Moses Levy interview recording, 1995 June 29
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Kisha Turner | I know I asked you this already, but could you again state your full name and when you were born? | 0:02 |
Moses Levy | I'm Moses Levy, Senior. I was born 1918, October 23rd. Is that correct? | 0:08 |
Kisha Turner | No, that's fine. Where were you born? | 0:24 |
Moses Levy | In Clarendon County. | 0:26 |
Kisha Turner | In Clarendon County. Okay. Here in this area? | 0:27 |
Moses Levy | In the Jordan area? | 0:27 |
Kisha Turner | Jordan area. | 0:27 |
Moses Levy | That's about eight miles from here. | 0:29 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Could you tell me about the house that you grew up in? | 0:38 |
Moses Levy | Well, the house that I grew up in, it was an old weather-boarded house, farmhouse. And we all growed up right there on that farm. | 0:47 |
Kisha Turner | When you say we all, who lived in the household with you? | 0:57 |
Moses Levy | My father, my mother, and four brothers and one cousin. First cousin. | 1:00 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. | 1:06 |
Moses Levy | All the brothers have passed on. My cousin still live in Lexington. | 1:12 |
Kisha Turner | In Lexington? Okay. Were your parents farmers? | 1:20 |
Moses Levy | Yes. | 1:24 |
Kisha Turner | And what were your duties as a son? | 1:25 |
Moses Levy | Work on the farm. I was the youngest of all, and my father was married twice, so I was his son from the second wife. | 1:30 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. How long had your parents lived in that area? | 1:45 |
Moses Levy | All their life. | 1:48 |
Kisha Turner | Did they ever tell you any stories about how the area was when they were children? | 1:50 |
Moses Levy | Well, they tell me a little bit about it. It was a very poor area, and there wasn't no jobs hardly for Black people. And as well as I could remember when I was a little boy, there was only three White families living in that neighborhood. All the rest were Black. But most of the people was self-dependent. They had they own little farm, and that hurt them quite a bit. Some of them didn't believe in hiring boys. Sometimes those White farmers would come around and want you to hire your son to work for them because they didn't believe in that too much. They believed in helping each other on the farm. If I need some help, some of the neighbors would come over and help me and when they need help we'd go over and help them. | 1:55 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. | 3:07 |
Moses Levy | We got along pretty good that way. | 3:08 |
Kisha Turner | When you talk about people helping each other on the farms, about how many people do you remember in number of families in the area? | 3:18 |
Moses Levy | Oh, I'd say about five or six, right in that area. | 3:26 |
Kisha Turner | And your parents as well as these people owned their farms? | 3:35 |
Moses Levy | It was like the Levi's, the Clark's and Frazier's and the Davis' the Johnson's, they own their farm. Their own land. | 3:41 |
Kisha Turner | Did your parents, did they buy the land or did it pass down? | 4:06 |
Moses Levy | They inherited. | 4:10 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. | 4:10 |
Moses Levy | Passed down. | 4:10 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Did you get a chance to go to school? | 4:16 |
Moses Levy | I finished 10th grade. | 4:18 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. And where were you educated? | 4:26 |
Moses Levy | In Clarendon County. I went to Felton Rosenwald for the last three years I think. | 4:27 |
Kisha Turner | And how about when you were little? What school? | 4:38 |
Moses Levy | It was a little small two room school in the neighborhood. But named after the church. Society Hill School. | 4:42 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Yeah, I've heard, Society Hill School. Okay. That was in the church? Was that the church? | 4:57 |
Moses Levy | It was in the church yard. | 4:59 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Right. Okay. | 4:59 |
Moses Levy | A little building in the church yard. But two room school. Had a double chimney in it. Sometime we go to school in the morning and before we get in the lesson we had to go in the woods and get tote up some wood. | 5:02 |
Kisha Turner | You did have to? | 5:21 |
Moses Levy | Finally, they got around to given a little bit of coal, but that was about the year when I was finishing up there and I leave and went to Felton Rosenwald. And that was good three and a half miles that we had to walk. | 5:22 |
