Walter Holmes interview recording, 1993 June 15
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| Karen Ferguson | Maybe you could first start off by telling me where you grew up, the neighborhood in which you grew up, and talk a little bit about that neighborhood. | 0:02 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Well I grew up in the southern part of Charlotte, which was known as Cherry. Oh. I attended Morgan School in Cherry. Cherry is one of the nicest areas in the city for Blacks at that time. It was the former farm of General Myers. The area of Cherry, most of the servants that worked in Myers park. General Myers gave the family's land and what have you for his servants. | 0:11 |
| Walter P. Holmes | That was named—John Myers Park was named after General Myers. But he gave us his land and most of his servants lived in this area, which was Cherry. Most of them at that time was homeowners. I attended Morgan School. I graduated from Morgan School in the seventh grade in 1938. | 1:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Well, so you say, so General Myers, this was after the Civil War? | 1:41 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Right. | 1:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | Can you tell me a little bit about the neighbors, about the neighborhood when you were growing up in it? What were your experiences in the neighborhood? Did you like living there? | 1:49 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yes, I did. I carried the mornings paper there. I knew everybody in Cherry. Most of the people in Cherry, as I stated, was homeowners. They worked for the well-to-do Whites in Myers Park. It was a very sophisticated area. | 2:00 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Most of the kids there went to school and finished. A lot of them went on to college and finished. We had a lot of people who later on came into professionals. We had of course course, we had our barbershops, and our schools, and restaurants over there. All of them was nice areas, yeah. | 2:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember anything about your neighbors when you were there? Is there somebody in particular that you remember? | 2:55 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, like I stated, I carried the mornings paper. I knew everybody in Cherry. They talk about disciplines now, kids not being disciplined. In my neighborhood, everybody in the neighborhood was your mama and father. I have more mothers that didn't birth me to be my mothers. You couldn't do anything wrong. You didn't have the problem that you having now with discipline. | 2:57 |
| Walter P. Holmes | As far as—Everybody, there was a role model. Most of the elder people were role models. Like I stated, everybody was interested in and everybody loved you. But if you did anything wrong, they'd get on your case. Then when you got home, you got another case with them. See? | 3:31 |
| Walter P. Holmes | But I can't—Well, not any particular person, because like I said, I knew everybody. I lived with my aunt, and she was, at that time, Blacks that went to these schools, when you're finished in seventh, eighth grade, you was able to teach. At one time she was a teacher. Now, I don't know what school she was, but she was a teacher. She later worked for Mr. John M. Scott, who was president of Wachovia Bank, and the owner of Scott Drug Company. Most of the people out there work for rich White people. So everybody out there was a role model. | 3:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were they well paid as working in these houses? | 4:45 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, at that time, I guess you were called well paid. Now, my aunt worked, and she bought her house, a seven room house with all of the necessities. That house cost $400. So I would imagine at that time, that was a pretty good scenario. She was making $8 a week. That was back in the thirties, late thirties and the early forties. | 4:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | When you say people were role models for you, what do you mean? What did they do? How did they—Or that they were so interested in you beyond the discipline? How— | 5:36 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, the way they carried themselves, they was always interested. If you was walking to school, they'd always say, "How's my boy? How's my girl?" When you write them, tell them I said, "Hello." When you come home, "Tell them to come by and see me." If you went in service, they'd say, "What? How's my boy?" I said hello and let me know here's a couple dollars sitting in my—you know what I mean? | 5:48 |
| Walter P. Holmes | When you came home, you went by to see him and they was always glad to see you. They always had a word of encouragement. "How you doing? You could do better." Give you pat on the shoulder and a hug. "Here's a quarter," something keep up the good work, that's what I mean with role models. | 6:16 |
| Walter P. Holmes | In the sport field, we had most of the boys over there was like baseball. We had two baseball teams. We had elderly men and we had a youth. The youth, our team was from 15 to about 18, and the men was elder men. See? Every Saturday over there, we had a big baseball game, and we played teams all over the city. Our team, the youth team—At that time, they had a Charlotte—We had the White team at the Charlotte Hornets Center. Years ago. Then you had the Charlotte Black Hornets. Well, the Charlotte Black Hornets a lot of times would play games. They didn't have enough men to play, and they'd come over and get some of us young boys. | 6:42 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I was 16 years old when I was playing semi pro baseball. But it was, those older men were role models for us too. We just had a good relationship. On Saturdays, when the men were playing, you had people out there churning ice cream. They were selling fish, and everybody in Cherry would come up to the ball field. We just had a good relationship. | 7:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Can you tell me a little bit about your parents? | 8:15 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Not too much. My mother and father were separated. My mother, she went to New York, and of course she stayed in Canada and in New York. My father was here. Of course, as I said, they were separated, and I didn't know too much about them. My mother stayed in New York until 1981. She had passed in 81. She had been in New York about 55 years. Yeah. | 8:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | So when did she send you down to Charlotte? | 8:49 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I was about eight months old. | 8:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh really? | 8:54 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Yeah. | 8:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | So your aunt raised you? | 8:54 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Yeah. | 8:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Could you tell me a little bit about her as a person? And— | 8:58 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Her profession was a cook. She worked for a lot of the rich White people out there. She worked for John M. Scott and she worked for WT Weiss, who was the president of JB Ivey's. During the summer, she would go to the summer resorts, and in Florida and elsewhere. Her profession was a cook. I mean a cook. Yeah. She was very religious. She was very stern, but she was very good-hearted. You know what I mean? There's nothing in the world that she wouldn't do for you or anybody else. | 9:01 |
| Walter P. Holmes | But she was stern. She wouldn't mind—You ever had a backhand lick? | 9:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Pardon me? | 9:54 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Have you ever had a backhand lick? | 9:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | No. | 9:55 |
| Walter P. Holmes | That's a backhand lick. Yeah. | 9:55 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I was 22 years old and I had finished college and finished my tour of duty in service. We was talking one day and she said something, I said, "Uh—" I didn't get it out. She was very religious. And at that time, young men were very courteous. I remember one Sunday we was coming from church, and we passed this elder lady, and we spoke and we spoke. She slapped me. And I said, "What happened?" I said, "I spoke." She said, "Yeah, but you didn't tip your hat." During those days, men respected women regardless, but she was very stern. | 10:02 |
| Walter P. Holmes | If you had anything to say, she would tell you. That was it. We used to have what they call—You would call it your mother's daughter's chat. We had that. She would say, "Son, come here." And I'd go, "Oh Lord, what have I done now?" And she would say, "Well, I'm not saying you're doing it, but I heard you was doing it, and if you were doing it, don't do it." Then she would tell me why. Tell me why. It was me and my sister lived there together. She would also tell her same thing. She was telling you about, I would imagine, the things of life. | 10:49 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Now, the other day I heard on TV about should you teach your children? Should the parents teach your children about sex, or should sex be taught in the schools? And I think sex should be taught in the home. | 11:41 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Now, I'm also a history and psychology major. We had in sociology, I had in sociology a course in married and family life. They was telling you about certain things about sex. I think that should be taught in the homes as well as in the schools. Because if you teach them at a home, then certain things they will know and expect. So that's the kind of person she was. | 11:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | You said your sister lived at home with you. | 12:34 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 12:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was there anybody else who lived with you? | 12:40 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. No, no. | 12:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | The three of you? | 12:45 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 12:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | Can you talk a little bit more about your aunt and some of the other values that she instilled in you? | 12:45 |
| Walter P. Holmes | One thing that she was saying, when I was in high school, my last year in high school, I had three jobs. Hawked milk in the morning from three to five for most dairies. Then I came back and I carried the mornings paper. Then at night I worked at Myers Park Pharmacy from 7 to 11. I did that all—After I leave football practice, I did all that. She taught me if you make a dollar, save 10 cents. I could never understand what she meant by that. Every Monday I would go downtown and put something in the bank. But later on in life, I found out the value of a penny. | 12:52 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Now I started buying my clothes, working and buying my clothes when I was 14 years old. Because this is something that didn't happen to you. We had a Sunday soup, Sunday shoes. When you come home from church, take them off. See, I was one of those that I want to go from the playground and play in my Sunday stuff. "Take it off, take it off." I said, "Well, I'm going to get me a job and buy my clothes and I can wear them when I want wear them." | 13:53 |
| Walter P. Holmes | When I was 14 years old, I started buying my clothes. But I found out clothes, you got to take care of them. When I started buying them, I couldn't go out there and slide in them, let get them dirty. Even now, when I come home from church in the afternoon, when I got in my car, I started taking my clothes off, because clothes, they are valuable. And if you don't take care of them, they won't last. Just like driving a car. You can tell who owns the car. If you own your car, you are not going to take off. But if somebody else driving your car, and take off, them tires costs, they don't care. But you care. See? | 14:28 |
| Walter P. Holmes | She taught me the value of a dollar. She taught me the value of working. Now my wife is deceased. She died in '88. At home I was taught wash, iron, cook, clean up. A couple weeks ago, I was talking to the fella, said "I got to go home, man. I have to go home and cook." Do you cook? I said, "Yeah." I said, "If I didn't know how to cook, I don't know how to survive." I say, "I wash, I iron, I cook." Now, on Mondays, I wash on Mondays and I iron on Wednesdays or Thursdays. | 15:17 |
| Walter P. Holmes | See when I was in service, we had a—When you get up in the morning, you had to mop around your bed. Make your bed up. I get up in the morning, and I do that. And the guy said, "Man, how you do that?" I was taught that at home. I was taught to make up my bed, and mop around my bed and keep things in order. Those are things that she taught me. The value. She was really one of my role models. | 15:57 |
| Walter P. Holmes | When I was away in service in school, I'd call and tell I needed some money. "I ain't got no money. I ain't got no money. Where am I going to get money from." But I knew when the mail man came there next day, I would've had it. She didn't believe in waste. In waste. | 16:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you think it was unusual for boys in your time to learn how to do all those things around the house? | 16:51 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. Most kids in that neighborhood, boys and girls, they did that. Plus like I stated before, we was like one big family over there. If a boy came to my house, and my aunt seen something need to be done, the paper or something, she says, "Go and pick up that paper." Anything you know? They would do that. Not only them, if I went to somebody else's house. When you go into someone's house and they was talking, you wouldn't sit around and hear the old folks talk. | 16:59 |
| Walter P. Holmes | When you go in there, you would speak. These kids now come in now, they don't speak. If you are talking, they'll interrupt, and all that stuff. I don't get where it went. Anywhere, I don't know whether Ms. Mungo told you that or not. She was my play sister, and I used to go to their house. If I did something wrong up there, I'd get the same thing as I get at home. Yeah. | 17:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | What is a play sister? | 18:03 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh, something like me and you. We friends and we talking. We discuss. I go to her house now, and I sit down. The first thing she asked me when I get in there, "You want something to eat? You hungry?" When I was in the hospital, I had open heart surgery a couple years ago. Her sister, did you meet Lucia, her sister? | 18:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | I just know of her from another person. | 18:29 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Okay. When I went down to the operating room, they both were there. When I came out five hours later, they both were there. When I was in the hospital, they both were there. She called me about—we talk about two or three times week. If she don't hear from me, she say, "Bro, what's wrong with you? Well, I haven't heard from you. You all right? Anything you need?" One of them things. | 18:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Just to clear this a little bit more, would you call anybody that you knew in Cherry a play sister or just somebody special? | 18:58 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. Special. | 19:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Special. Okay. When do you start calling somebody a play sister? Just happens? | 19:07 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, her mother—She didn't have any brothers. She and I came up together through grade school. Grades and high school. Her mother adopted me as a son, you know what I mean? We had been friends for years and years and years. | 19:11 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I go over there and like I said, when I was sick, they came to the hospital, and they came over here and brought me food. Even now, when something go wrong, like I said, if she don't hear from me in a week, she'll call me. "Where you been? Where? You all right." I'll call her. Say "I haven't heard from you, girl." | 19:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you have any blood relations who lived around your town in Cherry? | 19:53 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. | 20:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you ever hear anything from your aunt about your grandparents at all? | 20:00 |
