Bernice Miller (primary interviewee) and Larry Miller interview recording, 1993 June 08
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Karen Ferguson | —[indistinct 00:00:01] and the neighborhood in which you grew up. | 0:01 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Okay. I'll tell you when I was born. I was born in 1930, May 31st, in Greenville, on the corner of Canton and Kendrick Street, which no longer exists because it has been torn—The community has been redeveloped and those streets do not exist. I was born and delivered by a midwife, who was Mama Pfeifer, the lady that Denilles told you about. | 0:03 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | I grew up in the Greenville community. The very first home, I remember, was on the corner of—it was on Craver Lane. That's also in Greenville. It seems like I was about three years old and I can remember being in that house. And we moved from that house to Spring Street, all this is in Greenville, which was a dead end street. And from that house, we moved from Spring Street to Hampton Street, still Greenville. I grew up totally in that community. From Hamilton Street, we moved back to what we call the heart of Greenville. And that was on, at that time, Forest Street, now called Fontana. | 0:37 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | The community was a close-knit community. It was family-oriented. Mrs. Neal said something interesting the other day, and it was true when I was coming along, too, that we didn't visit in homes unless we were granted permission by our parents and the parents of the families. We would play together in someone's yard or in the street if we played ball, but we didn't go in and out of people's homes. That was a standard for the community, I suppose, but yet we were all everybody's children. | 1:39 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | I remember an incident when I was about maybe six or seven. I had gone to our church, which was a Church of God, Anderson. And I learned why they said that, because there were several Church of Gods and they wanted to be designated as from Anderson, Indiana. An incident in which the grandfather, whose name was Barrymore, saw me coming down the street. He thought I was his granddaughter, so he called me. Her name was Hannah, which she later changed to Romenia because she didn't like Hannah. And he jumped off his porch, grabbed me, and spanked me because I was running away from him. Told my mother what had happened and all she said was, "She probably needed a spanking, anyway," but my friend, Hannah, Romenia, I still owe her one. Each time we see each other, we talk about, "I still owe you." | 2:19 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Now, my parents were not—they were from South Carolina. They were from Jenkinsville, South Carolina, in that area. And after they were married, they moved here because of job opportunities being better. Okay. What else is there? It was a rural area more than it was urban at that time. So we farmed. We had gardens and chickens. And nobody had cows. One or two people had some cows around, but not many. Horses. In that community, growing up, I always felt protected. I didn't have any fear of going anywhere in that area because of the older people who were there, and most of them did not work and somebody was always watching over the children. | 3:19 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Now, you ask what we did for fun, and we used to gather together in the evenings after all your chores were done. You would have to have swept the yard. Whatever you were assigned to do, you had to do that. And we would gather in different people's yards. And our yard seemed to be the gathering place. We would play games, such as Ring Around the Rosy and those kind of games. Follow the Leader was my favorite because most of the older kids would lead us down to the creek, which is on Oak Line Avenue, which is now I-77. And we would do all kind of crazy things, like swinging across the creek and walking across and going under. I really liked that. | 4:31 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | We had picnics in the summertime. And in my family, the favorite treat in summer was homemade ice cream and banana pudding. And fried chicken seemed to have been a staple. He wasn't there at that time. What else can I remember from that period? For me, it was a happy time. I had a real happy childhood. | 5:21 |
Larry T. Miller | What about your brothers? | 5:52 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah, I have three brothers. I was the only girl in that group of three boys. One was younger, and I was his caretaker, and the other two were older. And I'd like to tell you an incident about the younger one. At that time, gypsies roamed the land in their carts and with their colorful costumes. And each spring and summer, they would come in that area. This was foreign to us over here. They didn't know. I didn't really know it existed until I was about in the 10th grade. Gypsies would roam the land. They would come with their colorful costumes and their tinkling sounds. | 6:01 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | And in the community that I was in, when spring came, everybody washed their quilts and they would just empty the whole house, let the sun get on it, and burn sulfur. Sulfur was supposed to be a disinfectant. And the women in the community would come to each house, they would take turns going to houses, because quilts and things were heavy to wash. So they would come together and do that spring cleaning, as we call it now, during this time of year. | 6:47 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | And of course, being a girl, I wanted to be with the ladies, but my mother said, "You could help a lot if you would take care of your brother. So go on the front porch and do this and read to him and sing to him," and I did not want to do that. I wanted to be back there so I could hear the gossip. They didn't gossip, to hear the conversation, is what it was like. And I was sitting there sulking and I heard this tinkling and singing coming down the street, and my little brother heard it. He's a happy kind of child. And oh, he started bouncing. It was a group of gypsies. They stopped on the porch and they thought—And he was reaching out and laughing and then they wanted to take him with them. And I said, "Take him." They took him and gave me— | 7:20 |
Larry T. Miller | He was saying you sold him. | 8:15 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | I sold him for 50 cents. | 8:19 |
Larry T. Miller | You sold him. | 8:20 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | This is true. Our house was kind of dead end. The woods were right next to that. The ladies in the back heard the gypsies and they came. My mother came around and she looked, she said, "Where's my baby?" I said, "There he goes." And they were going. He was so happy. He didn't realize what was going on. And my mother ran and said, "Bring my baby. My baby, bring my baby back." And they all started running behind the gypsies. Well, needless to say, I had to give the 50 cents back and we got the brother back. | 8:27 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Now, that's him right there. He says that it's because of me that he's a clinical psychologist and he still hasn't gotten—He said, "You gave me away," and I know it, but he was only about nine months old. He really didn't remember that. But I thought that was interesting. We talk a lot about that. | 9:01 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Another thing we did is, in the evenings, again, the older people would tell us stories about their childhood. And unfortunately, I don't remember too many of them, except one my mother used to tell us about South Carolina and that was when the rabbit and the fox—I don't remember that too well. Maybe it'll come, but I used to love to hear her tell that story over and over again. And adults would play games with us and do quizzes, like—What was that called? What Is This? And that was fun. I always liked that. Some of the neighbors would come over or we'd go over to their house and do that. | 9:22 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | I went to school to Fairview School, the same school that Neals went to, except that they were a little bit ahead of me. Fairview School was also dear to our hearts. It was like another home. Teachers were really concerned about us learning and using our talents. And I remember one teacher in particular, who's now dead, her name was Mrs. Anderson. I was always real skinny. You may not believe it to look at me, but I grew up a skinny child. And some of the kids were teasing me and I had to go to blackboard. I didn't want to go because I was ashamed they were going to kid. So she gave me some advice that I have always followed down here. She said to me, "It doesn't matter what you look like, it doesn't matter what you wear, but it's what is in here that counts." And that counsel has helped me and given me a lot of confidence down through here, but she's dead now. | 10:06 |
Larry T. Miller | [indistinct 00:11:03]. | 11:03 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | In the head, in the brain. | 11:03 |
Larry T. Miller | [indistinct 00:11:07]. | 11:03 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Oh, okay. That's probably in the head. So she said, "You get that knowledge in your head and then you use it as you go along," and I appreciated that. And believe it or not, the kids stopped teasing me. Okay. We went to Fairview school until the seventh grade, for us. Then we would have a big graduation, where the girls wore White and the boys wore their little suits. In fact, I got some pictures in there of several graduations from that seventh grade. | 11:08 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | And from there, we went to what is—we went to West Charlotte, but it is now Northwest Junior High or Middle School, but at that time, it was West Charlotte High. And all it was was a building with classrooms and we didn't have a gym or a cafeteria, but we did learn. We were taught a lot. We were taught a lot about social graces and self-esteem. Teachers would take personal interest in us. In fact, they would come to your homes on occasions and talk to the parents. And that was helpful to us, too. I look at the children who came through that area and most of them have excelled. | 11:39 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | So when we left Fairview, we went to West Charlotte, which was another home for us. The problem we had was having to walk from Greenville to that. And we walked rain, snow, sleet, and shine, that's a fact, until the city extended the bus service to Greenville. And at that time, the bus fare was five cent. And the only time we rode the bus is when it rained or it was extremely bad weather. And if you rode the bus, you were thought to be very, very rich because you had a nickel to pay your bus fare. Isn't that interesting? Then the bus fare went up to seven cents and nobody could afford it. | 12:32 |
