Joseph DeLaine interview recording, 1995 June 27
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Blair Murphy | Okay. If you could state your name, your place of birth, and your date of birth for the tape. | 0:03 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | I'm Joseph A. DeLaine Jr. I was born in Blackville, South Carolina, August 17th, 1933. My father is a Reverend J. A. DeLaine, who was credited as the individual who most influenced the movement in Clarendon County, South Carolina. Now, before you start with the movement, let me give you a little idea about my father. He was a minister. He was originally from Clarendon County. He was born and grew up in Clarendon County. | 0:07 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | His father was a minister there. The church, which is still remembered as the one where his father pastored, that's the Liberty Hill AME Church, and he built the church that's on that site now. Not the brick veneer, but the basic church that is there now was built by him during his ministry there and there was some conflict at that time because, I think, a lot of the money that went into the church came from him, and the conflict was, it was an attempt to move him higher to hierarchy of the church and that caused some conflict, which was resolved in later years before he died. | 0:59 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Anyway, my father, Reverend J. A. DeLaine, moved back to Clarendon County around 1934, and it was his wishes to pastor, teach, do whatever in that county with specific interest in the development of Black folk. | 1:45 |
Blair Murphy | Where did he go to return to? | 2:18 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Well, he was—I guess I need to step back and do this. He was one of 13 children. It appeared from everything that I have ascertained, his father had the attitude that girls should be educated, boys should fend for themselves, which is a strange twist, and as a consequence, there was much emphasis put on the education of the girls in the family, and the boys should fend for themselves and take trades or what have you. | 2:22 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | I think part of that trade solution attitude may have come from the fact that the DeLainians of the family, the DeLaine side of the family were not slavish, and as far as from folklore, as I've been told, back to my great-great grandfather, they were all builders or tradesmen of some nature, and apparently, when I look and I see distant cousins now, I find that most of them, their grandfathers were carpenters or something of this nature. | 3:11 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | If I look at my uncles, most of them were brick masons, and none of their brothers, except my father, finished college. They had some sort of training, but they were all pushed off into a trade. My father did not want this, and of course, his father was not a tradesman but that was his attitude. And he was a minister and an undertaker. Of course, undertakers were very different in that day from what they are now. | 3:51 |
Blair Murphy | How so? | 4:22 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Excuse me? | 4:22 |
Blair Murphy | How are undertakers different? | 4:22 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Well, first of all, especially for Black folk who did not have embalming, for most White folks who didn't have embalming either, so it was a matter of when the individual died, they were laid out on a cooling board, that's a wooden board, a slab. And of course, this mortician, undertaker, whatever he was, came in, and with a few herbs and so forth, he got over and so forth. And they dressed the body and made it look presentable and brought a pine box, which they were placed in, and then took them to the cemetery the following morning. And of course, cars were not that plentiful or—unheard of before the 1900s, and so it was usually a wagon that took them. | 4:29 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | My father did go to Allen in Columbia, and in order to earn, he worked. He basically worked his way through school, and this was by—Oh, I guess whatever job's necessary, which also took him to places like Baltimore, Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta. Those are the places I'm aware of where he's worked for some time as a young man to earn money to complete his schooling. | 5:15 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | After his schooling, he had accepted—He had pastored in Columbia where he met my mother, and then he took a job at the time when they got married in, I think it's Jameson, South Carolina, and he was also principal of a high school in Blackville at that time, which is where I was born. The school was a Baptist school. They hired him on the condition that he would become a Baptist and give up the AME church. He refused to give it up, so he was fired after one year there, and at that time, he moved back to Clarendon County, which was his ultimate goal. | 5:49 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | When he moved back there, the family homestead for his parents was just north of Manning. His father and most of his relatives were [indistinct 00:06:52]. I would say vast amount of land in that area from Black folks. My grandfather's land at that time, I think, was about five or 600 acres. I still—I've been trying to do research to find out how could they afford enough to take that, that I haven't gotten, but even all of the cousins who were there at that time seemed to have owned a lot of money. | 6:40 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | They moved there. He and my mother and myself at that time moved to Manning, north of Manning, in the old family house along with his mother, and finally his mother took sick and was taken to Detroit, and of course, he branched out and began pastoring or was pastoring at Spring Hill Church there, and they built a parsonage for us and he moved into that parsonage. And my mother, whom I'll introduce to you two before you leave here, taught then at the Spring Hill School. | 7:22 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | And my father pastored there, and he continued to pastor there until 1939. Let's see, 39 or 40. I think I got that. And at that time, he was transferred to a church called Society Hill in Pine Grove. Now, you may have heard of Society Hill, because I will be bringing up in my talk something about that church. | 8:06 |
Blair Murphy | Okay. | 8:34 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | At that point, my parents built a home in Summerton, and we moved to Summerton. And he pastored then at the Society of Pine Grove Circuit, which was 15, 20 miles back the other way, which basically still in the county, even though one church was running over the county line. During that period—And also, when they were at Society—At Pine Grove—Excuse me, at Spring Hill, my father taught at a little school called Bob Johnson Elementary School. It was at that school where he met the Pearson family children, okay? Now, it's interesting the relationship that developed with them and would still last until today. | 8:38 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | I don't know how much of this Ferdinand told you, so I'm going to tell you some background there too, okay? There was, at that time, a Mr. Levi Pearson, who was Ferdinand's father, and he had a brother, Mr. Hammett Pearson, who was not there when my father was teaching there, but background on them was that, Mr. Levi Pearson's wife died and left a set of children. Two weeks later, his brother's wife died, left another set of children. Have they given you the stories? | 9:36 |
Blair Murphy | Yeah. | 10:20 |
Kisha Turner | Yeah. He did mention that. | 10:20 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Okay. All right. So therefore, those two families were brought together while Mr. Hammett Pearson went to Baltimore to work and Levi and their mother kept the children. Then Levi eventually got married again to Mrs. Viola, I guess you met her, and she began to raise the children. So they all looked at her as a mother until today. Okay. So it was during this time that there seemed to have been a very close relationship built between my father and Levi, and then Hammock when he returned home, and neither one could read or write, and I guess Ferdinand told you about his father forcing them to take old newspapers and read to him. | 10:21 |
Blair Murphy | No. | 11:13 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | He didn't tell you that? | 11:14 |
Blair Murphy | No. | 11:15 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Well, neither one of them could read or write, and of course, Ferdinand's older brother was a little more further advanced in schools, from what he remembers, and as he told me, he says that his father would pick up newspapers that were thrown in the trash somewhere and he would bring them home and he would make his brother read these to him, and then when they were going to school, he would make them read their books to him and point out things and try to tell him what was this is and what was that, what these symbols meant, but that gives you an idea of what this man was like. And even with his limited—Without education, he had already purchased, I think that's about a 300 acre farm there that they had, which they purchased in the late 1920s, I believe. | 11:15 |