| Walter P. Holmes | My grandmother on my father's side, I saw her a couple times. She had lived in Ohio. I only saw her a couple times. But I don't know. I don't know too much about the family on my father's side. | 20:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you know where they came from originally, or? | 20:27 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, I got a sketch. They say that we came from—We are part Indians. That's all I know. I was talking to someone some years ago, and they was telling me about where we came from. It's from the Indian side. Of course, some people tell me and say, "Well, I can tell you were from that area. You got, you color on your skin and the cheekbones." Now, several months ago, I received a letter from some company and they was doing a history on the home just—But I didn't know. I didn't go. | 20:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | What was the first job that you had when you were growing up? | 21:29 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh. Cutting grass, I think. I don't know. | 21:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Cutting grass. Okay. | 21:42 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I don't know. | 21:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you have to start quite early working, or did you have a job? When did you start working? | 21:45 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, I don't know. I stated those three jobs I had. And I worked at the Charlotte Memorial Hospital. I think they opened in 1940, I think. I worked over there, but I had—Most of my jobs was at drugstores in the afternoon after school. | 21:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | That would be in high school or— | 22:19 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, high school? Yeah, because I played football, you see. By the time I got to play football and go home and do my night duties. And I go to work about seven in the afternoon. Go during the summer. During the summer. | 22:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | When you were younger, well, and then in high school as well, what kinds of things did you do for fun? | 22:38 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I played baseball, and softball and volleyball. Only time I had to do it. Otherwise, I was working. And of course the summers, sometime during the summers, went to Buffalo. I stayed in Buffalo a couple of summers. Yeah. | 22:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Who did you stay with there? | 23:06 |
| Walter P. Holmes | A cousin. | 23:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh yeah? | 23:08 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 23:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | How was that? Was that a lot different than being in Charlotte? | 23:10 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh, yes. Yes. I'm a tennis player and I used to go out—We lived about six blocks from University of Buffalo, and I used to go down play tennis. Of course I played softball on the softball team there. Plus, I got my job. The first week I worked on this job, and the man paid me off. He paid me $50. $50. | 23:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | That was big money? | 23:45 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, because I was making at the drug store. We wasn't making but $3 a week. | 23:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you think that was because of the job, or because Black people in the south were not paid very much? | 23:55 |
| Walter P. Holmes | The location. | 24:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 24:04 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 24:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | So was that the biggest difference? | 24:04 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 24:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Going to Buffalo? | 24:14 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Well then, going into another area was a lot more to do. When I played softball, I was the only a Black on the softball team. | 24:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | So it was an integrated team? | 24:27 |
| Walter P. Holmes | But of course, race has never come into my mind. When I was going to high school, we had to go right by the White high school to go to our school. In the afternoons, especially on Saturdays, we would go down behind the—At that time where Park Center is now, the old armory and everybody played together, Black and White. Play together. | 24:31 |
| Walter P. Holmes | We had to fight, and they would go right back and start playing. We did okay until a elderly person come by, and then they would start interfering. Then you had a blowout. But otherwise, I mean Black and White, then, us kids, we just make it along. | 25:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | When you say you played together, did you play on the same team? | 25:15 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Did. | 25:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Together? So it wouldn't be Black against White? | 25:24 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. No. | 25:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | No. What age were you when you did that? | 25:27 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh, we were what? I was 13, 14, 15? | 25:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was there a time when that stopped other than this White guy coming and— | 25:39 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. No, because my high school—When Central had a game, all the Black players from my high school went to that game. We got in free. We got in free. We knew most of the guys. Plus, a lot of them guys worked with us at the drug store. So we knew everybody. Yeah. | 25:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kind of job did you do at the drugstore? | 26:06 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I was a bicycle boy. | 26:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. So you made deliveries? | 26:10 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 26:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you ever go to any of the other Black neighborhoods when you were working? | 26:17 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. | 26:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Which ones did you— | 26:23 |
| Walter P. Holmes | All of them. | 26:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh yeah? | 26:25 |
| Walter P. Holmes | All of them. | 26:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now in Cherry, was there as many Black businesses as in Brooklyn? | 26:26 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. No, no. Brooklyn was the center of the Black area. Now, this here was known as Belville. We used to ride over here on the bus on Sunday to see how the people over here lived. But see, I was a guy that, I knew everybody knew me and I knew everybody. See, and I had a lot of friends over here. It didn't bother me at all. | 26:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. We've heard a little bit about there being some rivalry between the neighborhoods. Did you have some fighting going on? Were you ever involved in any of that? | 27:00 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Mm-hmm. | 27:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Can you tell me a little bit about that? | 27:13 |
| Walter P. Holmes | The rivalry was inner city. I lived in Cherry, next to Brooklyn. Okay. Brooklyn and Cherry, they were the fight. The dividing line was the square. You had Belville when the boys from Belville would come over to Cherry to see our girls. We'd have then—Brooklyn and Cherry would consolidate. Okay? All right. When we came over here to see girls over here, the same thing. We'd have little fights, but like I say, see, I've always been a loner. I ran alone. And so I had no problems because I had friends all over. Anytime something happens, my friends would, "Don't bother him." But there was a rivalry | 27:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Which neighborhood were people best off financially, do you think? | 28:19 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Right here. | 28:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Middleville? | 28:23 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 28:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 28:31 |
| Walter P. Holmes | You had all the lawyers, the doctors and school teachers and whatever. | 28:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | I've heard that a lot of that like Cherry, a lot of people in Brooklyn worked in wealthy Whites' homes in Dilworth rather than Myers Park. Is that what you remember? | 28:32 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 28:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Were people in Brooklyn—Were the people working in Dilworth better off than the people working in Myers Park? | 28:45 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. No. | 28:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was it the same? | 28:51 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. The people in the Cherry was a little more up, you know? | 28:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Do you think that had anything to do with the fighting that was going on? | 29:02 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. The fighting was between you all. | 29:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 29:06 |
| Walter P. Holmes | You girls. | 29:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Okay. Let me see here. Were there any bad areas of town that you were not supposed to go to? | 29:15 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, Brooklyn was the worst place. During the beginning of World War II, more people got killed in Brooklyn than they did in beginning of the war. See, and I had to be home at nine o'clock. On the weekends I to be home at 11. I wasn't allowed to be in certain area. But Brooklyn was an area where, I guess you would call the—I wouldn't call it this, but some people call it the lower class. Every weekend you had four or five killings in that area. See? | 29:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why do you think it got worse during the Second World War? | 30:09 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, more money was available, and you could get more alcohol. You had more extra time on the weekends. | 30:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was there ever that kind of violence in Cherry? | 30:28 |
| Walter P. Holmes | It was rare. Rare. | 30:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | You talked a lot about your aunt as your role model and so on. Did you have some male role models as well? People who kind of taught you how to be a man? | 30:41 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Not as an individual, but all the men that lived in Cherry was. | 30:56 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I can't think of any particular man, but most of the men that lived in Cherry, they tried to guide you in the right direction. Yeah. | 31:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | I wanted to maybe talk a little bit about race relations and segregation now in Charlotte. Did you ever have any contact beyond what you talked about, the White boys you played ball with? Did you have any contact with White children when you were growing up? | 31:21 |
| Walter P. Holmes | What do you mean now? | 31:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Maybe play with them or did you fight with them? | 31:40 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, I just said we used to go down to behind the center. We played together. | 31:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. But nothing really beyond that. | 31:52 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Nuh-uh. | 31:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Did your aunt ever have to teach you—Did she ever tell you about how to treat White people in order not to get in trouble? | 31:54 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, she didn't use a distinction there. She taught me how to treat people. | 32:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 32:09 |
| Walter P. Holmes | People, irregardless of race. | 32:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you ever remember an incident when you were growing up where you had been mistreated by White people and she had to explain anything to you about that? | 32:17 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. No. No. | 32:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | What do you remember.. What were the signs of segregation in Charlotte when you were growing up? | 32:34 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, same as any place else. You can't go here. You can't do this. You can't ride the bus in the front. You can't drink out of this water fountain. I remember one incident, I went downtown with a friend of mine who was down at [inaudible 00:32:57] and had the water fountain, Black, White. I told my friend, said, "I'm going to see how this White water tastes." I drink that. I drink out of the White fountain. | 32:41 |
| Walter P. Holmes | A lady came up to me and said, "You can't drink out of that. The water, that's White." What's the difference? The water taste the same way. Just like anywhere else, "You can't do this, you can't do that, you can't do this." | 33:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were there any other times that you or anybody you knew defied the signs on purpose? | 33:30 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, I would imagine so. | 33:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Yeah. You don't remember anything? | 33:41 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. I would imagine so. But I often wondered why. I often wondered I had to pass Central High School to go to school. Also in school, see in high school, when I was in high school, we had a lot of teachers who was delegated and they would teach you the dos and the don't's, and the what's and the why's. | 33:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you ever remember people getting into trouble with the police for things that they didn't really do or just because they were Black, or? | 34:11 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, at that time we had a police force. Just because they was a police, they would a abuse you. It didn't have to be anything wrong, see? | 34:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember that ever happening to you? | 34:36 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, not to me. Because I was—if I saw the police coming, I'd run. It wasn't that I was doing it, but if you were in a crowd and something happened, whether you was involved or not, you going to be involved. | 34:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember any of your friends getting into trouble with the police? For the same reason? For not doing anything. Just because they were Black? | 34:58 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, like I say, we had one police. Name was Big John [inaudible 00:35:19]. You could be standing on the corner, and he'd come up there and say, "All right, let's move now." You're not doing anything. If you didn't, he'd come up and boot in the rear. Things of that nature. | 35:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you ever remember there being any kind of sort of vigilante violence by Whites against Blacks, like the Klan or gangs of White youth? | 35:36 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. | 35:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Nothing like that? | 35:51 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. | 35:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. How about in school? When do you first remember people talking about civil rights, and that the system should change, and that Black people had to act for change? | 35:59 |
