Rufus Spears, Sr. interview recording, 1993 June 17
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Transcript
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Sonya Ramsey | All right. Mr. Spears, could you describe the neighborhood where you grew up? | 0:04 |
Rufus Spears | I grew up in a neighborhood called Third Ward, and the part of Third Ward that I lived in was two blocks from downtown Charlotte. And it was a neighborhood of middle income people, very good people, and very straight disciplinarians. Just around the corner from us was a White neighborhood, so we all knew each other, but we couldn't go to the same places. Not the same way, anyway. If they went in the front door, we had to go to the back door or to a side window to be served. | 0:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said they're all different occupations and things. What type of occupations did the people have that lived in the Third Ward? | 0:54 |
Rufus Spears | In my neighborhood, there was a truck driver, a man who worked for the railroad. My father had a dry cleaning business. Well, there were two men who worked at the railroad. And then further on down the street there was a lady who sold illegal booze. It was a dollar house in the neighborhood, we called it back in those days. Then we had the man who worked at the ice company and for the coal yard. These were typical Black jobs, basically. And we were fortunate. My dad had the dry cleaning business, so I guess that sort of put us just one notch ahead of most of them because he was independent and he didn't have to go to the White man for his living. | 0:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did he come to get a dry cleaning business? | 1:39 |
Rufus Spears | My dad moved here from a town called Bennettsville, South Carolina, and he was a tailor by trade. He had gone to a training school to learn how to sew. And when he came into town, he just decided to go into business for himself. And at first he started off very meager with pressing clothes. He was just pressing clothes. Then of course, he began to dry clean and then began to sew for people in the community. When we had Baxter Clothes and came in town, which was a White concern, they were just two blocks away and my dad got all that business. And so we all came home with a bag of money that night. But then he had his grand opening. | 1:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | In your neighborhood, what did you and your friends do for fun? | 2:23 |
Rufus Spears | Well, everybody had a bike. We shot marbles and we played football in the street, and we used to spin tops. You probably don't know anything about that, but basically we played cowboys and Indians. And when I used to ride through there with my children, I said, "I shot many Indians down this neighborhood." And we did made scooters out of old skates, and we found things to entertain ourselves with in the summertime when we out of school. | 2:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Where did you and your family go to shop in the Third Ward? | 3:02 |
Rufus Spears | Down the street from my dad's dry cleaners, there were two grocery stores, grocery stores owned by Whites, and of course they served this Black neighborhood. And we did our shopping there. And being so close to downtown Charlotte, there was a place that sold meat exclusively, a place called Marsh and Barnes, and their biggest clientele was Whites. But in order to get a better grade of meat, this is where you went. | 3:09 |
Rufus Spears | And then of course there were farmers who came to town on Saturday with trucks and they would come into the neighborhoods and sell live chickens for tomorrow's dinner and fresh vegetables off the truck. And I can remember my mother and the ladies in the neighborhood going out to these trucks and buying live chickens, and they used to tie the chickens feet so they wouldn't get away from you. And you'd kill it in the afternoon and pick the feathers off it. I've done that many a day. And that was Sunday dinner. | 3:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | When you shopped in your neighborhood store that was owned by Whites, how did they treat their Black customers? | 4:11 |
Rufus Spears | Most of them were very, very cordial to the Black customer because they were, in my opinion, just about one little tiny notch above us, as far as economics was concerned. So they were out there scuffing, trying to make a dollar, and they were trying to be of service to us because we had to have someplace to shop. | 4:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your father ever have any problems with his business with Whites and things like that? | 4:37 |
Rufus Spears | No. No, never that I can remember. | 4:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | In your neighborhood, what were the boundaries? What connected your neighborhood? What was the next neighborhood over and things like that? | 4:48 |
Rufus Spears | The next neighborhood over was Second Ward where I went to school. But the White downtown businesses separated Third Ward from Second Ward. Then there was Fourth Ward to the north of us. And here again, the business sector separated the wards. In other words, it was just like a cross. And the wards were separated then. Downtown was in the middle and everything had branched out from that. We had neighborhood schools. And so, the White man thought he had gotten us licked when he moved. He built schools way out in the suburbs. We didn't live out there. So then of course, Judge McMillan said, you got to bus them out there. So that's how busing started. | 4:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. I'll get to that later on. I'll get back to that. I guess I'll go back to your family now. Do you have any remembrances of your grandparents? | 5:36 |
Rufus Spears | Yes. | 5:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of things do you remember? | 5:46 |
Rufus Spears | My grandfather on my daddy's side, he worked for the Seaboard Railway in a little town called Hamlet, North Carolina. And he was a porter. And the porter's job in those days were, especially people who were not educated, the porter's job was to help carry baggage from the trains that would come in, to the baggage room. And I can remember these long wagons, they used to put the baggage on and they would pull them. I remember him pulling his wagons around to the baggage room so people could come and claim their luggage. | 5:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you remember any stories that he told you or anything or experiences you had with him? | 6:29 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah, he told me at a very early age, "I want you to go to college boy, so you don't have to pull one of these big wagons." And that stuck with me. He said, "You're not going to be a very big fella, but I don't want you to have to pull a wagon like this. This is hard work." And it really was. | 6:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you remember your grandmother? | 6:51 |
Rufus Spears | Yes, I can remember her because she didn't work. She kept the house immaculate and I can remember getting popped for putting things in the wrong place or removing things that they were not up to where she wanted them. And I can remember those delicious pies she used to make. Yeah. | 6:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | Where was she found, she from Hamlet also? | 7:12 |
Rufus Spears | No, she came from Haiti. | 7:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. How did your grandfather— | 7:24 |
Rufus Spears | Now I don't know how that happened. But she came from Haiti to this country. And she and my grandfather met somewhere and they married. | 7:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, that's nice. Did she ever tell you any stories from Haiti? | 7:37 |
Rufus Spears | She didn't have very much to say. She was real quiet. And she died when I was very— I must have been seven or eight years, nine, 10 years old, somewhere like that. And she died before I really got a chance to talk with her. But my granddaddy after she died. And after I had gotten up 12, 14, 15 years old, and I was able to talk with him and sort of understand what he was going through. | 7:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you remember your other set of grandparents? | 8:00 |
Rufus Spears | Yes. My grandmother, on my mother's side, she lived in a little town called Gibson, North Carolina, which is 11 miles from Hamlet. And the railroad track went right down straight in front of her house. Black family lived on both sides of the railroad tracks. So if we talk about going across the tracks, this is where it was. Again, she didn't work. She was a short lady and she was a strict discipline. If she spanked, she would put your head between her knees and turn your rear up and pop you. I can remember that. And my grandfather on my mother's side was a minister. Oh, okay. And I can recall seeing him walking to and from church with this big black hat on and his Bible on his arm. | 8:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you remember any stories that they told you or experiences with him? | 8:48 |
Rufus Spears | No, he died when I was way down. | 8:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | Would you talk some about your parents, more about your parents? | 8:55 |
Rufus Spears | My mother and dad were the best folks in the world. Yeah. My mother, if you met her, you would always remember her because she was very comical. She'd always keep you laughing. And she was just a real sweet person. And all through the day, she let us know how much she cared about us. Because you passed by, you had to hug her. And she'd always kiss you on the cheek. If you did something outstanding, man, she was right there with you. My daddy was a disciplinarian. | 8:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | In what way? | 9:32 |
Rufus Spears | He wouldn't spank you, but he would take away the thing that you like most as punishment. Like when I was in high school, going to the football and basketball games were my big thing, but if I misbehaved or did something I wasn't supposed to do, then those privileges were taken away from me. And that hurt worse than being spanked because I had begun to look at the little girls. And it's a big thing walking home from the game with this girl, or if you had one walking home with somebody's daughter. | 9:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have any chores to do around the house? | 10:06 |
Rufus Spears | Oh yes. Every afternoon when I got home from school, the first thing you did, you got out the school clothes. You had three types of clothes: school clothes, knock arounds and Sunday stuff. And you had to get out. And so in those days, we had heaters in the bedrooms and you had coal heaters. We're back to that now, but on a more lavish level. But I had to chop kindling. You know what kindlinger' is? | 10:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | The sticks of wood. | 10:36 |