Blair Murphy | Yeah, I think so. | 12:16 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | And anyway, he formed a very close relationship with the farm, which dates back to about 1934, and it would be where my father had the ability to read and was a teacher there and he had a confidence in him, and this was his arm for his ideas, and that's what pulled them together. Now, it's interesting because I think that's one of the closest relationships. There were other extremely close relationships down there, but many of them were in the Summerton area where my father knew all these people as children, when he was a child and they were children, and so it was a matter of reestablishing an old relationship as opposed to some new people that he did not know as a child. | 12:23 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | And now, Mr. Pearson belonged to the Mount Zion Church, and it's interesting. When I drive there today, I look at that area and it seems to me like it's closer to Manning than it is to Summerton, and they have a Manning post office address, but at that time, and even as I grew up, people from that area looked to Summerton as their point of outlet for a town, and rarely would they look at Manning. Now, people just off from them looked more at Manning, and there's another party I will bring up from that era. And Mr. Joseph Lemon—I don't know. Have you heard that name before? All right. He very often is left, in a sense, out, but I think he played a very important role during that era. | 13:19 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | The reason he was left out was that, even though he lived not too far from the Pearsons and they were very close friends, it was like a dividing line of people who went to Summerton versus people who went to Manning, and who went to Summerton schools and Manning schools. So that was where the division was and they—Later in years, their interest was focused Summerton, but in a sense, Summerton was a Johnny come lately, and the real effort started around Davis Station with Mr. Pearson. Now, hope I'm not rambling but I'm trying to give you as much as possible. | 14:19 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | At that time, during those years, my father developed a lot of relationships with people in that area, the Davis Station, Davis Crossroads, Mount Zion area, going back through there, in addition to the other areas of the county, but his activities with—How can I put this? I guess the civic activities. When you're dealing in an area where the average person has a maximum of a fourth or fifth grade education and where 40% of the Black folk can't read or write, there's a lot of work to be done, if you will do it and if the people will allow you to do it, and in most instances, they're crying for help. So even though they want the help, they must also trust, okay? | 15:14 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | And I don't say it because my father was my father, but there was a degree of trust, implicit trust, and I can remember times. For instance, one man, I couldn't have been more than 78 years old from what I remember with this, he would come to our house about every three or four months and he'd say, "Rev, I want you to count this money for me and tell me when I got enough to buy a piece of land so I can build a house for my family." He was a [indistinct 00:17:00]. He couldn't read, he couldn't write, he couldn't count money, but he knew he wanted a place for his family and he had enough confidence and to bring the money to my father and ask my father to count it for him, and then he'd take it back home and bury it until he got a little more, and then he'd bring it back and count it again. | 16:21 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | And it was even down the point where he wouldn't think of bringing that that he saved since. He'd bring the whole thing because he had no idea of addition. You see what I'm saying? And that was a relationship that my father had with many people in that area. Personal problems, they had problems with the law, they came to him. They had problems with credit or money, they came to him to get them out of it. I don't know, in terms of the culture then and how much people have told you about it—So if I'm redundant, shut up. | 17:25 |
Blair Murphy | No, you're not. | 18:06 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Okay. But the trick that White folks had on Black folks, you're mostly farmers, you had to plant your crops in the fall—In the spring, and you gather your crops in the fall. Well, you needed money to buy your seeds and buy your fertilizer, so the bank would loan you money to do that in some cases, but see, since most of us were sharecroppers and renters—sharecroppers, not renters—the White man bought it, and then when the crops came out of the field, the White man sold it, and he told you what he got for it and how much you owed him. In the meantime, he probably ran a commissary. I don't know if you've heard that term before. | 18:10 |
Blair Murphy | Yes. | 19:06 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Okay. And so, during the winter months since fall, you had to go to the commissary to buy yourself a new dress or to get your groceries from his store. You didn't have money to pay for it and the man would write down the amount you owed, and you were at his mercy because he was the only one that had the amount and he was making a fortune off it. Now, if you needed some more money, I think I may have this wrong, but I believe it was Gloria Harvey. I think—No, not Harvey, Elliot, in Summerton. One person was telling me that they used to go to him to borrow $2, and of course when they borrowed $2, they had to pay him $4 back at the end of the week, and if they waited until the following week, it was $5, and they weren't making a dollar a day. | 19:07 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | So this was the kind of problem that you had in a society like this, and what amazes me until today is the foresight of the Black folk down there to know that they were being taken advantage of to that extent, and that they would ultimately rise up in unison to fight, which is something I don't find now, okay? Now, the people—Oh, also—No, I was talking about the involvement that my father had with the people. So this, I think, can give you some idea as to why there would be such an influence. That influence extended beyond the local church, because even though he had an interest in pastoring, his interest was in helping Black folk, not Black folk at his church, and he had really attained a status where that was not a problem with other people because very often people get jealous, and that I find very prevalent today. | 20:15 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | One minister seems to be a leader, another minister don't want no parts of it because it threatens him and his folks, that did not seem to be in a great problem there. Now, whether that came from the way he held himself or whether the way the people esteemed him, I don't know. | 21:36 |
Blair Murphy | There seems to be, in people's accounts—No one knows exactly where your father was the minister, but they all just refer to him as a minister and as a general blanket respect. | 21:57 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | That's right. And then the other thing, his idea of ministering was a bit different from what I find in the average people today. He was what I would call a holistic minister. He believed in a set of principles, religious principles, and he believed that you should follow these because that is the moral and ethical way to go, but he did not believe in this business of stand back and God will provide. His idea was, God will provide for you what you provide for yourself. Now, he gave you the ability to think, and I'm giving you this because I just went over and I almost gave a speech on this two weeks ago, but he gave you the ability—I took this from one of his sermons. He gave you the ability to think for yourself, and when you manage your money, the wiser you manage it, the more you fit into the image that God desire of you. | 22:09 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | And this is—That's the approach that he used. And when it came down to practically everything in life, he was very practical about it, and that, here are things, here's what you want, here's what you need. You can sit in church and pray all Sunday, you ain't going to get it until you get out there and start doing something for yourself, and God gave you the brain to do it for yourself. That was his thing. So the church didn't really matter that much in terms of the impact of his leadership there. One thing he did desire, and that was to remain in Clarendon County, regardless of where he pastored, the church, size of church, he wasn't interested in size of church. | 23:25 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | His attitude that he had that would allow him, I think, to do a lot of this was that he was independent. He did not believe in credit. He says, "If you got to borrow, you can't afford it. So you do without until you can pay cash for it." And if you look at the movement, and not only that movement, but most movements, when someone gets too aggressive, when we as Black folk get aggressive, the first thing that's looked at is our credit, not so much today as it was then, but they still do it, and then they tell you, "All right, you don't shut up, I'm going to see the bank forecloses on you." And they got you. Or you get yourself extended to the point that you don't want your reputation ruined, so I'm going to fire you, and then you can't pay your bills and we're going to take what you have. | 24:22 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | And he was fortunate enough that everything that he had, he never relied on the bank for it. He didn't buy until he could pay for it. As a matter of fact, I remember when we moved to Summerton, the house that he built there, when we moved in, the only thing he had up there was a roof and some walls around the side, and half of the studs were in for walls in the hospital. There was not first wall in the house, and he says, "When I get the money, we put them in, but until then, we're going to live like this." And that was his attitude. | 25:27 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Whereas now, one other minister, I will not call his name because I think he's gotten somewhat of a raw deal there, but he was in a situation where his heart was, and the people there don't credit him for this now, but his heart was with us, and he did a lot to help a lot of Black folk then, but he was very heavily in debt, house and business, and he was flashy, and of course, when people started speaking up, the White folk came down on him, so he had to shut up. As a matter of fact, he almost had to jump when they say jump. Okay. Now, let's—Oh, and then also hit this and then I'll go back and give you the story. The other things that my father was deeply involved in down there dealt with the voting for Black folks, equal pay for teachers. Those are the critical issues that came up somewhere back during that era. | 26:09 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Now, one incident that I will mention, I don't know if anybody's ever mentioned this to you, but I think it's noteworthy and I'd like to never hear it forgotten. | 27:20 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | South Carolina has the reputation, name, whatever you want to call it, of electrocuting the youngest person in the United States history. That was a Black boy, 14 years old in Clarendon County. This happened in 1944. Jesse Stinney, not Jesse, James Stinney, I think that's the name. | 27:33 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | This happened in Alcolu. Two White girls were found murdered and this kid was accused of it. 14 years old and really underweight for 14, skinny little kid, was accused of it. His family, his sisters, brothers, parents had to flee the day he was accused for fear of being lynched. | 28:00 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | One sister lives in New Jersey now in Patterson. I don't know if any of them had ever been home since, but within three months of the accusation, the kid was electrocuted, and I've got the pack back here now with some of the papers, that talks about "fry the nigger," that kind of stuff. But there was never—there was a confession from him but that confession was beaten out of him. | 28:30 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Now, and the reason I bring this up was, not too long, about three or four years, no more than three or four