Larry T. Miller | What kind of man was your dad? | 13:14 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | My dad. | 13:16 |
Larry T. Miller | Talk about your dad. | 13:16 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | My daddy was a very interesting and a colorful personality. He was just one generation away from the slavery era and he came up through extremely hard times. And his goal was to be dependent on no man, Black or White, for anything. He was self-employed. He was a plasterer contractor. I have some of his records that we keep as a souvenir. And he was very successful at what he did. He provided a home for us, food, clothing and shelter, automobiles, washing machines, which at that time was a luxury, radio, boy, that old crystal kind of thing. That was a luxury. | 13:19 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | He was so determined that we succeed and be independent, we used to call him Hitler behind his back. He was a very detailed person, a perfectionist, more or less. All things had to be done the way he wanted them, even to sweeping. He had to hold— | 14:02 |
Larry T. Miller | [indistinct 00:14:20]. | 14:19 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | He had to hold the broom and said—which was right. He was right. You should learn how to do it right. And he was fortunate enough, at the end of World War II, I think—Yeah, he enlisted at the end of World War II and the war ended before he could get through the basics, but as a result of that, he was sent to Tuskegee Institute where he learned—You know where Tuskegee is, learned so much and he— | 14:20 |
Larry T. Miller | I or II? | 14:52 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Huh? | 14:53 |
Larry T. Miller | World War I or II? | 14:54 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | One, World War I. Did I say II? | 14:54 |
Larry T. Miller | Yeah. | 14:57 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | World War I, because I was thinking there. See, he was there. We talked all this before, so he knows. World War I. He was self-employed. And my mother only had a third grade education, but you would never know it. And that's her picture right there. She was a very wise woman and she spoke extremely well. You would not have known. She was like the glue in our family. She held our family together. Both parents are dead. One died in '62. My mother died in '62 and Daddy died in '60—what? | 14:58 |
Larry T. Miller | Four. | 15:41 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Four, or '65, I think it was. | 15:42 |
Larry T. Miller | You got some old checks from him. Right? | 15:44 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah. | 15:44 |
Larry T. Miller | He was about the only established— | 15:49 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Come on in. | 15:52 |
Karen Ferguson | We'd like to hear. | 15:56 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah. | 15:58 |
Larry T. Miller | At that time, he was one of the few established businessmen with his own checks. That was a big thing. At that time, that was a real big thing, and his own mode of transportation. A lot of people had to depend on other people to take them to work, this kind of thing, but he was—Again, that independent silver line spirit of his, dictatorial in a way, but as you grow older, you find out that this was not so much dictatorial as it was wanted you to have a basis, a solid basis you could build on. Go ahead. | 16:00 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Okay, that's true. I can appreciate him more and his goals than I could when I was alive. I only wish I had understood then, but I did get a chance to thank him before he died, both of them. And I'm grateful for that, for what he tried to do for us. And what else? As I said, we grew up in the Church of God, Anderson. Make a point of that, Anderson. We went to church Sunday mornings. Practically all day Sunday, we were in church. Wednesdays, we were in church. And in August, we had what we call the August meetings, was a camp meeting. And those were some happy times, especially the food part. The food was extremely good. People came from all over and it was just wonderful. I enjoyed that. | 16:42 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | I remember the first paved street that came through our community. It was Spring Street, which was one of the main thoroughfares. The whole community turned out to see the streets being paved. It was like a gathering. And I'm sure Mrs. Neal told you that we still, as a community, we have our gatherings once a year and the committee meets once a month to make plans. People come from all over the country to attend that Greenville community reunion, we call it. It's like a family reunion, is what it's like, because bonds were established that will last throughout our life and perhaps through eternity. Who knows? What else? Go ahead. Ask me some questions. | 17:40 |
Karen Ferguson | Well, I was wondering, when you grew up, did you just live with your immediate family in the house? | 18:43 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yes. No, there was my immediate family plus my father's sister's children. Both of those parents, my first cousins' mother and father, died within then a very short period of each other. They died from tuberculosis, which at that time was very—it was common among Blacks, but it was not as—They didn't have the medications to treat it as they do now. And they died within a year of each other. And it was seven children in that family. And my dad and mother brought them in and we all lived together, like brothers and sisters. I didn't know the difference until I was at least nine. And I couldn't understand the concept of this being a first cousin because we were just like brothers and sisters. | 18:48 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | And my family's house was a home for, what do you call it, home by the side of the road. Anybody that needed a place, they seemed to find our house to live, to come in to stay awhile. Several young men have stayed in our home and gone through high school from about the ninth grade because their parents were either not there or what, but they stayed with us. The parents either weren't there or they just didn't want to stay at home, one or the other. I'm not sure which it was. I was hoping my second brother would be here today so he could fill in some of these gaps, but he didn't feel well. So he's not coming. | 19:46 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | But after 1940, everybody had grown up and scattered then and we stopped taking in people, I don't understand that, but we did, the way we used to. And because the house that we lived in on Forest was a huge house. It was big, so we had room for everybody who wanted to come, even if you had to sleep two or three in a bed. It was nice. | 20:35 |
Karen Ferguson | Can you describe that house a little bit more to us? | 21:10 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Okay. The house— | 21:14 |
Larry T. Miller | First of all, it was big, had a very big front porch. | 21:15 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Huge front porch. | 21:18 |
Larry T. Miller | With a swing. | 21:19 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | The width of the house. | 21:20 |
Larry T. Miller | It had a concrete—The house, it was huge because my grandfather added on a lot. That was his business, construction. He was a builder. And he added on a lot over the years. Front porch was concrete as opposed to wood, which most of the porches were. Banisters, high banisters. We used to play on the banisters, jump over the banisters and break them a lot. I'll tell you about the house. As you come through the front door, bedroom on the right, living room on the left. There's a telephone stand right by the front door. I think that was something he put up. | 21:24 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah. | 22:16 |
Larry T. Miller | [indistinct 00:22:16]. Walk on in through one of these big old radios that she was talking about. | 22:18 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Was in the hallway. Yeah. | 22:23 |
Larry T. Miller | Was in the hallway. One of these old Motorola type radios that disappeared as time went on. Then you came into the sitting room, I guess you can call it a den now, but that's where the stove was. That's the main heat for the house. Big old pot-bedded stove. And one thing I did not like about my grandfather in the wintertime, he would sit around with his feet stuck up in the stove and sang hymns from the church hymnal and read the Bible. He would make a noise. He couldn't sing. He'd make a lot of noise and we'd have to sit there and listen to that because, in the wintertime, there was not much going on, no outside activities. You were in the house. | 22:29 |
Larry T. Miller | We, another generation now, we had one of the very first televisions in the neighborhood and, around Christmastime, I would charge people a nickel or something to stand outside the window and look in. And that went on for a little awhile. It was good for awhile, but as time went on, people started getting televisions. My grandmother was responsible for the television. All the little niceties of life, she was responsible for because he considered it as foolishness, didn't need that foolishness. And she got the television primarily for my sister and myself. It's a changing world. Things starting to change now. | 23:17 |
Larry T. Miller | Off to the right of the den was their bedroom, one more bedroom where my sister slept. To the left was the dining room, big, big dining room. And go back down to another little hallway to the bathroom and to the right of that was my room, a lot of room. And then straight on back on the right was the kitchen, kitchen stove, because it was some of his business of his, got a stove. Big, huge backyard. Used to keep a lot of his wood and building supplies back there. Still had room for a big garden. | 24:11 |
Larry T. Miller | As I say, he was kind of the dictatorial type. We'd all kids be out in the yard, playing and everything and, about four blocks away, you'd hear that big old raggedy red truck backfire, pow, pow, pow. And everybody say, "Oh, here come Mr. [indistinct 00:25:14]." (makes sound, claps) (everyone laughs) | 24:58 |
Larry T. Miller | Everybody split, and I'm left there to deal with him. Had a very strong and stern work ethic. I went to work with him, whether I wanted to or not, at an early age. | 25:17 |