Rufus Spears | Right. And then bring in coal. Now, we had, way in the back of our backyard, we had a coal house, believe it or not. And in the summer, my dad would buy coal for the winter. And I can remember the trucks backing in, dumping the coal in the coal house. Excuse me. Then I would open the door and I used to had to bring coal in for all the heaters in the house. I think we must have had about four. | 10:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have any brothers and sisters? | 11:00 |
Rufus Spears | I had three brothers and one sister. I had a twin sister that I didn't know. | 11:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 11:07 |
Rufus Spears | She died when she was six weeks old. | 11:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Who made the decisions in the family? | 11:08 |
Rufus Spears | My mother and dad got together on the decisions. But she always gave you the word. If my dad said, "No, you don't go," then she would tell you, "Your dad and I got together and you can't go to the games this week." | 11:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your mother work outside of the house? | 11:27 |
Rufus Spears | No, she didn't. | 11:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever have to help with your father's business? | 11:41 |
Rufus Spears | Oh, yes. Yes. My job was to go to the dry cleaners in the afternoon after I did my chores at home. So I had three brothers and all of us worked in the dry cleaners. As a result of that, he didn't really have to hire anybody, it was a family thing. And of course, my oldest brother went off to the war, and then that's when I came in. He said, "You're big enough to at least wait on the customers." I can remember getting 25 cents for a pair of pants that was dry cleaned and 50 cents for a suit. And you look at that as being meager today. But somehow or another we made it. They kept us going. It really did. And I can't remember not one day being ever hungry or I didn't have proper clothing or the things that I really needed. | 11:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | What were the holidays like in your home? | 12:21 |
Rufus Spears | Oh, Christmas was— Well, Sunday was just like a holiday. | 12:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, in what way? | 12:27 |
Rufus Spears | On Sunday you couldn't do nothing but live. Nothing was open. But this was the day that my dad had a chance to sit down with his family and you had to keep on that shirt and tie you wore to church this morning. And it was a known fact you were going to church. There wasn't no ifs, ands and buts about that. But you had to sit down with my dad on Sunday afternoon at the dinner table. This is when he found out what you did at school or what happened. You told him about what happened over the week. And I thought that was very good. And I tried to do that to my children, but they told me, "Oh, this is old fashioned, no." But it was very, very good. | 12:29 |
Rufus Spears | Christmas time was a time that we all got together, families. The neighborhood was festive. Everybody tried to put up some decorations, such as it was at that time. And holidays were very festive. 4th of July, we didn't have cookouts then, but folks in the neighborhood, just like a picnic, they used to bring all the dinners in the neighborhood. And there was a little park, not a park, but it was just a field, and I can remember them spreading all this food out there on the tables on the 4th of July. And you'd go out there and you'd pitch horseshoe and you play softball. And then everybody would sit down and eat, the neighborhood. So it was very festive. | 13:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | You mentioned your church, going to church on Sundays. What church did your family attend? | 13:52 |
Rufus Spears | My family attended Clinton AME Zion Church. | 13:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | And well, you said how long you went to Sunday service. Did you do any other activities with the church? | 13:59 |
Rufus Spears | Yes. You had to go to what was called Buzz of Promise. That's the same thing as BYP or Baptist. | 14:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 14:12 |
Rufus Spears | But it was the youth group. And every Easter you had a speech to make. And Children's Day was a big day. It was three times a year, Christmas, Easter, and Children's Day, you had to make a dissertation. | 14:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did that make people nervous of things? | 14:31 |
Rufus Spears | I used to be shaking all day. I used to hate it, but you had to do it. And there was a girl in our church who would learn these long speeches. And it would take her forever. And everybody, "Oh, she was so smart." I used to hate her guts, why would she give this long speech? So my parents would say, "Well, you need to get one of them." My sister would have a long one. | 14:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | All right. I guess I'm going to move on to, oh, I'll ask one more question about your family. What did your parents ever— Did they ever teach you or tell you things about White people or segregation, or things you remember? | 14:57 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah, my dad had some White customers and he instilled in us that they were people and we were people. And that we were to treat them nice and not do— Because we were being mistreated, they call us Colored folks then, just because we were Colored. He said, "We don't do evil for evil, we're going to be a little better than that. A little bit bigger than that." | 15:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | You need to get that? Okay. I wanted also ask, what kind of values did your parents instill in you and your brothers and sisters? | 15:35 |
Rufus Spears | First thing, it was a no-no if you entertained the thought to steal or to do anything that was immoral. And I can remember my mother taking my sister and talking to her about teenage pregnancy. My dad would talk to me and my brothers. Now, I wasn't even big enough to know what he was talking about, but he would take us all at the same time and talk. But he was saying, "When you have children, you need to be married. And think about that girl's parents and think about your parents." And so they tried to put us on a straight and narrow track. If we didn't follow it, then it wasn't their fault. They did a good job. That's why I said my parents were great people. | 15:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | I'll like to move on to school. Do you have any remembrances of your elementary school, things like that? | 16:27 |
Rufus Spears | Yes. One of the highlights of my elementary school day was May Day. | 16:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was that like? | 16:40 |
Rufus Spears | We would go home at around 11:30 and everybody would come back dressed in White. And we'd wrap the bay pole. And we had a little drill team. It wasn't called a drill team, but it was marching. And one of the highlights of my elementary school year was I had learned to play the clarinet. And I thought it was big stuff. I played taps maybe. | 16:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you take lessons? | 17:06 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah, we had a Black musician who came in. It must have been about 10 of us who had instruments. And this man would come in once a week and teach us. And I was chosen to play taps on the clarinet. And they had a microphone, it was loud so everybody could hear it. And I thought I was tough stuff. Well, I guess that was big in those days. And then of course, I can remember our little awards program. I went to elementary school six years without missing a day out of school. | 17:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Goodness. What was the name of your— | 17:37 |
Rufus Spears | Isabella Wyche. | 17:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 17:40 |
Rufus Spears | It's closed now. They tore it down. In fact, all my schools in Charlotte are torn down except Johnson C. Smith. | 17:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | You mentioned that you went to school without missing a day. What did your parents do when the children got sick and things like that? | 17:49 |
Rufus Spears | If you stayed home being sick, you had to really be sick. My mother was there anyway. And it seemed like all the childhood things, I had chicken pox, and mumps, measles, all that was in the summer. | 17:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh. | 18:11 |
Rufus Spears | I even had an appendectomy between fifth and sixth grade. And the operation was the last part of July, and I was in school the first day in September. | 18:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | With that experience, did you know that you had called the doctor and things like that? Could you describe that experience at the hospital? | 18:23 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah. I started having abdominal pains. I was very active when I was young. And my mother always observed the way you acted, during then. I was laying around sleeping and drowsy. So she found out I had a temperature, so she took me to the doctor. And of course I left the doctor's office and went straight to the hospital. I didn't even get a chance to go back home. | 18:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Which hospital did you go to? | 18:53 |
Rufus Spears | It was called Good Samaritan Hospital. That was the all-Black hospital in Charlotte then. | 18:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you remember what type of hospital, was it a nice hospital and you talked to him about Good Samaritan? | 18:58 |
Rufus Spears | Yep. Good Samaritan was a Black hospital in the Black neighborhood and it was operated by the Episcopal Church. And of course all the personnel except the administrators were Black. The administrators were White people. And the head nurse was a Black lady. The facility was not the best facility in the world, but according to the White man, it was good enough for us. And this is where we went. And we had no choice. You couldn't go to Mercy Hospital in Charlotte or Presbyterian Hospital. That was unheard of. And then West Carolina Medical Center, now with Memorial Hospital, they were three hospitals in town for Whites. And everybody went to Good Samaritan. We call it Good Sam. | 19:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 19:59 |
Rufus Spears | And of course, if you were in there on the weekends, Friday and Saturday night, if you were in the hospital, it was very difficult to sleep because the ambulances were coming. My room was right here and the entrance to the ambulance entrance was right there. And sirens all night long. It was very difficult, where we had been shooting and cutting each other. On the weekends when you get drinking that booze and we'd be all over the place, fighting and cutting. | 19:59 |
