Jean McDuffie (primary interviewee) and Lille Stovall interview recording, 1993 June 13

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Rhonda Mawhood	Okay, maybe Mrs. McDuffie, start with you. I'd like to know how long you've lived in Charlotte, ma'am.	0:02
Jean Stovall McDuffie	All my life. 58 years, just the other day. Just had a birthday.	0:13
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh, happy birthday.	0:16
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I've been away a few times for short periods of time, but for the most part I come back here.	0:20
Rhonda Mawhood	Were your parents from Charlotte?	0:29
Jean Stovall McDuffie	No, my mother's from South Carolina and my father's from Georgia.	0:30
Rhonda Mawhood	And so, where did your parents meet?	0:36
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I think they met here in Charlotte, as they were young and they were working here.	0:39
Rhonda Mawhood	And so, do you know why your parents moved to Charlotte separately?	0:46
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Well, at the time I suspect Charlotte was just a larger city nearby for Blacks to migrate. Some people went to New York, and some people went to Washington and Baltimore. But my folks stopped here in Charlotte, and they're from the South but they didn't leave and go very far like a lot of people did. And my mother's family, a lot of them came here to work. My father, I don't really know the reason he came, but he was sort of on his own as a very young person, maybe before he was a teenager. He was really just out there in the world. But I don't know the circumstances, how they actually met.	0:50
Rhonda Mawhood	And so your mother's family who were also in Charlotte, were they here before she arrived?	1:42
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Just one sister. One sister was here, and another sister came later and another sister came later. But some of my mother's sisters left South Carolina and went to New York.	1:47
Rhonda Mawhood	And what kind of work did your parents do here?	2:00
Jean Stovall McDuffie	My mother didn't work. She stayed at home with us. But my mother's sisters were nurses, some of them. The ones who came here first, they were domestics in Charlotte, and that's what they came from— That's what they did when they came from South Carolina, they worked as domestics. The ones who went to New York continued as nurses.	2:02
Rhonda Mawhood	What kind of work did your father do, Ms. McDuffie?	2:29
Jean Stovall McDuffie	He worked a few years, some years in a textile mill. And sometimes he worked for an automobile mechanic's helper. And I remember once he worked at the bus station, he was just a regular working man. No profession, anything like that.	2:32
Rhonda Mawhood	Thank you.	2:53
Jean Stovall McDuffie	My mother didn't work. And my mother, we found out as we began to get all— My mother had been to college a couple of years, but she had to work. She couldn't continue, the two years that she had to go, she couldn't finish those. My grandparents tried, I thought in that day and time, I think they tried real hard to educate. Some of them, it seems as if they educated the girls and the family. I don't think my uncles ever went to school, to college. I don't even know if they finished high school.	2:54
Rhonda Mawhood	Do you have any idea why that was, Ms. McDuffie? The girls—	3:35
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I really don't. I don't know, they seem to have been a little more prepared to work. Now my uncles worked, but it seemed like that was a preparation for the girls in their family to work and to learn something to do.	3:37
Rhonda Mawhood	That's interesting. And have you lived in Charlotte all your life, Ms. Stovall?	3:58
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	No, I've lived here since I was three, and that makes me, I've lived here about 55 years. We came from Lancaster, South Carolina, both my parents. I imagine they met somewhere at church or at school. Now my father was a minister, but he did not have a degree. My mother did domestic work, and stayed home with us because we were a large family. There were actually six children. And one died, but still there were six children that she had to take care of. But she did do domestic work. Anything else?	4:04
Rhonda Mawhood	Where did your father preach?	4:56
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Most of his ministerial life, he preached in Kannapolis at First Baptist Church, Kannapolis, North Carolina. However, he did go to school. He went to Johnson C. Smith, he went to Friendship College in— Where's Friendship? In Rock Hill?	4:59
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Rock Hill.	5:16
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Rock Hill, South Carolina.	5:17
Rhonda Mawhood	And so did you have— Okay, yes please.	5:17
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	No, we lived in Charlotte and we went to a church in Greenville called Newport Baptist Church. We went there all of our lives, but we would go with him a lot too. But we kept our membership in Newport Baptist Church. And since I have been grown, since I'm on religion, due to transportation I joined Mount Carmel Baptist Church. Because that was the first church actually that my mother and father attended when they came from Lancaster, South Carolina. So moving on this side and not having my license, I started going to Mount Carmel Baptist Church, which I attend now.	5:25
Rhonda Mawhood	So did you go to church any days other than Sunday?	6:19
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Yes. When we were little, we went to church quite a bit. There were always programs, Easter program, Children's Day, and we had to learn speeches. And I think that was very good for us, because that gave us an opportunity to learn how to speak in front of audiences. And I think that's one of the talents, I don't want to say talents, but it's one thing that a lot of Black people can do pretty well. They can express themselves in front of other people, a lot of them can. And I think that has a lot to do with having these programs in church. Then we had revival that we attended. And I remember there was a man that used to come around with plays and present them in the church.	6:24
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	So church took up a lot of our time. And since we're on what took up a lot of our time, and I'm not getting a chance to answer, but a lot of my time was spent at a place called the Oaklawn Community Center, which holds a very important place in practically anybody's life that was reared in the Fairview Homes, and that's where I was reared. But is now sort of a dope—	7:28
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Drug infested area.	8:05
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But during the time that I was coming up, that was a place where people went and got a start. Many people would go there and save their money, and eventually buy a home in another section of town. But there at the center, which we think that we were very fortunate to have lived there, we had people who were trained. Who came in, and these were— This center I really think was built by, I don't know what Presbyterian church, but I think it was a White Presbyterian church. But they hired Black people to come in and work with us. So we had the advantage of camp, we had the advantage of facilities to actually work and play, and learn how to do homemaking. We did a lot of interesting things there.	8:07
Rhonda Mawhood	And so, did your brothers and sisters go to the community center too?	9:10
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Now, I think I was probably the only one that just stayed there quite a bit. I would say that my older brother went a little bit. My older sister only went on special occasions. And I think when my younger sister and brother were probably coming up, there was not as much activity going on at the center. Because I think Mr. Rippi, you might have heard that name. If you talk to people who were raised in Fairview Homes, you will hear that name. Mr. Rippi started working I think at Smith or something, and I think, you know how sometimes you have things that was really working and then it sort of hits the plateau? I don't know whether that happened or not. And then by the fact that I was gone, I am— What, five or six years older than the next child. So I don't really think they spent as much time at the center as I did.	9:16
Rhonda Mawhood	So, who were your neighbors at the Fairview Homes, Ms. Stovall?	10:30
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Most of my neighbors were just hard working people. There were not many professional people in the Fairview Homes. Now if you want specific people—	10:34
Rhonda Mawhood	Sure. If you remember them, that would be nice. And what kinds of things they did, what you remember about them.	10:46
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Well, now I guess my best friend during that time was Bertha Hemphill. And her parents, her mother was a domestic worker, very religious. Her father worked at an iron factory, I think. Mr. Hemphill, Mr. and Mrs. Hemphill, they lived across in front of me. My next-door neighbor was Margaret Jane Clark. She was young. And another thing that we were blessed to have, I'm doing most of the talking, I'm sorry.	10:51
Jean Stovall McDuffie	That's okay.	11:26
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	We were had a lot of young people in our neighborhood that was maybe five or six years older than we were, that were really good role models now that I think about it. Margaret Jane, now she went back to school and she became a beautician. She lives on Dean Street.	11:30
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Mm-hmm, lives on Dean Street.	11:56
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Okay, Blandina.	11:56
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Her name sounds familiar.	11:57
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	It should, because she goes to the Catholic Church, I think Bland.	11:59
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Oh yeah, Miss— Okay.	12:04
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	I might have her name mixed up because there was a Blandina that lived on our street too.	12:06
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I think I know her.	12:12
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Ms. Bland. She, I thought was just a real, real attractive lady.	12:12
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Mm-hmm, I'd see her at church.	12:23
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And they would just talk with us and give us good advice. Let me see. Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham, Johnny Boy's mother and father. He worked as a cook, and he did that probably up until he died.	12:25
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Died a few years ago.	12:42
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	No, until he became disabled.	12:45
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Catering.	12:49
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Yeah, he did a lot of catering and eventually he bought, I think, a drug store something. He bought something, because but Shirley used to work there. So I would say that there were all kinds of people living there, but most of the people were just people that wanted the best for their children. And there are many, many people. Like Charles McCullough, who is the coach if he didn't retire.	12:49
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Successful coach.	13:29
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	A very successful coach. One of the most successful coaches probably in North Carolina.	13:30
Rhonda Mawhood	University or high school?	13:35
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	High school. And many of us feel that he has not gotten his due recognition. He was—	13:36
Rhonda Mawhood	Where does he, excuse me, where does he coach for the record?	13:43
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	He coaches at West Charlotte. He lived in the Fairview Homes. And they were just many, many people that we could call names. If people thought we were living in poverty, we beat the odds.	13:46
Rhonda Mawhood	You say if people thought you were living in poverty, did you think that when you were growing up?	14:08
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	When I was growing up, no. That's what we always say. We did not think that we were living in poverty. We thought that there were people with much more than we had, but by the fact that we had food, clothing was clean, and always had a place to stay, and got most of the things that our parents could afford, which was basically what most children got at that time. We didn't hear as much about being poor as we hear now. So therefore, we could aim for the stars.	14:12
Rhonda Mawhood	Thank you, Mrs. Stovall. I'd like to ask you what neighborhood you grew up in, Ms. McDuffie.	14:50
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Mine was completely different from Lillie Mae's. I grew up in a neighborhood called Brooklyn, by Second Ward. And it's no longer there where I grew up. And I grew up in— For the most part I was born on, not Boundary street, but McDowell Street. And we lived a short while over in a place called First Ward. And then when I was in second grade, we moved to First Street, which was right up the street from the high school where we attended.	14:59
Jean Stovall McDuffie	So from the second grade until we graduated from high school, I lived at 612 East First Street, and it was a four-apartment building. And all up and down the street there were lots of apartments and there were lots of single homes. It was an interesting block, because they had about three or four cafes. We had houses, about every other house people sold liquor. I wrote the numbers. And then we had people who were professionals, who worked in the schools.	15:24
Jean Stovall McDuffie	On the same block, we had an older man and lady who lived across the street from us who were professional people. And then we had people who worked for the railroad, and they were I guess the people who had a little bit more money than the others. But you could never tell it. And in between that two houses was a cafe. Then the next house was professional people, and next to them was a cafe. Do you know what a cafe is?	16:00
Rhonda Mawhood	A cafe? Well, I'm thinking—	16:26
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Because they had a jukebox, and sold beer and sandwiches and whatever, it was little businesses. And I grew up in a block where there must have been six or seven cafes in one block. There were all kinds of little stands and cafes, and you could go out just anywhere and buy soda. I guess I truly lived in what they would call, I lived in the inner city. Everybody did, because what they call inner city now is where everybody used to live.	16:29
Jean Stovall McDuffie	It was an interesting block. And the thing about it with all the diversity of the people, the people were doing all kinds of things, and some of the things could have been illegal. That's what people did in those days. But they were always interested in what the children were doing at school. They didn't have all this profanity. And if they were cursing and things like that, if they saw children coming, they would be quiet. They just had a tremendous amount of respect for people who were doing "the right thing," which we always thought was kind of neat to grow up around so many different kinds of people.	17:02