Larry T. Miller | And one incident sticks out in my mind, moving a bag of concrete, 90-pound bag of concrete. I'll never forget it. Had to go up on the second floor on a ladder. And I weighed about 87 pounds. Concrete weighed more than I did. And after I tussled with it, I cried with that bag because I wanted to be tough. I didn't want to hear what he had to say. And I got it up there and I'm getting ready to mix the mud right on the spot. And he said, "That's the wrong kind. Take it back." My heart—(makes sound)—dropped. | 25:32 |
Larry T. Miller | Just so happened, the other men that were working with him said, "Mr. Jackson, don't be playing with that boy like that." And he thought it was so funny, "Ha, ha, ha, it's the right thing. Ha ha, go on and mix it." But that's the kind of man he was. Big front yard. As a matter of fact, today, there's a tree that's still on Fontana Street. Right behind the church on Oak Line, there's an evergreen that used to sit in our front yard. | 26:12 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Hugo knocked it down. | 26:46 |
Larry T. Miller | Hugo knocked it down. It's no longer there. It used to sit there. That's how I would always know where I lived as the time went on. What else would you like? What else can I tell you? | 26:47 |
Karen Ferguson | Here. Can we just move so we can clip your— | 27:01 |
Karen Ferguson | [INTERRUPTION] | 27:02 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | About my father's work ethic, if you didn't work, you didn't eat in his house. You don't work, you don't eat. And he didn't mind teaching you how to work. And you had to be up at the crack of dawn to do whatever work you had to do. And then, when you finished work, you had to sit down and read a book. You couldn't just sit, you had to read a book. You had to be doing something with your hands. He did not allow us to just sit idle. Radio, he didn't mind listening to radio, except he did not like those soap operas that came on the radio at that time, like My Gal Sunday and Mrs— | 27:02 |
Larry T. Miller | [indistinct 00:27:42]. | 27:41 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | I'm talking about my era now. Mrs.—what was the—ooh, so, well. Well, some kind of of children's thing, he didn't think that was worthwhile listening to. And in some cases, he was exactly right. I grew up working. In high school, I had a job. He was away. He used to travel quite a bit from job to job, city to city, state to state. And I remember I wanted to be independent. I inherited some of his independence and I wanted to be on my own, so got a job at a laundry downtown at Charlotte Hotel, worked one week, he came home and he came down and pulled me out of the laundry. He said, "No, you're not going to do this, you're not going to do this, you're not going to do this," and brought me home. And next door to us was a funeral home. He went over there and talked to those people, evidently. And so I started working over there, answering the telephone and that kind of thing. | 27:42 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | But in summer, we all had to have a job, but before we got to the working age, they would send us to South Carolina for the summer, myself and my younger brother and my oldest brother. We would all go where my grandparents lived. And during the summer, my mother would work for some Jewish people named Goldstein. She would go to the beach with them. During the winter, she stayed home so she could be home. And one of the most secure feeling I had was to know that, when I got home from school, my mother would be there. Usually, you could smell the food before you hit the walkway. And just to know that she was there with something on the stove for us was a really good feeling. | 28:50 |
Karen Ferguson | So she only worked—she worked in the summer. | 29:42 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Right, during the summertime. They would go to the beach. Then they would send us to South Carolina until I got to be 13, I think it was, and then I didn't want to go there anymore. I wish I kept on going down there. | 29:42 |
Karen Ferguson | What was it like in South Carolina? How was it different than Charlotte? | 29:59 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | It was definitely farm, farm, farm, farm. Charlotte was becoming a little more citified, so to speak. That was what they were afraid of. They didn't want us exposed to the city ways and stuff. Well, down there, that was fun, too. I learned to ride a horse. I learned how to churn the milk to make butter. And we were talking about washing yesterday. I had to help carry water from the spring to the washing place. And that was an all day job. And I was thinking you go now, you put your clothes in, you switch a button, and that makes me tired. | 30:03 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | But when we were in South Carolina, the men would go to the field early in the morning. My grandmother would come through the house saying, "Get up, get up." This is 5 a.m. "The sun is way up. Get up, get up." So everybody would have to get up and go wash your face. You'd have to wash your face on the outside of the kitchen. Their house had sleeping quarters. One house was nothing but sleeping and a sewing room for her. And the other house was a kitchen. One side was a dining room, the other side was a kitchen. And they had a bench—not a bench, but a shelf on the outside where they kept water for washing hands and washing faces. | 30:54 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | And imagine, early in the morning around August, September, you getting up, you almost have to break the ice. That's how cold it would be to wash your face, but then you' get up, you'd get breakfast and you'd do your house chores. Then the girls and some of the younger boys would bring, on Monday, Monday was wash day, you'd bring the water in. Then she'd send me to the garden to get the food for the day, get the cabbage, get the potatoes, get the carrots, come on in and cook it. By 12 o'clock, she would ring the bell for the men to come. All that was done by 12 o'clock, to come and eat. And they would come and eat or else, if they were too far away, we'd take it to them. They were farming, plowing and pulling up stumps and stuff. And they wanted us to stay. They wanted my mother to come back home to stay, but she didn't. My daddy really didn't want to go. That was a real reason. Ask me some more questions and I'll see what else I can come up with. | 31:38 |
Karen Ferguson | Now, in South Carolina, these were your grandparents you were staying with? | 32:42 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yes. | 32:45 |
Karen Ferguson | It was your mother's parents? | 32:46 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | My mother's parents. | 32:48 |
Karen Ferguson | Do you remember anything about your grandparents, maybe about stories they told you about their childhood, or what were they like? | 32:50 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | They told us stories, but I don't know why I can't remember. Sometimes one will flash to my mind. | 32:57 |
Larry T. Miller | [indistinct 00:33:03]. | 33:02 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Here again, after all your work was done, you would sit on the porch. The house where the bedroom and the sitting room, they'd call it, had a long porch. And they would sit on the porch. My grandmother would smoke her pipe and tell us all kind of stories from slavery. I got to meet my mother's grandmother, who was a slave. But at that time, she was quite, quite old. I don't remember how old. She was old to the point that she had to be carried in and out of the house. She was alert and a lot of noise would disturb her. So the children were only allowed to say good morning to her and then they would get her up, bathe her, put her in the chair, and then take her back. I didn't get to talk to her and I wanted to talk to that lady so much. | 33:04 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | That, again, was my mother's mother. My father's people were not—I don't know an awful lot about them, except the cousins that grew up with us. I met his mother, too. I was about two years old. His mother came to live with us. I can remember she was sick at the time and I wondered what that lady was doing in that room. I'd go in and she would let me comb hair. Now, some people say you can't remember that far back, but I can. I honestly think I remember not wanting to be born. I didn't want to come here. They tell me, "You can't remember that far back." And little incidents that I can remember when I was nine months old, they said, "There's no way you can remember that," but no one had told me. And I remember this lady, I would get up in the bed and my mother would say, "Leave her alone." She'd say, "No, let her stay, let her stay," and I would try to comb her hair. She had real long, long White hair. This was here in Charlotte now. What else? | 34:05 |
Karen Ferguson | Now, your parents, they came from South Carolina. Did they grow up in the same community? | 35:10 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | No, my mother grew up in the Jenkinsville area. My father grew up near Columbia, South Carolina. | 35:14 |
Karen Ferguson | So how did they meet? | 35:24 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | At church, Church of God. I don't know what theirs was. Church of God, not far from where my grandparents lived. They were having one of these big meetings and that's where he met my mother. | 35:25 |
Larry T. Miller | Tell her how he got her. | 35:38 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Well, first of all, dating. Okay. The only time he could come was on Sundays. When he came, her mother and her father sat on the settee. And he sat on one side and she sat on the other side. And if they had any words to say to each other, they would have to pass the word that way. Now, I'm not sure how he got her, you're talking about. Which one? | 35:43 |
Larry T. Miller | What did he tell you he had? He was established and what he had and this, that, and the other, find out he did not have. He promised her a big house to come and go and live. And when she agreed and he got up here, it wasn't like that. As a matter of fact, he didn't have anything. | 36:16 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | They were in South Carolina. That's what he had there. His father required that he have a job, her father, he have a job and a house. The house was a one-room shack. | 36:36 |