years, when my mother was still able to get around and speak, someone called her, a historian called her, "I want to find out some information." And told her that they found it very peculiar that Clarendon County was the one that rose up to all of this, but yet when the Stinney boy was electrocuted, there was not one word of protests from Black folk in Clarendon County, which is true. Now, there was protest from Sumter County and Richland, and Columbia and [indistinct 00:29:53], nothing out of Clarendon County. | 29:09 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Now, the only thing, and I have no idea as to why, but the only thing I can think of was the lack of my father's leadership because that was the year that he was ill with [indistinct 00:30:10] and spent almost the entire year in the hospital, and it seems as if there was a hiatus of anything that was done at that time. | 29:57 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | I don't know if others just wouldn't do without his leadership, I don't know, but I do find it interesting that that gap happened there, and this historian brought it up to us about this kid's death and nobody protested from [indistinct 00:30:39]. As a matter of fact, it was like it never existed in South Carolina [indistinct 00:30:42], that was it. | 30:20 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Now, coming back to—That gives you, I think, a fairly good background on what I feel Clarendon County was like then. I don't need to go into the prejudice part because you know the segregation and all of that, so I don't think I need to get that for you. Now, let's take the story and try to bring that up to date, and this is the part that I find that most of the people down there don't understand, don't know and don't want to understand. | 30:46 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | The folk in Summerton will try to tell you that everything happened in Summerton and that's where the seeds were, that's not true, okay? The seed came from, I would call it a symbiosis between Levi Pearson and my father. Now, there were some other things that happened during that period. For instance, at the Society Hill Church where my father was pastoring, the Lake Marion, which is down there, was being formed. Water was backed up, forming new reservoirs here and there and all this, and one of them was right by the church, which had a school, so in order for people to come to church or go to school, they had to get in a boat and cross this thing, and one child died there. | 31:17 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Now, myth says that that child died on his way to school, but that's not true. The true story is that child died during a church service. It was an afternoon church service and kids went out to play and got in a boat, but the same thing could have happened. Now, on that, now just throw this name out if you wanted to explore more information on that point. There's a Mrs. Roberta Prince, and I got a tape, some things from her on it, and she can even—I think the family of this child still lives somewhere down there, but that child lived in Baltimore and was down visiting his grandparents when it happened. So the impact of that was taken, that the church should start some action to get something done so that people would not have to take a boat to church or to school, and that action fell on deaf ears. | 32:17 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | That was one of the first aggressive movements that I knew that my father was involved in. When the Pearsons became concerned, they were not that far from this other situation, so that's what helped bring some of this in, but that was a situation where if you were Black and you wanted to go to school past the elementary school level, you usually had to walk 7, 8, 9, 10 miles one way to get to school, okay? And so therefore, the Pearson children had to walk their nine miles from there to Summerton. Just across the way was the Lemon family and they had to walk to Manning. Well, both communities, really, not both communities, they were almost families of a clan, so to speak, got together and they wanted to stop this. During this time, Mr. Pearson had an old pickup truck, and when he was able, when he had gas money, he would drive his children to school and then he'd do his farm work in between and go back and pick them up. | 33:31 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | When he couldn't afford the money, they would walk halfway and he would try to pick them up halfway, and he also did this for other parents in that area. And I think Mr. Lemon, I believe, may have been doing some of the same thing. Anyway, they got together and decided that they wanted to buy some buses to take the children to school. Now, I talk about Mr. Lemon, I remember that, but at this point, my conversation with Mr. Lemon will drop off because he was with the group that tried to get the schools in Manning, and I don't remember that part that well. I do remember the group was Summerton. As a matter of fact, I don't know if I can give you all the names right now but I've got them written down here somewhere. But that group got together and at—Can't think of the name of the Baptist Church but it's a church on the road between Davis Station and Summerton, about a half mile out of Davis Station. Do you know the area yet or you haven't been there? | 34:58 |
Blair Murphy | Not that well. | 36:09 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Well then why should I even talk about it? I can't, but at a church down there, and 17 families got together under the—By Mr. Pearson, let's do something for our kids, so they bought a bus. It's interesting because you have to look at the mentality and our mentality now when we buy something that we think is good and we're so deprived of it. They found a bus. The man had to clean the hay out of the bus because he was using it for chicken coop and sold it to him. Now, this is a bus, apparently been junked from the White school many years before when somebody bought it and then set it up for chickens. That's what they bought. That's what they could afford to buy, and of course, they were happy to get that. | 36:10 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | The bus broke down within a matter of a couple of months. No money to repair. And my father again said, "Look, we want—Talk to the officials and see if we can get some help. I want to repair this bus." | 37:02 |
Blair Murphy | So did they talk to county officials? | 37:21 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Yeah. Nothing. Okay. They finally raised some money, bought another bus. The same thing happened. Meantime, while all of this is going on, World War II had ended. Veterans were beginning to come back. Jesse Pearson, I know I did not—Don't think Ferdinand was in this group, and I'm not sure, but Jesse and about seven or eight others from that area wanted adult classes, agriculture classes, which veterans were eligible for but Black folk weren't being offered in Clarendon County, and they were refusing it. So they haven't followed to represent them and to fight for veterans' classes in Manning and in Summerton. | 37:23 |
Blair Murphy | So Jesse Pearson was a veteran as well? | 38:22 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Yes. And that's why I'm not sure because Ferdinand's name, I don't think is listed among the names that I had for that group and I'm not sure if he came back afterwards or he come back before and left. I'm not sure. | 38:24 |
Blair Murphy | Okay. | 38:39 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | But I know if he was gone, it wasn't very long because he was back and came after the group, but anyway, if I look at most of those names, they were names from that Davis Station, Jordan Hill, as the most volatile and active people to get this. In the meantime, the court's rule that Negros had the right to vote, and that was not a ruling for the right to vote, but a ruling to join the Democratic Party because the south was a one party system and you could not vote if you were not a member of the Democratic Party. | 38:40 |
Blair Murphy | 1944, I believe. | 39:24 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | 47. 46, somewhere along in there. Yeah. | 39:27 |
Blair Murphy | Because it was a case out of Texas, I believe. | 39:28 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Yeah. But now see, even when the case out of Texas came, they still couldn't vote from South Carolina because they ignored the whole thing. | 39:32 |
Blair Murphy | Oh, okay then. Okay. | 39:38 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | So it was about 46 or 47. Anyway, all of this was going on during that period, and in 1947, Mr. Pearson says, "Look, I want to file a lawsuit for some buses. Can you help me with it?" So then my father contacted the NAACP office in Columbia with Mr. James Hinton. I don't know if you ran across that name but he was a very vocal person at that time who was head of the any NAACP lab and elicited help to file this bus transportation case. The case was thrown out during hearing in federal court because they claim that Pearson had no right to file a case against some of them. His taxes, half of his land was in another county and they figured that greater half—Not another county, another school district. | 39:41 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | And the technicality in the old thing was that, neither one of the school districts had a school for Black children. They named schools for White children at that time. Presently there are three districts there. At that time there were about 40 districts in the county and they just carved you out here and there, and it was almost like a gerrymander. If something came up from Blacks, they didn't hear, "Well, you don't have the right because you don't have a school." So the case was thrown out. Then they went back, and at that point, Thurgood Marshall said that, "Look, we aren't going to file anymore suits on behalf of individuals. Our strategy is evolving and that we are now going for more group kinds of actions." | 41:04 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Up until that period of time, the NAACP, which was the only group that did anything Black person, had really spread themselves thin and they were filing on behalf of Mary Jane and Sammy Jones and whoever for a situation. Even when you went into the situation of colleges. I wanted to get into medical school and South Carolina didn't have a medical school. It was filed for me to go to medical school, and then it was probably compromised in the end by saying, "Well, okay, we'll pay for you to go up north and go to medical school provided you leave us alone." And that's the way it was done. So it was at this point that there was some thinking and some change by the NAACP. That, "Let's go for more of group action." Now, then they said, "Okay." And here again, the greater portion of the people that were involved in that conference with Thurgood Marshall were people from Davis Station. | 42:08 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Jesse Pearson, Ferdinand Pearson, Raven L. Felder. Oh, I can't think of all the names right now. I've got them all written down here but my father—And I don't think—Oh, and of course, Mr. Levi Pearson, Hammett Pearson and Hammett's wife, Charles Pearson. These were people who sat there personally and talked with Thurgood Marshall about the whole thing, and third of them said, "Look, well, if you go back, I'll take group action." And so I said, "Okay, but we won't do an on bus transportation." So they went back and they decided, okay, we're going to file a suit for equalization of schools, and they don't want a group act, an individual's case, so we'll come up for group people. | 43:20 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Now, this was before they had been given details and criteria on what to do, and I have often thought until the day in—Or I've got some good reason for being suspicious and negative, but I feel very strong that the folk in Clarendon County were viewed as a group of ignorant country [indistinct 00:44:51] who did not fit the graces of the intelligent Negros. | 44:22 |