Rufus Spears | And it was a traumatic experience really to have been in the hospital and being that young. The thing that really got me, my bed was right beside the front window. I could look out and see the kids playing softball in the evening. Out there was a playground across the street and it was kind of hard being a child there watching that, and the doctor telling you to stay in the bed. | 20:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | I'd like to go back to your elementary school. Do you have any teachers, remembrances of any teachers that you had? | 20:48 |
Rufus Spears | Yes, there are two of them still living around here. My fifth and sixth grade teacher. Her husband is a member of the fraternity. And every time I see her. We have to hug each other. And I always say now, "We were in fifth grade together." But I can remember Miss Holaman, somehow or another, I showed off that day and she spanked me. And I said something back to her. And I forgot I was in the PTA program that night when my mother and dad was there. And of course, I got it again. And Mrs. Moore, my sixth grade teacher, her son and I were very good friends. And I think she did a little more for me because of that than she did for the other students. Seemed like I was kind of set apart. And all the nice little things that I was involved in, which I appreciate. But I don't know how the other kids took it. | 20:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. I was going to ask that. | 21:48 |
Rufus Spears | Back in those days, they would call you teacher's pet. And when I came out of the hospital that summer, I wasn't allowed to go out and play with the kids. So in lunch time we used to have recess. You didn't have that when you went to school? | 21:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | Yes, I did. | 22:04 |
Rufus Spears | Did you? We had recess and I had to stand out there with the teachers. And I felt kind of strange because they would be talking and I wouldn't know what they were talking about. And they would be saying things. It was an imposition for them because here was a student standing there. But my teacher had me standing there because I wasn't allowed to play. And she knew if I'd gotten out there, I'd been playing like everybody else. Because doctor's orders to me for the first month in school, I wasn't allowed to do anything in recess but just walk around or stand around. | 22:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did the kids tease you? | 22:36 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah, that's when I started being called teacher's pet. They didn't understand the seriousness of it. See, at that time when I had my operation, I stayed in the hospital 12 days. And you have an appendectomy today and you go home tomorrow. That's how it has advanced since then. | 22:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did the teachers ever play favorites for other people in different reasons? | 22:56 |
Rufus Spears | Yes. | 22:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | What were some of those? | 23:00 |
Rufus Spears | Some of the reasons was your family background, if you were extremely smart, you were favored or singled out. And I have seen them children who didn't dress too well, who would come to school dirty. I've seen them kind of withdraw and say— I remember one teacher saying, "I got to put up with this all day long." And the boy was dirty. And see that was a no-no for us because my dad was in the dry cleaning business. | 23:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | I guess we can go on to your high school now. What do you remember? You have remembrances of—. | 23:35 |
Rufus Spears | I went to high school in the seventh grade. See, we didn't have junior high school for us then. And you went six years in one school and some schools had first through eighth. But I went to high school in seventh grade. And I had two brothers and a sister who were ahead of me in the school and they were just, my brothers were role models with me. They kept their shoes shined, kept their hair brushed and they kept well groomed. And so I patterned after that. | 23:41 |
Rufus Spears | But I really wanted to participate in sports. And so when I got in the ninth grade, we started having track team and I went out for the team the first year and didn't make it. And of course, being short, I didn't make the basketball team. And I was too little to play football because there were a lot of veterans coming back. But I stayed with this track thing. And when I graduated I had a track scholarship at Charlotte University. I did very well in track. | 24:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | So you made it the second time? | 24:35 |
Rufus Spears | Second time around I made it. I was a distance runner. | 24:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | You practiced harder? | 24:41 |
Rufus Spears | Well, I don't know, I guess I just grew up a little bit more and I found something I could do. I was a long distance runner. | 24:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | What high school was it? | 24:46 |
Rufus Spears | Second Ward. | 24:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Second Ward. What did you do besides track, what other activities? | 24:51 |
Rufus Spears | I sang in the choir and played in the band. | 24:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Did you have to audition for the choir? | 24:54 |
Rufus Spears | Yes, we did. We had to audition for the choir but not for the band. If you had the instruments, you were automatically in the band if you could play it. | 24:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Did you get to travel with either one of those courses? | 25:04 |
Rufus Spears | I travelled. My junior and senior year, every time my bus came to Second Ward school, I was on it. I didn't play basketball, but I was the scorekeeper so I was a part. | 25:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | You had to go. | 25:18 |
Rufus Spears | Then I was manager of the football team and so I had to go. I was the equipment manager, so I traveled with. And I was in the choir and I traveled with the choir. And in the band, whenever we go to the music festival. I was with the choir and the band. | 25:19 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was traveling like during that time? | 25:32 |
Rufus Spears | Travel during that time was a little difficult if we went a distance. Most of the time we had to pack a lunch because there was nowhere for us to stop to eat. So we had to pack a lunch or the school would have the home economics teachers pack a lunch for us. And then we could stop on the side of the road someplace, and out in some remote area and have this lunch. I can recall having, on our way to Asheville, one time up in the mountains, and we stopped in the store and the man came out and said that we could come in the store three at a time. So they said, "You have to watch your Coloreds, you'll steal." And he was about right. We crowded the store. The store of that man ragged. But he let us come in three at a time and we came in to buy things in the store. | 25:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever have to stay overnight places and things like that? | 26:23 |
Rufus Spears | We stayed overnight in Durham. Yeah. | 26:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Where would you stay then? | 26:30 |
Rufus Spears | When I was running track, we stayed in the gym at North Carolina Central. It was called North Carolina College then. North Carolina College at Durham for Colored, believe it or not. And we went to Greensboro to A&T to a track meet, to a state track meet, for CIAA track meet. And we stayed out in a little area called Quansan. Quansan Huts. | 26:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | How do you spell that? | 26:57 |
Rufus Spears | I think it's Q-U-A-N-S-A-N. Quansan Huts. It was an old military place. Because A&T had ROTC or they still have it. | 26:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your family ever go on vacations or things like that, travel? | 27:11 |
Rufus Spears | No. The only time we got away from home as a family was the church picnics. We'd go and visit my grandparents. I guess you could call that vacation. Yeah. But my dad would go on weekend trips after he closed his business down on Saturday. I can remember taking the 11 o'clock train and going down to Hamlet to visit his parents. | 27:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was that experience like on the train? | 27:39 |
Rufus Spears | Oh, that was gorgeous. It was about a two and a half hour ride. But we were in the Black car. And usually the Black car was next to the last car. Last car was the baggage car. And of course the conductor and everybody would come right through the Black car going to the baggage car. | 27:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why did you say it was gorgeous? | 28:00 |
Rufus Spears | The ride. You know how youngsters are. Two and a half hours on the train. Then you come back to school and you have something to tell, "I was on the train." And surprisingly enough, there are a lot of folks today that I know that have never been on the train. | 28:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | All right. I guess the Second Ward, what did the students there do for social activities? | 28:19 |
Rufus Spears | Oh, we had sock hops. You know what a sock hop is? | 28:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Yeah. | 28:28 |
Rufus Spears | That's a dance. And at recess, we didn't have a gym at the time, but our auditorium was big enough, we called this area the flat. And we used to play basketball in there during the recess, and go back to class, all sweaty and stinky. And it was typical. We had fads like white shoes, but if they were clean you were out of style. They had to be dirty. | 28:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 28:58 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah. But most of the guys and girls in those days, they were well groomed. If a guy came to school dirty, he was in bad shape. | 29:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | What would happen? | 29:10 |
Rufus Spears | We'd talk about it. They'd talk about him. And he would get the message. He'd go back and put something better the next day. And to see a girl's legs was unheard of. | 29:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | Really? Why? They long— | 29:20 |
Rufus Spears | Long dresses, down to the top of the socks. The only time you might have got a chance to sneak peek was when they had physical education class. | 29:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Did they have a separate physical education? | 29:37 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah. | 29:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of music did you listen to when you were in high school? | 29:38 |
Rufus Spears | Oh, music of the '40s. When I was in high school and you go to the dance, you could tell, if I was dancing with you, you could tell I was dancing with you. | 29:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why? | 29:49 |