| Walter P. Holmes | How long you've been working in Charlotte? | 36:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Just for two weeks. | 36:16 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Okay. Well you probably knew about Kelly Alexander before? | 36:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 36:24 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Okay. In 1938, Kelly organized the youth NAACP. I was a member, and that's when I really got involved in Civil Rights movements. | 36:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why did you decide to join? How old were you then? | 36:40 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I must've been about 15. Well, see, I had been around Kelly and his brother Fred for a long time, and they talked about it. I was aware of what the Blacks could do, and what the Whites could do. Every year we had voting, they would come around and explain to you, "We going to vote now. We need to do this, we need to do that." See? Why Blacks couldn't vote and certain things. So I was well aware of that. | 36:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | What high school did you go to? | 37:30 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I went to Second Ward High. | 37:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Second Ward. How many people joined the youth wing or the— | 37:35 |
| Walter P. Holmes | At that time? I don't remember. The only person I remember was Kelly, Father Goodwin, and myself. I don't remember anybody else. There was some others, but I don't remember the others. Yeah. | 37:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was it a risky thing to do to join the NAACP back then? | 37:56 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. No. No. But now some people, and if you was a member, you would be refuse jobs, or you was fired. Now, I can't tell you offhand who they were or how many? But I never had a problem. | 38:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kinds of things did you do with the NAACP when you were in high school? | 38:22 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh, we just met and discussed issues. Of course, they would ask you maybe to—When they had programs, ask you to help advertise the programs. | 38:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | So it was more working within the Black community than doing a lot of protests. | 38:44 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Yeah. | 38:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Boycotts. | 38:56 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, I don't remember having any protests or any boycotts. No. | 38:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | All right. Well why don't we talk a little bit about your school, schools you went to. You said you went to, what was the school you went to? | 39:02 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, I went to—I finished Morgan School. | 39:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, Morgan School. | 39:11 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I went to Second Ward High. Okay. Let me tell you a little bit about Second Ward. Second Ward was the first Black high school in the state of North Carolina. It was the only high school in Charlotte until 1939, I think, when they opened West Charlotte. It was closed, I think—I'm not sure when it closed. Might have been closed in 1959 or '60. I don't know, because I left Charlotte in '43, and when I came back, a lot of things had happened. | 39:12 |
| Walter P. Holmes | But let me get back to the Second Ward. Second Ward had some of the best teachers I would say in the state. They was dedicated. Were dedicated. They would want you to do the best. I had some role models, teachers. I would like to cite Mr. Ed Brown and Mrs. Malone, and Mrs. A.K. Stewart. I saw Mrs. Stewart at a funeral last Sunday, and every time I see her, I always said, "If hadn't been for you," say, "I'd still be in Second Ward." | 39:57 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I wasn't bad, but we was devilish, and we could get sent home a lot. See? And they would say, "You go downstairs and get your lunch now and come back up here." Kept out of out of trouble. And we'd go out town, the football game. She would say, "You got any money?" I said, "No." She said, "Well, here's a quarter." You know what I mean? | 40:52 |
| Walter P. Holmes | We had, like I said, Mr. Brown, Ms. Malone and Miss A.K. Stewart. Those was my three models. We had others, we had Mr. Diamond, Mr. Moreland and Mr. Wiley, Mr. Clark and Mr. Farmer. Those was my role models at Second Ward. Those people kept a lot of kids in school. If it hadn't been for those and a couple others, I wouldn't—A lot of others wouldn't have made it. You know what I mean? Yeah. | 41:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | And you said she made you stay in at lunchtime and that kind thing. What else? What other things did she do to, or all three of them, what did they do to keep you going? | 41:49 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, I had a class under Ms. Stewarts. I had a math under her. They would see that you got your work and made sure that you got your work. Ms. Malone and Ms. Stewart, I see them occasionally now. They would say, she said, "There goes one of my boys." Anytime some of us after we finished school would go to college and come back, those are the first people we would go see. | 41:58 |
| Walter P. Holmes | They would have hugged you and, "How you doing?" And give you encouragement. "If you need anything, if I can help you, let me know." Every time I see them, I say, I told Ms. Stewart the other day, I said, "Girl, I said, you look as good as you did when you taught me." | 42:30 |
| Walter P. Holmes | [INTERRUPTION 00:42:46] | 42:46 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I'm fine. | 42:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. You were talking a little bit about your teachers, about Mr. Brown and Ms. Stewart and Ms. Malone. Before you went to high school, did you want to go to college? | 42:48 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Sometime it crossed my mind. Sometime. But I had never given it a serious thought. | 43:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Who encouraged you to go to college? | 43:18 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Nobody. | 43:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Nobody? Okay. | 43:22 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I went into service, and I came back, and I went to Detroit. I stayed a few weeks, and then I went to Washington. I stayed a couple weeks, and I came home, and one morning about three o'clock, I woke up. I said, "I'm going to school." I went over to the high school, and the coach who coached me had died. I was in service. | 43:23 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I came home for a weekend and found out he had passed. So they had another coach there, which I did not know, but he knew me. He'd heard of me. I said, looking at him, I said, "I'm going to college." Said, "Can you help me? Give me a scholarship?" He said, "Where you want to go?" So I said, "I want to go to A&T." He said, "Well, I can't get you a scholarship to A&T, but I can get you one to Shaw, South Carolina State. Smith." | 44:03 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I said, "I don't want to go there." He said, "I can get you a letter recommendation." So he gave him a letter recommendation, and I went on to A&T. Being a veteran, I said, I'm going to use my GI benefits. I was lucky enough. I was a walk on and I was lucky enough to make the team and get a scholarship. | 44:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Maybe just to go back to Second Ward a little bit more, you said you were devilish in high school. What kind of things would you do? | 44:51 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh. I remember one incident. We had a game this Thursday, and the teacher wasn't quite finished with his work. The bell rang for us to go. He said, "Well, I'm not quite finished with my work. You have to wait a while." I said, "I got a game to play. I got to go get dressed. Got a game to play." Said, "Well you got to wait till I get through working." After he went out the room, when he went out the room, we put a shovel behind the door so he couldn't get back in. | 45:07 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Finally I took it down, and he said, "Now you going stay in," say, "Nobody's going to leave here until you tell me who put this shovel on." So we sat there for a while. I say, "Well, look here. I didn't do it, but I'm going to say I did it. But I didn't do it, because we got a game to play, and I got to go get dressed." He went out the room again, and me and a couple other guys went out the window. Went on there and got dressed. I scored four touchdowns in that game that day. | 45:44 |
| Walter P. Holmes | That next morning when I came to school, I ran into the principal. He had told the principal. I ran into the principal, and I thought he was going to say, "You played a good game yesterday." Go home. Said, "Go home. Go home." I came back to school that next day, and I was in school all day till the sixth period. I was going to the bathroom, and I turned the corner. I ran to the principal. He said, "What you doing in? I told you to go home and stay until your parents come." | 46:23 |
| Walter P. Holmes | So that was one. A couple other times we was in the auditorium, and you know how boys do, just being devilish, laughing and going on. Go home. | 47:00 |
| Walter P. Holmes | If you want to graduate, you got to stay out of trouble. So that's when they came. | 0:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | We've heard a lot about the football rivalry between West Charlotte and Second Ward. Was that going on when you were— | 0:11 |
| Walter P. Holmes | It had just started. | 0:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh yeah. | 0:21 |
| Walter P. Holmes | It had just started when I graduated. I played against West Charlotte twice. I finished high school in 1943 and I played against them in '42 and '43. Yeah, it had just begun. | 0:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was that the only base for the rivalry? Was it only football? | 0:43 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Basketball. | 0:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, so it was only sports rivalry, nothing else? | 0:48 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. | 0:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | They weren't competing in other ways? | 0:52 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, now as far as the school's concerned, Second Ward, we had a dramatic club and it was one of the best in the state, and our choral club. Every year we went to the tournament in Greensboro and we would win first or second place every year. West Charlotte and the Second Ward has always competed in everything. But we was the best because I think we had better instructors. A lot of those instructors left Second Ward and went to West Charlotte when they built West Charlotte. Yeah. But like I say, we had a lot of dedicated teachers. They would make sure—We had one teacher, Ms. Robinson, if she would see you walking down the hall bent over, she would stop you and put a book on your head and say, "You walk straight because you bent over and that book will fall off." Posture. She taught posture. She taught you how to speak, you know what I mean? Express yourself, expressions. | 0:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kind of things did you learn in high school? Did everybody take an academic course of study or were there more technical things you could- | 2:03 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, I took academic studies, plus I took a trade in brick mason. | 2:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you ever think of becoming a brick mason? | 2:19 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Maybe. I thought. Because I had—Quinn, Tully. I had five guys in my class went on to make that a profession. | 2:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | So do you think if you hadn't gone into the service, you hadn't gone to school that that—Was that your plan to become a brick mason? | 2:34 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I don't know. | 2:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. What kinds of clubs did you belong to in high school, other than playing football? | 2:39 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I didn't belong to any clubs. I was a safety patrol. Yeah. Supposed to be taking discipline. We walked the halls and all that stuff. That was my last year. That's when I was a little more mature then. Yeah. | 2:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you belong to any social clubs? | 3:18 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. I didn't, no. | 3:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 3:21 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 3:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Were there ones that you remember? | 3:22 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, it was a couple at school. Yeah. | 3:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | What were their names? | 3:26 |
| Walter P. Holmes | One was Scorpions and Gay Y Club. | 3:26 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. And I don't recall the rest of them, yeah. | 3:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did your aunt let you go out with girls when you were in high school? | 3:43 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Sure. | 3:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh yeah? | 3:47 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I had to be home at 10 o'clock though. | 3:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Okay. So what was dating like back then? Where would you go? | 3:50 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, let me see. After every game we would have a social after each game. And on Saturdays I used to go over to the school in the gym and we had swing sessions on Saturday. | 3:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | What's the swing session? | 4:11 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Dancing. | 4:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, right. Yeah. | 4:11 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Had a jukebox. You know what a jukebox is? | 4:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Player? | 4:20 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Okay. You're right. I had a jukebox and I couldn't dance. And little girl would teach me how to dance, so that was an outing for me. Like I said, most of the girls like athletes. And then I had a lot of friend girls who we would go there and study. | 4:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kind of music did you listen to back in the early '40s? | 4:42 |