Kisha Turner | Three and half. Okay. Was the school crowded, do you remember? Or was it- | 5:46 |
Moses Levy | Oh yeah, it was crowded. | 5:49 |
Kisha Turner | How many teachers did you have? | 5:51 |
Moses Levy | At the Rosenwald? | 5:52 |
Kisha Turner | At the school, the Society Hills. | 5:54 |
Moses Levy | The first school? | 5:56 |
Kisha Turner | Mm-hmm. | 5:56 |
Moses Levy | Two. | 5:56 |
Kisha Turner | Two teachers? | 5:57 |
Moses Levy | Two teachers. | 5:57 |
Kisha Turner | And how about the Rosenwald school? | 5:59 |
Moses Levy | Four. | 6:01 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. | 6:01 |
Moses Levy | And the Society Hill school, we used to get sometime three months, sometime three and a half months. And if you was interested in your children going any further, you had to pay the teachers. And some of the parents would get together and make up a little fund to pay the teacher. But teachers were very generous. They would take anything that you grow on the farm, like food or whatnot that they could use, they would take that for pay. Maybe you didn't have the money, you had a ham or something that would value so much, they would take that. | 6:03 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Let's see. What about the farm that you lived on, you raised livestock there? | 6:59 |
Moses Levy | Yes. | 7:06 |
Kisha Turner | As well as your crops? | 7:06 |
Moses Levy | That's right. | 7:08 |
Kisha Turner | And did you sell any of that or was it all just for the family? | 7:09 |
Moses Levy | Well, we'd raised a little more than enough just for the family. Would have cows and a few hogs, things like that that we could sell. | 7:12 |
Kisha Turner | What about church? Did you go to church at Society Hill Church? | 7:31 |
Moses Levy | Yes. | 7:36 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. | 7:36 |
Moses Levy | That's the old home church. I still go there sometimes. | 7:36 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. What was Sunday services like? | 7:42 |
Moses Levy | Oh, it was good. It was good. People seem to have quite a bit of religion. They had good service. | 7:45 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. | 7:52 |
Moses Levy | I was there Sunday gone two weeks ago, wasn't it? Yeah, it was Sunday gone two weeks ago. | 7:56 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. | 8:04 |
Moses Levy | We went down there to service. I'm now a member of Mount Zion, AME Church, that where the Rosenwald school was at. I'm a member of that, but every once in a while I like to go home. | 8:06 |
Kisha Turner | What was it like just a day maybe when you were working, helping your family out on the farm? What time in the morning did you all head out or come in in the evening? | 8:26 |
Moses Levy | Since daylight. | 8:38 |
Kisha Turner | Daylight? | 8:38 |
Moses Levy | Yes. I remember back on the farm, there have been many mornings when I went in the lot to get the mule and I had to open the gate and let him come out in the lost so I can see, get him just as you can see him get in the field. Especially when the weather was hot. | 8:42 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. You didn't work through the hottest part of the day? | 9:03 |
Moses Levy | No. When it get too hot we would step out the sun for while, go back and work till dark. | 9:06 |
Kisha Turner | How would your family celebrate like Easter or Christmas? | 9:18 |
Moses Levy | Well, they would have a nice program set up for Easter, the church, and Christmastime, if it was a good year you had some extras for Christmas. Everybody would look forward to Santa Claus at Christmastime. But then Santa Claus wasn't too much. He wasn't able to do very much. But everybody appreciate what we done. | 9:22 |
Kisha Turner | Did you ever- Oh, were you going to say- | 10:00 |
Moses Levy | Notice. | 10:01 |
Kisha Turner | Oh okay. Did you ever work, I guess kind of to get your own money or something outside of the work for your family? | 10:05 |
Moses Levy | After I was about 14 years old, I think, they start surveilling for this dam down here. And I started working with the surveyors. And well, I and one of my brother worked with them all the way through. Because he was much older than I was, he was married, but I was living in the house with my parents. And I would work with them from the time I get off of the farm when we live by on the farm, until time to go to school. And I remember two years I quit and went back to school. And I remember one day I told the man that I wanted to work about two more weeks and school was going to start, I'm going to go back to school. He said, "Well Moses," he said, "I don't blame you for that." He said, "Get all the education you could." And I'd go back to school. And the wages wasn't very much. We used to work for a dollar and a quarter a day and that was like 10 hours. | 10:13 |