Rufus Spears | Because we wouldn't be that far away from each other. But now, the people doing electric slide. And you don't know who's who, whose partner's who. But junior and senior prom was a dignified thing. It was a dressy affair. And you just lived to go to the prom. This was a big, big night. And you didn't jitter bug, that was the name of the dance then. You didn't jitter bug with the girls because they had on evening dresses. | 29:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 30:16 |
Rufus Spears | So you had to either learn to do two step or a foxtrot or a waltz because this was the kind of music. They didn't play this fast music. You couldn't jitter bug with them. Like you see the folks now in evening guys doing everything. | 30:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was your prom like? How did you pick up your date and what was that— | 30:31 |
Rufus Spears | You walked. | 30:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | You walked. | 30:36 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah. And you could ride a cab for 50 cents all over town. And in order to save money. Now Joe Harper, the guy that came indoors with you. We were very close friends and we used to double date. And you see if we had $4 between us, see we were in good shape. I would pay the cab, four could ride for 50 cents. And so you walk to pick up your date. And usually we would meet, Joe and I, girls we were dating lived in the same ward. So we'd walk to their house and then we'd meet at a certain point, then take the cab and go to the dance or where we were going. And then after we'd take the girls back home and we'd walk by this place and get a hamburger. We didn't take the girls to get the hamburger. And then you'd walk home. | 30:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were the cab drivers Black cab drivers or White? | 31:21 |
Rufus Spears | No. | 31:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | They didn't mind picking up Black passengers? | 31:24 |
Rufus Spears | No. | 31:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Anything like that? | 31:26 |
Rufus Spears | No. No, they didn't mind that. | 31:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | So what in junior prom, was your date— she was from the same ward. Did you ever date girls from different neighborhoods? | 31:30 |
Rufus Spears | Yes. Yeah. The only problem you had, if you weren't well liked and you go in different neighborhoods, you may have to run. | 31:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh. Why would they— | 31:44 |
Rufus Spears | So the guys in the neighborhood, you coming taking our girls. | 31:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh. | 31:47 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah. | 31:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you have any remembrances of any special teachers at Second Ward? | 31:50 |
Rufus Spears | Yes. Mrs. Neil, she followed me from Second Ward to Johnson C. Smith. She was in science and chemistry. And my coach, Donald Garner, he was just like a big brother. If you had problems, you took them to him. And any problem. | 31:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said Donald Garner? | 32:17 |
Rufus Spears | Donald A. Garner. | 32:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was some of your favorite subjects in high school? | 32:22 |
Rufus Spears | Biology was one of my favorites. Biology and history was some of my favorite subjects in high school. And I did pretty well in English too. | 32:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | This is during the 1940s, how did World War II affect your family? | 32:35 |
Rufus Spears | Well, I had a brother who was older to go in World War II. And it was a scary situation. We used to have what was known as blackouts, this was a test run and they would have these at night. And they would turn all the lights in the city off. And they'd stay off for about 25 to 30 minutes. And then you'd hear a siren, which was all clear. And they had what we called air raid warnings. It was always, you'd hear a plane flying over with the lights on, "God, I wonder how they going to bomb this house." And when you go to the movies, you used to see these clips from scenes in the war where they would be bombing these dark places. So it was just something back in the back of your mind. And plus, the first time I ever saw my dad cry was when my brother went overseas. | 32:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | How long did he remain overseas? | 33:27 |
Rufus Spears | He stayed there about three years. | 33:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did he ever tell you about his experiences? | 33:35 |
Rufus Spears | Yes, he told me about his experience and New Guinea in Australia. | 33:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did he say? | 33:41 |
Rufus Spears | Oh, he was talking about how being Black, even in foreign countries, you had to take a step back from the Whites. | 33:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Really? Really? And did he explain in what ways that could affect him? | 33:50 |
Rufus Spears | For instance, there were places you couldn't go. I experienced that when I was in the military. I experienced that in Mexico. They had places for where Black soldiers couldn't go. | 33:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | And when were you in the military? | 34:07 |
Rufus Spears | I was in the military from 1953 to 1955. | 34:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | Well I'll get to that later. I think I'm trying to go— You were in the military when it was integrated by that time? | 34:12 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah. They had just integrated. | 34:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | In World War II, they were still segregated. | 34:22 |
Rufus Spears | Right. They had all Black units. | 34:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did he ever talk about any prejudice in the military? | 34:26 |
Rufus Spears | Yes. It was difficult to make rank and all their officers and sergeants were Whites, but they were all-Black outfits except the leaders. | 34:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did your father's business do with your brother being away and things like that? | 34:40 |
Rufus Spears | It did very well because during the war time, it seems like, as I remember, everybody chipped in to help each other. Things were rationed then. You heard about that? | 34:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 34:57 |
Rufus Spears | Then if your family had an abundance of sugar stamps then they would pass them on, this was in the neighborhood. And everybody just started helping each other. And my daddy's business went well because we had a military reservation here. It was called Morrisville, it was an Air Force base. And the guys would come in and get their uniforms clean. | 34:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, that's nice. Nice. So do you ever get to meet any of the soldiers and things like that? | 35:16 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah. | 35:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | And what kind of things did they tell you? | 35:22 |
Rufus Spears | Oh, they were saying, "Young man, be glad you're not old to be in this mess." I can remember one guy telling me this, guy was from Mississippi. And he was saying that once he got out he was going to come back this way to live because it was better here than it was in Mississippi at that time. | 35:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | And then I guess I'll go into your graduation from Second Ward. What did you do after that? | 35:39 |
Rufus Spears | After graduation, I had a scholarship at Charlotte University. And somehow or another, I never received the scholarship. And so I can remember my dad, first time he talked to me like I was a man, he had three kids in college at the time and he was saying— Three beside me now I was going to make the fourth one. So he said, "If you go to Johnson C. Smith, I can work it out. I can handle it." Because my dad was the breadwinner in the household and the only one working. And I look back at it now, he did one heck of a job considering, but it must have been just as hard then. But $50 is now worth $100. | 35:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you know if a lot of your other friends go to college? | 36:20 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah, Joe Harper had gone, a lot of my buddies had gone to Johnson C. Smith. For the same reason that you had more than one child in college. And you had to be reasonable with your parents. All I wanted do was go to college. | 36:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you stay at home while you were in college? | 36:40 |
Rufus Spears | Yes. That's the only thing I missed, was being in the dormitory. But I got a good idea what that was like when I was in the military. | 36:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did you major in when you went to college? | 36:50 |
Rufus Spears | I majored in science and physical education. | 36:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you want to be a teacher then? | 36:55 |
Rufus Spears | I started out to be a doctor. | 36:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. What changed your mind? | 36:58 |
Rufus Spears | I had a hard time with organic chemistry and I thought I better change my route. So I did. Plus, I was involved in the university choir. We didn't have a band then. I was trying to get into the fraternity. And there were a lot of social things that had me going. And I guess I just didn't apply myself like I did when I first went there. So I changed over. | 37:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to talk some about the organizations. Did you have to audition for the choir? | 37:30 |
Rufus Spears | Yes. | 37:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was the competition a little harder? | 37:36 |
Rufus Spears | It was very stiff. Yeah, it was very stiff because they were only taking about 50 people. And it was very tough. | 37:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you remember what you sang to get in or anything like that? | 37:49 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah. It was the line in, How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place. | 37:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 37:52 |
Rufus Spears | It was a little bass running and he got to that part. And I think one of the things that really helped me, Mr. Kemp, who was the choir director at that time, knew that Joe Harper and I had been in choir at Second Ward School. And we were able to sight-read and this is what he was kind of looking forward to. So I think that helped us out. | 37:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | I guess, when you got into your fraternities, why did you select your fraternity over the other ones? | 38:16 |