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I'm trying to think on our side of the street, I lived in apartment building where there was a lot of children in this block. I mean, children almost at every house. So the block was a long block, houses on both side of the street. But in just about every house was a child or two, sometimes five or six. Lot of people, my father and a couple more men were about the only men at home. A lot of people were raising their children by themselves.	17:48
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Could I interject something there? Now in the Fairview Homes, I don't know whether there was a stipulation that people had to be married, or I don't know.	18:23
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Probably so at that time.	18:34
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But when you said that, that made me think that most of the houses there, there were both parents. Although there were some houses maybe that, I'm trying to think on my street, of a house that actually where there was not two people living. So maybe that was a stipulation, because I do think that during that time—	18:36
Jean Stovall McDuffie	They had to be married perhaps.	18:59
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	I don't know, maybe they had to be married, but there were certain stipulations that they had in order to get a house there. So, I hadn't even thought of that.	19:01
Jean Stovall McDuffie	But see, Daddy and Mr. Jones and Mr. Franklin, out of all those children from First Street in that block, they were the only men who were home with their families, like Laverne and Barbara Jane, and Little James downstairs from us are people that had their families at home.	19:13
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And you were asking, and you go can back over this. Because thinking about that, there were actually three ministers in that little section that I lived in, Reverend Campbell and Reverend Scott. You know Lily Campbell?	19:34
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Mm-hmm.	19:48
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Her husband, and Reverend Scott. So I think there must have been some stipulation, although I know that there were probably some people who didn't have husbands during that time, but some men probably had to sign, and I guess you would call it a lease or whatever that was in order to get the apartment.	19:50
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I grew up in a three-room, we grew up in a three-room apartment. There were seven of us.	20:11
Rhonda Mawhood	Seven children or seven people?	20:17
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Seven family members. I'm pretty sure the rent was cheaper, we were always able to pay our rent. Like Lillie Mae said, we never, ever thought we were poor. Because we had enough food, and we had clothes and places to go. We could even go, we lived very close to everything. I lived near the school, the libraries, the movie was in the next block. Very urbanized area, I think I lived probably in just what you would consider a real busy urban section, where the theaters, they had the churches out there, the cafes and the grocery stores, everything was very convenient. You didn't have to go very far to do anything. There were lots of Black businesses at that time, many more than now.	20:19
Jean Stovall McDuffie	There were Black businesses, as you say, I said six cafes in one block. I don't even think that people were having a hard time. They kept those business open, those businesses were doing well. And people would go and eat the stewed meat and rice, that seemed to have been a staple. And it was just a thriving time. At that time, but again, considering what else was going on, it seemed like the people who had those businesses, they could have been having a hard time. But you never did hear anybody saying people were laid off, or this business failed. There were lots of restaurants and things.	21:17
Jean Stovall McDuffie	They stayed in business my entire time of growing up, until people had to move from Brooklyn. We had to move, because they did urban renewal. They just went through and completely tore down the neighborhood. It's right over there where like Adams Mark and Marshall Park. But see, that's where I used to live. And the school was there, even the elementary school was there, the gym was there, the basketball games were there. The buses rode right down the street. Everything was very convenient for everybody.	21:56
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And I would like to say that during that time, aunts and— I would say mostly aunts. Aunts really helped that mother or sister, who had more children. I have to give a lot of credit to my aunts who went on up North, and they were like domestic workers. And I think, and Aunt Sadie, she worked in a Catholic church for a priest for a long, long time. But those aunts, they were really good about sending things. They were sending clothes and monies to help—	22:31
Jean Stovall McDuffie	The sister who had the children. That's the way it was in our family too.	23:11
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	So we have to always be grateful. And that's one thing Jean and I talk about a lot. We still help our—	23:14
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Our nieces and nephews. Because I got, my mother and father probably didn't have to buy, my sister and I have a twin sister, any clothes or anything. Because we had two aunts that just kept up with what we needed, and we were always getting boxes from New York and places full of clothes and things. And my mother even worked at a rummage sale at a church. Now little miss Baptist, I'm a Catholic. That was a little bit unusual too, being a Catholic in the South in about 1948. We joined, me and my sister were the first one to join, in our family to join the Catholic church.	23:22
Rhonda Mawhood	Really, so—	24:04
Jean Stovall McDuffie	So it came upon us two ways. My aunt had married a Catholic during World War II, and he was from Louisiana. And then my two aunts who had gone to New York to work as nurses, they started going to the Catholic church. And we just went to church, we weren't having joined the church. And so, my aunt came down and started taking us to church. We were in about the sixth grade. And by the time we were in the seventh grade, my sister and I were the first ones baptized.	24:06
Rhonda Mawhood	I see. So what church did your parents go to, Ms. McDuffie?	24:39
Jean Stovall McDuffie	My mother went to Baptist Church. And I imagine my father went to a Baptist church too at times.	24:43
Rhonda Mawhood	And what did your parents think, if you remember, if it's not too personal, what did your parents think about you joining the Catholic church?	24:50
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Oh, they were just delighted really. It was something very unusual first of all, because as I can recall there were just about maybe 10 Catholic students at the high school that I went to, out of about 1200 students there were about a dozen Catholic students.	24:57
Rhonda Mawhood	And may I ask you what it was that attracted you to the Catholic Church?	25:19
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Well, with you being 10 and 11 years old, you really don't— Actually when I first started going, I started liking it because it was different, and it was quiet, and you got out early. And they said the mass in Latin and that was different. You're just about getting ready to start bordering on being a teenager, so you were just always looking to being a little different or something.	25:22
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And it really wasn't anything that was earth shattering, we all sort of liked it. And then the next people were my younger sister and brother, and they were like babies when they joined. And the next folks were my mother and father. And then my brother was married to Lillie Mae. (laughs) He started going to the Catholic church when he was— He was going all along, but he started taking instruction when he was a freshman in college. So it just turned out, so now we just have half of our family, lots of us are Catholics. And some of us are still Baptists.	25:54
Rhonda Mawhood	That's interesting.	26:31
Jean Stovall McDuffie	But it all started because of my aunts. My one aunt had married a Catholic, you know people from Louisiana, they were Catholics. And my other two aunts had gone to New York and they said the people who treated them, you can imagine in the '30s how people were treated even in New York. They said the people who were the nicest of them were the Catholic people, like in the hospitals, and I guess in the neighborhoods and all in New York.	26:33
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I guess they liked the way the people acted, and they just started going to Catholic church up there. And they started getting with my mother and father about us going to church and joining the church. And my mother didn't have any, she didn't seem to care one way or the other, she wasn't committed to any particular church at the time. I'm sure they were Baptist and all when they were going to church when they were younger. I know they were. But I think she was just so glad that we were joining up with something and maybe seemed a bit interesting and sticking to it. Because we probably did a little bit better when we were younger than we're doing now.	27:02
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But speaking of church, since Jean is talking about church, one thing we did a lot in the summer too, we would go from church to church, to vacation Bible school. Churches would have vacation bible schools, and they would give you bunch of cookies. And so, that was one way that one thing that we would do in the morning during the summer.	27:45
Jean Stovall McDuffie	We did too. We used to go to other churches even when we were Catholic, we could go early and then we could go to church with our friends later.	28:11
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And another thing about living in the Fairview Homes, we had a supervised playground too. And now I didn't get to go to the playground as much as my friends, which I had lots of, because my parents were from the South. And they were still a little bit, I guess we were a little more sheltered. And I would think in a sense—	28:17
Jean Stovall McDuffie	That's how we were. We lived right where everything was.	28:44
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Well, I'm just saying that they wouldn't let me go as freely, and mostly my mother, as some other parents of children who lived in that same neighborhood. But we did have playgrounds, and there were people there, same way as with the center who was trained, like Mr. Holshaw. They would work on the playground, and we would learn how to make different things, learn how to play different games. During the summer there was a, I guess this was the Presbyterian Church, they used to come in and they would teach Bible school also.	28:49
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	We also had Miss Anita Stroud, and she is a well known, if you talk with many people you will hear that name, Miss Anita Stroud, which had the Bible stories. She started out by bringing children into her home, reading them Bible stories. Then she would raise money some way, and the children would get a chance to go to camp. And now my brother, my younger brother, he experienced her camp more. I went to camp from the center, but he went to the camp with Miss Anita Stroud. And they used to have what they call the mobile library.	29:27
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Bookmobile.	30:01
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Mobile library, the Bookmobile. And that would come into the community and bring books we could check out, books to read.	30:03
Jean Stovall McDuffie	The library was a major part of my growing up. All of us went around to the corner to the library, and the movie theater. It's kind of interesting because we went to the movies three days a week.	30:10
Rhonda Mawhood	Really?	30:29
Jean Stovall McDuffie	They changed the picture, the Monday, Wednesday, Friday the picture was changed. The Tuesday, Thursday, the Thursday, Friday and then Saturday was the Westerns. So if you lived in the neighborhood, more than likely you went, I went three days a week, 9 cents a movie. So all the children in the neighborhood went, and we saw all kinds of movies. Nothing was extra— we probably saw movies we shouldn't have seen. We didn't even know what we were looking at, it's just that it was something to do.	30:29
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But Jean, we probably did see movies that we shouldn't have seen.	31:07
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Like Streetcar Named Desire.	31:13
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Not as much as she did. But they couldn't even say certain things on TV.	31:15
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I know, we couldn't say no— We were talking the other day about how they couldn't do these records. That Please, Please, Please, and You Give Me Fever. They couldn't even sing those over the radio when I was growing up. These were records by James Brown, and we were like in the 10th, 11th, 12th grade. They kept a lot from you too. You didn't hear a lot and you didn't see a lot.	31:22
Rhonda Mawhood	So you didn't hear these records on the radio. Did you hear them anywhere else?	31:46
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Oh yeah, you could buy them and listen to them all you want to. And every once in a while you, you'll hear them.	31:49
Rhonda Mawhood	Did you have a record player? Did either one of you have a record player in your home?	31:57
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I didn't, but we used to be around people who had them.	32:00
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Well now, we had a record player. But most of the records that were played, that were bought in our house were Christian records. Because they adhered to a lot of basic things. Like on Sunday we couldn't do— I don't remember what we could do on Sunday but take a bus ride. We didn't play hopscotch, we didn't play ball, we didn't do a lot of things. So we had a record player, but what we played were Christian records. And my sister still has a lot of those records that we had then because she collects.	32:05
Jean Stovall McDuffie	But you see, we didn't have to have one. I sat there right across the street from a cafe, and the people put the money in the jukebox. We could just hear the music, that's all I heard all day long. Music from the jukebox.	32:42
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And most of us who listen to the radio would listen to WGIV. That was a Black owned— I don't know whether it was owned by Black people.	32:56
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Black station then.	33:07
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But it was a Black station. Which Genial Gene Potts was probably the first Black DJ in Charlotte. Probably the first Black person on—I can't say that.	33:08
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I think there was some in Atlanta, in Southeast, because even I think even then Atlanta had a Black disc jockey. But we did a lot of things. We went to the Y like in high school, went to the Y a lot. Did you ever go, Lillie Mae, to the Y on Wednesday night to Swingster Shack?	33:19
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Mm-hmm.	33:34
Jean Stovall McDuffie	We used to do that ever— Swingster Shack.	33:37