Kisha Turner | What'd you do for the surveyors? | 11:26 |
Moses Levy | Well with the surveyors, we pull the chain, do the measuring and hold the rod. You ever seen people surveying land? | 11:28 |
Kisha Turner | No. | 11:38 |
Moses Levy | Well you have a rod, I guess that rod is about eight feet long and it painted in different colors and it have numbers on it. And that's how you tell whether the land is dropping off or raised off. And I worked for them off and on for about eight or 10 years. He was a very nice man. He was from Rock Hill, South Carolina. His name was Mr. Sykes. | 11:39 |
Kisha Turner | Sykes? | 12:15 |
Moses Levy | Mm-hmm. | 12:15 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. And this is when they were doing the river, making the lake? | 12:16 |
Moses Levy | Surveying the lake. | 12:23 |
Kisha Turner | What was that like when they came in and started surveying and damming up and did stuff like that? | 12:29 |
Moses Levy | Well, one thing I never understand, on my mother's side, her parents had quite a bit of land, something like 360 acres, as well as I remember, and I don't understand why they didn't pay them more for the land than they get. As well as I remember, they didn't get a dollar a acre for that land. And the federal government took that same land and leased it out to people to build houses on. They say the water was going to take it off. The water didn't take that land. And they leased it out to people. And if you ride around this lake, you'll see houses all around there. Fine homes. They sold some of the land, some of the lots, and the one that they lease out now they coming back telling the people that their lease is over. These people got these fine houses on it, they got to buy the land or going to lose the house. And they selling it for a high price, but yet they didn't pay nothing hardly for it. | 12:36 |
Kisha Turner | Did they ever try to get that land back after the lake didn't- | 13:58 |
Moses Levy | Yes, some of them did but wasn't able to get it back. | 14:01 |
Kisha Turner | No? | 14:02 |
Moses Levy | No. So that was just one of the things. And at that time there wasn't no Colored lawyer and everybody you could go to was White and nobody seemed to help Black people. | 14:12 |
Kisha Turner | So they just lost that land? | 14:28 |
Moses Levy | Just lost that land. | 14:29 |
Kisha Turner | Do you remember the Depression era, what it was like? | 14:38 |
Moses Levy | Yes, I remember a little bit about it. I remember when they first start helping the people a little bit during the Depression. That was during, what I remember is they called it Hoover times. And they would have certain days that people would go certain places and they would give them a little bit of food. Maybe like some flour, some butter or something like that. And that butter was salty. But that was it during those days. And you had to tell how many people was in your family and the age and all that character to get anything. They used to call it commodity help, and whether you was on your own land. And some of the people that was on their own land didn't get nothing. | 14:44 |
Kisha Turner | Really? | 15:53 |
Moses Levy | And I often wonder why some people have worked so hard, tried to have something and they couldn't get no help. And sometimes some people they work but they throw away everything they get, and they can go and somebody always willing to help them because they don't have nothing. They don't own no land. And it's the same way today with these food stamps and different things. Some people, some young people that much abler to work than I am. Right now I'm 76 and there's some young people been going up there to the office and get food stamps. But if I go in there to get food stamps, they think I'm crazy. | 16:00 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. I am spoke with some people in New Zion and they were telling me that people who own their land, the federal government gave them some money to improve the homes they lived in or to acquire more land. Do you remember anything happening like that in the late thirties, early forties? | 17:05 |
Moses Levy | No. | 17:26 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. | 17:26 |
Moses Levy | No, I don't. After Hugo, I guess you heard about Hugo? | 17:26 |
Kisha Turner | Mm-hmm. | 17:31 |