Rufus Spears | Well, all my buddies were in Omega and I looked around and Kappas seemed very strange to me. Sigmas were not the most popular people on campus. Alphas, they just really weren't my cup tea because I didn't like that black and gold. | 38:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 38:44 |
Rufus Spears | And the Omega men just seemed more like my type of people. | 38:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | During the time you went to school, did they have intense pledge processes? | 38:50 |
Rufus Spears | Yes. Yes. Board meeting every night. | 38:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did your parents think about that? | 38:56 |
Rufus Spears | Well, they didn't like it too well. I hid a lot of things from them because I didn't want them to know what I was going through. | 38:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | And you said your brothers were in school also. Did they go to Johnson C. Smith too? | 39:04 |
Rufus Spears | No, I had one brother who went to Johnson C. Smith. | 39:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did he also pledge? | 39:10 |
Rufus Spears | No, he didn't pledge. | 39:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | So you were the first person to join? | 39:13 |
Rufus Spears | Yes. My sister was an AKA. But she went to Hampton. | 39:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. After you became a member, what kind of qualities did you look for in selecting new members? | 39:24 |
Rufus Spears | First of all, you had to be a scholar. And then you had to be well groomed and you had to be sort of popular, because we were cocky. And I admit saying, "If you ain't a Q, you ain't nobody," this type of thing. But really it was scholarship, and you had to maintain that. | 39:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you notice after you became a member that you got more attention from women and things like that? | 39:44 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah. | 39:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you adjust to that? | 39:49 |
Rufus Spears | Well, it made your head swell a little bit. And especially if you were neat and clean and you caught it. During those days nobody had a car. But we have a little part-time job, like waiting tables at the country club, you have two or $3 in your pocket. And you were able to take a girl to the movies or go to the University Grill for a soda or here and there buy a hamburger. | 39:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did the students at Johnson C. Smith do for social life and dating and things like that? | 40:16 |
Rufus Spears | Well, biggest thing we did in those days was walk across the campus holding hands. | 40:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh. | 40:28 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah. And then in the dormitory, you have to go early on Sunday night when you go to visit, in order to get a seat. | 40:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, it was so busy. | 40:37 |
Rufus Spears | Everybody couldn't get a seat in the lounge. So this is why you leave on Sunday afternoon and you walk across the campus. On nice days you walk out on the campus. And that's how you dated. And I was telling my daughters, who's a student that went to Salem State. I took her back one Sunday and these guys was sitting around in jeans and sweatshirts and I said, "Gosh, it sure has changed." When I came along. If you had a suit with a shirt and tie, you had it on Sunday, or you didn't come out on the campus. | 40:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Really? Really? | 41:06 |
Rufus Spears | So you had to be dressed when you went to lunch. | 41:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did they dress for just going to classes during the week? | 41:11 |
Rufus Spears | Believe it or not, we used to wear neckties and shirts to class. Sweater with a shirt and tie on. And then you could always tell when the veterans got their money because they come to class sharp. | 41:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | Yeah. Were there any group of students on campus that didn't follow the norm? | 41:26 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah, they would always looked down on. | 41:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Really? | 41:33 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah. | 41:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did they have a football team and was sports really important activities there? | 41:38 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah. Everybody went to the football game. | 41:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was Johnson C. Smith's rival schools? | 41:46 |
Rufus Spears | Livingstone College, Winston-Salem and North Carolina Central. And at that time A&T. Real big rivals. | 41:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay, I guess I'm finished almost. Is there anything else you'd like to add about Johnson C. Smith? Do you remember any other teachers there or things like that? You mentioned that already. Do you have any other things you'd like to share? | 42:02 |
Rufus Spears | One of my most memorable experiences during the time that I was growing up, being downtown with my mother and there was a fountain that said "Colored" and one that said "White". And I couldn't wait to see if that water over here tastes different from this water over here. And I ventured out one day and drank from the wrong fountain. And the next thing I knew I was feeling my mother's hand on my head. That was a complete no-no. You didn't drink out of the forbidden fountain. And I could never understand why at that time. | 42:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | She didn't explain why? | 42:43 |
Rufus Spears | She did. | 42:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did she say? | 42:43 |
Rufus Spears | She said the law. And the law didn't mean anything to me. She tried to break it down to me. Meant we were supposed to drink over here and the White folks would drink over here. And when they finally put in a lunch counter, they put ours in the basement and the White folks was upstairs. Of course, they had Blacks down there working that counter. And Blacks working upstairs. But the manager was not Black. | 42:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | Which department store treated Blacks the best in downtown Charlotte? | 43:11 |
Rufus Spears | I would have to say Belks. | 43:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | In what ways were they better? | 43:18 |
Rufus Spears | When they first started doing the sit-ins, Belks and J.B. Ivey's Department store were the first ones to open up and say, "Hey, we ain't going to have all this marching and sitting there." Because what really broke it, we had students in Smith, Cookie Wright and this girl, they looked just like White people. And they went in a tulip room and sat down and ate and they were served. And when they got to go out, they told them they were Black. | 43:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was the reaction? | 43:49 |
Rufus Spears | They called the police. | 43:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | After you graduated from Johnson C. Smith, what did you do next after that? | 43:54 |
Rufus Spears | Believe or not, I drove a truck for a drug store for five years and I hated every moment of it. But I did not have a job. Every time I went for a job interview, everybody told me they were looking for somebody with experience. And my last concern was, "How do you get experience if someone won't give you a job?" | 43:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you want to teach? | 44:15 |
Rufus Spears | Not really, I didn't. But since I had— Well, because my first teaching certificate expired before I taught the first day. | 44:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 44:24 |
Rufus Spears | When I left the drug store, I had a job as Youth Director at the YMCA. | 44:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. What was that like with that experience? | 44:32 |
Rufus Spears | It was very nice, I dealt with Black schools. | 44:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of things did you do? | 44:39 |
Rufus Spears | We had organizations. You've ever heard of High Y? | 44:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | No. | 44:44 |
Rufus Spears | In the elementary school it was called the Grade Y. And in high school it was called the High Y. And these were subsidiary clubs in the YMCA. | 44:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 44:53 |
Rufus Spears | And I was more or less the field coordinator. | 44:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of activities did these clubs do? | 44:58 |
Rufus Spears | We used to have dances. Each club would have a dance. Parties. And I remember I used to have them dressing once a week, the high school kids and the elementary kids. | 45:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have a problem with discipline and things like that? | 45:12 |
Rufus Spears | No, you didn't have too many problem with discipline then. Because all the clubs had advisors, but most of them had advisors that were very strict with discipline. | 45:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you like that job? | 45:26 |
Rufus Spears | I would've stayed on the job, but the salary was— And I'd just gotten married. And I didn't have any children, but I had found me a new lifestyle, so I had to have some more money. I started teaching elementary physical education in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. | 45:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you meet your wife? | 45:51 |
Rufus Spears | I was working in Union County because I wanted to coach. And I left and went down to Union County to work. And they had a brand new gym and it was going to be a brand new physical education program set up. And I had worked there two years. And somebody told her about there may be some job open, so she wanted to go down and meet my principal. So the lady next door to me put me in touch with her. And I took her down with me one day and little old lady thought she was hot stuff and so I said, "I'm going to break this little old chick down." Next thing I knew I was in front of the preacher. | 45:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | But she's from Charlotte also? | 46:30 |
Rufus Spears | Originally, she from Marion, South Carolina. | 46:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you know. | 46:34 |
Rufus Spears | — somebody, and all these married couples, and when they leave, they go on home. I got to go and take this girl across town and then come back home myself. It was sort of a carryover thing. | 0:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. You're a new married couple, then you worked in Union County together? Did she get a job there? | 0:13 |