Kisha Turner | So that was the NAACP view or— | 45:00 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | I feel that was Mr. Thurgood Marshall's view. | 45:03 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. | 45:12 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | And a few others on his level. Okay? I think I have valid reason to feel that way. I think publicly they would come across as being for Black folk. Well, they were, but I think that there was also a deep element of, you know, were the children human, okay? | 45:12 |
Kisha Turner | Certain image they wanted to project. | 45:34 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Well, I'm not sure if it was an image they wanted to project, but I think that when you look at Clarendon County, here's a county that didn't have social graces. | 45:38 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | I mean, "Most of these people hadn't been to school, all they know about is farming. They probably just learned how to take a bath last year." I'm being very blunt now. | 45:49 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | "It does not fit my social graces of being the city slicker, and I'm educated [indistinct 00:46:06]. Yeah, I'm out here fighting for the Black man, but I would expect that I can rely on other people of my kind to want a suit of this nature, not folk from a county like Clarendon." Now, if it had come from Columbia, I think it would've been different story. | 45:59 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Now, as I said, those are my personal feelings and I feel very strong about it, but anyway, I think that had a lot to do with his saying to them because it was all, from what I gather, from what I can remember my father talking and from some of his notes, it was almost like if they were trying to—He was trying to get rid of them. | 46:31 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. So come back as a group later. | 46:54 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Yeah. | 46:56 |
Kisha Turner | And I was just— | 46:57 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Yeah. And so they went home and they didn't wait for any instructions. They started setting up meetings, and I think there were four strategic meetings in the college to explain what we've been told by them by his great maverick, Mr. Marshall. And the people—And as I said, there's been different sections of the county and the people said, "Yeah, go with it. You've got my backing." Okay. There were about 130, 140 signatures that were ascertaining during that period. Have you heard anything about these signatures being picked up? | 47:01 |
Blair Murphy | Some. | 47:50 |
Kisha Turner | Yeah, a little. | 47:50 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Okay. You'll find some people will say, I signed the first one. That's what they're talking, I'm talking about. | 47:50 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | This was a commitment saying, "Yes, I am willing to be one of those people to file." Then the state office was notified, "Look, we got 100 and some people willing to do it, and we have presented those. And we have gone to the local people already and told them that we're filing suit and here's who's filing, so you better do something now." Well, of course, nothing was done. | 0:02 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | The state office then says, "Hey, wait a minute. Hold off because you got people there that can be retaliated against. Some of these people are sharecroppers, et cetera, et cetera." These people didn't care. Okay. So they said, "Hold off. No." And of course, they got back to Marshall and the other lawyers in New York and that's when they began to seriously look at this thing. They said, "Okay, we will go with a case for equalization of schools, which is what you're asking for. And we will use a limited number of signatures." | 0:29 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Now everybody seems to say it was 20, but I have the documents and there's more than 20 names on that document. I'm not sure what they were told. It may have been 30 or 32 people or something like that. But anyway, that first lawsuit of that nature was filed in federal court for equalization of schools. The hearing came up and Judge J. Waties Waring, I guess you've heard that name bounced around a lot, have you? | 1:17 |
Kisha Turner | Mm-hmm. | 1:54 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Okay. All right, Judge J. Waties Waring, who was recognized as a friend of Black folks who was ostracized and not even spoken to by White folks, he was the judge that was hearing the case. And he then said to Mr. Marshall, "What do you really want?" And so Marshall starts talking to him and trying to tell him. And he says, "But you got that already." "What do you mean we've got it already?" "Well, you got separate schools now and they supposed to be equal." It was at that point that the light hit Mr. Marshall and Judge Waring says, "When you bring me a case with something that you want, fine, but let's just throw this out." Well, Judge Waring was practically putting words in his mouth. | 1:56 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Now it's interesting because I have yet to find anyone that will admit that today except those of us who are aware of it. And when I say aware of it, I don't mean before Judge Marshall died. I had never heard him mentioned. It was all his idea. And I know there's some books now that say this is something started by Charlie Houston. You see? Well, true, Charlie Houston did start it. Charlie Houston is the one that imagined this. And Charlie set up a way to chip at segregation, which was through individual lawsuits. And he felt the school was the most vulnerable area, so they were dealing with universities and graduate schools and things like that. | 2:56 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | But what he had said was, "Chip away with it until you get to the bottom." Well, here we were chipping away and all of a sudden, you get this school from South Carolina that's like a set of kamikaze pilots ready to go. And here's Judge Waring saying, "If you go for separate but equal, all I can do is tell you, you got it already, so what else is there?" You know it's not equal, but that's what it's supposed to be. That's what Mr. Marshall heard and what he realized, because Houston was his teacher. Houston had instilled principles in him. So it was time to go for the whole works, you see? So that's when it really formulated in his mind to go for the whole works. | 3:39 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Of course, the attitudes of people was that it's not time to go. There was a lot of pressure put on Mr. Marshall about this. "We not ready for that," from Black folks. The group from South Carolina was saying, "Hang on." You see? And the funny part, now history tells us today or tries to imply to us that Mr. Marshall came down there looking for someone to do it. That's not true. Those people who had little education down there went looking for somebody to help them. Okay. That's how the, I guess you can call it the genesis of that Briggs versus Elliott case came about. | 4:31 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | When they went back to regroup—Oh no, no, no. There's something I forgot to tell you. At the time when the 30 plaintiffs for the separate but equal schools went up, the strategy was already defined to use one school district where there could be a direct comparison of White schools to their Black counterpart. So therefore, when you talked about Mr. Pearson and where he lived, there's no White school out there and no Black school out there either, except for some little ramshackle buildings from first through sixth grade. We don't want that. | 5:24 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | We want to get directly into where it can be a comparison. And there were only two places to do that, Summerton or Manning. And they thought that Summerton is the best spot. Now the people, the Black folks in Summerton were very lukewarm about this whole thing. Many of them did not want to do it. What happened was that the principal of the high school in Summerton had been fired because he—How did they put the saying? His performance was under par. He was supposed to keep the Negroes in their place and keep them from voting, and they didn't feel that he did enough. And there were too many Negros registering to vote. He wasn't keeping them down, so they fired him. | 6:19 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | The man had been there for years and very well respected. So they brought in a little lackey and the man walked around there. Sometimes I think today and I wonder if he wasn't an alcoholic as well or a dope addict too, because half the time he walked around there halfway exposing himself and never in class where you could find him, stuff like that. And the graduating class of that year revolted. Have you heard anything about this? | 7:25 |
Kisha Turner | Yeah. | 7:51 |
Blair Murphy | Yeah. Arlene Smith. | 7:52 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | She told you something about it? | 7:54 |
Blair Murphy | She told me about that. | 7:55 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Okay, all right. | 7:55 |