Moses Levy | After Hugo, some people was able to get a loan to repair their house, but some of those houses is still in bad shape because I work a little bit on some of them and they didn't get enough money to fix the house like they should. | 17:32 |
Kisha Turner | When you were younger, when you were still living with your parents, when you weren't working or if there were times when you weren't working or not in school, maybe on Saturdays, did you do anything sports activities or social? | 18:06 |
Moses Levy | Play baseball. | 18:22 |
Kisha Turner | Play baseball? | 18:23 |
Moses Levy | Mm-hmm. | 18:26 |
Kisha Turner | Oh, okay. And was that like a community? | 18:26 |
Moses Levy | Yes. See, in different area, they had a baseball team and they would come together, play each other. | 18:27 |
Kisha Turner | Oh, so it's like a league? | 18:35 |
Moses Levy | Mm-hmm. That was about the only thing going then for a little get together other than the church. | 18:36 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. When did you leave your parents home? | 18:46 |
Moses Levy | Well, I got married the first time and I stayed with my parents. And at that time, my father was very up in age, so when I got married I planned to go. I had an uncle and a cousin in Miami and they were working at they call it, Red Camp. They had a job for me and I told my father about it, I planned to go to Miami. He said, "Well see, I'm old now and I can't do no work." He said, "I was hoping you would stay home and try to take care of me and your mother." So I was working with the surveyors at that time. And my wife, she didn't like the city and they must have talked that day before I come from work because time I get to the house she said, "You still thinking about going to Miami?" I said, "Yeah, I might go Saturday." She said, "Your papa don't want you to go." And she said, "I don't want to go either." So that killed that. I never did go. | 18:54 |
Kisha Turner | Oh, okay. | 20:09 |
Moses Levy | I never did went away from home to work but once. I went to Charleston in '43. My father died in '43, and I had just got married a few years before that. I got married in '40. And I went down there and got a job, went down there and got down there that afternoon, went out that morning and got a job and there was four of us. And what they were paying, when I figure my board and everything I had to stay down there, I wouldn't have saved about $5 a week, and I couldn't see being away from home for $5 a week and not knowing how my parents were doing. | 20:17 |
Kisha Turner | What were you doing? | 21:16 |
Moses Levy | Huh? | 21:16 |
Kisha Turner | What were you doing in there? | 21:18 |
Moses Levy | Down in Charleston got a job in Navy yard. | 21:20 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. At the Navy yard? | 21:24 |
Moses Levy | And I told a man that, I asked him when payday was going to be, and that was on a Wednesday, he said Tuesday coming week. And I didn't have much money and I couldn't stay down there until then. I leave and come back home. And lucky when I got back home that afternoon, my wife told me, said, "There was two fellas doing the surveying." She said, "Mr. Sykes and Mr. Murray was here today, want you to go to work for them." And I was so glad. It wasn't but a dollar and a quarter but I could have saved that dollar and a quarter by being home, because they would pick me up in the morning, bring me back in the afternoon. So the next morning I was out to the road waiting when they come along. I went back to work with them. | 21:26 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. What were your impressions of Charleston? I know you weren't there long, but what'd you think of Charleston? | 22:27 |
Moses Levy | Well at that time I didn't care much about Charleston. Then there was everywhere you can look, there was some foreigners looked like and soldiers, this bunch of soldiers and marines and stuff. And in the night they'd have so much fuss around that time you couldn't sleep. I stayed there one night and I had enough of Charleston. And I guess you know how it is being raised in the country and it was very much different than Charleston at that time. But since then I've liked Charleston all right. | 22:32 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. What did your wife do? | 23:22 |
Moses Levy | She was a housewife and whatever you could do on the farm, like chopping cotton and we grow tobacco, stringing tobacco, take care of the housework. And during the summertime we used to have a lot of fruit trees and preserve fruits to help us cross the winter. | 23:24 |
Kisha Turner | And how long did you work for these surveyors? | 23:56 |
