31:13 |
B. O. Butler | I can remember some that were related to schoolwork, and that was that a teacher, a prospective teacher that would come to the area, sometimes I would need to hire, recommend to hire [indistinct 00:32:24], they didn't allow me to hire, recommend individuals for interview at the superintendent's office for hiring for the high school or whatever it might have been. So there was a list of those families who signed that petition. Anybody related to those families, regardless of how qualified they may have been for the position, they would not hire. | 32:10 |
B. O. Butler | I can remember, I didn't know what it was, but once I went to the superintendent's office and he would get in somebody for interview, and he would sit there and question them, "What's your name?" They would tell him. "Do you know [indistinct 00:33:18]?" And they would either know him or didn't know him, but if they would mention certain names as Reagan, Briggs, or, "Do you know that person? Are you related to them?" Richburg, Delaine, all those different names, Hilton, this person's interview didn't get above the board. In other words, "We'll let you know something later," and that letting them know later was no deal. | 32:59 |
Kisha Turner | How do you remember people responding to this kind of White reaction or kind of backlash to what was going on? | 34:04 |
B. O. Butler | There were groups that continued to meet and to—Say, for instance, a lot of farmers were not allowed to gin their cotton. If they were kind of independent, they'd have to move off somebody's place, but continue to farm, they would pick their cotton, they couldn't carry it to the gin, ginner wouldn't gin it for them. And in the spring of the year at the time, to plant crops, they would usually go and get a loan at the bank, get their fertilizer on time or whatever it might have been in order to plant and make their crops. They were refused, so the people had to band together and form little co-ops that would help them go out and purchase fertilizer, and they had to carry their cotton to other gins and wait in order to get it done. | 34:15 |
Kisha Turner | Is that the same with selling their crops? Were they forced to go outside— | 35:13 |
B. O. Butler | Yes. | 35:17 |
Kisha Turner | —of the area? | 35:17 |
B. O. Butler | That's right. You see, usually, when a person would carry their cotton to gin, it was weighed and left on the gin yard, and they would pay them, write them a check from there, but they could not do that here. That was their method of trying to just freeze them out. | 35:19 |
B. O. Butler | I remember also that a lot of the graduates from the school, Scotts Branch, when graduation night came, we used to have it at night, those students would come to the graduation. There were many instances, their bags were already packed and, after graduation, they would catch the bus or go into King Street and get the train, and they were headed for other places, like mostly New York City. | 35:43 |
B. O. Butler | Had a conversation with somebody not too long ago that was talking about them in the class, the year they graduated, and the things that I told them at that time, I told them, I said, "Now, see here, when you go up to heaven—" I call New York Heaven. I said, "When you get to heaven, don't you go there to live with your sister and brother or other relatives and get involved in the family matters," I said, "because if you don't mind, you will be put out, because then you go in to help your sister fight her husband. And because they love each other, after a certain length of time, she's going to turn and [indistinct 00:37:04] say, 'Don't hit my husband,' and you're going to be out the door." So they were laughing about that. | 36:19 |
Kisha Turner | Do you remember, I think you were probably, I guess, still at South Carolina State, but maybe when you moved to the area, you heard about—I think it was the class of '48 that rebelled about having to pay a fee to graduate or something—? | 37:14 |
B. O. Butler | I wasn't familiar with that situation, but it's possible because I do know that, after I came to this—I spent six years down here. I only came to this one in 1955. So I wouldn't have known about that, but I do know that, even though we were not given things that we were supposed to have, because money is coming in from the state level, would come through the superintendent's office, and it was always that the White school got a better part of anything, even the financing of the schools, that this would make it difficult for us. But I'm not saying it because I was there, but because of the caliber of teachers that I had and the dedication that they had to education, we've had a pretty good system of educating the population of students in the school that I sometimes feel proud of it. | 37:31 |
B. O. Butler | I went to Philadelphia for a general class reunion. They call it a class reunion, but it was any person who attended St. Paul, Spring Hill, Scotts Branch, that graduated from Scotts Branch, living in and around the area, Philadelphia, New York, and other places around like that, and some of them from here went, but it was a big class reunion. And to tell you the truth, it was so amusing that, when I walked in, they were there about 1,000 and all of these were individual—some were teachers that once worked in the school and this ex graduates and a lot. | 38:39 |
B. O. Butler | It was just so amazing that, when I walked in, I said to the young man that was on the door collecting, who invited me, I went as a speaker for the occasion, so I said, "I cannot do it." He said, "Yes, you can." I've talked to all these individuals. I've stood in the gymnasium over there in class assemblies and the like, and just stand and talk to them for a long time, trying to motivate and lift them up, but to get them all together at one time in that big group, I said, "Uh-uh, that scares me," but sure enough, it was a very rewarding experience. | 39:27 |
Kisha Turner | When was this reunion? | 40:09 |
B. O. Butler | Beg your pardon? | 40:09 |
Kisha Turner | When was this? | 40:12 |
B. O. Butler | This was three years ago. | 40:13 |