| Walter P. Holmes | The Dipsy Do and, well, ordinary. The music I listen to, you wouldn't know about that. | 4:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | Well, we want to know what it is. | 4:52 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh, I can't remember right now. "I'll Get By," and "I'll Never Smile Again," and the "White Cliffs of Dover," and "I Miss You," and oh, it's been a long time. | 4:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 5:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were these mostly Black musicians that you listened to? | 5:12 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Yeah. | 5:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | So who were some of the musicians? | 5:17 |
| Walter P. Holmes | You had Erskine Hawkins, you had Lionel Hampton, you had Erskine Hawkins, Count Basie, Louie Armstrong, Cab Calloway, and Billy Eckstine. Who else? There are a number of them. | 5:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Did any of those performers ever come to Charlotte? | 5:50 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh yeah. Yeah. | 5:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember going to see them? | 5:54 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, Louis Jordan. Yeah. Yeah. We had the old Armory, now it's Park Center now. And about twice a month they would come to Charlotte. Yeah. | 5:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | And that were the audiences only Black or were they mixed? | 6:11 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Everybody. | 6:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 6:15 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 6:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | And now if somebody did come to play like that, how did you sit? Did you have to sit— | 6:17 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Now, at the Army is you go and dance. | 6:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. | 6:23 |
| Walter P. Holmes | The Black would dance, but the White wouldn't be dancing. | 6:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 6:36 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 6:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | On the subject of some famous people, do you remember having any kinds of sports heroes or other kinds of famous people that you looked up to when you were growing up? | 6:37 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh yes. Being an athlete, I had several people that I was involved with. In 1938, '39, one of the two, Jesse Owens came through here and he was on a tour. At that time, he was outrunning horses and cars and what have you. So I don't know, I guess it was a sport war, where somebody came up to school, West Charlotte, Second Ward, and then want him to get some of his, what he called the fastest players, to a run against Jesse Owens. And at that time I was pretty fast and I was chosen, I think there were six that were from Second Ward, we was chosen to run against Jesse. Course we know that we couldn't outrun him, but—we were doing our thing and he was just loafing it. But it's an honor to be out there with him. | 6:50 |
| Walter P. Holmes | And of course, like I stated earlier, we played baseball and I played baseball with a couple other teams. And I had the opportunity of playing against guys like—In fact, when I was in Buffalo, I played against Satchel Paige and George Gibson, and when I was in college, I played baseball in college, and I played against Larry Doby. Yeah. So those were some of the stars that I was involved with. | 8:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | You, you said that you played semi-professional baseball with the Black Hornets. | 8:37 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Mm-hmm. | 8:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | And that was considered part of the Negro League? | 8:44 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, it were. Yeah. | 8:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | So who did you play against the White, the Hornets? | 8:48 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. | 8:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Other Black teams? | 8:52 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, the other Black teams. Yeah. | 8:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 8:54 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 8:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | What was that like? Did you travel around? | 8:55 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well see, I remember the farthest I've been with those, we went to Lexington one night and we went to Gastonia. Yeah. But the team traveled all over. But that's when there was a shortage of players. | 8:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 9:11 |
| Walter P. Holmes | They were come and say, I need so-and-so. Yeah. Yeah. But I didn't travel all over. Yeah. | 9:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | So after you finished high school, you entered the service? | 9:24 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, I went to service, yeah. | 9:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were you drafted? | 9:29 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 9:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | And you were in the Army? | 9:31 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, I was Pearl Harbor. It was a bombed December the 7th, 1941, on Sunday. And at that time, Charlotte had a professional football team, the Charlotte Clippers and they were playing the Richmond Rebels that game, that Sunday. And at halftime they interrupted and said Pearl Harbor had just been bombed. And everybody said, who is she? I never heard of Pearl Harbor. And a couple weeks later, Roosevelt declared war and he said, all men from 18 to 40 will be drafted. We have to register. And the 18's that registered wouldn't be called to duty until they were 21. And I was in that first bunch of 18 year olds to register. And that next July I was down in Fort Bragg, I was 19. So I spent my 19th, 20th, 21st, and for my 22nd birthday in the service. | 9:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | So what was that like for you? Was it— | 10:56 |
| Walter P. Holmes | It was exciting to me. Exciting. I told a guy last night, I couldn't wait to get in, because you go to the movie and you see where the soldiers will go in town and all these girls around and they was partying and everything. And at home I had to be home at 10, eleven o'clock, and now you would be out there long as you want. So I couldn't wait to get in the service. And so I went in service, I was down in Bragg for 18 days and I left there and went to Fort Knox. And we left Fort Knox New Year's Eve, 1943, going to Los Angeles, going to California. And we arrived in California New Year's Day. And the first time I got a furlough I went to Los Angeles. I said, "Now I can do what I want to do. I ain't have no time and I'm going to get out there and walk the streets all night long and see what's out there." Because I had heard so much. | 11:04 |
| Walter P. Holmes | And we were out there and we had a good time. So I found out at that time of morning, nobody out there. Ain't nothing out there. But see, I had to satisfy myself to find out what was out there. | 12:05 |
| Walter P. Holmes | In the Shriner's, we had a group of girls we know as the [indistinct 00:12:38]ettes, and there were drills, and I used to give them a lesson twice a week on discipline. And I was telling them about drugs and what have you. And I said, "Now, staying out late at night, unless you're going to work or coming from work, there's nothing out there." But I said, "I can tell you that, I had to find for myself what was all out there, and I'm just telling you." But that was an excitement for me. The travels and you went a lot of places, just met a lot of people. | 12:26 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I was in the Army a month and I was Staff Sergeant. My principal was a Officer in World War I, and he taught the senior boys the most important things about military service. How to drill the manual arms. And we went down and shot and made a M1 rifle. So when I went to Fort Braggs, I knew all that see. And when they started to call out taking drills. So when I got to Fort Knox, I trained my whole battalion at Fort Knox. And I was in the Army a month before I was Staff Sergeant. So that was a help for me. But it was an exciting thing to go in the Army, I just couldn't wait. | 13:07 |
| Walter P. Holmes | But of course it wasn't all you thought it would be, but anything is worth doing if you have problems. And I always thought, give the best that you can in order to be successful. And I worked hard. I worked hard and I tried to do what was right. I'm a disciplined person and I believe in discipline, because I really like having a lot of fun but I believe in discipline. So that's how it was. | 13:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you go overseas? | 14:39 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 14:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Where did you go? | 14:42 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I went in the Aleutian Islands. | 14:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | What did you do there? | 14:47 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I was in a quarter master service? We were on the Alcan Highway. We built the Alcan Highway. Yeah. | 14:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | You built the Alcan Highway? | 15:00 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well we was on that route. | 15:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | That's right. | 15:00 |
| Walter P. Holmes | We built the Alcan. | 15:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now what was that like? Because I heard something about Black American soldiers who met Eskimos up there and they had never seen— | 15:06 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh, yeah. | 15:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were you among those people? | 15:14 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Not only that, but I've been in the areas since I've been out of the service. We went to Minnesota in '62. I went for the Shrine Convention, and we stopped in Wisconsin and a little White boy came out there and looked and said, "Where y'all from?" He said, "Don't see Black folks before." And in Minnesota you don't have many Blacks up there. | 15:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | So what was that experience like being in Alaska? | 15:46 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh, just, well, just— | 15:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Cold. | 15:51 |
| Walter P. Holmes | It was a cold, but it was a different kind of cold than we have here. And then I started under John Patton, D-Day, June the 6th, 1944 was fitted in John Patton. And we all denied what is called the—We were losing ammunition and we weren't able to get supplies across. So one of the sergeants asked John Patton to let him form a unit who was known as the Red Ball Express. I don't know whether you heard that or not? Red Ball Express. And that was a all Black outfit and it really saved the war, because we were able to get supplies and so forth. | 15:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you were supplying Patton's army? | 16:49 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, yeah. | 16:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | So that was in Europe. Where in Europe was that in? | 16:55 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I've forgotten now. | 16:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. What was it like being in Europe? | 17:09 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well— | 17:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | How did people treat you as a Black soldier? | 17:16 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, I was in the fighting lines. We didn't get to go into the, yeah. But I've heard a lot of things about it. I heard some they were good and some were bad. I don't know. Yeah. | 17:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Overall, what was your experience like in a segregated Army? | 17:33 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Sometime tough. | 17:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | In what way? | 17:41 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Sometimes it were. I really wouldn't want to go into that, but it was tough. And then later when I went with the Officer to Candidate School, we had a little problem. I was one of the first Black officers to go in integrated service. And we was at Fort Meade, Maryland, just before we got our bars, we had this Colonel Chastine, who had been a prisoner of war for about 30 months. And just before we got our bars that Friday, he came out there and told us that Negroes didn't demand to be Officers. They didn't demand respect because they didn't know how to organize. They didn't know how to command, they didn't know anything. | 17:42 |
| Walter P. Holmes | And I thought to myself, here we are getting our bars as a second lieutenant and fixing to give our lives, and here's somebody else telling us that Negros aren't capable of commanding in a unit. Of course you probably don't know this, but during the war, when you had this Black Air outfit that was trained in Tuskegee, they were saying that Negros couldn't fly planes and stuff. But those Negro boys, when those White boys got into a angle up there and Black guys came and rescued them. So that's some of the hate things you get in your mind about what you hear and see. And even after that, there's some places that you still couldn't go being a Black officer in United States Army. | 18:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | What did those kinds of bitter experiences do to you in terms of how you thought about race relations and about the situation of Blacks in the United States? | 19:56 |
| Walter P. Holmes | It gives you a hatred feeling. Well, like I told somebody recently, with all the hatred, bigotry, racial discrimination we have in the United States, there are no better place to live than the United States. Because even now you still have some—I do a lot of traveling from January to October and you'll still run into a lot of hatred. For example, now you see what's happening at Denny's Restaurant. And a couple years ago I was in Las Vegas and I ate at Denny's every morning. And last year I was in Detroit, I ate at Denny's, I had no problem. But that you're still going to have somebody with that racial hatred in them. So it's going to be a continuously thing regardless. Yeah. | 20:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Your experiences in the Army, these kinds of terrible and bitter experiences, were they different than the ones that you had experienced with segregation in Charlotte? | 21:22 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yes, because Charlotte was one small place. And in traveling, going to California, we got in Texas, we left Louisville, we went in Texas. We've in Texas for four days, as soon as we got into Texas, they pull our shades down. They didn't want the White people to see us under troop things. Yeah. | 21:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was there a lot of violence against Black soldiers from places like that? | 22:05 |