Moses Levy | It was about eight or 10 years. | 23:57 |
Kisha Turner | Really? Okay. And this whole time you were still living in that home? | 24:00 |
Moses Levy | Yeah, you asked me how long I, well when my father died in '43 and then my mother was there, so I had her to take care. And she lived from '43 to '68, and we all stayed there together. | 24:09 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Back briefly, I guess to school. Do you remember learning anything African American history or any Black history? | 24:39 |
Moses Levy | Not too much. | 24:57 |
Kisha Turner | No? After you moved away, what was your next stop? | 25:08 |
Moses Levy | Well, after my first wife passed in '73. And this is my wife now. And after we got married and we lived down at my house a while and she couldn't get anyone to stay in her house, they thought would take care of it. So I had three children, single, so they agreed to stay in my house and we moved here. And my house burnt down, and I don't remember the year. Do you remember the year the house burnt? | 25:19 |
Mrs. Levy | No, I don't. | 26:00 |
Moses Levy | See, we moved here in '75. It must have been like maybe '78 or nine when that house burnt. And my son Moses Jr., he built a little house back in that same house spot. And he never did got married. He still live there. | 26:26 |
Kisha Turner | I know Clarendon County was very involved in the move to desegregate schools. Do you remember the early civil rights in this area? What it was like? | 26:41 |
Moses Levy | Yes. I remember some of it. During that time, Reverend J. DeLaine, I guess you have heard of him? | 26:52 |
Kisha Turner | Mm-hmm. | 26:59 |
Moses Levy | Well he had preached for us at Society Hill and it was right after war ended, I think it was in '44 when he started civil right movement. And it was awful rough for Black people then. There was some family that signed that petition, they couldn't get no kind of loan whatsoever. They couldn't get fertilizer for their crop. They grow the crop and some people wouldn't buy it. And some refused to gin their cotton. And they made it just as rough as they could have for Black people. I actually don't know how some of them survived. | 27:02 |
Moses Levy | And I did sign one petition and at that time I was working for the South Carolina Public Authority, and the foreman was, his last name was Drake. I'm trying to think of whether it was Henry Drake or Harry Drake. But that particular day I was working on the farm and three fellas come from the job that my friend's neighbor come by and tell me, said, "Drake said somebody told him that I was in with those fellas and said not to come back on the job anymore." So I didn't go back. And I had a cousin that was in service and he got out of service, he went to Denmark College, learn to lay bricks. And I was interested in being a brick mason. My mother had a cousin that was a brick mason and I used to help him a little bit. | 28:11 |
Moses Levy | So I was telling him about it. He said, "Well," said, "If you interested in it," said, "You might not have to go over there. See I got all the books that I had," and say, "You welcome to get them and study." And I got those books and I studied. We didn't have electric light in the country then. And I used to sit up there by lamplight and study those books and my wife would go to bed, she'd tell me, say, "Why don't you put them books down and come on to bed. You got to get up the morning and go to work." "I'll be to bed [indistinct 00:29:58]." And finally, I start doing brick work and some of the fellows that went to school, I didn't better on them over here, State College, that stadium over there, I was the head brick mason on it. I laid all the plans for that stadium over there. And I work on some about as big a job in South Carolina as any the other people. And it really helped. | 29:26 |
Moses Levy | But you have to do a whole lot of trying during that time, things was rough. And if they find out that you was going along with the civil right movement, they really tried to make it rough for you. But I think that in this world, there's enough for everybody, if you just understand and work together. And there's another man that I feel like if you interested in talking with him, that might can give you a whole lot of insight on the thing. You heard about the Pearson's? | 30:29 |
Kisha Turner | Pearson's? | 31:27 |
Moses Levy | Mm-hmm. | 31:27 |
Kisha Turner | We spoke with Mr. Ferdinand Pearson. | 31:28 |
Moses Levy | Oh, that's the one I was talking. | 31:30 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Yeah. | 31:30 |