Blair Murphy | Mr. Georgie. | 7:55 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Now they revolted and they wanted something done about the collection of monies that they were charging them a fee for graduation. They were charging them all kinds of crazy things. And they had a meeting where they invited—Well, I shouldn't say they had a meeting. They had come to my father and asked him about it, and the meeting was held at the church in Summerton. When the school board was invited, all parents were invited. Quite naturally, no school board member with children. They were all White. | 7:58 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | It was at this meeting that Mr. Pearson got up and said, "Look, all these problems are interrelated," in his own little lowly way. "All these problems are interrelated, connected to each other. And y'all, those of you who're not behind us to do something about suing better get behind us because you're going to have this kind of problem from now on." Well, anyway, that night turned almost into an old time come-to-Jesus revival, and it was a convincing that night. | 8:34 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | I would say that a lot of that convincing was done by my father, a Reverend Seals, Mr. Robert Georgia, by Mr. Robert Reagan, I'm sorry, Edward Reagan, and the two Pearson brothers, Levi and Hanna. Those were the vocal people who got up there and just put the pressure down. And when that night was over, everybody was stirred up for action. When I say everybody, I'm talking about those who were doubting Thomases. So I had to stop and tell you that. And then— | 9:24 |
Blair Murphy | Can I ask you a clarifying question? | 10:03 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Sure. | 10:03 |
Blair Murphy | You were talking about people in Summerton's reluctance to get involved. Was it because of problems they had with NAACP, or was it because of the threat of reprisal? | 10:05 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | No, no problems with NAACP. That wasn't the problem. The problem was fear, that was one, retaliations. Number two, I guess ignorance, dependence of job, never knowing anything any better. So you had these kinds of things playing into it. Now, there were many people there that recognized that there's something better out there, but many of them didn't. So you had that kind of thing. That's when the unity came and they were able to pick up these 30 names, which was boiled down to 20, with no problem. | 10:17 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Before that time, they had more than 30 names. They had a hundred and some names from around the county, which were people with children and people, some didn't have children in school at that time but were taxpayers. This was specific to people, Summerton district, that one little district there with children in school. | 11:10 |
Blair Murphy | In schools. | 11:33 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | So if your children were a little older, a little younger, that didn't fit. That's where that became the cohesive point for the 20 plaintiffs with the desegregation case from Summerton. That was then supported by people throughout the county. And you see, we talk about one person's a maverick or that kind of thing, and there wasn't—Well, maybe there was. My father was a maverick in some sense of the word, but there were people from other areas of the county that were just as important to this. | 11:35 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Example, the name Mr. J.T. Boyd, I don't know if that ever comes up with you, who was—Well, yeah. Right. The NAACP in Clarendon County was apparently started around 1940 or 1941. The NAACP in South Carolina was started in '39. I have not found the data to tell me too much about what it was like then, but I did discover that my father apparently was the one that founded it then and was president of it in '40 or '41. And it was in '44 when he was ill that the whole thing went under. | 12:19 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Now at that time, the group was almost, if you belonged, White folks were apt to lynch you, in fact. I found letters that stated that he had secured the money from the bank, which was about to be lost, and had turned it over to the treasurer of the NAACP because the chapter was inactive. And then I found other names that were involved in it at that time, Mr. Pearson and Mrs. Sarah Daniel, who, I think she was a home demonstration agent at the time. Her name has practically been lost in the shuffle of things from the early forties. And a Professor McCray, I vaguely remember who this man—Did you read something about him? | 13:11 |
Kisha Turner | No, I think it's James, but I think it may be a different name or a different person. Yeah, I know it's a different person. I'm not sure if it's the same. | 14:05 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | No. This is a man who died. I think he's probably been dead since about 1960. But I talked with a lady down there, she's dead now, and she was pretty close to a hundred when I talked to her. She mentioned him and I vaguely remember the man, but seems like they were very involved in that early NAACP. But when it was reactivated around '45 by my father and Mr. Pearson and Mr. Boyd from Manning, and Boyd became president. | 14:15 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Pearson was first president and he deferred to Boyd because he said Boyd was more educated. And Boyd was retired, so therefore no one could retaliate on him. Then Reverend Seals, who was a local preacher in the area but not an educated man, but provided an awful lot of moral support. And then they had people who would quietly support but didn't want their names involved. So when you hear people and some of them say, "We are the ones," this is baloney. There were people from all over. Okay. | 14:47 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | The case proceeded from there in the courts. In 1950, our house was burned by arson. The fire department from Summerton refused to put the fire out, saying it was about 20 feet from the city line, okay. Now, there had been other threats made, but nothing as terrible as this. Now, during that same period, my father was transferred to Lake City, to a pastorate in Lake City, which required his living in Lake City. I have often questioned this. I don't think that it was a sincere move. I think that it was a move with an ulterior motive. | 15:26 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Well, in the AME Church at that time, there was a law that ministers had to be moved after eight years. He had left Society Hill because his eight years was up. And he was supposed to have taken another church, I think in Elyria somewhere, and he refused it. He said that he had to remain within Clarendon County because he would be betraying the people that had put their trust in him for leadership. And he said that he really didn't care whether a church could support him or not. That he'd take a mission church, fine. | 16:34 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | So he was given a small church that year that was in the county. And the following year he was abruptly picked up and moved against his wishes to Lake City. And of course, Lake City required a live-in pastor. And of course, all this happened around the time that the house was burned. And so he went on to Lake City, but maintained activities, trying to lead in Summerton by running to Summerton every time you turned around to help with the situation there. | 17:24 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Well, the problem with Lake City was one where that was one of the strongest centers of the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina. I mean, they had Klan rallies there and they just announced it out in the public. The state troopers would come to guard the place. It was just like going church on Sunday, so to speak. And you'd hear all everything. And those of us who were nosy enough to try to go at the time would hear how they would lambast the burr-head nigger and hook-nose Jew, and they would pray to God and thank God for giving them the power to kill niggers and Jews. That kind of stuff. | 18:02 |
Kisha Turner | May I ask— | 18:46 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Sure. | 18:46 |
Kisha Turner | What board or who decided that your father would have to move to Lake City? | 18:48 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Okay. Now, you have to understand the church. He is an African Methodist minister and the bishop within the diocese decides who pastors where. | 18:53 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. | 19:09 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Okay. Now, even though it's supposed to be on a fair and objective mode, it is not always on that kind of mode. And I find a lot of crookedness in Black churches. Okay. I don't mind lambasting the church because I'm so sick of it, I don't know what to do. When local people, and maybe this is where there's something to do with my father, because they really don't care anything about what my Mr. Mayor out there in Summerton was doing. It's what you down here know about. But when local people put their blood, sweat, and tears into this little edifice for themselves and you play with it over here and drain them of that money and they don't get the good benefit out of it, I have a problem. | 19:11 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | That's why I say within the church, you do have some of that. I don't find as much of it in certain churches because of the way they're structured. Presbyterian Church, I don't find very much of it. The Baptist Church, well, the Baptist Church, it depends on the congregation, how strong the congregation is. If you've got a good, strong congregation, then the pastor won't take advantage of it. But in the Methodist form of religion, you have a bishopric. And of course, Episcopals have bishops too, but I don't find that they take advantage of the people. | 20:21 |
Kisha Turner | It's very political in its structure. | 21:00 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Yeah. And you may find, for instance, a person like my father in the church. His conviction, I think, would be very similar to my conviction of wanting to belong to the AME Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Why? This is a church that was not founded for religion. It was founded to perpetuate religion, but it was founded as a protest for the injustices done to Black folk. And that church became almost a leading institution for schools and things like that. That was the idea of Black folk. You take Johnson C. Smith, the Presbyterian school. It's just White folk coming in to help. Ain't nothing wrong with it, but I see the AME Church more as a symbol of what we can do for ourselves. That's why I say I would lean that way, but I see so much corruption that is almost distasteful at times. | 21:01 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | I think that what happened there, I don't know, when they forced him to move, could have been paid off by some White folks. I don't know. I wouldn't put it past him if he got a few dollars to do it. I also would not put it past him that there was some jealousy on the part of other Black ministers in other areas because they thought he was getting too much praise. I don't know. But I know something caused it. It was not logical. | 22:16 |