Rhonda Mawhood	Swingster Shack. What was that?	33:39
Jean Stovall McDuffie	That's a dance with the high school students from all the different level four high schools. And about the 10th, 11th and 12th grade, teenagers would just go up and dance. And they had advisors and chaperones there. And then when it was over you went home, you just danced and went home. Sometimes they had refreshments. If it was Valentine's there or somebody's birthday, they had nice little things for the student. We could roast wieners outside in the summer.	33:40
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Now I've gone, but I that was not one of the things—	34:08
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yeah, we used to go everywhere.	34:11
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	I did a lot, now because that—	34:12
Jean Stovall McDuffie	See, I live near there.	34:14
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Close to her home. And in order to get from where I live—	34:15
Jean Stovall McDuffie	You had to get the bus.	34:18
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	You had to get the bus. Like she was saying, there were four high schools. But basically there were two in the city, West Charlotte and the Second Ward. And she went to Second Ward and I went to West Charlotte. And the children who lived on this— Well, this was country then. But where Johnson C. Smith, is and the children who lived in Greenville basically went to West Charlotte. And the children who lived in Brooklyn in First Ward, Second Ward, went to—	34:21
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And Cherry.	34:52
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Went to Second Ward. Then we had Clear Creek.	34:54
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And Plato Price.	34:59
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And Plato Price, which I didn't know a lot of the children.	35:01
Jean Stovall McDuffie	But then Selma and those came from Clear Creek and Cicero, and a few other people like Earle—	35:04
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But you learned those people since you were—	35:12
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Later. I knew them from, because I played basketball, and so I would know girls on the teams from the different schools because we would play them. That's the only reason I would know them. I don't know if I would've known them in the other way.	35:15
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	No, because I met, Picola was the only one.	35:30
Jean Stovall McDuffie	You met her in high school.	35:31
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	I met her in high school at, I think it was the Y team. Something, she was real active or something like that, so I met her there. So we basically knew more children from West Charlotte and Second Ward because they were in the city and we were real competitive.	35:36
Rhonda Mawhood	Really?	35:48
Jean Stovall McDuffie	The students, uh-huh, from her school to my school. Very competitive.	35:48
Rhonda Mawhood	How did that sort of thing—	35:56
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Sports and everything.	35:57
Rhonda Mawhood	Were there ever real conflicts between the students at the different schools?	36:00
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yeah, big fights.	36:04
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Now, she says big fights. I don't know whether there were ever as many fights as we were—	36:14
Jean Stovall McDuffie	They had fights after the games and all.	36:18
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Okay. But I know there used to be a lot of fear in us. We would leave before the game was over, because we were afraid that something would take place.	36:20
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And see, all the games were played in our neighborhood, because our school was the only school that had a gym.	36:32
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	As a matter of fact.	36:36
Jean Stovall McDuffie	So everybody had to come over there, wherever they went to school. Even Johnson C. Smith used to have to have their games in the gym. It was a good time. I enjoyed growing up in Brooklyn. I wouldn't have wanted it no other way. It makes you see things a whole lot different. And sometimes you see stuff that don't surprise you because if you grew up with it, you can't be surprised. If you just grew up seeing a lot of stuff. But we still didn't see what the kids see today.	36:41
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And even if they did fight, they didn't fight with weapons.	37:14
Jean Stovall McDuffie	They fought maybe with their mouth.	37:20
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	That's what I was thinking, it was a lot of, they used to put a certain person that might have it in for a certain little group. Now, that little group would be afraid. But like I say, I don't remember them just actually fighting. Because we used to get away, we would leave before—	37:22
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I remember those girls beating up Doris Talford. And then I remember—	37:44
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Now, were the girls from West Charlotte?	37:49
Jean Stovall McDuffie	The girls were from West Charlotte, who beat Doris and did it on the bus. Mildred Archer and Jackie—	37:50
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Don't be calling Mildred.	37:54
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Okay (Stovall laughs) don't put those names down. And then those kids from Second Ward beat up Peggy Grier, just beat up real bad one night in the gym. Yeah, they used to fight and they used to fight after the Queen City Classic.	37:54
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	What I know is they were always wild. But I thought we kind of got away, and I'm sure that there were fights, but I was thinking that we kind of got away. Because we did, we started leaving, we'd start moving because we were on their side of town.	38:16
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And we never had to move because we were always already at home. In fact, I was so close to the gym, and then I just lived right at the school. It was nothing to, you'd go home in about two minutes.	38:30
Rhonda Mawhood	You said, Mrs. McDuffie, that you have a twin sister?	38:43
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yes.	38:47
Rhonda Mawhood	What was that like growing up with a twin? Sorry, are you identical?	38:48
Jean Stovall McDuffie	We're identical twins and we look just alike. And we've sort of stayed the same— Even though we're not, we separated when we were 17, and she went to school in one place and I went to school in another. And then she came home and her son was born and a little bit later, she was 18 then, a little bit later I came home and got married and had a child. So we both married at the same time, and we both had boys first, six months apart. But we were real active in school, and people couldn't tell us apart. And people called us everything but our names, they would say Twin, what did you call us, Lillie Mae? Jean or Joan?	38:52
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Well, I called them Jean and Joan because I could always tell. And I tell them that all the time, I could tell them apart. Because Jean at that time was friendlier, she appeared to be friendlier than Joan. She was, "Hey Lillie Mae!"	39:36
Jean Stovall McDuffie	That's me.	39:53
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And that would be Jean. I said, "That's Jean." And when I see Joan she's say, "Hey." So I knew them by their personality, and I think a lot—	39:54
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I think a lot of people knew us by the way we acted. But it was fun.	40:03
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But they had an uncle who called them Jean-Joan, so he always got them right.	40:07
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And my brother always knew them. Actually, people who really knew us, they knew us. Now the teachers didn't know us at school. They didn't know us at all.	40:13
Rhonda Mawhood	Did you ever take advantage of that?	40:20
Jean Stovall McDuffie	A couple times. Especially for Joan's benefit, my sister sometimes wouldn't have gotten her work or something, and they'd call on her and she didn't have her work. So if it was saying something like the Gettysburg Address or something, I would just say it again. (laughs)	40:24
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But the amazing thing is really they have a brother who looks—	40:43
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And the thing about, we graduated, the three of us, my sister and I and my brother, all of us went to school together in the first grade and we graduated together. That was a little bit unusual for three of us to graduate from high school at the same time. I don't think that has never been done, unless somebody had triplets somewhere. But he's like a year and a half older than we are. But we went to school when he went, and left when he did.	40:46
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	So he needs to be here to tell the story of how.	41:16
Jean Stovall McDuffie	But he always seemed to have known us. My mother knew us.	41:20
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Oh yes, she knew every strand of the hair.	41:23
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yeah, she knew us.	41:26
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	One was fatter, one was lighter.	41:27
Jean Stovall McDuffie	My sister's face, my face is round and her face is kind of square. I see the differences in us now.	41:31
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Yeah, I do too now.	41:37
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I've always seen them, haven't you?	41:38
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	No. The personalities, that's really what I saw.	41:44
Jean Stovall McDuffie	But it was fun.	41:45
Rhonda Mawhood	So, how long have the two of you known each other? It sounds like along time.	41:49
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Since high school. Yeah.	41:52
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	I met their brother when I was in the 10th grade.	41:55
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And that's probably, we met you shortly after.	41:58
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Very shortly after that. We met officially. Now by them being twins, they were very popular, and so I knew of them.	42:00
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Because somehow, there wasn't that many twins around there, were there?	42:09
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	No.	42:09
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Weren't too many twins. If you were a twin, everybody knew you.	42:10
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Yeah. So I married Jack, Jack and I got married the year after I graduated from college. And so, we have remained friends and sister-in-laws.	42:20
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Ever since.	42:37
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	A long time. So we grew up a little bit together. Not as little children, but as—	42:37
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Grown ladies.	42:46
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Dating little girls, and that type thing.	42:47
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yeah. We've done a lot together.	42:51
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And our families, right now our families are very close. It's really like one family that we— Both of us have neither one of our parents, they're both—	42:56
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Gone now.	43:08
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	All deceased, so we're just sort of a family.	43:10
Jean Stovall McDuffie	The few left of us.	43:14
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And in high school, let me see, let's go back and think about what— Behind the Veil, Documenting African American Life In the Jim Crow South. We basically told you about just our life in general, so I'll yield to Jean as far as life in the Jim Crow South. As I told you earlier, we were sort of sheltered in a sense from what was going on. Because our lives really revolved around our community. Now, we were aware that certain things were not as they should have been. We were aware that we got hand me down books—	43:21
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And one of the strangest things that happened to me—	43:59
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	From Harding. And things like that.	44:02
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yeah, we got things like that. We knew that we were getting secondhand books from schools and secondhand gym, the basketball teams and the football team. We got typewriters that the things don't work, because everything we got came from the White school. So we just never, I almost never had anything new in school. Do you remember? Never had any new books or anything. You had books and things with the pages torn out, or you're trying to type on typewriters with the keys.	44:03
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And the interesting thing about typing, and some people my age don't know how to type, well when we were going to school, nobody took typing, because you weren't going anywhere to work where you were going to be typing. So, it was just very few people taking typing. I think they started teaching typing when I was in 11th grade. Because see, it was just something, unless you were going somewhere like New York or Washington, you weren't going to be typing.	44:38
Rhonda Mawhood	Why not?	45:10
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Because there were no jobs here. The few people who worked in doctor's offices and insurance, I think they could beat it out. But you couldn't get no job typing in the office or nothing anywhere.	45:10
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Because I heard, and this might not be true, that when—	45:22
Jean Stovall McDuffie	They started, in the '60s you could.	45:25
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	When secretaries were hired in the Black schools, they had to have a college degree.	45:29
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yeah, they did.	45:34
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But White girls could go and take a typing course and become secretaries, or we used to call them stenographers or whatever. Is that the name?	45:36
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Mm-hmm.	45:46
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And we really, about the only thing that we thought in terms of being, when we were coming up—	45:49
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Teachers.	45:56
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Were teachers—	45:56
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Nurses.	45:58
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Nurses. Some people with high aspirations wanted to be doctors, mainly boys. And some wanted to be lawyers.	45:58
Jean Stovall McDuffie	It was really kind of, you just didn't have a whole lot that you could aspire to do. You just didn't. And the thing about it, I always thought that I could have done much better doing something else. Because I always, now I know I probably had the skill and the brains to do it.	46:08