Moses Levy | Yeah, his father and his uncle Levi and Henry Pearson, they was in on it. | 31:33 |
Kisha Turner | You said you worked for South Carolina Public Authority. What was that? | 31:47 |
Moses Levy | That when there was, after they turned this water loose, see they cut out all the trees in there and when this water was coming up, those trees would float out some of them. And they had machines around there, pull them out of the water. And they would pull them, they would burn some and sometimes there was some great big cypress logs in there and people that was able to have a truck or get a truck, would get those logs and haul them to a mill in make lumbar out of them. There were one man working there from over at Enoree, and he got enough logs haul it to Holly Hill, a lumber place down there and had them cut. And he built a house over here at Enoree, and that whole house was nothing but cypress. I built the fireplace in it for him. | 31:53 |
Moses Levy | They still, work goes on in South Carolina Public Authority because some of those old trees, they tie them down with wire, to keep them from floating up. Some of them were floating down and people start fishing out there and they didn't want them up and boats running into them. They had to tie them down. But every once in a while now, especially in February and March, when the wind get high, it shakes some of those logs loose and they still comes up, and they had to get him out of the water. | 33:01 |
Kisha Turner | And so when you signed the first petition, was it the first one that you signed? | 33:39 |
Moses Levy | No, it was the second one. | 33:42 |
Kisha Turner | The second one? Okay. | 33:44 |
Moses Levy | I checked to see where the bus was going to pick up White children, and it would pass the Black children. The Black just didn't have no way to get to school. There was a young man growing up right across the field back up where I was living, his name was Mack Frazier. He lives in Buffalo now. And his parents wasn't able to get him to Manning to school. When he finished this little school at Society Hill, they had a school at Jordan, and he had a little bicycle and it was about six miles he used to ride that bicycle to school. | 33:50 |
Moses Levy | And I remember one morning he was going out to the road right from where I lived and it was cold. Everything would freeze up. My wife would look out the window and see, she said, "Oh, my." Said, "Mack on that bicycle going to school," said, "He'll freeze." Said, "You got a little bit of gas, you couldn't carry him to school?" So I went out and got him and took him to school. And I take several children in that area to school when they didn't have a way to go to school. | 34:37 |
Kisha Turner | That's how you got involved? | 35:07 |
Moses Levy | Yes. | 35:07 |
Blair Murphy | Okay. Other than Charleston, did you travel to any other places? | 35:27 |
Moses Levy | No. No I didn't. | 35:31 |
Blair Murphy | You were a member of the NAACP? | 35:46 |
Moses Levy | Oh yeah. | 35:49 |
Blair Murphy | And you would meet at? | 35:51 |
Moses Levy | We would meet two various churches. We didn't meet this one place. After Reverend DeLaine leave South Carolina and Billy Fleming to be there. A lot of times we would meet at his place. Yes, I remember I was a member the NAACP. I'm still on the executive board. | 35:54 |
Kisha Turner | So your membership in NAACP and your name on the position didn't affect you getting work as a brick mason? | 36:24 |
Moses Levy | Well, yes, it helps some | 36:32 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. | 36:33 |
Moses Levy | It helps some. | 36:33 |
Kisha Turner | This is kind of going backwards, but do you remember your grandparents? | 36:47 |
Moses Levy | On my mother's side. I remember my grandfather. You want their name? | 36:52 |
Kisha Turner | Sure | 36:58 |
Moses Levy | Name was Scipio Mack. And I remember my step-grandmother, her name was Ms. Eunice Mack. | 37:07 |
Kisha Turner | Eunice Mack? | 37:14 |
Moses Levy | Mm-hmm. And I was told what my grandmother's name was, but I never seen her. She was Emmaline Johnson Mack. | 37:22 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Did David's- Oh, go ahead. | 37:37 |
Blair Murphy | Do you remember anything about them? | 37:39 |
Moses Levy | I don't remember nothing about my grandmother, but my grandfather used to run a Blacksmith shop. And when I was a little boy, I would be glad when my mother was going to visit them a day. I would go along and I would help him in his Blacksmith shop. And I learned to work in a Blacksmith shop a little bit from that. Some years ago there was a Brooklyn Cooperage company moved down and the edge of right where Clarendon and Williamsburg County joined. Right on the river road. And they had a old train that used to go in Santee's Swamp and we used to cut timber and bring it out. And I did work for them a while. | 37:41 |