| Walter P. Holmes | It's according to where you went. I was never involved in it, but it was lot of strife in other areas of the United States, in the service camps. Even now, you got some KKK in the service now. | 22:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | How much contact did you have with White soldiers? | 22:28 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Nothing. | 22:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Not very much? | 22:29 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, not very much, no. | 22:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you finished up in the Army in 19, was it I guess- | 22:40 |
| Walter P. Holmes | '43. | 22:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 22:42 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, no, no. Yeah. No, no, no, no. In 1945. | 22:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. And when did you go to Officer— | 22:46 |
| Walter P. Holmes | And then I went back to Korea. I was in a reserve. I went to Officer County School after I did a tour of duty, then I went to Officer County School. | 22:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | This was after Korea? | 23:06 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, no, no. Before Korea. | 23:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 23:09 |
| Walter P. Holmes | And I was a Officer and I was in the reserve. And then when we had Korea see, when you're an Officer, you always stay in the reserve pool. So I went to Korea. I had been in Korea 14 months. | 23:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | How was that experience in an integrated army? | 23:25 |
| Walter P. Holmes | It was okay. It was tough. | 23:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Why was that? | 23:29 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I went in as a replacement officer one night and we got ambushed and I lost 28 men. See that when you are over there in Korea see, you don't know where you are. And you're not familiar with the territory and you got mines and you see a tree up there, you don't know where the tree are or what. Yeah. | 23:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | When you were an Officer in Korea, were you an Officer for Blacks and Whites? | 24:01 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 24:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | And did anyone question your authority? | 24:06 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. Because you're just hoping to just try and stay alive. | 24:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So did you find a real change in their- | 24:14 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh yeah, they got a change, yeah, yeah. | 24:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why do you think that happened besides just integrated? | 24:18 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Trying to save a life. | 24:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 24:23 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Trying to save a life. They don't care who you are. You had a lot of Black soldiers save White lives and vice versa. | 24:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So that solved a lot of those problems. | 24:34 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Yeah. Don't care who you are. Just like sports has closed a gap as far as race relations, a whole lot. And even at that, you got a lot of hatred out there on the court. | 24:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | So, okay, so you came back in '45 and then you decided one night to go to college? | 24:58 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Go to college. Yeah. | 25:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. And you got to A&T. | 25:06 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Mm-hmm. | 25:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | And what was your experience at A&T like? | 25:10 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, a different experience. Here you going into a area that you don't know anybody, and you don't know what to expect. And well, just a unique experience though. A unique experience. And after I got there, I went out for the football team and several weeks you began to mingle and learn people and people know you. And it was just another home. And after I was there for a quarter, you couldn't take me out. I was talking to someone last night and they said, "You people from A&T always bragging about A&T." He said, "What's so great about A&T?" It's just a great school and a family school. I don't care where you going, anywhere in the United States, and you say you went to A&T, you went home. This is just a family thing. | 25:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was it co-ed? Was there women— | 26:03 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh yeah. | 26:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | —there too? | 26:03 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 26:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | What did you major in when you were there? | 26:05 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Social science and pre-law at the same thing. Yeah. | 26:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was it difficult for you as somebody who had been in the war relating to the students who had just come out of high school? | 26:31 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, yes, really, I shouldn't have gone right then because I hadn't adjusted to civilian life. | 26:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 26:47 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Because I had been out of service only a short time and I really wasn't ready. But after I got there, when I got there you had thousands of other vets who had returned to school. Some had been there before and some just like me, just coming. And I really hadn't adjusted to civilian life. But like I say, after a few months there, you intermingle and meet friends and share your experiences and everything. Yeah. | 26:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | What do you mean when you say you hadn't adjusted to civilian life? What kinds of things were you having trouble getting back into? | 27:20 |
| Walter P. Holmes | In the service you have all kind of addictions. And I came from a Christian home, and I wasn't used to a lot of fantasy. And you'd probably be in the dining hall, somebody say, "Pass the damn pepper, pass it down here." And I came home on leave one time and I was hit to the table. You know what I mean? | 27:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 28:04 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Your vocabulary hadn't been reduced, you know what I mean? Yeah. | 28:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you join any organizations when you were there? Fraternity or? Okay, which one is it? | 28:16 |
| Walter P. Holmes | It's Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. | 28:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Omega Psi Phi. What kind of guys join that fraternity? | 28:21 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Regular guys. | 28:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Regular guys. | 28:30 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Wild guys. | 28:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Wild guys? | 28:31 |
| Walter P. Holmes | But smart. I can tell you two outstanding brothers right now that you know. Jesse Jackson, he was in school up there with me. McNair, the astronaut, the Omega man, Thurgood Marshall, he's an Omega man. Ron Bryant, who works for Clinton is an Omega man. Jordan up there with Clinton, Omega man. Well, I could go on and on and on. Old people say, "I can tell an Omega man. He's wild, he's joyful, he's crazy, but he's smart." | 28:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why did you join to decide to join the Omega's? | 29:19 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, most of the athletes were Omega's. And like I say, my roommate was a Kappa, but most of the athletes were Omega's, and those are the guys you hang around with and you just enjoy the company. | 29:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were there many men on campus who didn't join a fraternity? | 29:47 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, I don't know. Because we had over 2000 men. So I really can't tell you now. I was looking in my yearbook yesterday from '46 to '49, and I was looking through fraternities and of course, you had quite a few that went to fraternities, but then on the other hand, you had a lot of who didn't. Because going into fraternity requires a whole lot. Finance, and you got to have a grade point average to get in there and you got to maintain a grade point average to go over. And there's a whole lot of other stuff. And a lot of guys can't take that seven days of hell. Of course I was lucky. I went over during the football season and most of the athletes was Omega's. And there wasn't too much they could do to me. | 29:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | So this was a kind of hazing or something that they would get? | 30:58 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Seven days of hell. | 30:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Is it secret or can you tell me a little bit about that? | 31:04 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I'd rather not tell you. | 31:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. That's fine. That's fine. Was it strict? Were there strict rules? I assume you were living in a dormitory. | 31:14 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Oh, yeah. | 31:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were there strict rules in terms of your behavior and the kinds of things you could do? | 31:19 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, like I said, in my case, there wasn't. Now the most thing I had to do when my brother asked me, to carry his clothes to the cleaners. And sometimes they would tell you at midnight to go over to the cemetery and take a egg over there. | 31:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. But how about the school itself? Were there rules when you had to be back in your room? | 31:45 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh, no. | 31:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Turning out lights or that kind of thing? | 31:53 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Not for the male. | 31:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 31:53 |
| Walter P. Holmes | But for female. Yeah. Yeah. | 31:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Let me see, what else? When you were in college, were there any professors or other people or other organizations that talked about civil rights and the need for civil rights to the— | 32:00 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yes and no. But I was never involved in that. But the first civil right movement started in Greensboro, after the crisis. Yeah, the First Civil Right Movement. | 32:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | But this would be before then when you were there. | 32:32 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well see, I came out of school in '49 and between '49 and the period you're speaking about at '60, a lot of things happened. | 32:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. What kinds of things do you mean? Different than being in school. | 32:50 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. Well, what I'm saying now, for example, this civil right march in 1960, that was after my time. And during this period between '49 and '60, I don't think you had a whole lot of sit-ins or marches. I don't remember. | 32:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 33:12 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 33:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | But do you remember anybody talking about the need for civil rights and the need for action? | 33:13 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh, well, like I said, that's always been talked about since I was a kid. | 33:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | What other organizations did you belong to when you were at A&T? | 33:37 |
| Walter P. Holmes | When I was in college? | 33:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 33:38 |
| Walter P. Holmes | But that was the only one in college. | 33:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 33:38 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. But after I got out of college, yeah, I belong to whole lot of stuff. | 33:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Like what? | 33:45 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I belonged to the Masons. I'm a third and second degree Mason. I'm a third degree Mason. I'm in the Shriner's, I'm in the Eastern Stars. You see all that stuff up there? | 33:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | I saw all that. | 34:06 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 34:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why did you join these organizations? | 34:13 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, I always wanted to be an Omega and a member of the Mason's. And then after I got into the Mason's, I just started learning more about the organizations. Those organizations there is one of the forerunners of the African-Americans. This is part of the NAACP also with support. | 34:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | So what do you think membership in these organizations has meant to you in your life? | 34:44 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh, a great deal. | 34:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Like what? | 34:51 |
| Walter P. Holmes | First, it helps you to understand the what's and the why's a great deal. Now, and most of the big names that I mentioned earlier were members of this organization. Thurgood Marshall, he was Chief of Justice. And we meet Jesse Jackson a couple years ago in Atlanta. And all these big guys, there are endless organizations which supports them financially. Without the support of these organizations, you couldn't exist. | 35:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | You mean organizations like the NAACP? | 35:42 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then with the people in these organizations and also in the NAACP, they know the who's, how's and the what, and what we need. | 35:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | To get what? | 35:59 |
| Walter P. Holmes | To get anything done. | 36:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 36:04 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Well, they've been advisors to all the presidents. And I'm also a member of the Black Caucus, and the Black Caucus just this last week was refused to meet with Clinton because this lady here has recommended, and then at the last moment, he dipped her. Yeah. Think about all this nature. We got people who in the organizations who know what need to be done and can keep us informed. | 36:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | And do you think that that was the reason that you joined in the fifties, if you joined this organization? | 36:48 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, that wasn't the reason. It was something that I wanted to do. I wanted to do. | 36:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Can you remember why you wanted to do it? | 37:00 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, I wanted to be among the, I guess you would call it elite. | 37:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | When you were growing up, your family attended church. What church did you belong to? | 37:17 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I belonged to A.M.E Zion Church and I've been a member of that for about 60 years. | 37:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | So this is the same church that your aunt belong to? | 37:53 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, I just received an award there the other Sunday. 25 years as a member of the Board of Trustees. | 37:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Who in this part of Charlotte belongs to the AME Zion Church? What kinds of things do they do for a living? | 37:54 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh, I couldn't tell you that because it is so many. | 37:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 38:02 |