Rufus Spears | No, no, she worked in— We worked in South Carolina together. That's why I'm still working now, 'cause I could have been retired, hadn't I gone to South Carolina. | 0:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | You worked in Union County, South Carolina. Okay, then you— | 0:25 |
Rufus Spears | Union County, North Carolina. | 0:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | North Carolina. Okay. Okay. Then when did you move to South Carolina? | 0:32 |
Rufus Spears | I left Union County. They were just getting ready to integrate to schools. I was head baseball coach in the school, and we didn't play football. They were going to send me to the White high school and I was going to be everybody's assistant and teach health. | 0:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | You didn't want to do that? | 0:51 |
Rufus Spears | Well, health is kind of boring. After you start talking about fluoride and brushing your teeth and this type of thing, hey, I knew no way to dress that up to make it interesting. I could make my science classes interesting at the drop of a hat, or my PE classes, but it's just difficult. And I didn't like the idea of being everybody's assistant. There was a guy fresh out of college, didn't have any experience, and he was going to be head coach in basketball and I was going to be his assistant. I'm coming from a headquarters job. It was racial. | 0:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh yeah, sure. After you finished college, you worked for a trucking company? | 1:28 |
Rufus Spears | Drug store. | 1:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Drug store? Okay. Then you worked for— | 1:34 |
Rufus Spears | YMCA. | 1:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | The YMCA, and then you worked for? | 1:40 |
Rufus Spears | Then I went to Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools. And I left Charlotte-Mecklenberg schools and went to York County in South Carolina. | 1:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And then you had met your wife before you worked in Charlotte school system, or after? | 1:46 |
Rufus Spears | No, after. | 1:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | You were single quite a while? | 1:51 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah, I was out there for a long time. | 1:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Okay. What was your experience teaching in Charlotte? | 1:54 |
Rufus Spears | It was very, very nice, because of being a new teacher, we had workshops every Thursday. And our advisor, our supervisor, basically she gave you your lesson every Thursday for the next week. It was a super experience, but I wanted to coach after I got into physical education. Cause I was working with children, first through sixth grade, and I wanted to go with the big children. That's why I left Charlotte. And I should have stayed, because the salary was better, the supplement was better. The only reason I got over in Union County was being coach, and that required being after school and then at games twice a week. | 1:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | And you were married when you went to Union? | 2:44 |
Rufus Spears | No, we got married when I went to York County together. | 2:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay, so that's been a while. Okay. What was your wedding like? | 2:49 |
Rufus Spears | We got married at my wife's house and we had our reception at the Excelsior Club on Beatties Ford Road. | 2:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay, the Excelsior Club. | 3:01 |
Rufus Spears | We had a small, small wedding. Well, ain't no such thing as a small wedding, because it cost a lot of money in that day and time, but it was a pretty happy day, I thought. | 3:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you nervous about it? | 3:14 |
Rufus Spears | I was okay until my brother came across the street to get me. My brother was my best man. He said, "Okay buddy, your time's up." I was just like, "Gosh, my time's up." | 3:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you and your brothers have a big party the night before? | 3:27 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah, yeah, yeah. | 3:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. | 3:27 |
Rufus Spears | Because I had bought a house before I got married, so they came to my place and we just had a good time. | 3:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. With your wife, she was from South Carolina and then she went to— You both lived in York together? | 3:40 |
Rufus Spears | No, we didn't live there. We commuted back and forth. | 3:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | From Charlotte back to York? | 3:47 |
Rufus Spears | Mm-hmm. | 3:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | How many miles is that? | 3:53 |
Rufus Spears | She was going about 40 miles and I was going about 17, because Rock Hill's right down 77. | 3:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | And she was a teacher. What grades did she teach? | 4:02 |
Rufus Spears | She was teaching language arts and social studies. | 4:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And what type of organizations did you and your wife participate in as a married couple and things? What kind of clubs? | 4:09 |
Rufus Spears | We used to have a pinochle club. We used to play every Monday night. | 4:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was the name of that? | 4:19 |
Rufus Spears | We didn't have a name. We'd just get together and play. And we got very active in church work, and I worked as a Scout Master for 15 years. | 4:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was it the same church you attended before? | 4:31 |
Rufus Spears | No, no, no. | 4:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | What church was it? | 4:32 |
Rufus Spears | I was living around the corner here, from the Presbyterian church, and my car broke down. And it was unusual for me not to go to church on Sunday, so we walked around to the church. The church that I was attending was across town. I would go at 9:00 as a Sunday school teacher, and I wouldn't get home until 2:00 or 3:00. And that Sunday, we were back home by 12:30. I said, "I kind of like this." And they didn't have evening service, so we kept going around there and kept going, and next thing I knew, we joined. And there was a lot of my friends in the church and there were young people in the church. In the church where I was going prior to that, I grew up in that church. All the people that I had known were gone, 'cause when I came back out of the military, it was just a different ballgame altogether. | 4:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay, now I want to get to your military— How does this fit in your military experience? Where does this fit in on the timeline? Were you married before or after? | 5:26 |
Rufus Spears | No, no, no, I wasn't married to nobody's daughter when I went in the service. It was after. | 5:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay, okay. What was that experience like in the military? | 5:38 |
Rufus Spears | Military? | 5:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 5:40 |
Rufus Spears | In the military, that's where I really grew up. | 5:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | In what way? | 5:45 |
Rufus Spears | I had gone to college and I had started school, and the only reason I stayed so long was I was the only son at home. There were three ways you could get out of going. First, they gave a Armed Forces qualification test. If you stayed in the upper two-thirds of your class, you could stay and finish. If you were an only child and your family depended on you, then you could do it. And if you were the only son at home, and I had two brothers who were already in the service, but one brother came home in September and they got me in January. | 5:45 |
Rufus Spears | I'd had three deferments, so I couldn't be deferred anymore. It had gotten to be a point where I was worried about it every— The first five days of the month, I'm looking for this draft notice. And then, plus, Joe had gone. They started picking the guys out one by one, and it was just around here. All my buddies were going to the services and so I didn't want to be left out. When my time came, I said, "Well, hey, I'm going to get it over with." | 6:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was there a war going on when you went there? | 6:49 |
Rufus Spears | Korean War. | 6:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | Korean War, okay. What was that experience like? Where did you go for your training? | 6:51 |
Rufus Spears | I went to Fort Jackson for my training, and from there I went to Korea and I came back and was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. And from Texas, I went to Arizona and I was separated in Arizona. | 6:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | What do you mean separated? | 7:11 |
Rufus Spears | From the military. | 7:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 7:13 |
Rufus Spears | I wasn't discharged, I was separated from active duty. At that time you got released and I got my— I wasn't there when I got my discharge. I was at home. | 7:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. What was Texas and Arizona like, as compared to Charlotte? | 7:25 |
Rufus Spears | Okay, Texas was a lot of wide open spaces. And I experienced, the third night we were at this post, and my outfit, I was in a technical outfit. I wonder why I was in it. I was in the Signal Corps, and most of the guys who were in that outfit came out of Brooklyn, New York, New Jersey, and they didn't care anything about— They didn't have no problem with Blacks and Whites being together. We went into town, a little town called Killeen, Texas, and we were mistreated, the Blacks were. And of course the White boys, they left, and so as a result of our mistreatment, the post commander made the town off limits to all military personnel. In the evenings, we would take buses and they would take us into a little town called Temple, Texas. And of course, they saw all them dollars going past these little places, so they finally opened up. | 7:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | What do you mean mistreated? In what way? | 8:24 |