Moses Levy | And one morning we were waiting to catch the train to go in there to work, and they had a Blacksmith shop there. It was a settled White man working it, running it. And he look like he ought to been about 75, 80. And he come out there that morning. He said, "Anybody know anything about working in a Blacksmith shop?" Nobody didn't say nothing. So the third time he asked, I put up my hand. He said, "You ever help in a Blacksmith shop?" I said, "Yes, my grandfather was a Blacksmith, I used to help him." He said, "Come on, go with me." So I went with him, and I made 50 cent more a hour working in the Blacksmith shop. And I used to make two hours more per day than I was making going in there. And I liked that pretty good. | 38:36 |
Blair Murphy | Do you remember the things that your grandfather would make? | 39:35 |
Moses Levy | Well, at that time there used to be a lot of horse-drawn wagon, buggy's and things that he would do all the work for those people in the neighborhood. Keep up their wagon and buggy and work on their farm tools. They plow stalks and stuff, he would do that. | 39:40 |
Kisha Turner | How long did you work there with that man? In his Blacksmith shop? | 40:05 |
Moses Levy | About three months. | 40:09 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. | 40:09 |
Moses Levy | It was time to go back on the farm, come back to the farm. | 40:09 |
Blair Murphy | Yeah. I was wondering, when you were small, if someone got sick, was there a doctor that came by or who took care of people who were sick? | 40:18 |
Moses Levy | Well, there was a doctor and some doctors was in Manning and nobody had no phone then. And my father was fortunate to have an old car. I used to drive it and I used to take a lot of people to Manning to the doctor, and sometimes go for the doctor. The doctor would come out to the house if they were real ill. And there was no hospitals then. No [indistinct 00:41:01] and something. And I took many people. I get out the bed all the time at night and take people to the doctor. | 40:30 |
Kisha Turner | Well, I guess the period we're trying to learn more about, legal segregation. Do you remember any of those kind of signs or some of the symbols of kind of the separation between the Black people and the White people? | 41:18 |
Mrs. Levy | Enter through the back door is one. And you stand up, you couldn't sit down in the drugstore. You didn't have [indistinct 00:42:06]. | 41:41 |
Moses Levy | Yeah. I don't care how sick you was, and you go in the drug store, well, there could be a line of chairs there, but you couldn't sit down. | 42:06 |
Kisha Turner | You couldn't sit down in the drug store? | 42:06 |
Moses Levy | Mm-hmm, no. | 42:06 |
Kisha Turner | And you had to through the back door? | 42:06 |
Moses Levy | No, you didn't have to go in the back door there, but they had a side door at the doctor's office. You didn't go in the same door that the White go in. And sometimes you can go in there, you can be so sick and you had to wait so long, you didn't know how many White that they wait on before they call a Black in. You would sit there for hours, and finally the nurse would come and call, "Who's next?" | 42:07 |
Kisha Turner | And you'd be the first person in. Yeah. | 42:36 |
Moses Levy | And they had separate office to examine you in. | 42:39 |
Kisha Turner | Really? | 42:45 |
Moses Levy | When she called in, you'd go in there and sometimes you would sit there another hour, and so sick until you felt like you were going to fall out the chair. | 42:45 |
Kisha Turner | What did it cost? | 42:53 |
Moses Levy | Well, it didn't cost very much at that time. | 42:55 |
Mrs. Levy | Didn't have- | 42:58 |
Moses Levy | Huh? | 42:58 |
Mrs. Levy | You didn't have anything to pay. | 42:58 |
Moses Levy | It was like a dollar. | 42:58 |
Kisha Turner | A dollar? | 42:58 |
Moses Levy | And they would come out to your house for $5. | 43:07 |
Blair Murphy | On the train ride you took, what was that like? You said you took a train sometimes? | 43:09 |
Moses Levy | This was an old log train and it was to work. | 43:23 |
Blair Murphy | Okay. | 43:23 |
Moses Levy | Yeah. Old fat car pulled with that engine on the railroad. | 43:33 |
Kisha Turner | Did you ever take the buses? | 43:43 |