| Walter P. Holmes | We got 1, 2, 3, AME Zion Church's within the ranges of two miles. Reverend Ballis. You know Reverend Ballis? He is the Chairman of the School Board. | 38:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 38:16 |
| Walter P. Holmes | He be AME Zion minister. So in less than three miles, we got three AME Zion Church's thee. | 38:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Which one do you go to? | 38:24 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I go to East Stonewall. | 38:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Are there people from all kinds of—Would you have somebody like professionals down to people who were maybe less educated and less well-payed, the whole spectrum? | 38:26 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, each church are integrated regardless of working conditions. | 38:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | So do you think all kinds of people attend church? | 38:48 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, all, yeah. | 38:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Can you remember, not today, but before the 1960s, whether your minister and the congregation was involved in civic affairs at all? | 38:51 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. In fact, one of my ministers, two of my ministers, we had March with King and there's a March on Washington. | 39:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 39:17 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. So most of the ministers in all these churches, they involved in civil rights. | 39:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | In what way? How were they involved? How did they support the Civil Rights Movement? | 39:27 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, programs, finance, discussions and marches. | 39:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. What kind of marches did your church participate in the sixties? | 39:40 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Not the church, but the minister. | 39:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | The minister. What kind? The March on Washington. | 39:53 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, I think with the Washington and some of the local marches that we had in the area. Yeah. I was never in a march though. But most of the ministers approve that. | 39:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Would they preach about it? | 40:04 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Oh, yeah. | 40:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Can you remember when that first started happening? When they started to preach about civil rights? | 40:06 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, I can't remember now, no. | 40:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Would that be something that people would ever preach, your minister would preach about when you were a boy? | 40:12 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I don't remember. | 40:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | How about in the fifties before the movement really started happening? | 40:33 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh, yeah. It was strongly advocated. Yeah. Yeah. | 40:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. In the church? | 40:48 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Uh-huh. | 40:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember what kinds of things that your minister would preach about? | 40:49 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. Well, not exactly, but the whole thing is the basics, the rights that you have and the dos and don'ts. And of course, I think when most people got interested in, well, when Emmett Till and Medgar Evers was shot down. And I think during that time was when people really got enthused about it. | 40:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember what happened? What kind of effect Emmett Till's murder had on the community? | 41:27 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, I don't remember that. No. But they showed you certain programs. I think this Emmett Till thing was when he and these two White women from New York went down to, what was it, Mississippi or Alabama, something like that, and they would show various things, but fella was hung. Was hung in the trees and things like that were shown. I think that motivated a lot of people to get involved in it. | 41:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember ever there being talks of lynchings or anything when you were growing up? | 42:20 |
| Walter P. Holmes | When I was small? | 42:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 42:26 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, I don't remember. No. | 42:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | What do you think it was about the Emmett Till murder that made people so aware? Because obviously it hadn't been happening in other places too. | 42:31 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, down south in Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia, that has always been a thing. So I don't know whether Negro's have been lynched and hung and drugged for no reason at all. | 42:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | So what was it then about Emmett Till that made people so angry and made them so— | 42:58 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I don't know. Now, during those days, I would imagine, I don't know. If a White man came in here and saw you sitting here, and I'm innocent. I would be drug out and hung. | 43:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 43:19 |
| Walter P. Holmes | So I would imagine during those times, anything like that could've happened. And in his case, I've forgotten the story behind that, but I think he and these two women came down and I don't know whether they say he looked at a White girl or spoke to a White girl. I don't remember the story, but yeah. Yeah. But see in those times, it wasn't nothing for a Black kid to be going home from church at night and going through these woods somewhere and somebody just stop him on GP and hang him. | 43:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | What's GP? | 44:01 |
| Walter P. Holmes | General principle. | 44:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember that happening? So you don't remember that happening around Charlotte? | 44:06 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, not around Charlotte. No. | 44:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | All right. But do you think that there were some conditions that were different for Black people at the time of Emmett Till's lynching that made it different in terms of the reaction to it, that people would not accept this kind of thing happening anymore? | 44:11 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, I don't know, but it would take a person with a lot of stamina to do something about it. Where anytime you was in the South in that area and make a remark about being mistreated, where you wake up being killed— | 44:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 44:55 |
| Walter P. Holmes | —in some way. | 44:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | But how about here in Charlotte? Why do you think people reacted so strongly to the Till's? | 44:57 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, if it happened there, it could happen here. | 45:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 45:03 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. So I would imagine they were saying that we going to eliminate it. Plus one thing about it, we had a police chief, Franklin Littlejohn, he didn't believe in violence. The Klan said they was going to march here one time and he said, "Don't put your foot in Mecklenburg County. Don't do that." | 45:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | The Klan said that to Littlejohn or Littlejohn said that— | 45:34 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Littlejohn told that to them. | 45:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 45:38 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Don't put your feet in. Yeah. | 45:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | So conditions were getting a little better. | 45:41 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. And then too, we had a lot of White people here and that wasn't really as bad as some of the people down in other areas. Charlotte has been a kind of close area among the races. And it hadn't stood for a lot of racial things. Now, for example, we were talking about earlier about the sports in the schools and how I had to walk past this White school to go to my school. In 1938, the Shriner's, the White Shriner's organized what they had a Shrine Bowl Game, and you familiar with that, aren't you? They had raised money for crippled children and whatever. In 1938, 1939, they had less than 500 people at the game. And now the game is played in the summer and they can't buy a ticket. Black players wasn't allowed to play in the game in I think 1962. | 45:42 |
| Walter P. Holmes | That game was for Blacks only. You got a White Shrine Bowl game and a Black Shrine Bowl game. Okay. I became chairman in 1962 and we invited a Black boy. The White Shriner's didn't put him on the team, the best halfback in the state of North Carolina, and the White Shriner's wouldn't let him play in that game. So I invited him to our game, and a boy from my apartment, Woodside, a White boy. | 0:15 |
| Walter P. Holmes | And there's a whole lot of commotion about it. Houses got bombed, Chambers' house got bombed. Fred and Kelly's house got bombed. And when I came home that night, my wife said I had calls from everywhere, whatever I was trying to do. | 1:05 |
| Walter P. Holmes | So man, I went down to see Kelly and we talked, another friend of myself, talked. And I told him what we were planning to do. So we met with the school superintendent Mr. Phillips, who was the superintendent of the school at that time. And we met with him and asked him what we could do to let Black boys play in that White game. And he said, "When I was principal of Myers Park high school, I caught hell because I let West Charlotte play Myers Park integration." He said, "I caught hell." He said, "Now I'm on the board. And we meet in July every year in Chapel Hill." He said, "If you write a letter to the Secretary Simon Terrell and tell him you want to get on the agenda to speak as to why they can't play—" He said, "I'll back you." I said, "Okay." So we did that and we met with them twice. | 1:21 |
| Walter P. Holmes | And we found out, this is what I found out, before you leave, I'll show you one of my programs. The White high schools played under the North Carolina High School Athletic Association. And to play in that game, you had to be a member. The Black schools played under North Carolina High School at the Athletic Conference, and the conference couldn't play in that game. So after several meetings, they agreed to let West Charlotte write a letter and they was accepted in the association. And the first boy who played was from West Charlotte, first Black boy that played. And since then, now 80% of the Shrine Bowl is Black. Now, I don't tell a lot of people, they think I'm trying to brag, but see, I'm the one responsible for integrating us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. | 2:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Well, you say that the race relations were better here in Charlotte. | 3:45 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 3:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. You [indistinct 00:03:54]. | 3:53 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. Well I was fixing to say we had the first Black policeman in the South in Charlotte. | 3:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | But there still was segregation. | 4:04 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Mayor Brookshire, he was the mayor at that time, and we was getting ready to have a meeting here and me and the same friend went around and talked to Brookshire. And we talked for about a couple hours and he told us some things. Now, like I say, a lot of these people, they were very cultivated and they didn't believe in a lot of racial stuff, but he was one of them. And the way Charlotte really made history was I think Brookshire invited about five, Brookshire and some other Whites invited about five Black people for dinner downtown in a restaurant. And they was received and that broke this discrimination. | 4:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Around what year was that? | 5:04 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Must have been in about 19, what was that? I don't know. 1960. | 5:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was that in the '60s. | 5:06 |
| Walter P. Holmes | That may have been '58, '59, '60 somewhere. I don't know. Yeah. But when he invited those people, he invited, it was some ministers and some other educators, they went down for dinner downtown. And when they did that, that broke the line. | 5:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | When did you start voting? | 5:37 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Voting? About 1951. About 1951. | 5:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you ever have trouble voting? | 5:55 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, I had no problem. No. | 5:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did most Black people vote in Charlotte in the '50s? | 6:00 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 6:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | There was never any trouble with the registration or voter registration or anything like that? | 6:05 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. No. The only trouble I think was last year when, at the last day they moved some voting machines from one area to another the last minute. But I don't think that'll happen no more. | 6:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So nothing like that even happened when you were coming up? | 6:29 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Only thing about it, then you had to vote at houses. Houses, they had certain, you didn't have big areas to vote like you have now. They had certain houses in a community where you, and they had long lines. And I remember when John F. Kennedy was running and we voted at some house that lines all— | 6:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were you ever involved in voter registration drives with the NAACP? | 6:53 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. No. | 7:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, so you came out of the service and then what did you do after you finished up? After you finished A and T, what did you do? | 7:10 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, I got me a job. | 7:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | And what did you do? | 7:22 |