Kisha Turner | It was purposeful. | 22:48 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Yeah. Ironically, the church where he went in Lake City was a church that was built on the land where a Black family had been burned alive. And the father was made to watch the burning and then shot afterwards because he would not give up his job in the post office. Okay. The entire time that my father was there, he was constantly reminded, "Same thing's going to happen to you." You see? Now, he finally sort of backed off on some of his activities for Summerton, but in the meantime, that movement down there had gone to court. | 22:49 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Well, by the time he left, it had already reached the Supreme Court and the ruling had been made. But in the '53, '54 period, the White Citizens' Council became the gentlemen's form of KKK. And there was a resolution, apparently, to get him. So he was given a warning to leave town or die, leave Lake City or die. | 23:45 |
Blair Murphy | How far is Lake City from Summerton? | 24:11 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | That's about 60 miles. Anyway, he would not leave. Again, the church offered him a transfer outside of United States to Bermuda, which he turned down. Because his point was, "Why am I going out of the United States? I'm here fighting for my people and you going to get me that much further away from them." So that was turned down. He went back to the church. Well, the timing of this was he was in conference at the time. The annual meeting of that particular conference is where assignments happen and review of all the business of the church. That's when this notice came. | 24:17 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | My mother was at home and somebody snuck her out and took her to Charleston with this warning that came through the mail. Anyway, he was sent back. About three weeks later, they came again and there was a couple of volleys of gunfire at the house. And cars would go away and come back. So the third time they came back, he was ready for them. And so when the shooting started, he shot. Our understanding was that two people were injured and some folk keep saying that one person was killed. I don't know that to be true, but he escaped and went to New York. | 25:08 |
Kisha Turner | How did he escape? | 25:46 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Well, number one, there was a story told to protect people who helped him. I won't even go into that story now because it sounded ridiculous to me then. But he basically left Lake City by himself in his car and was able to outrace some cars that had chase on him. Ended up in Florence, went to a friend, an Attorney Williams who lived in Florence, his home. Attorney Williams hid him in his house for two days. And the ironic part about that it was throughout the papers and everywhere, I understand, they were looking for him for arrest and all this kind of stuff, and the car is sitting right on the street in front of Attorney William's house. | 25:49 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Anyway, my mother was brought there. She was smuggled out that night in the trunk of a neighbor's car and was taken to her parents' home in Columbia. And then she went to Florence, and Attorney Williams and my mother put my father under eight or 10 blankets on the floor in the backseat of the car, and they just layered stuff over him and drove him here. And when I say here, I meant up the street to my uncle's house. My sister was here in school at the time, so they got her, brought her out to see him. And they put him on a plane for Washington. | 26:39 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | When he got to Washington, he contacted some relatives. And of course, these relatives almost had a heart attack. And they said, "This is not the place to go. You might as well have stayed in South Carolina if you're going to stop here." | 27:26 |
Kisha Turner | In DC? | 27:39 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Uh-huh. And so they said, "Where are you right now?" He was at the airport. So they said, "We'll be out there to pick you up in a minute." And they said, "Don't even plan to come to the house because we ain't going to keep you in no—" They put him in the car and they took off for New York. They stopped in New Jersey and called the FBI. I don't know how they got that in their mind to do it, but they stopped there and called the FBI and said, "Look, we on the road. We going to New York. We aren't going to tell you what kind of car we in or nothing else, and you can find us at this place in New York." That's how he got to New York. | 27:43 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Now, in the meantime, with his going to Lake City and ultimately fleeing the state, there was in a sense a lack of leadership in Clarendon County. Now the people that were actively involved, the names that were actively involved at the time, Mr. J.P. Boyd was getting way up in age, and he just couldn't do it. Reverend E.E. Richburg, there's that name, if you come across that name. | 28:22 |
Kisha Turner | I've heard of Richburg. | 29:12 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Yeah. You've heard of the Richburg family. | 29:12 |
Kisha Turner | Right. | 29:12 |
Blair Murphy | Mm-hmm. | 29:12 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Okay. Now there was a Reverend E.E. Richburg, who was related to that family, who was also an AME minister, but he was pastoring outside of that area. And he was transferred during this period to Libertyville. So when he came there, he jumped right in and begun to play a masterful leadership role with it. But it seems as if none of this was replacing him. It was helping, but it wasn't replacing what my father was doing. | 29:13 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Well, number one, I think most of these people were not going to take the kind of risks that my father took. Because my father was the type that if you held a gun up at him and said, "If you take another step, I'm going to shoot it." And he'd say, "Prove it," and keep going." Reverend Seals was a good person to work with but had limited education. It sort of bounded around that group of people. Well, there was a problem in trying to get other people to come in. And at that time, Bill Fleming, how much information have you got on him, not much? | 29:51 |
Kisha Turner | Not much, but the name has come up. | 30:42 |
Blair Murphy | Name has come up. | 30:42 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Okay. At that time, Bill Fleming had gone to Virginia somewhere, and that was really at my father's urging. Technically, he's my father's nephew. Maybe not by blood, but by every other way. He was my uncle's adopted son. And in the same way, my father, Bill would know him. He was a cousin to us. Now, it was during that period that he begun to take an active role, and he had just come on to live and take an active role with the activities and did a lot of useful things, because the group was beginning to fall apart from their lack of leadership. | 30:42 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Bill's style of leadership was very heavy handed, and I think this turned off a lot of people in the Summerton area. Now, sometimes we get frustrated and we don't know why we get frustrated and we accuse them, "They're stealing the money. They're doing this, they're doing that, and they're doing the other." Those are not the problems. Those are symptoms of the problem. It got to the point there was so much strife in the NAACP branch that it became necessary that they pull out and form another branch. It's ironic that most of the potential leaders went over to the other branch. It was just the old guys that really don't have any leadership ability that stayed with the branch Summerton. | 31:38 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | If you even look at the activities today, you look at what the Summerton branch does and shake your head and say, "Kind of pitiful." And then when you look at all these activities that are going on in Manning, they're aggressive. But yet, the two won't—Well, the Manning branch tries to reach out to the Summerton branch, but the Summerton branch keeps pulling back as if they've got something to protect. | 32:41 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | I think the problem is, and I spoke to them not too long ago, I was down there about two months ago, and so I just brought it up, the fact that there has to be followers and there have to be leaders. You don't get anything done without it. I don't think what I said came through, but that's where I see the problem there today. I really didn't intend to get into all that, but I guess I had to get into it to tell you a little bit about it. | 33:10 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Now, in terms of Bill Fleming, you will find that, depending on which circles you're talking, they'll tell you about all the activities he had with that effort. His activities were more at the end of the effort. And when I say the end of the effort, the Supreme Court decision in 1954 did not break down segregation in Clarendon County. It wasn't until 1964, '65, somewhere up through there, that those schools were desegregated in Clarendon County. And that desegregation came about because of a lawsuit that was filed by the Manning branch, which was headed by Bill Fleming. | 33:43 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | People tend to try to compress everything in a small period of time. But whatever you call the end results, which I think is still getting there down there, started in the mid-forties. And one milestone was the desegregation case. Now let's go back to the desegregation case. I hope I'm not giving you too much telling. | 34:44 |
Blair Murphy | No. | 35:09 |
Kisha Turner | No, you can't do that. | 35:09 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | I hope this is worth your time coming up here for. | 35:11 |
Kisha Turner | More than worth it. | 35:14 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Okay. Let's go back to the desegregation, the decision to desegregate. The Briggs versus Elliott lawsuit was the first to have reached the Supreme Court. Did you know that— | 35:14 |
Kisha Turner | Mm-hmm. | 35:31 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | —in 1952, I think, around '52? the Supreme Court didn't want to take this case. It was a hot potato. They knew by that time that these other cases were beginning to come up. And ironically, the NAACP had said to South Carolina, "We'll take a group action case, but we won't take an individual case." But if you notice the other cases, three of them were individual cases. Belton versus Gebhart, Brown versus the Board, those are individuals filing, which came up after us. They did that really to augment and get from each section of the country a different kind of case attacking the same thing that from different laws. | 35:31 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | What the Supreme Court apparently decided to do, and we'll never know, but we know they didn't want to take it. And they did not want to offend their brethren from the South. Briggs versus Elliott was a direct slap on the South. If they could get around that case and put it under another name, it wouldn't have as much of an insulting effect against the South. They knew the others were coming up, so therefore, send this one back and say, "Let's see what you folk have done in South Carolina with all this money you raised to build new schools, and then we'll look at it," which gave them time for Brown to get there, Belton to get there. And they could easily name it after one of them. | 36:22 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | They first said, "Look, it was done alphabetically." And then you look at it and you say, "It ain't no alphabetic in this thing." That wasn't the reason. Because if you look at it, Belton would've come before Briggs. Brown was at the end of it. So it wouldn't have been—That wasn't the reason. | 37:14 |