Jean Stovall McDuffie	No, I think what I really wanted to do was work on a newspaper. But I couldn't go anywhere to work on it, to a school. So, you'd just be sort of thwarted in what you really wanted to do. Because there was this place I could have gone. It was maybe somewhere up in New York or Missouri, or somewhere like that.	0:01
Rhonda Mawhood	Was there a Black newspaper, a Black-owned newspaper in Charlotte at the time?	0:23
Jean Stovall McDuffie	At the time, uh-huh. It was mostly people just writing pretty good papers to it. And then the Afro has already been around.	0:27
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	People used to come around—	0:34
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And the Afro was very popular. People sold that, and that was what we read. And we had a paper. But it was, like I said, it was just written from people who could probably just write. It was reporting on what was going on in the neighborhoods, and at the schools, and social stuff, and the church stuff, which was real interesting.	0:38
Jean Stovall McDuffie	But if you really wanted to really write something, that was not one of the choices that you had. And nobody really had—I guess the teachers just sort of knew where we could go to school and talked it up to us. So, we had a few social workers. We've always had a few social workers.	0:58
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And that's one way you'd do that—	1:27
Jean Stovall McDuffie	There's a lot more things now that the students are doing, that we didn't even think about doing. I mean, you didn't even think about it, you know? You didn't even think about maybe being an airline stewardess, or something like that.	1:28
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And one thing, we do have to give a lot of our teachers credit for, they really did try to push us, and prepare us, in a sense. Try to prepare us for the life. They were more aware of what we were going to be facing than we were.	1:45
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Than we were.	2:08
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	So, they tried to prepare us.	2:09
Rhonda Mawhood	In what ways, Mrs. Stovall? Do you remember?	2:12
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	I guess mainly in talking to us, telling us that we had to be good.	2:14
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Had to learn.	2:21
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Had to learn. And we felt like they really did mean it. And just by encouraging you to go on to school. Just by when you see them now, you know that they are really proud of you. I mean, really, a lot of them have gone on, but you can see, I would see them, and sometimes you could just see it that they were proud that you had tried to go on.	2:21
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And at the time, a lot of people went without a whole lot of—you just went. I mean, if you really wanted to do it, you would try to go on. You just seemed like you tried a little harder. Because everything was just, you never knew what you were going to have to face.	2:57
Rhonda Mawhood	Do you remember your parents, either one of you, talking with you about the fact that you got the hand-me-downs? That things weren't fair? Do you remember your parents talking with you about that?	3:15
Jean Stovall McDuffie	No, they never talked about it. Mm-mm.	3:25
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Because our parents were more probably acceptance of what was going on than we were. They sort of accepted it. When Jean and I were just talking, I said, a White man used to come to our door and collect insurance. And even as a child, I did not like that, because they would walk in, and they would seem so familiar. Just like they was members of our family, just walking in.	3:27
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Calling your—	4:05
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Calling my mother by her name. And then we had to always address people as Miss.	4:07
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And Mister.	4:17
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And Mister.	4:18
Speaker 4	Yeah, girls.	4:18
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	So, those were things like, and bus drivers. See, the first time I knew that there were Black bus drivers, was when I went to Winston-Salem State College, Winston-Salem Teachers College. It's been a long time. But when they had a Black-owned company in Winston-Salem. See, all the people we saw basically were White.	4:20
Jean Stovall McDuffie	We used to have to call them Mister, too.	4:45
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Right.	4:46
Jean Stovall McDuffie	No matter what they did. They could be selling meat at the grocery store, you'd call them mister.	4:46
Jean Stovall McDuffie	But my thing with growing up Black, and like I said, White people, see, I thought all White people were rich and had everything. And it was, until I started working at the public library in 1960, then I realized that they didn't really have any more than we had. But you just thought they had everything. But they really didn't have everything.	4:53
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Because in a sense—	5:16
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And now that I'm working, I see now that they don't even have as much sense. I mean, when I say an intelligence, I see our students at school, if they're lacking in something, I see that many White people, who I always feel like they're lacking. And I just sort of say, "Well, that's probably the way it was all the time." I thought everybody, I thought all of them were just smart, and had big homes, and everything. I really did. Until a little bit later, I realized they didn't. But you sort of thought that.	5:17
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And the jobs that they had, like uptown in Woolworth, and the dime stores, and all that, I'm so glad that we couldn't work there, because we might have would've gotten stuck in those jobs. So, that's where I'm thinking we got the best of the deal. We did not leave high school and go and work in Woolworth or Kress's. And I used to think those were just good jobs, to see people working back behind the counter. And they knew you'd change. But now I look at that, and I realized that those were not good jobs.	5:54
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And I think that, going back to what I was saying about seeing these people coming into your house, seeing the White bus drivers and things, I think sometimes that's what's happening to our kids today. But they don't have a support system that we had, which makes a difference. Because, see, all they see in many situations, they see predominantly White faces. Sometimes I just look at television. Sometimes I just click it off.	6:30
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I can't tell—I can't tell you.	6:59
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Because, I mean, there's just all in the world. Whereas we could get together. Now, when you came in, you probably didn't see a child in the yard. If you did, you surprised me. I'm talking coming up in here. But see, when we were coming up, we were clique-ish, gang-ish, and we would always be together. Be out. And we would be, maybe our parents didn't talk about certain things, but we probably were discussing important issues which we didn't know were important.	7:01
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But see, nowadays, children, a lot of them don't have a chance to. I don't want to sound like what I'm going to say. But okay, let's say Jean's daughter, we don't have any children. Jean daughter probably played with children who were on the same level of thinking. Am I right?	7:35
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yeah. I think it is.	8:05
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Parents were probably on the same level of thinking as Jean. Whereas we have children who do not get much thinking, in terms of what they want to be, and things that would help them to establish goals, and things like that. Whereas we would see these things, and we would discuss them. I think it made a difference in our lives.	8:06
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Although there are many people when we were coming up, didn't go to school. Many people didn't do anything with their lives. Many people. But I think we have more people. We had more people then, than we have now. Sometimes we think of us as being a lost generation. And going back to school, because this is what you wanted to do.	8:33
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	I often say this, too. Back when I was going to school, all of us had an opportunity to be something, and to be somebody. If you didn't want to be in the dramatics club, you could be in the band. If you didn't want to be in the band, you could be a cheerleader. If you didn't want to be a cheerleader, you could be on the patrol force. But every face you saw that was actually participating and doing something, was a Black face.	8:55
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And sometimes we sort of get a little bit saddened by the number of Black children, I'm not into [indistinct 00:09:37] and whatever, that we see this actually taking the leadership role they don't have, but maybe two on the cheering squad.	9:26
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And it's token, I mean—	9:49
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Just everything.	9:50
Jean Stovall McDuffie	—it's almost like a law to have two.	9:51
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Right. So, see—	9:53
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And one. Even when we were doing things at school, they'd say, "Well now, we've got to get a Black."	9:55
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Because now, I can remember when I was coming up, I could open a meeting and close a meeting. I could have a meeting, I could chair a meeting. But there are very few Black children today who can open up a meeting and close it. We can chair a meeting. Just simple things.	10:01
Jean Stovall McDuffie	It's because they don't—	10:20
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	See, they don't get the opportunity.	10:22
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Opportunity. So, I think it really changed things when we started going to school with, when the schools were mixed up, because I think our students lost out. They haven't become leaders like we were. You just could lead, like Lillie Mae said, you could lead almost anything, because you had a chance.	10:23
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Because now I—	10:46
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I think that's important, too, to give children something to do. And if they don't have it to do, they'll never do it. And we started very early being in the student council, and working on the newspapers, and things like that. That's when we lost out on some of our school activities. I think our students have lost out.	10:48
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I actually think, I don't know, maybe all of them are losing out. Maybe they don't care as much for the school's extracurricular things as we did. We took a lot of pride in doing things for our school. And everybody, like I said, in the neighborhood, everybody knew what you were doing. If you were, I mean, all of the people were involved in what you were doing in school.	11:11
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And, Jean, if something happens now, if something happens to a person in the old neighborhood, right now, 50 years later, you could always see that neighborhood appear. If there is a funeral, and we have been separated for 30 and 40 years.	11:38
Jean Stovall McDuffie	If something happen.	11:59
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	If a funeral happens, you are going to always see people. Which I think says something.	12:01
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yeah. You can count on seeing the people from a long time ago, more than the new acquaintances that you've met. Because people are a little bit more close. It's kind of interesting, though. And we've also, Black people in Charlotte have also sort of been scattered, too. And we're living all over Charlotte. I mean we have, some people came to my house yesterday, they never, they are Black, they had never been on my side of town.	12:08
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I had to give them directions, like it was out of town. Their zip code is two-eight. They even lived beyond, maybe close to Matthews. Never been on my side of town. But now, they are not from Charlotte. Yeah, they were not from here. But they'd never even been on—They said, "Oh, Jean, this is a nice neighborhood." This no—	12:42
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But now, do have actually had any—see what word, I'm getting slow on words. But to have actually to have anybody to just serving, to show, what word do I want to say, Jean, to actually show prejudice. I can't say prejudice. But firsthand prejudice to me, in high school, I was not able to really think about anything. The things that I was more or less aware of, was things that everybody was aware of, like going downtown.	13:08
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Well, I kind of remember, see I always, what struck me in high school, and I always thought it was just really awful that we had to go to the circus and the fair on different days. And I even resent that to this day. I took my children once to each event, just to say they've been. But it's something that I don't go to, because see, I remember having to go just once, on one day out of the week when we were growing up. They let all the Black children go to the circus and to the fair. Maybe some more of the things that they would have that we couldn't go to all of them. I remember that. I remember not being able to try on clothes in town.	13:49
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Oh, yeah. Now that—but I was thinking about somebody to actually to confront me with any racial slurs.	14:37
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And say something.	14:43
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And I'm sure it happened. I'm sure if I would really call back, I'm sure we passed by some children, and they probably yelled—	14:44
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Oh, yeah.	14:50
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And we probably yelled something back. But just to really think about it right now, I cannot.	14:53
Jean Stovall McDuffie	See, I remember that they didn't have all the books that we needed when we were—	14:53
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Oh, yeah.	14:54
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Books, that we used to have to get our books. We couldn't go to the public library uptown to get our books. And we had to get them from the Brevard Street branch. I remember that. I didn't seem to resent that so much as I resented the fair and the circus.	14:59
Rhonda Mawhood	And you said not being able to try on clothes?	15:22
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Well, in the stores uptown. Now, they took your money right good. And I can remember now. I remember my father's always very friendly and all, with everybody. Really very friendly, a nice man. But I was looking back, I don't resent it too much then, but I sort of, I know how hard it was to always be trying to be pleasant and everything to everybody. Just some people could think he was a nice man taking care of his family. Probably had to do a lot of stuff that he didn't feel like doing in that time.	15:25