| Walter P. Holmes | And I got married. And I was married about six years and I got a divorced. And meantime I taught school for a year and then I went to the post office. | 7:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. What did you do at the post office? | 7:40 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I was a carrier. And I worked for the post office 35 years. And I retired in 1981. And then, well, in between that, in 1962 I got married again and my wife was the first Black principal of integrated school in Charlotte. | 7:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. What school was that? | 8:06 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Wilmore Elementary. | 8:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | When you worked for the postal service, were there very many Blacks working there? | 8:17 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. No. In fact, in 1960 we sued the post office. | 8:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Just in Charlotte or— | 8:26 |
| Walter P. Holmes | In Charlotte, yeah. Yeah. | 8:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Who do you mean by we? | 8:30 |
| Walter P. Holmes | The Blacks, some of the Blacks. Yeah. And we had Julius Chamber was our lawyer and we won the case. And in 19, I think '75, the post office appeal. In 1983, we won it on discrimination basis. | 8:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. What kind of discrimination is going on at the post office? | 8:54 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, not getting jobs that we were qualified for. When you write your resume and your resume is much better than, and we were just discriminated against. Yeah. | 8:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | So how did you get your job? | 9:21 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, you have to take an exam. You got to take an exam, see? And you have to make 70 on it. And of course being a veteran you get five points and I made 87.3 on my exam, see? But you got to take an exam and pass it. Yeah. | 9:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | So why do you think they hired you? Were you just lucky then to get— | 9:44 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, but they hired me because of my grades. Yeah. Because when you pass the exam, they got to list your name and your marks and they start from the top. | 9:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | So there was no way they could discriminate against you— | 10:03 |
| Walter P. Holmes | On that— | 10:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | On that basis. | 10:06 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Yeah. But after you are hired, any number of ways that you can be discriminated. Yeah. | 10:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kind of discrimination did you face on the job? | 10:15 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh, numerous. And it still got discrimination in it. | 10:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Can you remember one example, [indistinct 00:10:28]— | 10:24 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Okay, they was going hire one person for a supervisor. 18 people applied, 15 Whites, three Blacks. All three Blacks were college graduates. All right. After they interview you and they will come down to three, and the postmaster will select one of those three. Well, when I was interviewed, they ask you a lot of questions, why you want to take this job? And I told him, I said, "I'm qualified," and I knew I can do the job and yak, yak, yak, yak. There wasn't any other Blacks nominated our of the three. And the boy who got the job had just finished high school. He and I started the same time, he finished high school. That was one discrimination. All right. You go out on a route and you may have a little problem, maybe the traffic stop you, something, and then they give you hell, you know? They may get you ahead, but don't bother nobody else. In the morning you may be a little late. They just nag you. | 10:27 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I remember I had been the post office about 22 years, and one morning I had a little more mail than I thought I could handle. And I asked the supervisor, "Look here, I'm going to need a little overtime about 20,30." "Oh no. Oh no, you don't need no overtime." I said, "What you mean?" "Oh no, you don't need it. The book said—". I said, "Wait a minute, you can't go by what the book say, because you may have a lot of mail and you may leave 10 letters at one house and you may have another stop to down there. You don't know until you get out there." I said, "You don't tell me what I can do." "Oh yeah." I said, "That's okay. That's okay, I'll bring it back." "No, you ain't going to bring it back. You ain't going to bring it back." I said, "Now you don't even know how to talk to nobody. You don't even know how to talk to nobody." Things of that nature. Yeah. | 11:56 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Now I've had some supervisors I said, "Look here, I'm going to need a little extra time." Okay. And you get out there and find out you don't need that time. See? But she going argue and a guy don't need that, he going to stay out there anyway. Talk to anybody. | 12:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | I assume you had to deal with that through most of the time you were at the post office. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with that kind of constant unfairness? What kind of strategies do you do to survive that kind of job situation? | 13:13 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, when I went there in '51, there wasn't many Blacks there. And you really had a lot of dissension. A lot of the White guys, they didn't want to associate with you. You go back in the restroom, have lunch, and a lot of them old guys, you have all kind of discussions and this, that and the other. But see, the way I was taught and being an officer in the army, a lot of stuff you got to take it. Used to be a comment say take it and grin. Take it and grin, as long as they don't put their hands on you. So I just go on, leave it like that. And pray to the Lord that let me survive that day. Yeah. | 13:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | What was it like when there were more Blacks working? | 14:28 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Oh, well, later on, see, after a lot of Blacks got there and we joined the union. They had a Black union and White union. Then most of us join the White union and you begin to get more little White guys, they begin to talk, fraternise with you, they invite you out to their house. And we began to get a little close later on. See? Yeah. But you still had a lot of them guys who had been there for years and years and years and had that hatred in them. | 14:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | When do you think it got a little more friendly? You said— | 15:12 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, like I say, when years passed. Yeah, years passed. We had a, this boy, he was hired about four or five months before I was, and he was the president of the association and he really hated Blacks. And he went to a national meeting somewhere in New Jersey, Chicago somewhere. And his roommate was Black. And he said that's when he finally changed. He found out. And he had a little boy that went to this Black school up here, Double Oaks. And he said his son's best friend was a little Black boy. And that's when they really found out. See, most people think Blacks are hoodlums. When you was over in Europe, people over there thought Blacks were monkeys without tails. If you walking down the street, they call, "Where your tail? Where your tail?" | 15:12 |
| Walter P. Holmes | But see, I think later on after up to integration came in when? 1954, right? Yeah, because I was working downtown and this lady came to me and said, "Oh, so I just heard on the news where it's Supreme Court." Yeah, yeah. And so it was something you had to do. I remember this Black guy was carrying mail out to this White section out here. And this man called the post office and asked to speak to the postmaster. He said, "Look here and see, I got a Black mailman out here," said, "I don't want him to bring my mail." So he said, "Look here and see, either you accept that mailman or you come and get you a mail." So you still have people who had that. So later on they began to accept us. Yeah. And we were just like one family. | 16:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | When you began as a mailcarrier, did you just deliver mail to Black neighborhood? | 17:15 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, I worked all over town. All over town. I was a substitute. And when you're a substitute, you go where— | 17:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | So this was in the '50s you were— | 17:28 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. yeah. And then that was one way to learn the city. And I had one route in a White section, affluent White section. And I went on the porch. This old boy pretended to spit on me. And I said, "Don't do that son." See a lot of this stuff see comes from the parent. I remember one morning I was going out on my route and I stopped at the red light and this lady and her little boy was in the car, I guess about four years old. And we stopped at the red light and he said, "Hey nigger." And I said, "Hey nigger," right back. Because anybody can be a nigger. Anybody. These things, you take the, and if you don't have a broad mind, you'll get in trouble. | 17:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Did you ever know anybody who kind of broke under the pressure of this kind of unfairness at work? Prejudice and then— | 18:34 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, I knew. Yeah, I knew. But like I said, you got to have a broad mind. If you don't see, I was carrying out in another influential section and it was hot. It was hot and I wanted some water. And I said, "The next house I come to, I want to ask." So I went to gray, big old house and I rang the doorbell and the maid came to the door, and I spoke and I gave her mail. I said, "Do you mind if I have a glass of water, please?" And she looked at me like she had seen a haint. | 18:48 |
| Walter P. Holmes | She stood there, you know. So the White lady heard us talking and she said, "What's the matter?" I said, "I just asked the lady for a glass of water." And she said, "Yeah," said, "Would you rather have a glass of milk, buttermilk or water?" And I looked at her and she said, "You wet and you done lost a lot of salt, that you drink this buttermilk that's put salt back in your body." I said, "No, if I drink that, I still want the water." But she told the maid to get my glass of water. | 19:28 |
| Walter P. Holmes | So she said, "Now let me tell you, if you come up here anytime and you want some water or use the restroom, see out here in the garage, see if we get some water out there. Got a restroom. Anytime you want to come up here, see you can do it." And then I had a, well for the last 10 years I carried all White section and I carried in Dilworth, and this lady she lived by herself. And she said, "Mailman," said, "look behind this." She had a big flower thing there on the porch. She said, "Look behind here every morning and you'll find a pitcher of a lemonade and a glass." The last ride I had out here is this old lady, once a month she gave me a jar of pickled peach. And another lady out there wrote a letter to the postmaster, said, "I've been out here 40 years and Mr. Holmes is the first mailman that we ever had that we appreciate." | 20:00 |
| Walter P. Holmes | So see everybody's not alike, but even at that see you going to find some that's a little difficult and you got to take it and grin. Yeah. So really I never had no problem. I think it's the way I adjusted. Because you going to find some people of the other race the same way. Right. See yeah. | 21:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | What happened to people who couldn't—to Black people who couldn't take it? | 21:27 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Eventually they fire themselves. The post office don't fire you. You fire yourself, you won't come to work. I worked 35 years and I was never late if. I wasn't going in, they gave you an hour to call in before you go in. But if I wasn't going in I'd call, but I was never late. If I work for you and supposed to be at work at six o'clock, I think you are expecting me at six o'clock, right? Yeah. I carried my car down the shop Wednesday and I was down there Monday. Monday he had seven mechanics. I went back Wednesday, he had one. So the man expect you to be there. And that's the way I feel about it, see. If I'm not coming, I'll let you know. But usually the guys, they won't come in and they'll lay out. And, "That man cussed me, that man did this." You know what? You're hurting yourself. So eventually they fire themselves, you know? | 21:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. Well I'm almost done here. I thought the very last question I was going to ask you is kind of a personal one. And you don't have to answer it if you don't want to. But I wanted to ask you what segregation meant to you in your life? | 22:44 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I think segregation, I'm not against it. It had its point, but I think it had missed a point too in some areas, for example, schools. If you got a Black kid in a White school start together in the first grade going from one to six, when you get to the sixth grade, the White kid is two grades ahead of that Black kid, because the White teachers don't take the interest in these kids. And like I stated earlier, I came from a Black school that the teachers were dedicated, were dedicated, but a lot of the White teachers are not dedicated. Because now my wife was a principal and I know some of the things that she went through. And I taught school one year and I know what I went through. It's a difference. Now, I'm not saying all White teachers are like this, but it's a difference in the White teachers and the Black teachers. The White teachers, some of them say, I heard them say this, "I got mine, you get yours." And they don't put that much emphasis on certain kids as they do others. | 23:03 |
| Walter P. Holmes | So I think it's good, but it had its step backs. Now I think if you going to integrate a school, you should start in the first grade not to wait till you get to high school. Because when you get to high school, a kid has already been green at what they do and what they say. You know what I mean? But a kid in the first grade, they don't know red, White, blue or green, right? Together. And then a lot of these parents should be educated as to certain things, because nobody sees things exactly the like. And if you care more for your child than you do the others, you are not doing anything. So the teachers and the parent should work together, and there's any problems they should work them out. But like I say, I'm not against integration, it's good, but it has its setbacks. | 24:39 |
| Walter P. Holmes | If you carried your car to a shop and my wife carried her car to that same shop, you would get the better service. Which is not right, but it still is integration. And most people, if they got 12 Whites, they hire Black, it's integrated. That's not integration, right? Yeah. | 25:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Well you've been very, very helpful and very frank with me. I appreciate that. We have a little bit of a few forms to fill out. We have some biographical information just so that when people are listening to the tapes, they have a better idea of who you are and where you come from. So if you wouldn't mind answering a few questions. | 26:28 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, yeah. | 26:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | What's your full name? | 26:51 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Walter. You want my initial, or my name? | 26:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | You can give me your middle name if you've got one. | 26:58 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I give my initial name. Okay. P. | 27:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | P, okay. | 27:03 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Holmes, H-O-L-M-E-S. | 27:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And what's your zip code here? | 27:06 |