Kisha Turner | Oh, okay. Again, I don't know, maybe you've just heard about when the Supreme Court passed down the decision to segregate public schools, before that, I understand that they started to construct a new school for the Black students here. The city council or state allocated more funding to almost comply with the separate but equal. | 40:21 |
B. O. Butler | This took place in 1954, but it was. This school right here was built. It was once just an old gun barrel type of—looked like a warehouse, white board building with a tin roof and a hallway down the center and classrooms on either side. The hallway down through the center had boards driven up at a certain height that students could hang their coats and their hats to go into the classrooms. Classrooms overcrowded. One teacher had as many as 50 some odd students in first grade, I'd say it's 51, 52, or 53, somewhere along in there. | 40:58 |
B. O. Butler | Another old building that was constructed on the outside was Army barracks, when they began to sell those barracks from World War II, and there were three of them, I believe, put together that ran out of the direction from the other building. And this is where the one class and then a vocational ag class and a little shop in one of them was set up. Restrooms were out across the ditch in the edge of the pines, one for girls and one for boys. | 41:44 |
Kisha Turner | And then they just started to brick in that building or something like that? | 42:30 |
B. O. Butler | No, that building, they did paint it. It needed paint real bad, but just beyond there is where the brick structure joined into the back end of this old, rundown type situation. There's where the new part was built on and that was the new high school. At that same time, the brick part of the old White school, original White school, was constructed down there in a very modern, nice way, but this building was thrown together real fast, inherently, that—I don't know how it passed state regulations, but at the same time, it was done in order to say, "Well, you have a new school now. You don't have to come over here." | 42:36 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. I don't think I asked you this. Do you remember the NAACP— | 43:32 |
B. O. Butler | Yes. | 43:43 |
Kisha Turner | —coming down here? | 43:44 |
B. O. Butler | Mm-hmm. | 43:45 |
Kisha Turner | What do you remember about those times? | 43:46 |
B. O. Butler | Well, first of all, I learned about NAACP when I was at South Carolina State College and I joined the NAACP while I was out on the area doing a student teaching down in [indistinct 00:44:08], South Carolina. And when I came to this area, they had a very strong [indistinct 00:44:14] was the one who actually went about with these petitions and things of that nature in order to bring about the integration. They met in church. Now, I know by the name of Liberty Hill and another one up here on the corner named St. Mark, AME. Both churches were AMEs. | 43:49 |
B. O. Butler | But I remember them meeting. I attended some of their meetings. The pastor of the Liberty Hill Church at that particular time when I was at the St. Paul, I joined even as a Baptist. I associated myself with them in that area at the AME church that I might be able to attend services with students from that particular area. So I stayed at that church for 21 years. But in attending the meetings—I've gone to some of their meetings. I remember when the NAACP was split. We have now what's called the Clarendon NAACP and you also have the Manning branch. I don't know when it split. And I can also recall Mrs. Majestic Simkins from Columbia coming down trying to prevent it from going into that state. | 44:32 |
Kisha Turner | What happened? What caused the split? | 45:39 |
B. O. Butler | I think some of the officers—was a controversy over some money. One was supposed to have spent some money that they didn't have and this brought it about. But incidentally, in dealing with that branch, I used to go to the meetings, but the pastor of that church was very much involved in this situation, knew that a teacher in this area that affiliated themselves or worked with it had a talk with me and told me that, "Instead of you coming to the meeting, we know who you are, we know what you stand for," said, "but if you come to the meetings, you will be fired, and we don't want to lose you. So you just give us your financial and moral support and don't attend the meetings." So that was the reason why I didn't go to the meetings when it hold monthly, but I was aware of what was going on and was very active in it. | 45:39 |
Kisha Turner | From what I understand or from what I've heard from other people, it was kind of underground. Was that the case? You couldn't freely talk about your involvement? | 46:44 |
B. O. Butler | Mm-mm. Let me tell you a little story about that. In 1955, when I told you I came from the St. Paul School over here and that they transferred me during the summer, I received a letter from the superintendent at that time requesting me to come from South Carolina State College— | 46:57 |
B. O. Butler | —moving me from the St. Paul Elementary School to the Scotch Branch High School. And everyone was having to come in to fill out applications. So they required me to come in and fill out application. And on that application, they both asked the question, "Are you a member of the NAACP?" So when I got that question, I wrote in that, yes, because I did not want to be moved from St. Paul out here. You getting me? | 0:04 |
B. O. Butler | I knew that this was going to result in being fired or not being hired. So I filled it out, and I put the application on the desk with the secretary and I walked out. I went back to my boarding place at St. Paul and went back in my room and started packing my bags and getting all my belongings together. | 0:38 |
B. O. Butler | Finally, the lady out the boarding called me and says, "I heard the call [indistinct 00:01:13]." Says, "Somebody to see you, Mr. Butler." I says, "Just a minute." And finally when I went out, there sitting in the yard was the superintendent and the chairman of the trustee board, and I walked and I was so mad. | 1:03 |