Karen Ferguson | That's here in Charlotte. | 36:49 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | No, that was in South Carolina. And had one iron bedstead. I don't think they had a kitchen, Mama said, but anyway, she wanted to go back home because she was—what? She didn't get married until she was 25. That was old for that time period, but she didn't really want to get married. She didn't want to leave home. She didn't come. Her father and her mother go, "You with your husband now, you got to stay." It wasn't long after that before they came up here to Charlotte. | 36:50 |
Karen Ferguson | Do you know, was there any specific reason why they came to Charlotte? | 37:34 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Work. Daddy thought it would be better to—he could get a job better here. They didn't want to farm. They wanted to do something else. | 37:38 |
Larry T. Miller | He didn't want to farm. | 37:45 |
Karen Ferguson | He grew up on a farm, though, did well. Did your mother's parents, did they own their own land? | 37:47 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yes. | 37:53 |
Karen Ferguson | They did? | 37:53 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Oh, yes. Let me tell you something very interesting. We are a very special Black family because we had been able to trace our, on my mother's side, trace our lineage back to 1775. And that's very unusual. The way it happened, according to—It so happens that there's a genealogist in the family who works for the government and she had access to certain documents and places that the average person wouldn't have. So we were having our family reunions about 25 years ago and we started researching. | 37:54 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | She discovered that this little Black girl came from West Africa down to Portugal, from there back up to New England. From New England, she was sold to this Portuguese farmer down in Jenkinsville. And from that relationship, there were six children. We have documents of where he married. This Portuguese man married this little Black girl from West Africa. And the six children they had, he deeded them land. And so there was nothing the authorities could do, although they tried. But that's how we happened to have that land down there, which is still in the family. | 38:28 |
Karen Ferguson | So they owned land, even before the Civil War began? | 39:12 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Right. | 39:16 |
Karen Ferguson | And they were free, as well, or were they slaves? | 39:17 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Well, no, they weren't exactly free. They were free in their own environment, but beyond that, outside of that area, they didn't venture too far. In fact, our family reunion is coming up and we got a book that should be out by that time about our history. It's in July. Coming up real soon. And the thing that authenticated the fact that we do have—We don't have the actual document, we have copies, certified, photostatic copies of these documents. We have some videos on this kind of stuff, which is really fascinating. That's why I urge you to go. | 39:23 |
Larry T. Miller | [indistinct 00:40:07]. | 40:06 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Oh, okay. What else? | 40:08 |
Karen Ferguson | Did you have anything you wanted to—I can go on. Okay. I thought maybe we can come back to your childhood again. You talked a lot about your father and the kind of values he instilled in you. What about your mother? What's her influence on your life? | 40:11 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | My mother was like the glue. And I later realized that he voiced these things, but it was he and she who talked about this. So her values were same as his, except that she used a different method to let it be known. | 40:29 |
Larry T. Miller | She was more humane. | 40:51 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | She was a quiet, soft-spoken woman. And she really only had to say something to you one time, whereas—Well, he didn't either, but I was more willing to do what she said. I felt better doing what she asked than he. I resented it, the way he approached us, but her values and his were similar. But as Larry said, she was a little bit softer with hers. She was the one who taught me how to—different things, crochet, how to tat. You know what tatting is? How to embroidery, because she, too, felt that you should be busy. | 40:56 |
Larry T. Miller | She was the one that, excuse me, the one that taught me about dealing in the real world, about going downtown in those White folks' business, what you can say and what you can't say. She was the one that taught me how to take a little bit of money and pay a lot of bills and keep everybody satisfied. Not exactly lying, but just not telling it all. | 41:37 |
Karen Ferguson | Did you have a similar experience with her? How were you taught how to deal with White people? | 41:58 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Let me see. How was I taught to deal? And when I was growing up, we were totally separate in our community. And White people were nebulous kind of people, they. We didn't have newspapers and we didn't have radio until I was about eight maybe or nine. So I didn't get to hear much about what was going on in the outside world. We're more or less protected from the White world. We didn't have any interaction, except that I knew my father had a kind of anger that I didn't understand. He would come home sometime and he would be real upset. | 42:09 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Ms. Neal talked to you about the Buckeye, I think. She mentioned a meal manufacturing Buckeye. Well, my daddy worked for awhile at the Buckeye. I remember him coming home saying that he will never work for a White man again. I must have been four or five when he said this. And he and my mother went into the other room and they talked and talked. He was an upset man. And from that point on, he never tried to work—He always worked independent. | 42:54 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Now, I learned about the White world when I went to Wishalt High School, riding the bus. That's when I began to learn about them and how different these worlds were. At our school, as I told you, there was no cafeteria, there was no gym. All the athletic or activities that we participated in were done on the outside of the building. They had a basketball court on the outside, track and all that, which is still true, track is on the outside. | 43:26 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | But we brought our lunch and then those persons who were involved in the athletics were—This is about two years later. We started selling snacks, cakes and peanut butter crackers and stuff like that in one little corner of one of those rooms. That was the cafeteria. I didn't understand that then, why was this that way? Then they began teaching Black history in that school. And then I learned about the slavery issue and all of that and what was happening then. We were separate, but definitely not equal in our facilities. But again, I credit those teachers and the parents with urging us to learn, open their mind and learn, and learn, and learn. And they would do this individually. | 44:03 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | I'm trying to remember what else I know about the White world. I knew there were Jewish people because, in the summer, my mother would go work for them. They seemed to be a kind people, the ones that I knew about, but I never went into a White home. Oh, downtown. We'd go downtown, which at that time consisted of just a group of flat roof buildings. The tallest building was the Independence Building where that hotel—I think it's the Marriott Hotel, it is now. It was about 10 stories high. I remember something on the low side of Tryon and Trade, that was Kress', a five and 10 store. I remember going—my mother and I were downtown. We went down to get some water. And now, I remember there was a sign over the fountain, right beside each other. One was White and one was— | 45:06 |
Larry T. Miller | Colored. | 46:09 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | —Colored. And I wanted some water. So I hopped up to this White one, not knowing the difference, and Mama said, "No, honey, you have to drink over here." I didn't understand that. | 46:10 |
Larry T. Miller | And when I came along, the same sign was still there and the same water fountain, and I used to go spit in the White water. They would chase us. There would be a group of—they'd chase us downstairs and outside and stuff like that, fighting, just because. | 46:20 |
Karen Ferguson | So this would be a group of boys? You'd go downtown and do that? | 46:43 |
Larry T. Miller | Yeah, nobody said this is what was going to happen, but it always happened. Go through and stand in places where White people are only supposed to stand and drink out the White fountain and make the cashiers run you away and all kind of stuff like that, and jump on some White boys if you see them on the railroad track because, if they catch you down there, that means they're going to jump on you. So. In fact I, my grandmother, I had, early on— | 46:48 |
Larry T. Miller | Yeah, this is for Ms. Jackson, here, here, here. Made me feel like a big little man. And she encouraged a lot of that. She kept children—This is how she got her money, because although my grandfather had a lot of strong work ethic, it's just that another, he was a tightwad when it came to the house, in a lot of respects. Most of the things that we got, if it were not for my grandmother, we would not have gotten. And to do this, she kept children. This is how I learned to take care of children, to change diapers and all of this care. This is how I learned to be responsible, taking care of me. And still, it still rubs off today. | 0:02 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Okay. You're probably wondering why grandmother. I was married—I graduated from high school in June and got married in July. And we were together for maybe five years. And then I guess— | 1:00 |
Larry T. Miller | You guess? | 1:18 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | (laughs) I know, we just grew in different ways. My husband was content to earn $35 a week and I wasn't, and I wanted to go back to school. When I enrolled in Johnson C. Smith, we really were just too different. | 1:19 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | So I went to DC. My mother kept these two children. That's my daughter. The one in the black robe over there, that's my daughter, and I had these two, this child there and that's mine. The girl, the one in the white, is her daughter, the white robe. But then I went to DC to go to school, and my mother kept them for me. And I guess that's where he really got his good training. I got my good training there too. | 1:39 |