Jean Stovall McDuffie	See, my mother didn't work hard as speaking, and laughing, and grinning, and all. He had to do that. He probably, sometimes he might have didn't want to do it. I know I don't want to do it some days.	16:01
Rhonda Mawhood	Do you remember your—I'm sorry, please.	16:13
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	No, I was going to say one thing that I think about, too, is that there were grocery stores in our neighborhood, and they were owned by White people. There were two that I remember. And what they would do, they would let people run bills. And that kind of came back from people living on the farm.	16:16
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Sharecroppers.	16:43
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	It's kind of, in a way, sharecropping. Seemed like they could never get their bill paid.	16:44
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Paying on it.	16:48
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	They'd pay on it.	16:50
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I think it was a way of the White people keeping customers, too.	16:53
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Yeah, probably so.	16:57
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Let them have it, because if they let a whole lot of people have their groceries, that was just economics, that, "Well, we know we're not going to get our money this week, but all of it this week, but we'll still let them have it." You know, you might owe them 30, and go in and pay 15, and get 15 more.	16:59
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And next time, you might owe them 17.	17:14
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yeah. That's the way they used to do it.	17:17
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	They used to add a little bit.	17:18
Jean Stovall McDuffie	We had that, too, in all the stores in our area, too.	17:19
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Now, we didn't have them in all, because there was Mr. White.	17:22
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Mr. Pitman did, but I don't—	17:25
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Mr. White was a Black, he owned the store. And he didn't run bills.	17:26
Jean Stovall McDuffie	They probably stopped it.	17:32
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	You had to pay for it. And there was a Black, that was later on, a Black group of brothers opened up Watson's. They opened up a store. And I think Black people were a little more afraid to let people have money. Probably it was because they themself did not have enough capital—	17:35
Jean Stovall McDuffie	That's probably true.	18:04
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	—to keep the store going.	18:04
Rhonda Mawhood	But most of the businesses that you and your families patronized were Black-owned businesses?	18:09
Jean Stovall McDuffie	No.	18:13
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	No.	18:13
Rhonda Mawhood	They were White. Oh, I see.	18:13
Jean Stovall McDuffie	No. When you say we didn't have a lot of money, now we weren't doing a whole lot of spending of money. But we paid our rent and everything was White, and the grocery store, we had the little corner store. But we went to the A&P on Friday.	18:18
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Now, the A&P, at stores like that, you could not—	18:30
Jean Stovall McDuffie	No, you couldn't.	18:30
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	You couldn't—	18:30
Jean Stovall McDuffie	No, you had to pay him.	18:32
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But those stores like—	18:40
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Like Mr. Pitman.	18:41
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	—Mr. Ben Hoffmeyer, which was a White man, see, he had a regular full-scale grocery store. And a lot of people who lived in the Fairview Homes actually bought their groceries from Mr. Ben Hoffmeyer.	18:42
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Oh, groceries from him. Okay. Okay. Well, see, we didn't get our groceries from up there, where Bobby Jean's mama worked. We got our groceries from A&P. And we used to go up there to pick up the stuff that we needed every day. We seemed to have gone to the store a little bit more, too.	18:55
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Yeah, people used to go to the store.	19:15
Jean Stovall McDuffie	You used have to go to the store all the time. I guess people that have these real big refrigerators and things. So, you just had to go a lot.	19:20
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Now, Jean, for a while we didn't have a refrigerator. We had a icebox.	19:25
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Well, that's what we had, too. We had them til we—	19:29
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	He would come around—	19:32
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And buy you about the ice.	19:32
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And that was an occupation that somebody would come around and sell ice.	19:36
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And one of my jobs to do at home was empty the ice pan, under the refrigerator. Everybody had to do that. Or else the water would run out all over the floor.	19:41
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And then, I remember, too, that my parents used to have a little, now my youngest brother did not remember that, but they used to have a garden where Double Oaks School is right now. They would go down there. Because I'd never heard my parents argue. And I said, that must be where they would go and argue, because we just never heard them argue when we were children.	19:49
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Now, my mother used to be upset sometimes, but I had never heard them arguing when we were children. And I would say, "That must be where they went." And also they went because it saved them on their grocery bill, too. They had a little garden down there. And so, people did like gardening. And people used to have a hog somewhere, maybe somebody in the country would take care of a hog for them, and—	20:17
Jean Stovall McDuffie	LeJay? Did he go?	20:51
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	I don't know.	20:54
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I wonder what he did with my car keys.	20:55
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	He put them right on the table, honey.	20:57
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I just felt in my pocket. I'm sorry.	20:59
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	That's okay. So, any questions now? We'll leave it for you.	21:02
Rhonda Mawhood	Well, let me see. Well, do you remember how your parents disciplined you, if you were ever bad when you were children?	21:08
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yes. We got spankings, whippings. Not a whole lot of them. And it wasn't anything like you couldn't look at TV, I couldn't have the car, or anything like that. So, if you got a whipping, it was pretty bad. So, I mean, that was all you needed. You might not get to go somewhere that you were supposed to go. But otherwise it was, like I said, a whipping was all you need. That was a big punishment.	21:18
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Same. You'd keep them from following you from going into a game.	21:52
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Or something like that. But there wasn't no such thing as time out. You can't go up to the movies, or nothing like that. I mean, that was just unheard of. There wasn't that much to do. I mean, cut the TV out for something? We didn't have one.	21:54
Rhonda Mawhood	And Mrs. Stovall, earlier you started to mention going downtown when you were talking about being aware of Jim Crow laws, and so forth, you were talking about going downtown.	22:12
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Going downtown. And we only had one restroom that we could use downtown.	22:25
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Down at Belk's.	22:30
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And that was what it—	22:32
Jean Stovall McDuffie	In Belk's basement.	22:33
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Well, maybe too, Kress's.	22:34
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Kress's had them?	22:36
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Then what was the store right on the corner of Trade and Tryon?	22:37
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Kress's.	22:47
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	On the righthand side?	22:47
Jean Stovall McDuffie	That was Kress. I think all of them might have had a rest room downstairs somewhere. But I know Belks had that little one down there, where they used to sell the material.	22:48
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And with the water fountain, now, you know where it said White and Black? And when you—	22:56
Jean Stovall McDuffie	You'd see people eating, and you couldn't eat.	23:03
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Eat. Right. You might be hungry down there, but if you could get anything, I know we used to sometimes get something from town.	23:05
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And you had to take it out.	23:16
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Take it out and eat it. Those type things.	23:17
Jean Stovall McDuffie	It was rough. Those, you remember it. But so you didn't go up to the counter and ask for anything. So nobody ever had to say to us, "Well, I'm sorry," because you didn't go. I mean, you went to town because you knew that you could walk in there and just go to the back, and there would be people there, and you could get your hot dog and a soda, and you had to take it out.	23:25
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And when you would ride on the bus, you'd know that you always have to go in the back. And even though that bus that went from, excuse me, the Fairview Homes, basically, that Black people. But they wanted you to sort of start in the back. Just in case—	23:50
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Start from the back, and sit to the back. And there was a sign on the bus that would tell you, "Black patrons, please seat from the rear. White from the front." And then the bus drivers could tell you to get up and let a White person sit down, and you did. And they could get up, if you just sort of got on the bus and sat in the middle of the bus, and then one fella, they would tell people to move all the time. This was awful.	24:11
Rhonda Mawhood	Thank you. Maybe on a happier note, I'm wondering around what age you would start courting or dating in junior high, or high school? Could you tell me a little bit about that?	24:52
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I probably, I was just talking about this last night to somebody. I said to a student, to kids, I don't think maybe 10th or 11th grade on. I mean, the boys, you couldn't go out too much with them. They could come to your house. I mean, you weren't going anywhere too much, except maybe to the—you just had a date like for the prom. But people could always maybe go to your house. They were about the 10th grade.	25:04
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And a lot of times—	25:27
Jean Stovall McDuffie	10th, 11th, the 12th grade. But a lot of girls and fellas didn't even think about talking until they were in the maybe 11th grade. On the other hand, when you did talk to somebody, you just seem to not to have had very many boyfriends above, you just almost married the first person who ever said anything to you.	25:29
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	I think we did a lot of—	25:51
Jean Stovall McDuffie	We went out in groups.	25:52
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Right. We did a lot of group dating for a while. We liked boys. And that was one, well, the contest between the high schools. See, the boys from Second Ward would like sometime a girl from West Charlotte, and sometimes it led to World War II. And so, that would create a conflict. But I think, really, by the time we got in the, maybe—I met Jack when I was in the 10th grade. And he used to come over to my house, and that. So, I would say, maybe about 10th.	25:53
Jean Stovall McDuffie	10th grade. The boys would come to your house. You couldn't hardly go nowhere with them. And you certainly couldn't go nowhere if they had a car. But then there were only, in fact, two boys in the whole high school who had a car.	26:31
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	You might be walking, and they might be—Now, I remember, Jack don't, he doesn't remember when I met him. But really, when I met Jack, I guess it was probably eight of us. It could have been 10 girls. I should have had some of those pictures of my friends when we were in high school. But probably about eight or 10 of us were sitting in a basketball game. And Jack has a different story. And there was about maybe the same number of boys behind us. And no, the boys were from Second Ward. And their cousin Willie Neal, and I had on a green suit, believe it or not, whatever.	26:44
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And Willie Neal say, "Jack," but Jack, their brother's relatively shy. Say, "Jack likes the one in the green suit," or whatever. And so, when we left, they came. And he walked me home, and he said, "I'll be able to see you tomorrow," whenever, Sunday. Because my friend was talking to a boy from Second Ward, and he was going to come over. And when they came, they all came in this big group.	27:19
Jean Stovall McDuffie	That's the way they did it.	27:49
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	We did a lot of things in groups.	27:50
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Group. Our parents tell them that people would just be somewhere by themselves. It was different. Yeah.	27:52
Rhonda Mawhood	So, when you graduated from high school, now, I know you went on. Can you tell me about where you went on with your education?	28:02
Jean Stovall McDuffie	A little, maybe.	28:09
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Now, when I graduated from high school, I went to Winston-Salem State.	28:11
Rhonda Mawhood	Okay.	28:15
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And I went to Pennsylvania State University. I got my master's at Pennsylvania State University.	28:21
Rhonda Mawhood	And when was that, Mrs. Stovall, at Pennsylvania State? Was that much later or right away, after?	28:31
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	There was no, let me, I don't remember years. But that was probably about—	28:36
Jean Stovall McDuffie	You probably went to get your degree about '60 or '61.	28:45
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	They know better than I do.	28:47
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Because you got yours before I went back.	28:50
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And during the time we were teaching, we had to do a lot of, every five years you would have to go and get your teaching certificate renewed. So, we've dotted—And the reason, and I'm switching, I'm going to sound trouble on that tape, but the reason I went to Penn State, is that somebody said that I needed to go to a school that was probably integrated.	28:58
Jean Stovall McDuffie	To get your master's.	29:33
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	To get my master's. Because I had gone to a segregated school. And during that time, see, we were thinking, we knew that it was coming. And so, that was also, I guess, a word of advice there.	29:33
Jean Stovall McDuffie	So it wouldn't be cut, perhaps.	29:51
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Right.	29:53