Rufus Spears | Okay, for instance, there were six of us went into the little town, and Lou Berman, the White boy from Brooklyn, he ordered six beers. The waiter told him that he could bring him four, he couldn't bring for them two Coloreds. He said, "We ordered six. We need six." And so I thought they were going to start a ruckus in there. The guy said he wasn't going to serve anybody. "If you want them niggers to be served, we ain't going to serve them." We got up and left. Of course, we reported it and that's when they started making the town off limits. And you had to go right through the town, but they would take us on buses into Temple, Texas. | 8:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you or the other soldiers feel any resentment from being mistreated while you was having to fight for your country? | 9:06 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah. En route to Fort Hood, Texas, from Camp Chaffee, Arkansas, we stopped in Temple to have dinner. All the White boys had individual meal tickets. There was another Black guy named Jackson on the bus, and we got to know each other in travel. But I had the meal ticket, it was for me and one other, and Jackson was the one other. When we got there, the sergeant went in and made arrangements for the troops. I guess he told them he had two Blacks. Well, they put all the White boys at a long banquet-like table, and put Jackson and I in this booth in the back. The White boys had fresh, fried chicken. They brought us some kind of old smothered steak or something. | 9:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | You didn't have a choice in what you wanted to order or anything? | 9:59 |
Rufus Spears | No, no, but the White boys did. | 10:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | And how long— You worked with the Signal Corps? | 10:04 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah, I was in the Signal Corps. | 10:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | How many Blacks were in your outfit? | 10:07 |
Rufus Spears | It was very few. I was the personnel clerk, so I didn't get involved in the signal business. But Signal Corps was a technical outfit, and we had— Everybody in that outfit were college people. | 10:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you make friends with the Whites, your fellow— | 10:29 |
Rufus Spears | Oh yeah, yeah. But as I look back at it now, all my White brothers were from the North. | 10:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | You didn't know any White ones from the South? | 10:38 |
Rufus Spears | We knew them. | 10:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | They [indistinct 00:10:41]. | 10:41 |
Rufus Spears | I'd see them right beside Lieutenant and Gizmo over here, and they were from Georgia and Mississippi and places like that, and we knew that they didn't like Blacks, but we had to live together. We put up with each other. You could see them in the latrine, if I'd go in there and shave, they'd be cleaning the sink over again. You always clean the sink when you left, but they'd go behind you and clean it again. Some of this Black might get in that sink. | 10:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever have any problem with your officers and things like that? | 11:08 |
Rufus Spears | No, no, no. | 11:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And how long did you stay in the military? | 11:11 |
Rufus Spears | Two years. | 11:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Two years? Okay. And then where did you go after that? | 11:16 |
Rufus Spears | I came home, went back to school. | 11:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Oh, during the military, you were at Johnson C. Smith? | 11:21 |
Rufus Spears | Yes, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. | 11:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay, okay. Now, then that's— Okay. I guess, and later on you— I guess I can go on to some more talk about your associations and things. Did you ever join the NAACP? | 11:27 |
Rufus Spears | Yes, yes. In fact, I belong to NAACP now. During my high school days, we had a youth council and we used to— I was president at one time. | 11:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Okay. What kind activities did they do? | 11:48 |
Rufus Spears | We used to have parties and dances, and most of the time we had seminars. I don't know whether you ever heard of Kelly Alexander? | 11:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 12:00 |
Rufus Spears | Okay, his dad was the state NAACP director that time. His dad used to come to all our meetings and he used to talk— He was just like Martin Luther King, non-violent. And he used to talk to us to keep it calm and get involved and just general basic things like that. | 12:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | With the youth council, were they involved in any protests or anything like that? | 12:19 |
Rufus Spears | No, we didn't have any protests during that time. | 12:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Were there quite a few other students from Smith, or there were other people from the community in the youth council also? | 12:27 |
Rufus Spears | This was when I was in high school. | 12:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, when you were in high school? Oh, okay. You had a high school chapter? | 12:35 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah, mm-hmm. | 12:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | All right then. And you were a member since high school? | 12:38 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah, I guess I've been a member of the NAACP ever since maybe I was in 10th grade. | 12:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | After you started teaching and coaching, did you continue your membership? | 12:48 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah, and we have a life membership here in this fraternity. | 12:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Did you ever receive any threats from outside pressures? I know teachers sometimes couldn't join the NAACP. | 12:56 |
Rufus Spears | No, nobody ever said anything to me about that. I was never involved with anything like that at all. | 13:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | You had mentioned your experience later on, when you chose not to be the assistant coach at that school. Did you ever have relationships with the White superintendents of your schools and things like that? | 13:09 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah, the superintendent was a racist. | 13:19 |
Sonya Ramsey | Where was that? | 13:26 |
Rufus Spears | Union County. | 13:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Union County? Okay. | 13:26 |
Rufus Spears | And he told me that I was lucky to have a job. I may have been, but I didn't think that was going to be lucky to go to the White school and be everybody's assistant. Excuse me. He asked me why I was resigning. I told him why I was resigning. | 13:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was your relationship with the principals of the schools where you taught and coached? | 13:43 |
Rufus Spears | The principal was a Smith man. He was a fraternity brother. He believed in discipline, he believed in, if you had a job to do, to do it, and he wouldn't bother you. But if you crossed him, he was on your case. And he was tight as a Dick's hatband with a dollar. | 13:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | What's that mean? | 14:08 |
Rufus Spears | He wouldn't spend money. When I would travel with the basketball team, I carried the same $100 bill to every game we had out of town. | 14:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why's that? Because you couldn't get another one? | 14:19 |
Rufus Spears | Okay, no, I would carry that money with me in case there was an emergency. If one of the kids got hurt, a lot of times you would have to have some money to get a doctor for them or something. And then every morning when you come back from the ball game, I'd put that $100 bill right back, and it stayed in that little envelope the whole season. | 14:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Not only basketball, but I remember you saying during college that you played baseball. How did you become a baseball player? | 14:38 |
Rufus Spears | I was a coach, but no, I didn't play. But the guys, country boys know how to play baseball. This was a class AA school, and the guys wanted to play baseball and the principal agreed to buy some uniforms. Most of the guys who played basketball for me were baseball players. And so I told them from the beginning, "I don't know that much about baseball." But we worked it out together and we were very successful. | 14:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your wife come to the games or anything like that? | 15:11 |
Rufus Spears | No, no, no. | 15:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why didn't she? | 15:14 |
Rufus Spears | She didn't bother with that. Well, she came one or two times, but not on a regular basis. | 15:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you pretty well known in communities where you coached? | 15:35 |
Rufus Spears | Yes. I was the Black man at that time. | 15:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, everybody knew who you were? | 15:35 |
Rufus Spears | Nothing to do in the town. There was no recreation center or nothing. It's just 35 miles away. We used to sell popcorn and sodas at our basketball practice. Folks see lights on in the gym and they'd come in the gym and I'd allow them come in there, so we start selling popcorn and things— | 15:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | What would the proceeds of that money go to? | 15:53 |
Rufus Spears | My salary. | 15:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 15:55 |
Rufus Spears | And equipment for the team. And sometime we'd have to take— I'd have to feed the team. After a ballgame, I'd have to stop somewhere and get them some food. | 15:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever, as their coach, and when you traveled, ever face any prejudice or anything like that with them when you traveled? | 16:07 |
Rufus Spears | No, one thing, we had our own bus. And if we were going to travel any long distance, we— some packed a little food. Lady in the lunchroom would fix sandwiches for the team, and so they'd have some food after the game. And the kids were pretty disciplined and a good bunch of guys. Strangely as it is now, a lot of the guys are in the fraternity with me. I said, "Man, you stop calling me Coach and calling me Mister. Just call me Doug." | 16:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | Really? | 16:45 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah. Because they got families of their own now. | 16:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | When did you start having your own family and things like that? Your own children? | 16:49 |
Rufus Spears | Doug Junior was born in '69. | 16:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Okay. And how do you think their educational experience is different from yours? | 16:55 |
Rufus Spears | I couldn't get my son to go to college. He wants to be the world's greatest rock and roll drummer. | 17:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 17:11 |
Rufus Spears | He's into music, and every day I keep telling him that he needs to get some formal training. And my daughter is a junior, went to Salem State, and she's doing very well. But the educational experience is much, much, much different from what it was in my days. | 17:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | In what ways? | 17:31 |