Karen Ferguson | So let's talk a little more about what you did after high school. Did you work after high school or right afterwards? | 2:11 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | No, I got married right after high school, and I didn't work for three years after that. Then, oh, I went to work—This is really when I began to find out what the White world, the difference between—I went to work for the city as a pastry cook. They were paying $12.50 a week for a pastry cook. Well, I didn't really know how to cook anyway, but I figured that I could read a recipe and follow it, which I did. And I went to work, and my mother kept the children for me then. I worked there for the school year, but I knew that wasn't—That's when I decided to go back to college, go to college. That was it for me, and so I did. By this time, my husband and I separated. He went into the service, and I went to DC. | 2:17 |
Karen Ferguson | So when you said you learned about the White world when you were working as a pastry chef. Tell me about that. | 3:21 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Well, I learned that it was definitely an unequal world we were living in. The salaries that they were paying us were not at all adequate. There was a rigidity in the work area that I had experienced at home with my father. But it was very highly dogmatic. You had to always be doing something, or else you were written up. And I thought, "Hey, this isn't fair. It's not right." My mind began to expand then. I began to read a lot, and different still exist actually, only in a more subtle fashion. I never had much contact with White people except when I did go to work after my marriage and all, the time I worked in the hotel, oh yeah, in the laundry, which daddy said won't be, I told you he talked to the people there who were in charge, and they put me on the elevator. After he talked to them, then I was on the elevator checking people up and down. That didn't last long. That's when I went to work for the funeral home next door. | 3:28 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Now at that period, about my relationship, I was learning to survive myself, and I didn't have much dealings with White people until I went to DC, and I found that it was a little bit different. There was a little more interaction, especially at school. And then I went to work for the government. And after I finished school there, I went to work for the government. That was tad better. | 4:53 |
Karen Ferguson | When you said you first went to Johnson C. Smith, you finished it up as a pastry cook and you went there, was it unusual for a woman to do that sort of thing? | 5:26 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yes. Yeah, it was. It was, a little unusual at that time. But I had my daddy behind me, and he was saying, and my mother, "You need to get your education. You need to. You must do it." So they were really the catalyst behind me doing that. And I knew that I had to do something because I could not support—I realized at that point that I would have to support my children and I didn't want to do it. I couldn't do it on $12.50 cents a week. There was no way, and I had to prepare myself to do something, to earn more than that. That was the only way. But then getting into the personal side, after I did get involved with Smith, my husband became extremely threatening. And that was one of the reasons my mother decided that I should leave. And I agreed with her, to leave the city, and we did. And after that, he went into the service, my husband did. | 5:39 |
Karen Ferguson | Did you go back? When you went back to Smith, did you go back full time or did you have to work while you were— | 6:40 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Work, I had to work. I had to do whatever I could do, domestic work and all that. | 6:47 |
Karen Ferguson | What course were you taking at Smith? | 6:52 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Education. | 6:54 |
Karen Ferguson | Education. And then when you went to DC, where did you go to school there? | 6:55 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Well, I enrolled in DC, it was at that time, DC Teachers College. It is now called Federal something, Federal College. And then after I went there for one quarter, I thought about how unfair it was for me to leave my children or my parents when they did not leave me on somebody. And so I went to a business college. It was called Atlantic Business College. And in two years there, I finished that and then I went on from there. | 6:59 |
Karen Ferguson | So where did you work after? | 7:33 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | After finishing college, I went to work for the navy, the US Navy, and what, at that time, was a photographic division. I was a clerk steno for the navy for a number of years, and then moved up to other positions while there. | 7:37 |
Karen Ferguson | So that was in Washington as well? | 7:58 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah. Mm-hmm. | 8:03 |
Karen Ferguson | So your children were still here in Charlotte? | 8:03 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Still here. By that time, by the time I attained the job and got an apartment and got it first, there was no separating them from my mother. In fact, we tried that. We went—You remember getting on that? | 8:04 |
Larry T. Miller | We were. | 8:18 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | We moved. We went up there and took all our furniture on the truck. We rode up to DC on the truck. But very soon, my mother became ill, terminally ill. Doctor said it was, she was heartbroken and lonely. And I thought, "Oh no." So they came back here to live. | 8:19 |
Karen Ferguson | So when did you come back to Charlotte? | 8:44 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | To live? | 8:47 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 8:47 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | In 1962. The reason— | 8:48 |
Larry T. Miller | When did she die? | 8:54 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | '62 April. My mother died in April of '62. And my father, who was this dictatorial person who was like iron, we thought crumpled to the point that he became ill and we could not—My brothers and I tried to trick him into coming to DC to live so we could take care of him there, but he wouldn't be moved from that house. And so they, my brothers, elected me to come back here to take care of him on a trial basis, which I did. And so I've been here ever since. | 8:55 |
Karen Ferguson | Did you want to ask something? | 9:36 |
Kara Miles | Yeah. You told us how your parents dated with their parents or your parents in between. What was dating like for you? | 9:39 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | For me, well here really wasn't supposed to be any dating until I finished high school. But when I was in the 11th grade, my husband and I, we played basketball. We played athletics together. And at that time, we did not date individually like couples. We would all grow in a group to the theater, or when we made trips out of the city, we got to know each other. And he worked for my father, my husband did. And he asked my father if he could date me. And it took him six months to say okay. And when he came only on Sundays, they follow in his saint, we sat on the porch in the summertime, and they sat in the living room with the light on. When they switched the light out, that meant it was time for him to go, and he went. He would go. And that would be about 9:30 or 10:00, and he'd have to get out and go. | 9:45 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | We would see each other at church briefly, only one day a week. And that was on Sundays. We didn't go anywhere except to the theater, which we did in groups of seven or eight of us. There was no place to go. There was not much eating out. Now there were some cafeterias in our community, but they sold beer and liquor, and I was not allowed to go in those cafeterias. There was one place called Wise Wonderfoods, which is not far from here, where all the young people would go. And I wanted to go to that place so bad. But I was scared, because everywhere I go, people knew me either as Mr. Jackson's daughter or Sam and T's sister. "Don't say anything. You better leave her alone." | 10:56 |
Kara Miles | You said your mother had a third grade education? | 11:53 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Right. | 11:56 |
Kara Miles | What did she do after? She finished third grade and then had to go to work or something? | 11:56 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Well, yeah. She went to work. This was in South Carolina and went to work in the field. She could read and write and figure, but she read a lot. She read higher than a third grade level. She read way up there, but she was more or less self-taught. | 12:01 |
Kara Miles | You said you learned some Black history in high school. | 12:24 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Mm-hmm. | 12:28 |
Kara Miles | Were there books that you learned this from, or? | 12:30 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | They had classes, secret classes. Now I say secret, but it was not a citywide—It was not in the curriculum. But those teachers had classes for us to teach us, they gave us books. And I don't remember them. And we would have to write essays, and we would have to come before the class and read our essays, that kind of thing. They gave us books to read. It was not on the standard curriculum. Those were some concerned teachers about their students, bottom line. That's what it was about. | 12:32 |
Kara Miles | Do you remember any of the books that you had to read? | 13:15 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | There was poetry by Langston Hughes. I don't know the name of the book. There weren't many books and a little bit of history. And history books about us was about this. No, I don't remember any names of any of the books, but we were required to take books home and read them and come back and tell about it. That's how I learned as much as I did about myself, who we were. | 13:20 |
Karen Ferguson | Maybe we can talk a little bit about church. | 14:04 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Okay. | 14:06 |
Karen Ferguson | Now you always belong to the— | 14:07 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Church of God. | 14:10 |
Larry T. Miller | Anderson. | 14:11 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Anderson. | 14:12 |
Karen Ferguson | And did you both your parents go to church with you? | 14:15 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yes, we all went together. Yes sir. | 14:17 |