Moses Levy | Yeah, I took the bus to Baltimore. Well, my two oldest children lives in Baltimore. I had a brother-in-law, the only brother-in-law that I had at the time, lived in Baltimore and I took the bus up there. And my oldest child Dot [indistinct 00:44:10], sent her to Baltimore to John Hopkins Hospital. When it was her first year in school, the teacher find her eyes was going to give her some trouble. And I went and talked to our family doctor. He sent me to Dr. Dunns in Sumter. And Dr. Dunns worked on it for about a year. And her eyes wasn't doing much better. So the teacher advised me to try another doctor, and I tried Doctor- what's your eye doctor name in Manning? | 43:46 |
Mrs. Levy | In Manning? | 44:53 |
Moses Levy | I thought it was another doctor. | 44:53 |
Mrs. Levy | I don't have a doctor in Manning. It was Jordan I was going to. Go to Dr. Blands in Sumter. | 44:53 |
Moses Levy | I can't think of this other doctor. But anyway, the third trip to him, he told me, "I want you to go to John Hopkins in Baltimore or either Penn's Hospital in Philly, and take this child up there. See, now she won't have to stay in the hospital if you got some family up there that she would be satisfied to stay with. And they'll just have to take her there some days out the week, maybe twice a week or something like that." | 45:20 |
Moses Levy | So I come back and went to Manning, didn't have phone there, went to Manning to his funeral home, call my brother-in-law and tell him. And he always would be at us let Dot stay with them sometime. So I told him the situation. He said, "Bring her in the morning. I'll be glad to help all I could." And I had an old car and I went and take her up there and she stayed about three months, and I remember it well. Easter morning- | 45:48 |
Kisha Turner | All right. You took her to John's [indistinct 00:00:05]? | 0:02 |
Moses Levy | No, [indistinct 00:00:07]. | 0:03 |
Kisha Turner | Mm-hmm. [indistinct 00:00:13]. Okay. | 0:14 |
Kisha Turner | All right. Well, thank you. Okay. Could you tell me about what you were saying about your father's [indistinct 00:00:22]? | 0:14 |
Moses Levy | The only education that he got, he had an uncle who used to run on a night school and they used to walk through the field and go to him at night, and that was the only education. He said he'd consider hisself to be about a third grade, but he could write and read pretty good. | 0:21 |
Kisha Turner | Did he ever tell you anything about Clarendon when he was young? | 0:45 |
Moses Levy | No. No, I don't remember too much what he say when he was young about Clarendon. Well, I would rather not guess at it. But he did tell how hard it was for Black children to get a education. And he'd often tell us, "I want you to know more than I know because," said, "I just didn't have a chance." | 0:48 |
Kisha Turner | So his uncle ran the night school out of his home or a different building? | 1:18 |
Moses Levy | Yeah, at his home. | 1:22 |
Kisha Turner | He taught it? | 1:24 |
Moses Levy | Yes ma'am. | 1:24 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. That's interesting. | 1:27 |
Moses Levy | And this uncle name was Hampton James. | 1:29 |
Kisha Turner | Hampton James? | 1:35 |
Moses Levy | Mm-hmm. He was a local preacher. | 1:36 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. And how about your mother? Did she ever tell you? | 1:45 |
Moses Levy | My mother didn't have much education. And I used to often talk to her after I was going to school and learned a bit, I used to tease her. She used to sew a lot for a lot of people. And you could bring a dress for her to make and bring one of yours and she'd take it and spread it out on the bed. Or you could have show her a dress in a catalog that you want it made like, and she could have made it. But she couldn't measure. She could have take a tape and made it the length of the dress or something and take a pencil and put a dot on it, and that's the way she would do it. Well, she could have make just about anything. | 1:48 |
Moses Levy | It must be was a gifted family because she had two sisters, they could have sewed. And she had a brother, of course, he was able to go to Allen. He used to run a tailor shop in Columbia. He'd come home one afternoon and brought some cloth and that same afternoon, he made my father a suit right in the house. | 2:36 |
Kisha Turner | And who owned this tailor shop in Columbia? | 3:04 |
Moses Levy | His name? That's my mother youngest brother, Mack, Duffy Mack. | 3:06 |
Kisha Turner | Okay, Duffy Mack? | 3:09 |
Moses Levy | Mm-hmm. | 3:09 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Thank you. | 3:22 |
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