Rufus Spears | First of all, it was unheard of to have co-ed dormitories. It was unheard of to sit out on the campus on Sunday, looking like you didn't have any clothes to put on. Girls had to sign in and out of the dorm. When I was at Smith, boys had to be in— Was it midnight or 11:00 or something? But you had to be in. You couldn't just go out in the street. You couldn't be caught off campus too late, and the girls couldn't go out after 11:00 at all. And now, they don't even care whether you come in or not. You don't have to give an account of that. That's probably the same way at your school. | 17:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Yes, it was. Okay, what was I going to ask you next? Oh, well, I'll think of something I wanted to ask you. I'm drawing a blank. You had mentioned something. Did you continue your work with the NAACP? I mean the YWCA and things, as a member? | 18:18 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah, I have memberships in the YMCA. And in fact, I took some swimming classes, because we didn't have a pool at Smith when I was in school. And being a PE teacher, you need to know how to swim. | 18:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. Okay. I think I have asked all my questions. | 18:51 |
Rufus Spears | To be on the elementary physical education staff for Gaston County Schools. When I went there, they didn't have any Blacks. And this happened three months ago, on the 27th of March. | 18:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | You were the first Black recently? This recently? | 19:08 |
Rufus Spears | No, I'm telling you, this happened on the 27th of March. I was coming from Florence, South Carolina, had been down there to a fraternity committee meeting, and I was going to stop at this Red Dot. That's where they sell booze. I was going to buy me a bottle, because it's cheaper in South Carolina. I walked in the door and this guy told me, in 1993, March 27th, about 6:00 in the evening, "We don't serve Coloreds in here." | 19:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did you do? | 19:37 |
Rufus Spears | And so I just said, "Okay, thank you." And I knew then, boy, get out of here. I was by himself, and I thought about it and I said, "Now, that guy could have shot me and sworn I was in there trying to rob him or whatever." | 19:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. This is my question I wanted to ask. With the fraternity, you continued on after college and things like that? | 19:54 |
Rufus Spears | Yes, yes. | 20:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of activities did you do after college? | 20:00 |
Rufus Spears | Okay. You talking about fraternity-wise? | 20:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 20:00 |
Rufus Spears | Okay. We have four or five activities throughout the year that we look forward to. We have a formal dance on Good Friday night. We call it our spring formal. We have an annual meeting. It's either in April or first part of May every year. We just came from Durham. The sixth district, which this chapter is located, it encompasses North and South Carolina. We have our grand conclave every other year. We go to Cleveland next year. Last year, we went to Atlanta. Then at Christmas time, the ladies' auxiliary of our fraternity are called Q-ettes, okay? | 20:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 20:46 |
Rufus Spears | And we have a Christmas party for them at Christmas time. In about two weeks, we got 60 boys that are sponsored by the brothers in this chapter who will be going to summer camp, underprivileged kids. And at Thanksgiving time and Christmas, we provide food for the needy. A couple years ago, we gave needy families Christmas trees. We do a lot of things that we don't get into the newspaper, and that's my responsibility, because I'm chapter editor, but you take it to the newspaper and they don't print it and what can you do? | 20:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, well, this is another question I wanted to ask before I do my little last, but as you participated in the '50s and the '60s, how did the fraternal organization, did it participate in any of the civil rights activities? | 21:23 |
Rufus Spears | Oh, yes, yes. | 21:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | You had speakers about the subjects and— | 21:35 |
Rufus Spears | Yes, Mm-hmm. | 21:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of things— | 21:37 |
Rufus Spears | We had a guy here who was one of our chapter brothers, Charles Jones. He's a practicing lawyer here now. He was very, very instrumental. In fact, he led the sit-ins at Johnson C. Smith during that time. And then the guys and the girls wore their fraternity and sorority paraphernalia so they could be recognized. Well, the Whites downtown didn't know what it was, but we knew. | 21:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | And did you vote when you were young, in Charlotte? | 22:01 |
Rufus Spears | I started voting when I was 22 years old. Friend of mine, my sixth grade teacher's husband, we called him Pop Moore. We called him Pop. He was a friend of boys, and we were all in school and we were sitting down in the university drinking beer one day. His son was in the crowd, and he came out and he said, "Would you guys like to have another cold pitcher of beer?" We said, "Yeah." He said, "How many of you are registered to vote?" We said, "Nobody." He took us in his car, went downtown and we registered. We registered as Republicans, believe it or not. | 22:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why was that? | 22:40 |
Rufus Spears | Because he was a Republican. Hey, we just thought we were doing the right thing. And I later changed to a Democrat, after I got into— After I started voting, I started paying attention to it. But I look back at that now, and I wonder if he had not done that, what avenue would I have taken toward the political arena in this country, or in this city? | 22:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was it hard for Blacks to register to vote [indistinct 00:23:05]— | 23:03 |
Rufus Spears | No, no, it was a simple matter. Just a matter of going and doing it. | 23:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | Where did Blacks— | 23:09 |
Rufus Spears | But it wasn't in our neighborhoods. We had to go into somewhere else to do it. | 23:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | What were some of the— You mentioned Third Ward, and what were some of the other Black neighborhoods in Charlotte? What were they like? | 23:14 |
Rufus Spears | Second Ward, which was known as Brooklyn, this is where the majority of Blacks lived. We had three— Greenville, right up here, Biddleville, that's where Johnson C. Smith is, and all up Beatties Ford Road, that's Biddleville. | 23:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of people live in these places? | 23:36 |
Rufus Spears | Okay, Biddleville, the upper class Blacks lives. This is where you found all your doctors and your teachers. Your middle class lived in the other— Well, your middle class lived in First Ward, Third Ward, and Greenville. And your, I guess you could say, lower people lived in Brooklyn. Now, you had one or two teachers who had property in Brooklyn, but the reason why most people lived in Brooklyn was because there was not any land to build or to buy a home. Most of these homes were built by White landlords and the shotgun houses and this type of thing. Are you familiar with shotgun houses? | 23:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | The long houses? | 24:19 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah. | 24:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 24:20 |
Rufus Spears | And then the First Ward, there was some homes that were built by Blacks, and there were a few in the neighborhood called Cherry. | 24:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Cherry? Okay. What was Cherry like? | 24:28 |
Rufus Spears | Cherry was middle class, and then Grier Heights, this was middle class. | 24:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you mainly play and associated with people in your own— in the Third Ward? | 24:37 |
Rufus Spears | No. | 24:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you venture around too much? | 24:41 |
Rufus Spears | No, we were all over. | 24:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Okay. | 24:44 |
Rufus Spears | Yeah. That was one of the avenues that my daddy opened for us, because my daddy had one of three Black cleaners in this town. There was one on the West Side, one in Third Ward, and one in Brooklyn. Blacks in this town had to use one of those three dry cleaners. And so people came from all across town to get their dry cleaning done. As a result of this, we used to deliver the dry cleaning on a bicycle. | 24:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 25:10 |
Rufus Spears | Believe it or not. Admittedly, I'm going riding the bike with one hand, holding clothes on my back. Yeah, mm-hmm. | 25:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And I also wanted to ask you, how long did your father keep his cleaners and things, and you never considered going back to work— | 25:20 |
Rufus Spears | It was burned in 1947. | 25:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, how did that come about? | 25:30 |
Rufus Spears | We were out school because of snow. I remember it very vividly. I must have been, what, 10th grade? Yeah. And this guy came in, didn't have any money to get his dry cleaning. It was cold and snow was on the ground, and my daddy let him have his clothes on credit. That night, he broke in, cracking matches in there and got the cleaning fluid, that's inflammable, and burned the place down to the ground. | 25:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Does he have a place to stay? Was he arrested and they found— | 25:56 |
Rufus Spears | Oh yeah, they found— He stole about 20 suits, and the next day he took them to the pawn shop. My dad used to write your name in the pocket of your pants. That's one way he could identify them. Plus he had a metal book that, if you brought something in, he would write it down, and the date and whatever. | 25:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your father have a— Was there a association of Black businessmen there? | 26:21 |
Rufus Spears | No, not during that time. | 26:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. Where did he receive his support and business advice from, do you think? | 26:27 |
Rufus Spears | He did some business with Standard Dry Cleaning and the guy was White. But I think before my time, my daddy might have bought some equipment from him, because they were real good friends. Very close. | 26:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I think I actually have finished. If there's not anything else that you'd like to add— | 26:56 |
Rufus Spears | No, I've enjoyed this. | 26:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. I guess— | 26:58 |
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