Jean Stovall McDuffie	But everybody did break it all open at Columbia, and NYU.	29:54
Rhonda Mawhood	So, how was that, going to Pennsylvania after you had grown up in Charlotte all this time?	30:03
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	It was a really good experience. It was a good experience. First of all, when I got on the campus, and this is true, I saw this beautiful building they call a hub. And the first thing I said is that, "You mean I can go in that building?" Those were my first thoughts. And if I ever wanted to learn about myself, that's really where I learned a lot. Because there, I was dealing with people who were there for a purpose. And they really helped me.	30:09
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	I would say we would go to the hub every day about 10:00, I believe. And that's where we would learn a lot of Black history. That's where we began to appreciate ourselves, the few of us who were there. Because one thing now in the Black race, and this is no secret, we have our form of beauty. The closest thing to White, it used to be. That's what they would say that those were the prettier girls. They would say, "Oh, she's cute."	30:57
Jean Stovall McDuffie	If they were light.	31:33
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Yeah.	31:34
Jean Stovall McDuffie	You've probably heard this.	31:35
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	So, a little Black girl like me, they would always say, "You a cute little Black girl." This is true. That's how they refer to people of darker hues, when they wanted to say that they were cute. Now, I always wondered about that, too. Because why couldn't they just say I was a cute little girl?	31:37
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But when I went to Penn State, there were these men that were working on their doctorates. And they would sit there, and they would discuss a lot of things I've never heard of before. But one thing they taught me that we in America had no basis of beauty. In Africa, it might be the person with the biggest nose. But we have always put ours right. He said, "And look at you, look at your skin." And I had nice skin. And just talk about my skin, and talk about the things that he saw that they would see that would make us look good, and which gave me a better identity.	31:56
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And the first time I heard, and I say it all the time, about good hair. And I learned this at Penn State. We said, "Oh, she has good hair. She has this, that kind of hair." And this boy, and his name was Rudy, and he was trouble. And he said, when he would walk into his classroom, he would start out and say, "Who has the best hair in here?" And they would look around with the most, the child who's mostly caucasian with the straightest hair.	32:37
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But he said, "No, I have the best hair in here, because my hair is more of what it should be, like the people of the [indistinct 00:33:20]." So, I became educated at Penn State in the hub.	33:09
Rhonda Mawhood	Now, was this a formal class?	33:29
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	No, that was just a group work. See, there was so few of us there, so when you see each other, we would be, you'd be way across the campus.	33:33
Jean Stovall McDuffie	"Please come over here."	33:42
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	"Come on. Come on. We'll be in the hub today." And these men were working on their doctorates, and things like that. And we would go down, we would cheer them up. Because sometime they would present, and they would maybe turn back in. We'd maybe have talked about it for a week. And then that dissertation would be turned back, and we would try to calm—that's probably all I could do. We would comfort them, and that type of thing.	33:44
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But those people really helped me, before they talked about Black was beautiful. It really helped me to see that I had been brainwashed. I think what we were saying, as we were talking, we had been brainwashed. But nobody had just come out and said, "You've been brainwashed." So, I think that's what I learned. And that is probably one of the best experiences I ever had.	34:06
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Well, when I came, and I also did a paper there. And I should have had that out, on Black attitudes toward desegregation because it was right around the time we were desegregating. So, this professor had every Black person almost there to do a paper on Blacks' attitude toward desegregation in the South. And I had to come home and do a survey here, of some of the teachers in Charlotte. And we had very, some was against it. Some was for it. And some had no opinion. And I should have had that. But talking helped me bring—But that was really a wonderful experience. And I'm glad that I had that experience.	34:41
Rhonda Mawhood	What were your feelings about the coming desegregation, Mrs. Stovall, at that time?	35:40
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	I'd probably been brainwashed a little bit, too. Thinking that maybe things would be a little bit better if we were in school together. But now, I don't know. I think material-wise, and even sitting up talking, like talking with you, and like at Penn State, I learned to accept White people in one sense. Because there was a girl, and she was just real, real friendly. And I'll come back to your question. I remember a lot. I'm an elderly, please.	35:45
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	She just took onto me real quickly, and she would come in my room, and she would put her feet on my bed with her shoes on. Now, in a Black family, that is a no-no. See, a lot of things people think about us that it's not true. And a lot of things we thought about you and they're not true, both positively and negative. But when I went to her room, she was putting her feet on her chair, too. On her bed, too.	36:37
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	So, I got over the feeling that she was just doing that because I was a Black person, and she was White. So, I guess that's the first time I really had a real experience, that up-close contact with Whites. Now this, I did learn this at Penn State, too. You know how to study better than we do. When this little girl would say, "I am going into my room and study," she closed the door, and she went in her room and studied.	37:03
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Being at TC, and somebody said we were going to study, we might close the door. But if you came in, we greeted you. We greeted you. But I think that that was one thing I really observed. That you had better study habits than we did.	37:36
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And the one thing, they were real curious about us. They were really curious about Black people. They thought we were still living in the country, in the old days. And we had to help them on that.	37:56
Jean Stovall McDuffie	With the century.	38:09
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But, it was a good experience. And my first real encounter with White people.	38:21
Rhonda Mawhood	Thank you. And, Mrs. McDuffie, after high school, did you continue your education?	38:25
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yeah. I first went off to college in Atlanta. And I came home, I stayed a year. Then I didn't go back to school for—how long? About seven or eight years. In the meantime, I had gotten married, had two children. So, when I went back to school, I went as I was 24, maybe 25. I graduated when I was 27. Because I was in library school at 28, and I graduated from that at 29. So, I stayed out of school about seven or eight years.	38:36
Jean Stovall McDuffie	So, I started, went to school in the late '50s. And then I started back to college, it was 1962. So, by then, things were changing. And I went back to school just when the students were marching and everything, and getting arrested. And I was in Atlanta when people were—the Selma Bridge, all of that. And when the lady named Liuzzo from Detroit got killed, I was in school. So, the people were marching. And I took part in some marches down in Atlanta.	39:10
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And then busloads of us went up to Washington and Maryland. So, I kind of got involved with the Civil Rights Movement, actively involved. And one time, when I was in Charlotte, I used to just look at the ministers, but it really got kind of rough about '64. That's when it was really bad. Those three, the Chaney and Schwerner, and all them, that's when they got killed. And the minister from Boston, he got killed. All of this happened in '64. That's the year Johnson was elected president.	39:44
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I just remember '64 stands out as a powerful year, because so much was going on in the world. I mean, people were getting killed every day in Alabama and Mississippi. And I went to school with kids who had the hose put on them, and the dogs where they had bitten them, and everything. So, I didn't realize I'd ever, I didn't know I would be down in Atlanta with people who had actually been bitten by dogs, and all that.	40:19
Jean Stovall McDuffie	But a girl showed me where she had been bitten. And if you'd look at her wrist, she show us the tape, if you'd look real close, you could see it when they have that hose on them. And the dog, she's falling down, and the dog was biting her on her leg. This was a girl who went to Atlanta University.	40:47
Jean Stovall McDuffie	So, I never thought, I was just seeing it. I never thought I would meet anybody who actually had been into that. And then, I was so busy trying to get back home, because my children were in Washington. They were pretty good size children then. I had just been gone a year. So, I was really trying to get through and get back.	41:05
Rhonda Mawhood	So, you went away from North Carolina when you continued school?	41:29
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yeah. No, I went to Smith here.	41:32
Rhonda Mawhood	I see.	41:34
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And then, for my master's, I went to Atlanta.	41:35
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh, I see.	41:38
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yeah.	41:39
Rhonda Mawhood	And then you worked in the public library?	41:40
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yeah, I worked downtown at the public library. In fact, I got a North Carolina scholarship where it was paid for. All I had to do was come back and work uptown for two years, which I did.	41:42
Rhonda Mawhood	And that's when the library was integrating?	41:55
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yeah, it was integrated when I first went up there. I had worked up there before I went to library school. I had worked up there five years before I'd gone to school. I went to school and work. I would go to school either morning or night, and work—I worked 40 hours a week. It's just that I just had to work them around my school schedule.	41:58
Rhonda Mawhood	You worked 40 hours a week, and went to school?	42:18
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Mm-hmm. And I had two children. But I had a lot of help. My mother-in-law helped me a lot. Yeah, I worked 40 hours a week. I would be tired when I got up. I was almost—since I stayed tired.	42:33
Rhonda Mawhood	And Mrs. Stovall was saying that at Penn State, that was her first experience with White people.	42:36
Jean Stovall McDuffie	My first experience was working with them at the public library. And it was in 1960. Because, see, when I went to library school, I went to school where there was just a lot of Blacks. We had a lot of White teachers and all, but most of the students were Black. I had a chance, I could have gone to Chapel Hill. But I didn't want to go there, because somebody else had gone there, and they were getting subjected to go home, sticking notes on.	42:43
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And see, I had to leave my children. I had to take them to Washington. And I wanted to get back. So, I went to a school where I could get through it and get back home, because I had, the scholarship money was just for a year or two. So, I just went. First of all, I didn't want to go to Chapel Hill. I'm so glad I didn't go up there. I think it's kind of—I don't know what it would've done to them, but everything you see that it does to some of the people is not very positive.	43:14
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Especially the undergraduates. Maybe the graduate student would do a little bit better. This was years ago. Now, it's not right now. This was like in '64, '65. But when I started working with White people in 1960 at the public library, I wasn't friends with them or anything. I just worked with them. They started, we didn't have just big jobs. I was a page, putting books on the shelf. And they didn't seem to mind that. I mean, you're just putting books on the shelf, and that was it. That's all you could do. So, that was no big problem.	43:40
Jean Stovall McDuffie	So, what happened? All the pages would be together, and then all of the librarians would be together. And maybe the people who were the professional, the clerical staff, they sort of hung together. It was like three groups of people hanging together. But the interesting part about it, it was an eyeopener, because I always thought that, as I said earlier, I thought White people had everything. And then I found out that their lunches were just as skimpy as mine. They were scrambling around for whatever they needed, just like I was.	44:26
Jean Stovall McDuffie	But one thing I do remember, and I always thought that they were always speaking to you, and asking how your children were. And see, I can see how Black people can think that you really just go on and pay attention to what they'll say. You would say, "Well, this person's really nice, they just love me. They ask about me and my children." But if you sat down beside them, if you were acting like you wanted to go to lunch, they resisted.	45:00
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And I remember a lady who, two times I remember, two ladies, they were always smiling and asking me about my children, because I had two little children. And, "Hi Jean. How was those little children?" One time I went to a bathroom in a staff meeting, and everybody saw it, and she wouldn't go in behind me. So, I got her, I remember that about her.	45:28
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Then another lady, when the restaurants and things were integrated uptown, she was always asking me about the children, and how cute they were, and this and that. Then one night I had to work and it was a policy, it was just something that people were trying to do. The restaurants and things had just opened. And so, I said, "Well, I'll come with you all." So, we were going to go down the street to eat, and everybody was trying to be cooperative, and go together, White and Black. But she didn't want to go, because I was going.	45:52
Jean Stovall McDuffie	But see, people would always, they would do that. They would speak to you and everything, and you really didn't know if they really were sincere, until something like that happened. Then you just sort of, I didn't get mad or anything about it. I just sort of knew, that that's the way people would do. It was just going somewhere to eat. You weren't getting into bed with them, or use their washcloth, or something like that.	46:29
Jean Stovall McDuffie	So, ever since then, that has made me just realize that just because somebody was just speaking good, they may not really mean it. A lot of times they don't mean it, even to this day. And we just sort of, I actually think it's sort of a—I want to just—	46:56

Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yeah, I think that's what it is. I don't think there's either a whole lot of like or dislike. I mean, I don't think we like you, is what, dislike as much as—I think it's just about equal. And I think we do a lot of, like, tolerate the differences. That's what it is.	0:01
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Because—	0:19
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I don't know if that's—	0:20
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	—it's so deeply embedded.	0:21
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Mm-hmm.	0:26
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	That it would be hard for people to, now there are people you probably do like pretty well, but on a whole so many things have been embedded in us. And most of it has been against us because we feel like people didn't really know us and yet they have taken little things to degrade us. For instance, I was talking about us getting before an audience like in speaking, but sometimes when we are just really speaking we might not speak as well as you do. And children will sometimes laugh at other children because they're speaking folly. And I say, but suppose they had taken you from a country and brought you to another country and you didn't know the language, you probably would not have been able to speak as well as we do. But yet we are held accountable for something that is not really our fault.	0:26
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	I used to always say when we would have a test, White kids would just eat English up. But when it actually came up on a test where you got to mark if it stated correctly or not, but when it actually came to the rules there was not that much difference in the children and knowing the rules, it was just that they had heard it spoken correctly. So if I'm going to say, "She are in my home all the time," when I see it, I think that's correct. But where you have heard, "She is," then you are going to mark that answer.	1:50
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And I think that by us knowing this and by us seeing how we are held responsible for so many things that we did not do then that probably makes us very doubtful about most people of the other race. And we sort of feel like you need somebody to look down on, and we were there so you make yourself look good to make us look bad. And nobody told the truth for such a long, long time. They just keep finding things to enslave us with. I think that's probably what some of us feel and you probably feel like and you are falling for it. So many people are falling to be enslaved with different things.	2:31
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	So maybe that's why we don't feel like, and you probably feel the same way, that most people would really, I guess rather be with their own kind and that comes from being brought up in a separate environment.	3:52
Rhonda Mawhood	Well, thank you very much.	4:22
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Mm-hmm. Because I'm going to tell you when you asked me when I first got this in the mail, I really thought it was a group of Black people do it. (laughs) And that came, I thought about it again. Now—	4:24
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I don't know. For some reason I kind of thought it was somebody Black.	4:40
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Mm-hmm.	4:44
Jean Stovall McDuffie	But still I went. Plus, I had the experience of doing one at the public library and the person was White.	4:46
Rhonda Mawhood	Okay. Well, our team is both and there are two professors directing it and one is Black and one is White. The woman who is—on our team, there are seven people, there are six of us who are researchers and there's one who is researcher but she also coordinates everything. And she's Black, she's a graduate student also at Duke. So we're about half and half. Some people who have been interviewed have requested to be interviewed by a Black student, and that's fine, we send a Black student.	4:53
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Well, it really didn't make any difference to me, but I was just really happy that maybe somebody was going to do our history. And we are all guilty. We are guilty. We'll say that somebody is writing our history and they don't really know our history, because I go to the library and I just have gobs of books and there are people out here writing books for Black children. But there are just so few Black books. And every time I'm fussing to my sister, she said, "Well, why don't you write some yourself?" Now, because I'm getting to the point, we talk about identity so much, I hate to give Black children books now with nothing but White people in them. But see, I'm sitting here saying that, so why don't I do something about it? So, I mean I didn't feel like I wouldn't talk with you, a White person. It was just that I was hoping that we had finally decided that we needed to do it ourselves.	5:19
Rhonda Mawhood	The colleges that we're working with in the different areas are historically Black colleges, like Johnson C. Smith, for example. Yeah, we're really—It's important to have Black students doing the work. And it's important for the White students who are involved to try to understand the history from Black points of view. To try to understand, not to assume that we know what people were thinking or doing until they tell us what they were thinking and doing.	6:31
Jean Stovall McDuffie	See, I worked with so many White people now and where I work now and all the students and most everybody's White and I never said, so I'm kind of glad to see you doing. I never see them doing a reading anything about us or writing. When we have our Black history program downstairs, they don't even come.	7:06
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	That's true.	7:25
Jean Stovall McDuffie	You don't ever see nothing back. So, I'm always just real happy when I see somebody else trying to learn about us. Because I always ask them, I mean, you know. I just don't—I wonder what is the difference? Is it do you not want to know about us? Or do you assume they never ask you anything about yourself? Or what you do if something happened on in the TV or on in the paper, they never come up to you and say, "Well, I read about so and so, that sure was nice? Can you tell me a little bit more about—?" They never do that, never.	7:25
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Because again I think, "Well, they're not interested in that." But the only thing that they will sort of discuss with is maybe some sports and maybe somebody on TV singing or dancing. But otherwise they don't ask you anything else about what's going on in the Black community. And it disappoints me because it makes you feel like "They had to read this in the paper, maybe they had to look like—they know I went to Smith. Like they say, 'Oh gee, that was really nice what I read about Johnson C. Smith.'" It's like you don't even exist. It's like this didn't happen.	8:04
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And it would be nice sometimes if they would come up and say, "Well, I read about that Black girl who was appointed." So, I said I only worked with one White woman who used to do that. Her name was Millie. She would always let me know that she had read something and she would ask me, "Do you know him? Do you know where he went to school?" But the rest of them they just, they don't acknowledge that somebody Black has done something or a Black school has achieved something. Makes you feel like you just overlooked. I'm sure you've heard that before.	8:42
Rhonda Mawhood	Well, that's part of the reason as I said that we're doing this project in particular is because for whatever reason, Black history of this particular period in general, but at this particular period has been overlooked. And it has—	9:18
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Black history, period, has been overlooked.	9:35
Rhonda Mawhood	Yes, ma'am.	9:38
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Because you would be surprised at how little Black history children are getting in school. They are trying to do a little bit of it. But now when we were going to school where they used to have Black History Week.	9:42
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Month.	9:57
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Whatever.	9:57
Jean Stovall McDuffie	A week. Yeah.	9:57
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Black History, it was Black History Week. So we did learn a little bit about some Black famous people that we could be proud of. And you do need to know something that somebody has done in your family, in your race, anywhere. That just makes you feel good. But see I guess the people who were going to school when Jean and I were going, very few of them knew anything about anybody, but probably George Washington Carver. Who?	9:57
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And Booker T. Washington.	10:36
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And Booker T. Washington. See, but that was probably the extent of what they knew. And like—	10:36
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Marian Anderson, maybe.	10:44
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	I was getting ready to say, well they always equate us with being able to sing. And tape still on maybe I shouldn't say—	10:45
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Dance.	10:53
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Somewhere I read in the paper, we were talking about integration they say, "Well, what's going to happen when they integrate the school?" And the man said, "The pictures will look better and the voices. The choir—" Said "Choir will sound better." (McDuffie and Stovall laugh) So they have always equated us with being able to sing.	10:54
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And dance.	11:10
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And dance.	11:10
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And run.	11:10
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Right. And run. By us putting our dark spot that would give your pictures, a little bit of light. But it would give a little variety which would make look better. But I still think we have a long way to go. And somewhere we say that for the first 10 years you sort of accepted us, and then now people are kind of coming out. It's more of what people actually feel. They don't even try to—Look how you looking at me. They don't even try. Now they just, you sort of know they don't want you.	11:19
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Like when I was saying about going to eat dinner in the evening. But see, everybody would really be trying to try to go because it was the lot everybody, "You going? Come on, let's go." So everybody was making a big effort to go and eat together and everything. And then people just stopped making the effort. I guess just how I feel like. I always ask, I even remember used to be invited to parties at White folks' houses. I never did like to go because they were always so far out and I had to come back home by myself. So, I just quit going.	12:01
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I know White couple used to invite me. I said—Well, the girl and I still have lunch. I said, "Lynn, I can't come way out there now." I appreciate them inviting me and everything. But Lynn the one that shows up at everything, now she has always sort of been around and the thing about she's from Pennsylvania. It was an interesting story about her and another little White girl from South Carolina and myself, the three of us were going there to pick up some cakes by the library.	12:36
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And so we were coming back in the car. The one from South Carolina said, "Oh, isn't this nice? All three of us is riding about." We were stuck in a little car, it was a little sports car. We were just sort of trying to—And then she said, "When I was growing up," and see this is the catch right there, "my best friend was Black." So then Lynn was driving. So Lynn said, "But what happened?" And so Lynn just said, "When I was growing up, I didn't know any Black people." She didn't know any, she said, "But when I went to college, I had a Black college roommate," because she went to college in Chicago. She said, "So I asked," but what she asked me, "But what happened? I used to play with—" But what happened? She couldn't answer her. The White girl from South Carolina couldn't answer. But the one from Pennsylvania, she said she didn't grow up with Black people. She didn't even know anybody Black. She lived in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Right in the area.	13:13
Rhonda Mawhood	Okay.	14:16
Jean Stovall McDuffie	That's where she was from. She said all the people she know was the person who cooked for the family and they treat her like a family member. So it is a difference in White people. See, they used to play with Black children a long time ago in the South. Everybody played together but at a certain age they stop.	14:16
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And they still do now.	14:37
Jean Stovall McDuffie	They still do it now.	14:37
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Even in Charlotte where the communities are integrated, they still play together.	14:40
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Mm-hmm. Yeah.	14:45
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But then they come a time when they realize, I guess—	14:46
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I think it's when they start dating. It's the dating thing that stops them.	14:48
Rhonda Mawhood	But did you play with White children when you were growing up? Doesn't sound like you did.	14:54
Jean Stovall McDuffie	No, we didn't even know any.	14:57
Rhonda Mawhood	Okay.	14:59
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Didn't know one by name.	15:00
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Mm-mm. I never known any.	15:01
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	That's I was saying and when I said that I was telling the truth—	15:08
Jean Stovall McDuffie	These are people who kind of live out in the country way down where maybe just big old farms and maybe White, Black, White share—	15:10