Larry T. Miller | There was none of that splitting. | 14:21 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | There was no splitting up stuff. Another thing I appreciate about my family is that we all went to church together and we came home together. We all ate together. This was every day in a week. Nobody ate unless everybody was there. And, excuse me, that was two meals a day, breakfast and what we called supper at that time. But that time, what we call lunch now was dinner, and supper was in the evening. So wherever you were, you were making it home in time to be there to eat, and that was good. | 14:24 |
Larry T. Miller | And you wouldn't make it home for breakfast, you were already there. | 14:58 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | You were already there. You didn't come home for breakfast. You're right. | 15:01 |
Karen Ferguson | Who in this community belonged? Were there a lot of people who belonged to Church of God, or? | 15:10 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Most of them. There were different churches, but most of the people in the community.—See, there was Church of God, which was Anderson. There was Greenville Tabernacle, I don't know what that was. I think that was a Baptist church. Then there was a Presbyterian church. There were about—I can remember about four or five churches in the community. There were different denominations. And late when we started going where Charlotte, the Catholics built a church up on Oak Line, which is now West, where West—Well First Baptist West is now the Catholic church. | 15:15 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | And that's the first time I knew anything about Catholicism was when they did that church. And one of my older brothers joined and my father turned the house inside out. And he's still a Catholic by the way. The church was close knit, and many people in the community belonged there, but not all the people, because they had their different beliefs for whatever reason. Most of it is because my mother and father did. It was traditional in that family to go to that particular church. | 15:57 |
Larry T. Miller | But every church was full on Sunday. Still, everybody didn't go to church. You saw a lot of people at home. But until after church, it was kind of inside the house, right around the house. And after church, everybody would just be in the street. | 16:30 |
Karen Ferguson | So it was a big social time, Sunday afternoons or evenings? | 16:50 |
Larry T. Miller | Yeah, Especially in the spring and the summer. You got a chance to run around and give it to people you saw that you go to school with and you hang around and fight and all that good stuff, find out who's going, who would get your little girlfriend that you can look at from a distance. | 16:55 |
Karen Ferguson | You said your church came from Anderson, Indiana? | 17:19 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Mm-hmm. That's where their headquarters were. Yeah. | 17:22 |
Karen Ferguson | When did they come to— | 17:26 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Charlotte? | 17:27 |
Karen Ferguson | —Charlotte? | 17:27 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | I have no idea. I was born—When I realized anything, they were already there. I don't know. I don't know the history of that church too much, too well. | 17:28 |
Karen Ferguson | Were the people in your church and the congregation and the minister, were they involved in civic affairs at all? | 17:39 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Not in my particular church too much that I'm aware of. Not that I'm aware of. Mm-mm. | 17:46 |
Karen Ferguson | How about the organizations in the community? What kind of organizations did you belong to as a girl and after you were married? | 17:54 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Well, the NAACP was an organization that we knew about, but school related groups, like the Y-teens and the girl scout, I became a girl scout. But politically, the NAACP is about the only one. | 18:06 |
Karen Ferguson | So you knew about the NAACP when you were in school? | 18:31 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Mm-hmm. | 18:34 |
Karen Ferguson | Did people belong to it or? | 18:35 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | My daddy belonged to it. Yeah, some people belonged to it, but he wouldn't discuss that with us at home too much. He'd talk about other things, but not about that. | 18:38 |
Larry T. Miller | And he did not discuss politics, although he was political. | 18:48 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah. | 18:51 |
Karen Ferguson | Did you remember people before say 1960? Do you remember talking or hearing other people talk about civil rights or the need to vote, or? | 18:54 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | No. I feel like we were just sheltered from a lot of that deliberately. Whether it was deliberate or accident, I don't know. But we were sheltered quite a bit. | 19:10 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. Do you remember ever hearing about people—Along the lines of what your son has been saying, defying segregation signs and that kind of thing? | 19:18 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah. My brother for one, my oldest brother, was very defiant. And there was an incident in which he rode the bus from school, and the bus driver wanted him to go to the back and he refused because it was crowded or something. Anyway, he went to jail because he refused to go to the back of the—But that was kind of, they pushed me out of the room when they came and started talking. So I don't really know if he does. I wish he had been here. That was about the only incident I can recall. | 19:32 |
Karen Ferguson | How long was he in jail for? | 20:11 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Overnight. | 20:13 |
Karen Ferguson | Overnight, and then they let him out. | 20:14 |
Kara Miles | Did your parents get mad at him for doing that or were they proud of him for doing that? | 20:18 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | My mother was proud. My father felt that it would interfere with his getting jobs. His word. And he wasn't exactly angry, but he just thought he didn't use his head. He said this was his favorite expression, "You didn't use your head. Your head is as thick as pig iron." He said, "Had you used your head, you would just gotten off the bus and walked," because that's what we'd been used to doing anyway, walking. | 20:23 |
Karen Ferguson | You said you were sheltered, and that you lived in a fairly self-sufficient community. Were there many Black-owned businesses? | 20:56 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | There were several stores. The big store was, at that time, Colonial Store. We would get in a buggy on a Saturday, and go to that store and come back home. That was White. There was a grocery store. There was a funeral home. There was a dry cleaning establishment. There was some kind of little snack shop. I think that's what it was called, snack shop, that your date would take you to on Sunday and something like that. So we were really almost, from my viewpoint, a self-contained community. And that's why I think we were sheltered from a lot of the things. See, our schools were in our community. We didn't have to go cross the boundary lines to get to our schools. And that protected us from a lot of things that I had since learned were happening. Some people went from—Well at that time, first there was only one high school and that was Second Ward High School. | 21:05 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Then in 1940, the city built what's Charlotte now, which is now Northwest, which gave people on this side, the Black people, an opportunity to go within the community over there. And then on the Second Ward side, which this town was divided by the square on the east side, the Blacks in that community went to Second Ward High School. | 22:12 |
Karen Ferguson | Well, we've been talking to people. Everyone is very definite about the neighborhood in which they grew up like Greenville or Brooklyn or whatever. Was there a lot of rivalry between the neighborhoods, or? | 22:47 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | The schools, after, where Charlotte was built, there was a lot of rivalry between Second Ward and Charlotte. We would have our annual homecoming games. We would play each other because we weren't allowed to play other schools. And there was a lot of rivalry between the school kids as far as I know. But I don't know about the adult world at that time, because I was not allowed in it. | 23:00 |
Larry T. Miller | There was a lot of rivalry there too. I was not an adult but I would say there was a lot of rivalry. | 23:30 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | I'm sure there was, but they asked me what I re— | 23:35 |
Karen Ferguson | What kind of thing? Do you remember anything, any kind of thing? | 23:38 |
Larry T. Miller | Aside from the athletic point of view, basketball, football, baseball are always a big deal when the two played each other. There was an annual event, the Queen City Classic, West Charlotte and Second Ward in football. And regardless as to the outcome of the game, there was always a fight afterwards. That's, you know. That was one reason the city banned the Queen City Classic because not only was Second Ward going out of existence as a school, but it was always trouble. You went to West Charlotte, you just didn't go over there. You had a girlfriend over there, y'all have to meet somewhere else, because she'd get beat up a lot. She don't like to talk about that part. But that's [crosstalk 00:24:33]. | 23:42 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | No, it's okay. I don't mind talking about that part. That was a part of life. It's getting a little warm. | 24:33 |
Larry T. Miller | And also in academics, there was a lot of competition. Second Ward wanted to be the top chef, West Charlotte wanted to top chef. And in both schools, you had teachers that pushed you to excel and it's not like that anymore. It's you get it or you don't get it, because there was a lot of [indistinct 00:25:24]. | 24:39 |
Karen Ferguson | What kind of social organizations were there when you were growing up? | 24:39 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | When I was growing up, our social activities revolved around the church. And as I told you about the coming together in the evenings to do those games and things, we were fortunate in that—That's about it. That was about what we did. Go to church, have church gatherings like picnics— | 25:41 |