Blair Murphy | So why do you think that race was more of a direct insult? | 37:38 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | That was the only case from the deep South, and you're going to offend all your Southern White brothers. Okay. | 37:42 |
Blair Murphy | Because it came from here. | 37:51 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | It came from here and it was attacking the bases. It was Black school versus White school by state law. Kansas case was county law. The states, they had no law on segregation, but the counties could do what they wanted to do. Delaware had some sort of optional system, you see. Now the Virginia thing, it wasn't state law, but it was something else involved there that did not quite make it Southern segregation. | 37:51 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | The Washington case was federal. That was not state. And usually, federal laws have solved more things than state laws have solved, has to go into it. So that's what happened, and that's why that case became Brown and not Briggs. It only became Briggs because that was allegedly the alphabetical first name, but it is not. | 38:33 |
Blair Murphy | I heard that they were talking about Briggs being alphabetical as opposed to another name on that originally. | 39:07 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | But there's another name. Yeah, but there's another name on that should alphabetically come before Briggs. | 39:14 |
Blair Murphy | Okay. | 39:16 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | I can't think now which one it is, but there was another name on that. | 39:18 |
Blair Murphy | On that list. | 39:20 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Uh-huh. It should've come before that. In South Carolina, well, first of all, let's go back and talk about the people who are alive today. Those names were on that list, Mrs. Braves, Mrs. Gibson. Did you meet her? | 39:25 |
Kisha Turner | They say she's in Philadelphia. | 39:44 |
Blair Murphy | Yeah. | 39:51 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Visiting? | 39:53 |
Blair Murphy | Mm-hmm. For the summer. | 39:53 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Okay. Mrs. Richburg, she is right in Summerton. | 39:53 |
Kisha Turner | Okay. Who is it? | 39:53 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Rebecca Richburg. | 39:53 |
Kisha Turner | Yeah. We do have her name. Some people, like you said, weren't—Like Macy Solomon, she said she didn't want to talk. | 39:58 |
Blair Murphy | The only one. | 40:03 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Didn't want to talk, didn't want to talk. | 40:03 |
Kisha Turner | Although she's interviewing with her granddaughter, her granddaughter. | 40:06 |
Blair Murphy | Yeah. | 40:07 |
Kisha Turner | Or not her granddaughter, a young lady she knows, maybe. I'm not sure if they're related or not. | 40:08 |
Blair Murphy | It was in a high school project. | 40:10 |
Kisha Turner | They were working on. | 40:10 |
Blair Murphy | That's related to our project. She's going to interview with her, so it would be in part of the collection. | 40:17 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Okay, yeah. She's that way. And she'll tell me, "Don't come by here. I'm not talking to nobody." Anyway, but see, the other thing right there, I find that group there in Summerton, they somehow tend to ignore Mrs. Richburg, and I don't understand why. Because I kept asking about her, not knowing that she was still there. And then by left field, her daughter got married to someone. No, her granddaughter got married to someone that I knew and the conversation came up. And I found out she's still there. Yet Mrs. Solomon was saying, "I don't know where she lives now." But those are left there. | 40:19 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Then you have Mrs. Plemme Parsons, who is in Mount Vernon, New York. Her husband just died recently, who's still alive. And let me see now, if I break it down, there's some more I want to tell you about. What's the guy's name that died? Okay. Anyway, his widow, the Browns, his widow is in Philadelphia, but she's remarried and under another name now. But they were doing this. There's a mister—I don't know why I'm so forgetful with you here today. What's his name? James. I think he's in Detroit. He's not a plaintiff. He was a plaintiff on the first list for the equal schools and he was fired. He wasn't fired. James Brown. That was James Brown, the one from—I have to go back and get some— | 41:06 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | I don't know why I'm getting so confused today. But anyway, that was James Brown. They moved to Detroit. Now, I don't know if anybody has mentioned them to you or not down there. | 42:23 |
Blair Murphy | James Brown, uh-uh. | 42:34 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | All right. Now let me explain to you this. Because see, many people will say that he was fired and run out of town. That's not quite the way it was. It's a long ways from the way it was. Mr. Brown, for some reason, had a relationship with a Mr. Sprott in town, White man. And Mr. Brown considered Mr. Sprott as a brother. They might have been for all I know. I don't know that. But anyway, they were extremely close, and Mr. Sprott employed Mr. Brown as a oil truck driver. Now that was a job designated for White folks, and that was not a job for Black folks to have. | 42:40 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | So here is this Black man with this job and had the brass to file and was a plaintiff in this lawsuit. So a little delegation went to Mr. Sprott and says, "Get rid of the nigger." Mr. Sprott went to Mr. Brown and says, "James, you know I would never do that to you." So things rode along and all of a sudden the Whites got together and boycotted his business. And so Mr. Brown decided, "I'm not going to see him go broke, so the best thing for me to do is quit and fend for myself." | 43:44 |
Blair Murphy | Gotcha. | 44:24 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Since you're picking up stories and I think that you want that kind of stuff in there. | 44:26 |
Blair Murphy | Yeah. | 44:30 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | So that is what happened to Mr. Brown. He then looked for another job. He could not find one. I talked with him less than a year ago, and he said that my father did find him a job somewhere north of Columbia. And he said he did not want to move. He could not commute 70 miles to work, and he was just fed up with it. So his brother said, "Come to Detroit." So he packed his family up and went. | 44:35 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | The Briggs, I think they probably told you already what their saga was, because he was also fired from work. He was fired, literally fired. It wasn't just quitting and couldn't get a job. They gave you all that history, did they? | 45:13 |
Blair Murphy | Mrs. Graves— | 45:31 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Mrs. Graves. | 45:31 |
Blair Murphy | —interviewed with other of the team members, and they had talked to her during— | 45:31 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Oh, okay. Well, then she probably told them that they first left and went to—He went to Florida and worked for a while and then sent for her and the family to come down and stayed there for about 10 years. And from there to New York and then came back before they retired. My mind is so blank on the lady in Philadelphia, and I wanted to tell you about her because her husband was a plaintiff and he was fired from his job as a mechanic. So instead of leaving to try to go to find work, he decided he would try to just work on cars in his yard. | 45:37 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Not having the right equipment, he was working under the car and the car fell on him and he was killed. So the family, there were four children involved and a wife. So the wife and the four children left and went to Philadelphia to some of her relatives that were living up north, and they never came back. Then I understand she remarried. I had her address. I've never talked with her. My father used to keep in contact when he was alive, but I have never talked with her. Mr. Brown, the Parsons and those people that do live away from here, I do keep in contact— | 46:25 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | —The part that I forgot to tell you. You remember I referred to this meeting where the senior class at the school met with parents, and I think Holleen, her name's not Holleen Trendle. Her name's Holleen— | 0:03 |
Kisha Turner | Smith. | 0:17 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | —Smith. Yeah. I told you about, well, that was not Holleen's class. Yeah, because Holleen would've been my classmate. I didn't graduate from there, but she would've been my classmate. That's why I said, but that would've been, have been the class ahead of us. | 0:19 |
Blair Murphy | Was her husband? | 0:35 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Yeah, her husband was in that class. That's right. That's right. Yeah. | 0:36 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Now the president of that class was one Reberdy Wells, R-E-B-E-R-D-Y, Wells. And Reberdy is the individual that has totally paid for that rebellion of that class. Reberdy finished high school as the Valedictorian. Left there, enrolled at Allen in Columbia, only stayed there one semester because he did not have money, went to the Army. Spent two years in the Army, came out, and was admitted to Temple in Philadelphia on condition that the official records, when received from Scotch Branch, bore out what they had gotten from Allen. When his transcript arrived, the best mark on there was a D. Okay? | 0:37 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Now, it's crazy how people—You're going to say this man graduated from high school, and the best mark he had in four years in high school was a D. How'd he graduated? For that reason, Reberdy was never able to finish college because he could not produce— | 2:04 |