| Walter P. Holmes | 28216. | 27:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | 28216. Okay. how would you like your name to appear on the tape? | 27:08 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Walter P. Holmes. | 27:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Walter P. Holmes. Okay. | 27:18 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Is there any way I can hear the tape? | 27:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Well, when the tapes come back to Charlotte, which won't be for a couple of years. It will probably be to Johnson C. Smith or to the public library. People will be notified. And you can make an arrangement through those institutions to get a tape. We aren't offering everybody a tape because we're going to have about 5,000 interviews all together and there's just not the money to copy them. But as I say, it will be available here in Charlotte. Okay. What's your date of birth? | 27:30 |
| Walter P. Holmes | 2/10/24. | 28:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | 2/10/24. And you were born in Montreal, right? | 28:08 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Put Charlotte. | 28:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. And what was your wife's name? | 28:09 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Which one? | 28:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Well, if you want to give me your first wife's name, you can. Or just your second wife. | 28:25 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I'll go for second wife. | 28:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 28:31 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Natalie. | 28:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Natalie, okay. | 28:34 |
| Walter P. Holmes | C. Holmes. | 28:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | And that's N-A-T-A-L-I-E? | 28:36 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 28:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. C. Holmes. Okay. What was her maiden name? | 28:38 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Cowan. C-O-W-A-N. | 28:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | And when was she born? | 28:47 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. | 28:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And when did she pass on? | 28:57 |
| Walter P. Holmes | '88. | 28:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | And where was she born? | 29:02 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Charlotte. | 29:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Charlotte. And she was a school principal? What was the school name again? | 29:03 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Wilmore, Derita, Tryon Hills. | 29:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | So that was Wilmore Elementary? Okay. I'll put that down. Because that was when she, with the integration. Okay. And what was your mother's name? | 29:19 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Mabel. | 29:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Holmes? Okay. And do you know, was her maiden name Holmes or? | 29:32 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Maiden name was Parks. | 29:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Parks. Okay. And you said she died in 1981? | 29:41 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 29:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Do you know when she was born? | 29:45 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, 1900. | 29:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | 1900. Okay. And was she born here in Charlotte? | 29:51 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 29:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And what was her occupation? | 29:56 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I think the last job she had was with, she was sales lady with Macy's, New York. | 30:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | And your father's name? | 30:18 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Walter Holmes. Walter S. Holmes. | 30:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you know when he was born? | 30:26 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, I don't. About about 1900. About 1900. | 30:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | All right. And do you know when he died? | 30:39 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, I don't know. | 30:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | That's fine. Was he born here in Charlotte? | 30:44 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yes. | 30:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And do you know what he did for a living? | 30:46 |
| Walter P. Holmes | He was a truck driver. | 30:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | And I'll put your aunt's name down too, since she raised you. What was her name? | 30:54 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Bertha Parks. B-E-R-T-H-A Parks. | 30:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | And you know when she was born? | 31:11 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, I don't. 18 something. | 31:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | 18 something. | 31:11 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I don't know. | 31:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And you know when she died? | 31:11 |
| Walter P. Holmes | 1959. | 31:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | And what was her occupation? | 31:17 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Cook. | 31:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, that's right. Sorry, I remember that. Can you give me the name of your sister? | 31:19 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Mattie White. | 31:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | And her maiden name is Holmes, right? | 31:35 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, Parks. | 31:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Parks. Okay. Parks. Mattie White. And when was she born? | 31:38 |
| Walter P. Holmes | 1920, I think. | 31:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And is she still living? | 31:47 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, she's dead. | 31:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | You don't remember when she— | 31:47 |
| Walter P. Holmes | 1974. | 31:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And it was just the two of you? Were you the older? | 31:52 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, younger. | 31:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Younger. Okay. Okay. Sorry. Do you have any children? | 31:55 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Shoo—do I have to? | 32:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | No, you don't have to— | 32:02 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Okay. Thank you. | 32:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | —if you don't want to. | 32:03 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. | 32:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Okay. (Holmes laughs) | 32:03 |
| Walter P. Holmes | They called me the mail man. You know what the mailman do, you know? (laughs) | 32:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. Do you have any grandchildren? | 32:08 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. | 32:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Okay. So you lived in Charlotte until 1943? And then you were in the service, right? So I'll just—When did you move to Greensboro? | 32:16 |
| Walter P. Holmes | '45. | 32:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | And you graduated in— | 32:52 |
| Walter P. Holmes | '49. | 32:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And then did you come back here? | 32:58 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 33:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Okay. I can't remember, what was Morgan Street School? Which was your school, elementary school? | 33:00 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Morgan. | 33:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. Morgan Elementary? Okay. And did it go up to sixth or seventh grade? | 33:30 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Seventh. | 33:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Seventh grade. Okay. And then you went to Second Ward. Okay. And that was the 12th? | 33:35 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 33:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Some people went when it was only 11. | 33:44 |
| Walter P. Holmes | 11, yeah. Right. | 33:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. What degree, you got a BA at some— | 33:57 |
| Walter P. Holmes | BS. BS in Political Science. | 34:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | And have you gone back to school since going to AMT? | 34:06 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. | 34:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Now, your work history, your most important jobs, you worked— | 34:13 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Post service. | 34:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Postal service. Okay. And you were a mailcarrier. You started in '51 you said? | 34:20 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah, '51. | 34:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | And then you retired? | 34:29 |
| Walter P. Holmes | In '81. | 34:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 34:32 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No, no, no, no. Yeah, '81. | 34:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Are there any other jobs you want to mention? | 34:37 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. | 34:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | School teacher? | 34:39 |
| Walter P. Holmes | No. No. | 34:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Have you received any awards or honors or held any offices that you'd like me to mention here? | 34:46 |
| Walter P. Holmes | You look up there and see what you want to put out. | 34:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Which ones are most important to you? | 34:56 |
| Walter P. Holmes | All of them. All of them. | 35:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | All of them? | 35:01 |
| Walter P. Holmes | All of them for me. I was on the Charlotte Mecklenburg Park and Rec Commission. I was past Master of Myersville Lodge from '60 to '70. | 35:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Of what Lodge? Sorry? | 35:23 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Myersville. M-Y-E-R-S-V-I-L-L-E. Okay. | 35:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | And you gave dates for that? Did you or? Okay. Nevermind if you didn't. I thought. | 35:29 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Okay. And I was past Potentate Rameses Temple Number 51. | 35:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Rameses— | 35:33 |
| Walter P. Holmes | R-A-M-E-S-E-S. | 35:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. What was that after that, past Ramses? | 35:40 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Temple. | 35:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Temple. | 35:44 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Number 51. Shriners. | 35:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Sorry. All this stuff is kind new to me. | 35:55 |
| Walter P. Holmes | And I'm past Imperial Potentate of the Shriners. | 36:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Okay. | 36:03 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I'm past the Trustee of East Stonewall AME Zion Church. Okay. The member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. Member of the Elks. Former Officer in the United States Army Reserve. 33rd degree Mason. You got that? | 36:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 37:12 |
| Walter P. Holmes | And I received numerous awards. | 37:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. Numerous awards. Okay. So you belong to East Stonewall | 37:12 |
| Walter P. Holmes | AME Zion Church. | 37:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | And you've always been AME Zion? | 37:16 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. Right. Yeah. | 37:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Have you ever belonged to another church? Is there a quote or a verse or a favorite saying that you'd like me to record here? Okay. | 37:24 |
| Walter P. Holmes | A winner never quit and a quitter never wins. And every day is a day of thanksgiving. | 37:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Okay. A winner never quits and a quitter never wins. And every day is a day of thanksgiving. Okay. Now there were just a couple of words here, proper names and so on that I wanted to make sure that I had spelled correctly. General Miles as in Miles Park. That's M-I-L-E-S? | 38:07 |
| Walter P. Holmes | M-Y-E-R-S. | 38:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Pardon me? | 38:31 |
| Walter P. Holmes | M-Y-E-R-S. | 38:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. Sorry. Okay. | 38:31 |
| Walter P. Holmes | I'm sorry. Okay, go ahead. | 38:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | That's— | 38:42 |
| Walter P. Holmes | It's Colonel Myers instead of General Myers. | 38:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Colonel Myers. | 38:44 |
| Walter P. Holmes | C-O-L. Yeah. | 38:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | So that's like as in Myers Street School? | 38:50 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Right. | 38:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 38:52 |
| Walter P. Holmes | All it was named after him. | 38:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And so it was Myers Park then that was the rich White neighborhood? | 38:55 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. It's still in existence. But he also gave Smith the land of Bill there. Okay. | 39:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. I'm sorry, I misheard you there. Okay. And you talked about a Colonel Chastine? | 39:07 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. | 39:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you know how to spell his last name? | 39:15 |
| Walter P. Holmes | C-H-A-S-T-I-N-E. | 39:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Okay. And the very last thing I have to do is, in order for students to be able to use this tape, you have to sign a release form for it, which allows the tapes to go back to the archives at Duke and to come back here to Charlotte so that researchers can use it. Okay. Would you be willing to sign that? | 39:22 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Yeah. I wrote my thesis on a comparison and survey of the American Negro Soldier in World War I and World War II. | 39:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | And what did you conclude? | 40:28 |
| Walter P. Holmes | Well, I have a copy in the library at NT. | 40:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh yeah. | 40:35 |
| Walter P. Holmes | And its the only way I show it to you. I got a copy here. | 40:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for spending this time with us, time with me. I really appreciate it. And as I said, it's been very informative to me. This is a pamphlet for the project. | 40:52 |
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