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Black sharecroppers' children would play. But, no, that didn't happen here.	15:21
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And one other thing. You can cut the tape off. [INTERRUPTION 00:15:30]	15:26
Rhonda Mawhood	Yes, ma'am. So you're saying you work at the community.	15:28
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I work at the community college. And unless I could see now as just a revealing thing, the way people feel about the Black male, I remember when I first started working at '69, there used to be a little Black fellow, he used to walk around in Khakis and he had on a cap. And the two librarians, they would say 10 years older than I. And they used to say, "What is he doing in here? Follow him." "Don't follow me." He was a student. And looking back, I think about that and I said, that was awful. It started somewhere then, the mistrust, he couldn't come in that building. The fact somebody said, "What's he doing in here?" So now if they're in there, a White man came up to me the other day, he said, "Those three boys over there in the corner making fuss. I'm trying to study." Sometimes it's just always after them. I mean they're not that bad.	15:31
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But somebody said—	16:33
Jean Stovall McDuffie	See, because they have, it's been so much written. I went over there. He said, "They were saying something." So, I just went over and told them to keep their voices down. And they did. But he was trying to make an issue up. I said, "Well, what is going on?" It's like they don't want to see them. It's really bad. I asked you when—At first, I asked you about it, I said, "Did you ask them?"	16:34
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I'm really, whatever I do now, I try to put the Black male first. Asked somebody wanted somebody to give up their seat for me something recently. And they didn't ask the person. I said, "Well, wait a minute, let's ask him. He may not want to give up a seat. Don't just get up and give so and so your seat." And I didn't like the way they spoke to him. I said, "We got to stop doing this." We got to say, "Do you mind, let my nephew sit down," or something. Speak to our men a little bit better. We can't—relearn how to speak to them, be nice. We can't expect other people to do it.	17:04
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And people always blaming things on television. But I think with television, make you believe what they want you to believe. And they have said so much about the role of the Black man until see they have the Black man sometime blaming himself. Not the real Black men who know who they are, but some children and teenagers who really don't know who they are, they began to think, "Well, we aren't going to ever do anything. We can't do anything. We are no good." They start thinking that themselves. They, in other words, I think television really puts a lot of ideas in people's head, don't you?	17:46
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I do too. Oh, yeah.	18:32
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	I really do.	18:34
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I'm almost to the point where I don't like it now. Just for a few things I still watch.	18:35
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And I guess that's basically how we feel about the whole situation. We feel that a lot of good has come out of, I guess, integration. We still have a long, long way though. And it has to be where people really, just like you said, this has been a long time and you are a child and much of what you have seen has not been negative. And a lot of what we have seen has not been negative in the sense of our seeing it. But being aware of it, it was negative.	18:43
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Well, now tell me how is it in Canada?	19:29
Rhonda Mawhood	Well—	19:35
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Is it as bad as it is here?	19:36
Rhonda Mawhood	It's bad. It depends on—	19:39
Jean Stovall McDuffie	On outer—	19:40
Rhonda Mawhood	—where. On where you are. There's a very small Black population in Canada, but there are different areas. It's sort of there are large areas where there are none. But then—	19:41
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Are they from the islands and Africa, places like that?	19:55
Rhonda Mawhood	Well, I'm from Montreal and there's a Black community in Montreal, which is mainly people from the Caribbean, English speaking people from the Caribbean. They've been there since the early 20th century, really a long time. And there's an established neighborhood with a community center that was set up in about 1920 or so. I used to live in that neighborhood and it's really an established neighborhood with Black businesses and so forth. And then in Montreal is also starting to be more Haitian immigration since the last 10 or 15 years. And also African immigration now mostly from French speaking Africa, West Africa. But there's a community of maybe 1500 or so Africans now in Montreal. And it's growing. So there are several Black communities within Montreal. And that's quite interesting.	19:58
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I wondered how because I have—Well, my son-in-law went to college in Canada. He's African.	20:47
Rhonda Mawhood	And where did he go to school?	20:52
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Over in Nova Scotia.	20:54
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh. Well, in Halifax there's a very long standing African Canadian community, where people—	20:55
Jean Stovall McDuffie	That's where he went to school.	21:02
Rhonda Mawhood	People, either slaves who escaped or also people who fought for the British in the Revolutionary War. And who got land that way in Canada when Britain lost the war. And so that's quite a long standing community.	21:04
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Catherine lives in Montreal.	21:25
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	I didn't know.	21:26
Rhonda Mawhood	Really?	21:26
Jean Stovall McDuffie	My daughter has a friend who lives there.	21:26
Rhonda Mawhood	Okay.	21:30
Jean Stovall McDuffie	She lives there. They've been there for two years.	21:31
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Is her husband from there?	21:32
Jean Stovall McDuffie	He's from Canada.	21:35
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Okay.	21:35
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Catherine, my daughter's best friend, married a fellow from Montreal. He has the Caribbean descent. Yeah, but he was born there.	21:36
Rhonda Mawhood	Yes. Oh, yes. There are still a lot of problems. Often people assume that if someone's Black that they weren't born in Canada. "So how long have you been here?"	21:47
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And so they were born here. Right.	21:59
Rhonda Mawhood	I'm Canadian like you. And unemployment is a bigger problem for African Canadians than it is for White Canadians. In Montreal, it's pretty bad. And there's also growing White supremacist movements in Canada. Just like in the United States, the KKK seems to be on the up rise. And that's a big problem in Canada too. So I mean the violence against African Canadians, also against Jews, against Native Canadians. That is a problem. That's something that I'm concerned about.	22:01
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Well, yesterday I saw an interesting—You probably saw this in the Charlotte paper where they were the views of White Americans against—Did you see that?	22:35
Rhonda Mawhood	No, ma'am.	22:43
Jean Stovall McDuffie	It's just a little short art—	22:44
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And it says that the people, the age groups, it's interesting that the people who are 18 to 30 are more prejudiced than the ones who are 30 to 49. And then it picks back up, say from 50 something to say 80, they're back. They say it's just a little article, but it was in the paper and it's really something 18 to 30, that's young. And so the people who are really trying to make it go out of this are people who are our age, in this from 30 up until about 55.	22:45
Rhonda Mawhood	Well—	23:30
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Because it happened, the civil rights movement happened I guess when we were coming of age. And so now, like you said, the 18 year olds. Everything was over about 30 years. And it's been that long.	23:30
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	You say from 18 to?	23:49
Jean Stovall McDuffie	To 30.	23:50
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	To 30, they are—	23:51
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Very prejudiced. They're the most prejudiced people in the world. 18-30. It's in yesterday's paper. I read it twice to be sure because I wanted to get—	23:51
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Well, I can kind of see that, Jean.	24:02
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And I can see the older people, the older people who were like 65 on up, they're probably still, but sometimes they're surprised.	24:04
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But children who probably—Now those children have gone to an integrated school all of their lives and a lot of them see, probably don't have good memories. See? And that's probably what it is.	24:13
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Mm-hmm.	24:31
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Where we have—	24:31
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Good memories.	24:31
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Good memories.	24:31
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Being, in a—	24:31
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	We have memories of being separate but not —	24:36
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Unhappy.	24:40
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	No, we have memories of being—Right.	24:43
Jean Stovall McDuffie	And we were not unhappy.	24:47
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	But they have been in a classroom—	24:50
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Full of pressure and everything.	24:51
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Right. So therefore they wouldn't have good memories.	24:53
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Yeah, I think the kids now, I don't think they having any good fun in school like we did.	24:58
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	No, I don't think so.	25:03
Jean Stovall McDuffie	I think they're just off in a lot of pressure.	25:05
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	And then a lot of our children probably were not in the top group. They were probably not in the middle group. Most of them were probably in the bottom group. You writing that down?	25:06
Rhonda Mawhood	No, I'm getting out some forms which I have to ask you to help me fill out. I'm just listening to what you're saying.	25:21
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Okay. So, they probably don't have good memories. And even if you were in a situation anywhere and the person makes you, they have maybe nothing to do with it, but you feel like you were probably not as bright, you're probably not as talented.	25:27
Jean Stovall McDuffie	Look as nice, maybe.	25:51
Lillie Mae Brewer Stovall	Right? Well, all of them look funny to me, but as long as it's looking nice. No way, I'd buy any of those jeans. Jeans that already has holes in them.	25:52
Jean Stovall McDuffie	My sister last year said she—My sister works at a—My sister has never taught a White child in her life, she works in Washington DC. So she was down last year for a year when my mother was sick. And she would come pick me up. But first of all, it was like a cultural shock to her to see so many White children. And then she couldn't understand why they came to school with that hair all stringy, because our girls take a lot of time with their hair and everything. So it's just strange all the way around where, and I never noticed because that's all I see. All this stringy hair, this frizz, I see that all the time. She never saw it until last year. So it just depend on who's doing the, looking in the city. She said, "Look at these children. All that hair."	26:04
Rhonda Mawhood	I have to ask you to help me to fill out just some —	26:56
Rhonda Mawhood	I can turn this off now.	27:00

Item Info

Title:

Jean McDuffie (primary interviewee) and Lille Stovall interview recording, 1993 June 13

Date:

June 13, 1993

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Contributor:

Mawhood, Rhonda Lyn

Description:

Name: Jean Stovall McDuffie; Date of birth: 1935-06-08; Place of birth: Charlotte, NC; Occupation: educator; librarian; Residence: Charlotte, NC. Name: Lille Mae Brewer Stovall; Date of birth: 1924-04-20; Place of birth: Lancaster, SC; Occupation: educator; Residence: Charlotte, NC
Informant ID: 48; Informant ID: 70; Interviewed by: Rhonda Mawhood.

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English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

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Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South interviews, photographs, and project records, circa 1864-2011, bulk 1990-1999

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The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired the Records of the Behind the Veil Oral History Project from the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.

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Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

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Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

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Interview number: 256
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Jean McDuffie (primary interviewee) and Lille Stovall interview recording, 1993 June 13

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1. Jean McDuffie and Lillie Stovall administrative file, 1993

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Jean McDuffie (primary interviewee) and Lille Stovall interview recording, 1993 June 13

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