Larry T. Miller | Christmas parties. | 26:22 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah, Christmas parties and in Easter, maybe sometime at Easter, you'd have some kind of egg hunt. But during that time, we didn't have an awful lot of time for our social activity because the work, the way we had to work, was more manual than it is now. Of course in our family, we read a lot, which took up part of our—And we considered going from Charlotte to South Carolina as traveling. At that time, the train would take every bit of eight hours to go from Charlotte to Jenkinsville. So we traveled a little bit in the summer when our parents—Then daddy got a car and we would drive. | 26:23 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | That was a horrible experience because I was looking somewhere—I was over to Gastonia the other day at Morrison's Cafeteria. And I went in the bathroom and it reminded me, my mind flashed back to a time we were traveling from Charlotte to South Carolina and had to go to the bathroom, the most horrible thing I ever saw in my life. Filthy. I don't know if that was Morrison's or someplace, but it looked just like that awful place that we had to stop and go to the bathroom. | 27:09 |
Karen Ferguson | Was it so awful because? | 27:43 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Because they were separate bathrooms at the service station. | 27:45 |
Larry T. Miller | [Inaudible 00:27:49]. | 27:47 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | What? | 27:50 |
Larry T. Miller | It's [indistinct 00:27:51]. | 27:50 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Okay. I am getting very tired. What time is it? | 27:54 |
Karen Ferguson | That's okay. We can finish up if you're getting tired. | 27:57 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Okay. | 28:01 |
Kara Miles | I can ask you one last question. How old were you when you tried to sell your brother to the gypsies? (laughs) | 28:05 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Ah, eight. I was eight years old. | 28:09 |
Karen Ferguson | If you can just give us a few more minutes, we just have to get some biographical information. | 28:19 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Okay. What time do you have? | 28:23 |
Karen Ferguson | I have five to 11:00. | 28:25 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Oh good. That's good. | 28:26 |
Karen Ferguson | All right. Could you give your full name? | 28:29 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Bernice. | 28:31 |
Karen Ferguson | And that's B-E-R— | 28:33 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | —N-I-C-E. Jackson is my maiden name, and Miller's my married name. | 28:37 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. Would you like it to appear in any written material as Bernice Jackson Miller? | 28:45 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yes, because that's the only way anybody would recognize me. | 28:52 |
Karen Ferguson | What's your ZIP cod here? | 29:04 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | 28206. | 29:13 |
Karen Ferguson | And what was your date of birth again? | 29:13 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | 5/31/30. | 29:15 |
Karen Ferguson | And you were born here in Charlotte? | 29:17 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yes. Delivered by a midwife named Mama Pfeiffer, was her name. | 29:21 |
Karen Ferguson | Now your spouse's name? Your husband's name is? | 29:32 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Rossie, R-O-S-S-I-E. The initial D, which doesn't stand for anything, but Miller. | 29:39 |
Karen Ferguson | Miller. And was he born in Charlotte here? | 29:48 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | No, he was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina. | 29:53 |
Karen Ferguson | Do you remember when he was born? | 29:57 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | When? | 30:06 |
Karen Ferguson | How much older was he than you? | 30:08 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | About two years. | 30:09 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. So let's say 1928? | 30:10 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Mm-hmm. | 30:10 |
Karen Ferguson | Is he still living? | 30:13 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yes. | 30:14 |
Karen Ferguson | And his occupation, he was in the military? | 30:17 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah, he went to the—Yeah, he was in the military. | 30:20 |
Karen Ferguson | Your mother's name? | 30:27 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Etta. E-T-T-A. Martin is her maiden name, M-A-R-T-I-N, Jackson. | 30:29 |
Karen Ferguson | And do you remember when she was born? | 30:44 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | No, I don't. I've got that information in some paper. | 30:48 |
Karen Ferguson | That's all right. That's all right. You said she died in 1962? | 30:52 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yes. | 30:54 |
Larry T. Miller | And she got married when she was 25. | 30:54 |
Karen Ferguson | 25. Do you know how old she was when you were born? | 31:00 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Well, when I was born, she must have been—Let's see. It's 10 years between— | 31:03 |
Larry T. Miller | Born right around the turn of the century. | 31:09 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Huh? | 31:09 |
Larry T. Miller | Right around the turn of the century? | 31:10 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah. Maybe about 1906, something like that. | 31:15 |
Karen Ferguson | And she was born—Where was she born? | 31:18 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Jenkinsville. | 31:27 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, that's right. So that's J-E-N-K-I-N-S-V-I-L-L-E? | 31:28 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | South Carolina. | 31:34 |
Karen Ferguson | And what would you like me to put as her occupation? | 31:36 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Housewife. | 31:41 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 31:44 |
Larry T. Miller | Wonderful person. | 31:44 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Oh, and a wonderful person. | 31:45 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And your father's name? | 31:52 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Charles Tillman. Middle name, Tillman, T-I-L-L-M-A-N, Jackson. | 31:54 |
Larry T. Miller | Odd name. It's an odd name. | 32:09 |
Karen Ferguson | That's his occupation. Do you remember when he was born? | 32:09 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | No. No, I don't. | 32:14 |
Karen Ferguson | And he died in 1965, somewhere around there? | 32:14 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yes. Mm-hmm. | 32:25 |
Karen Ferguson | And he was born—Before I forget, where was he born? | 32:26 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | In South Carolina, but I don't know the— | 32:27 |
Larry T. Miller | [Inaudible 00:32:29]. | 32:28 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | No. No. I don't know the city really, just the state. | 32:30 |
Karen Ferguson | And his occupation? | 32:37 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Self-employed. | 32:38 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 32:39 |
Larry T. Miller | Construction. | 32:39 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Construction. Plasterer contractor, that's what he likes to call himself. | 32:42 |
Karen Ferguson | Plasterer contractor? | 32:56 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah, plasterer contractor. | 33:06 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And your brother's names? | 33:06 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | The oldest is Samuel Elmore. E-L-M-O-R-E, Jackson. | 33:10 |
Karen Ferguson | And he was 10 years older than you? Is that what you said? | 33:23 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Mm-hmm. | 33:27 |
Karen Ferguson | So it was about, he was born around 1920 then? | 33:27 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah. I think—Well he's 70. The oldest one is older than that. He's at least 12 years older than— | 33:30 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. So I'll just put around 1920 then. | 33:42 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah. | 33:42 |
Karen Ferguson | He's still living? | 33:47 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yes. | 33:48 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And your second brother? | 33:49 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Is Charles Tillman Jackson Jr. They wanted their first child named out of the Bible, which is Samuel. The second one was named after my daddy. | 33:51 |
Karen Ferguson | And how much older was he than you? | 34:13 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Now he is 10 years older than I am. It's about two to three years between those two boys. | 34:16 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. Okay. And then there's you, and then you have a younger brother. | 34:26 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Mm-hmm. | 34:26 |
Karen Ferguson | What's his name? | 34:26 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | His name is French—Now get ready for this, French Albert Tyson Jackson. | 34:26 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And how much younger is he than you? | 34:42 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Eight years. | 34:47 |
Karen Ferguson | Eight years younger, so that's 1930. So he would be born in 1938, around there? | 34:48 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah, around there. Somewhere in there. | 34:53 |
Karen Ferguson | So you were the third child? | 34:57 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Mm-hmm. Wait, there was a child between my second brother and I, that was born a stillborn child. | 34:59 |
Karen Ferguson | Did he have a name? | 35:10 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | She. | 35:13 |
Karen Ferguson | She. | 35:13 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Her name was Curtiss, C-U-R-T-I-S-S. I don't know if she had a middle name or not, but she was Jackson. | 35:14 |
Karen Ferguson | And she was born between Charles and Samuel or between Charles— | 35:23 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Between Charles and me. | 35:28 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. So somewhere in the mid '20s then? | 35:30 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Mm-hmm. Then there was me, and then there was another stillborn child between me and my brother. And that child, I don't know if he had a name. He was a boy, but he died at birth. That she did. I don't remember what that child's name was. | 35:38 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And now your children's names? | 36:03 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | My children? | 36:04 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 36:05 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Larry Thomas Miller. | 36:07 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And you were born? | 36:16 |