B. O. Butler | I walked up to the door and I did one of them kind of angry, because I wasn't putting on or acting. I says, "Yes?" He says, "Come me a minute. We want to talk to you." So I walked out to the door. I said, "What is it?" He says, "Get in." So I just reached in and cocked the back door and opened it. I didn't get in, but I just come in, and I turned around and sat on the edge of the car seat. | 1:26 |
B. O. Butler | He says, "[indistinct 00:01:58], we noticed that you filled out your application and you said that you are a member of the NAACP." I said, "That is correct." He said, "Well, we can't hire you if you put that on your application." I said, "I know that." They say, "Well, why don't you do this," they brought along a new application. "Take this application and fill it out and don't put that on here." | 1:57 |
B. O. Butler | I said, "Well, that still wouldn't change the situation, would it?" Said, "Yes, but it wouldn't be on our record." I said, "I'll think about it." And I took it. I went back in the house and started packing again. Then finally I decided I'd go up to the church, which was up the road about a mile and a half or maybe a mile, it's only around a mile, and talked to this Reverend Litchburg, who was pastor of the church. | 2:30 |
B. O. Butler | I says, "Look here. I filled out an application a few minutes to go at the district office and I told them that I was on that application, that I was a member of the NAACP. I was just visited by the superintendent," and told what all was said. So he said, "Well, Mr. Butler, let me tell you what," says, "if they are willing to do that, knowing that you have told them the truth, and they want you to tell a lie one, do it." | 2:54 |
B. O. Butler | So I said, "I'll think about it." I went back toward South Carolina State College and I had several friends who were principals of schools in various counties and I told them about it. They told me the same thing. So I fill out that application and mailed it back to them, and to this day I haven't heard one word from them concerning it. I was hired back to be principal at [indistinct 00:03:51] High School. | 3:25 |
Kisha Turner | That's interesting. I'm going to ask you another thing about education. Being an educator, can you talk about how you see the education of Black children changing from the time when you were a child to now, I guess, the quality of their education, the content, I guess, attitudes toward education? | 3:54 |
B. O. Butler | Well, that's a situation which I've seen some changes in. Because I told you before that time I had a very mediocre type bringing up if had not been for teachers who were energetic and enthusiastic and very interested in helping to develop the little Black girls and boys they were dealing with. There would have been a lot I would've missed. But I feel like I did a pretty good job of doing that. | 4:21 |
B. O. Butler | When I came out of college and started working, I came into a very, very deplorable situation of students and what they had to work with and us typing up and dedicated to the cause for all these years, trying to build it out. Through my work here at the high school, I had to be very innovative in trying to bring in these types of things, bring in even sometimes speakers that could motivate individuals to look up and try to be somebody. | 4:49 |
B. O. Butler | Because they've been pushed down so long and I not having anything to work with. So I've had the opportunity to have to fight for a lot of things that I needed for them in order to improve their education. But until 1971, yes, 1971, I was appointed or elected to serve as the superintendent of the district in which I had been serving under for so long. | 5:28 |
B. O. Butler | I went into this with that same determination to do all I could to improve the area and the school system and the educational process. I feel like we did a pretty good job. But this change from administration, when I went to the superintendent's office, had to bring in other individuals from other areas to serve as principal of the school. There is where a lag, a slack. It caused quite of friction among students, teachers, parents, and all these type of things. | 6:05 |
B. O. Butler | So I served that office for seven years, and when I felt like I couldn't take it any longer, asked them to transfer me then back to the high school, and there I came back there and worked for six more years. In the spring of 1984, in '84, I retired because I put in enough years in to move out of the system. | 6:41 |
B. O. Butler | But I've seen certain periods in there where education was doing real well, and then I've seen periods in which it seems to be going backwards. Right now, I'm serving as a member of the school board of this area, and we are very much concerned with the state level of student progress that they're measuring up with other systems and others in the state as well as national, that we find that it has been kind of low, and we're working very hard to try to build this up. | 7:10 |
Kisha Turner | Just quickly, this is a complete change of subject, but Black businesses in Orangeburg as well as in this area, can you tell me what they were like? What, were they restaurants primarily and did you patronize those? | 7:55 |
B. O. Butler | Oh yes, Orangeburg as well here, Black businesses are doing pretty well now, some of them, but at one particular time they were almost frozen out also. | 8:15 |
Kisha Turner | When was this? | 8:29 |
B. O. Butler | I beg your pardon? | 8:29 |
Kisha Turner | What time? | 8:29 |
B. O. Butler | Back during the time when schools were ordered to integrate and individuals were losing their jobs and things of that nature. That was a lag there then, because individuals were having to leave this area and go elsewhere to find the work. So they were not here as they were when I first came in. | 8:32 |
B. O. Butler | Orangeburg, yes, it was booming. We had one car that they used to call the Weber car where we had the dime stores. Weber had a soda shop, that's what we called it, the soda shop, and various things of that nature. Yes, it was doing it real well. I don't know whether they still have that there or now or not, but at one time it was moving pretty good. | 8:54 |
Kisha Turner | Well then, excuse me, it's okay. | 9:26 |
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