Blair Murphy | A high school transcript. | 2:31 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | —a high school transcript that had any passing grades on it. Okay. | 2:32 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | That has left Reberdy a very bitter individual. And I think that's also—I think he's police officer with, oh what's—I have to go back and look. It's somewhere ran out of Cherry—South Jersey. | 2:39 |
Blair Murphy | Cherry Hill? | 3:06 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | It's right out of Cherry Hill. I can't think of the name of the town. Yeah. | 3:06 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | But anyway, he was a police officer there. But the problem was that he was limited in terms of where he could progress with the police department because of this high school thing. | 3:09 |
Blair Murphy | Was it a Black community, or was it a White community? | 3:18 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Hold on. Let me see. Somerdale. | 3:21 |
Blair Murphy | Oh, yeah. Right down the road. | 3:32 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Huh? | 3:32 |
Blair Murphy | I live right down the road. | 3:37 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Oh, uh-huh. | 3:38 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Anyway, three years ago, 91. No, that's four years ago now. I just happened to, they did BET, South Carolina Black Education Television, did a panel discussion in May, and I was on the panel. So after the panel was over, I brought this up, and I indicated that here's somebody still paying for it. | 3:39 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | And so after the program was over, a fellow came up to me and he says, "I wish you had told me something about that before." And he says, "Let me go back in the archive and see if I can find his records because I'm on the staff down there, and I can get this stuff up." Went back and pulled his records. The records showed what his actual grades were. Lowest grade he had was a B. Most of his grades through high school were A. Indicated on there was that grades sent to Allen University of Columbia, and the date, grades sent to Temple, sent date, an F after that. | 4:08 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Which meant they, apparently, they knew they falsified it. And that followed him all those, from 1950 when he tried to get in. No, 52, I guess, when he got in, because he spent some time in the Army, and then went back, until 1991. He's had to live with this as a result of what happened. | 5:01 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | So anyway, that verbally tells you a little bit about it. Now, are there any other things I can get for you? Any questions you got on that? | 5:24 |
Blair Murphy | I guess I was wondering a little bit about your own upbringing and such, and the things you experienced personally, not just the larger story. | 5:41 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Oh, okay. | 5:56 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | My experiences in Summerton would've ended, completely ended, by 1950. | 6:01 |
Blair Murphy | Okay. | 6:11 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | It really ended a little before that, but that was still home. But I was away in school. It was, as I said, a very rural community, poor community. I found a closeness of people, an extreme closeness of people, that I don't experience today. | 6:13 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Even today when I go back, they've taken aside the local aspects and so forth. There's a caring on an individual basis that I don't see in most places. So from my personal point of view, that's said, now sometimes I have to also wonder would the same thing have occurred if I went down there not being Jay Jalene Jr? I believe it would be, to some extent. But I also think that that probably gives me more of an entree because people knew me from back then. | 6:40 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | The racial situation was an interesting one. I have a blessed—That was a town where your place was spelled out for you, and you knew it. But rarely was it mentioned, right? You go to Columbia, and you look around. And you see you're not supposed to do this, and you're not supposed to do that. And here's where you go and so forth. And Summerton, the sign wasn't always there to tell you, but don't cross the line. | 7:25 |
Blair Murphy | It was understood. | 8:07 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | And today I talk with people, Whites, from there, and I'm now beginning to understand a little bit more about my days there, in that most of them had no idea that their thing like this existed back then. And when they hear it now, they say, "These are all lies. I lived in that community." But their parents never told them anything in terms of what was going on, in terms of who got beat up last night because that nigger was out of his place. | 8:18 |
Blair Murphy | That was just—? | 8:58 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Yeah. | 9:01 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | But as a Black person, I don't know, I can't say it was an aid that we knew it, and I can't say that we'd always—Maybe we'd always seen it, so we knew our place. And you knew how to get around it. And I don't see it too much different than some of the kids now, let's say. And you see little kids are mighty grown for their age. They probably lived in an environment where they had to grow up real fast. And I think, in a sense, maybe we did, too, and didn't realize why we were growing. Why we was doing this. But you know when to take low, and you knew when not to take low. | 9:01 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Now for instance, this is not something that happened to me in Summerton, but I told the police officer off in Camden. I was in boarding school right then. And I got mad because our school was right here, and I didn't have to cross it because I was living on campus. Public school's right over here, right across the street. Route One's in between. And Route One is north-south highway. And we were being used to crossing the street as target practice by cars. | 9:44 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | And so I picked up phone, called the police station one day, wanting to know why no policeman out there. And the man said something to me, and I got huffy with him. And then I found out, here I am, he's coming out. They want to take me down the station and talk to me. Of course, the principal at the school wouldn't let me go by myself. She was White, and here she is down there saying, "Yes sir," and, "No sir," all this stuff. "He's young and doesn't realize what he's saying." | 10:24 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | I tell him, "I do realize what I'm saying." And she's telling me to be quiet. But it was the same kind of thing in Summerton. I guess this is what you're trying to find out about what my thoughts are like in some of them. I've gone into, I think it was, a post office once and asked for my aunt's mail. And I said, "Mrs. Ryan Oliver's mail." Old cracker woman looked at me and said, "Who's she? You talking about some Black gal?" [indistinct 00:11:35]. | 10:54 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | "Well, if there's a white lady you can call her Mrs, but don't be coming in here calling nobody else Mrs to me." | 11:32 |
Blair Murphy | As a general. | 11:46 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Yeah. | 11:47 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | And so some of it's no different. And I don't know. I don't see it. I guess I'll have to say, life in a segregated society in the South was one thing, but I don't see any difference in Clarendon County than the rest of them, except that they're a little more countrified than a lot of areas. Does that answer your question? | 11:48 |
Blair Murphy | Yeah, it do. Thank you. | 12:20 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | Okay. | 12:34 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | In a community like, well, in Clarendon County at that time, as I said, people were poor. The church, as in most rural communities, was the center of activity for Black folk because there was no other meeting place. And this is where most problems were taken, for some contact that you didn't know, or it was through someone you had met there, that you probably were able to resolve your problems. The people tended to react towards each other as a family unit, or an extended family unit I should say, with a certain amount of caring. | 12:34 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | For an example of what I'm talking about, let's take with my own family. I mentioned in 44 my father was sick for most of the year. He'd been outspoken as far as social and specific things before that. I don't think there was anything basic that we needed during that year because if the neighbors found out about it, they got it. | 13:29 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | When my father was there, there were times when we were under threat by Whites for retaliation. And there were times that we didn't know it, but there were men guarding our house all night long. And there were times when my father would be out of town, some of men would get together, Mr. Georgia, Mr. Reagan, the Gildons, and come more would get together, and they would have somebody close to watch our house with a gun in their hands. I know he were kids there at the time. | 14:08 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | That is a kind of caring that I found in the people there. It was a community where your child was the community's child. If I got caught doing something wrong, and this gentleman spanked me, I'm had another spanking when I got home. So it was not a community with hands off. And I think there's a difference on that today. But that's the kind of community that I remember from then, that even though this person may not be your parent, there was a certain judgment that they could render. | 14:51 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | And I found that there was a lot more of the caring between people there. Then, I hate to call it mystique, aura or something. There was a manner in which people communicated, which was not always a direct communication, but it got their points across to the right person. And very often, you'd be talking to them, and they would say one thing and imply something totally different. And you would say, "Well gee, that's rather," if you knew what was going on, you'd probably say, "it's rather shrewd of this individual." | 15:43 |
Joseph Armstrong DeLaine Jr | But yet you wouldn't expect it of the individual because you probably considered them as intellectually limited. But we weren't. We, as a race of people, I think, probably were more resourceful. And we may not have had the training or education that supplied to date, but in many ways we were more resourceful in getting what we wanted, that we had to do. So I see that as a difference. Okay? | 16:35 |
Blair Murphy | Okay. | 17:05 |
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