Larry T. Miller | 8/25/48. | 36:17 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And then? | 36:24 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Linda? | 36:25 |
Karen Ferguson | Linda. | 36:25 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Diane Miller, Mendinghall. | 36:29 |
Karen Ferguson | Sorry, what's the— | 36:36 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Miller Mendinghall, M-E-N-D-I-N-G-H-A-L-L. | 36:39 |
Karen Ferguson | M-E-N-D-I-N-G— | 36:46 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | H-A-L-L. | 36:46 |
Karen Ferguson | H-A-L-L. And when was she born? What year? | 36:48 |
Larry T. Miller | 1950. | 36:51 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | About 1950. | 36:51 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And then you have another son as well, is that right? | 36:51 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | I just have two. I have two grandchildren. I have more than—Well officially, I have how many grandchildren? | 36:58 |
Larry T. Miller | Two. | 37:09 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | I have two grandchildren. | 37:09 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. So you lived in Charlotte until about—When did you go to Washington DC? | 37:13 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | It must have been 1950—Let's say '55. I'm not really— | 37:26 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. Then you went to Washington DC. | 37:31 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Mm-hmm. | 37:32 |
Karen Ferguson | And how you were there until nearly till '62? | 37:37 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | '62. | 37:39 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And then you've lived in Charlotte since then? | 37:40 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Mm-hmm. | 37:48 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And your elementary school, Fairview Elementary? | 37:55 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Fairview Elementary School, right. | 37:57 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. So when did you start going there? At six or five or six years old? | 38:09 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | I must have been six. | 38:15 |
Karen Ferguson | Six. So you were there in—And that was at sixth grad or seventh? | 38:15 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Seventh. | 38:16 |
Karen Ferguson | Seventh grade. So that's six—So about 1943 you went there? | 38:17 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | I guess. That's good enough. | 38:28 |
Karen Ferguson | And then you went to West Charlotte High School? | 38:37 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | It is now Northwest. | 38:39 |
Karen Ferguson | So that would be 1943, or something? 1948? | 38:58 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Something like that. | 38:58 |
Karen Ferguson | So that was still grade 12? Is that what it was? | 38:58 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Mm-hmm. | 38:58 |
Karen Ferguson | And then you went to Johnson C. Smith? | 39:03 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | One-quarter. That was '53 or '54? One of—Oh, these dates. I need to— | 39:05 |
Karen Ferguson | It's all right, we just need approximate. And then you went to—What was the school, the teachers' college you went to? | 39:17 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | At that time, it was DC Teachers College. | 39:32 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. How long did you go there? | 39:46 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Just a quarter. | 39:47 |
Karen Ferguson | Just a quarter. And then the business school you went to? | 39:49 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Atlantic Business College. | 39:57 |
Karen Ferguson | And that was in DC as well? Okay. So you were there for how long? Do you remember? A couple of years or? | 39:59 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | At school, yeah. | 40:15 |
Karen Ferguson | What did you receive? What did you graduate in? | 40:19 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Associate degree. | 40:22 |
Karen Ferguson | Associate degree? | 40:24 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Uh-huh, in business. | 40:25 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. Now we need a little bit of work history. And you can just list the jobs that have been most important to you. | 40:36 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | The first one was with the Navy, US Navy in the photographic division, clerk spino. Then— | 40:44 |
Karen Ferguson | And you worked there from around 1957 to '62 or? | 40:58 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Well, with the navy in total, but then within the navy, various positions. And the next, you spoke of the most important. The next one is secretary, bureau of supplies and accounts. And then administrative assisted at that same place. | 41:11 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. So this is between 1957 and '62 approximately? | 41:52 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah. '57. Uh-huh. And those are approximates. | 42:00 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And then are there any other jobs you'd like maybe to list here? | 42:03 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Well yeah. When I came back, I started working for Western Electric Southern Bell. | 42:06 |
Karen Ferguson | You worked at Southern Bell? | 42:14 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Mm-hmm. I retired from Southern Bell as a circuit layout assigner. | 42:15 |
Karen Ferguson | I'm sorry? | 42:20 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Circuit, C-I-R-C-U-I-T, layout assigner. | 42:20 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And so you worked there from—When did you retire? | 42:25 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | When did I retire? '80. Wait a minute. '80— | 42:42 |
Larry T. Miller | Seven or six. | 42:45 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Six, I think. | 42:51 |
Karen Ferguson | And when did you start working there? In the '60s? | 42:54 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Mm-hmm, '63. | 42:56 |
Karen Ferguson | Just let me make sure I get these jobs that you talked about on the interview. You worked in the laundry at the Charlotte Hotel? | 43:03 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah. That was during high school. And then— | 43:10 |
Karen Ferguson | What was the name of the funeral home at which you worked? | 43:17 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | It was—What was Mr—The man? | 43:22 |
Larry T. Miller | Arerys. | 43:26 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Aries. A-R-E-R-Y. | 43:27 |
Karen Ferguson | A-R-E—Sorry? | 43:32 |
Larry T. Miller | A-R-E-R-Y. A-R-E-R-Y. | 43:34 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | That's right. A-R-E-R-Y, which is now Longs. | 43:38 |
Karen Ferguson | And then you were a pastry chef for the city of Charlotte? | 43:58 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | In the school, for the school. Night chef cook, pastry cook. | 44:01 |
Karen Ferguson | Pastry chef for the Charlotte School. | 44:08 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Okay. Go back to the Charlotte Hotel. | 44:25 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 44:26 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | After my daddy talked to those people in charge, they put me on, I was an elevator operator. | 44:27 |
Karen Ferguson | That's right. Sorry. | 44:32 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | That's when I really went up in the world, up and down. | 44:34 |
Larry T. Miller | Up and down. | 44:39 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Up and down. And that funeral home job came after that. | 44:41 |
Karen Ferguson | Have you received any honors or awards that you'd like us to list here on our— | 44:49 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Outstanding student in college. | 44:59 |
Karen Ferguson | This was at the business school? | 45:05 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yeah. I received several from Southern Bell, but I can't remember the names of those things. | 45:12 |
Karen Ferguson | I'll put down Southern Bell employee award. | 45:25 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Mm-hmm, something like that. | 45:27 |
Larry T. Miller | And although she does not say anything about it, if I'm not mistaken, [indistinct 00:45:43], she was the first—She was the one who booked the color line at Western Electric. She was the first Black secretary and office person. | 45:43 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Right. | 45:48 |
Karen Ferguson | So you were the first Black person working where? At the? | 45:49 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | At Western Electric. Okay. Western Electric was a manufacturing arm of Southern Bell. But they've since gone out of business. | 45:54 |
Karen Ferguson | When was that? | 46:05 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | That same, '63. | 46:14 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. Okay. That's this word. I'm glad you— | 46:15 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | I'm glad you did too, because I forgot. | 46:19 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. It's Church of God. Church of God, Anderson is your— | 46:24 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Then, not now. | 46:29 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. What's your current—? | 46:29 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | I'm a Seventh Day Adventist now. | 46:30 |
Karen Ferguson | And what's the church that you go to? | 46:33 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Berean, B-E-R-E-A-N. | 46:46 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And is Berean a Seventh Day Adventist church? | 46:52 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Yes. | 46:52 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And your past church membership was Church of God, Anderson. Have you belonged to anything else? | 47:01 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Any kind or— | 47:11 |
Larry T. Miller | Upper Room Baptist. | 47:11 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Other churches you mean? | 47:14 |
Karen Ferguson | Yes, that's right. | 47:15 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | In DC, I belonged to the Upper Room Baptist Church. | 47:16 |
Karen Ferguson | That's all for the church memberships? | 47:38 |
Bernice Jackson Miller | Mm-hmm. | 47:40 |
Item Info
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