Arthur Brodie interview recording, 1993 May 28
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Chris Stewart | Okay. This is an interview with Mr. Arthur Brodie and my name is Chris Stewart and it is May 28th, 1993. And we're sitting in East Union. | 0:04 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Upper Eastside. | 0:17 |
Chris Stewart | The Upper Eastside at Duke University. Very nice place. Mr. Brodie, have you always lived here in Durham? | 0:22 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I was born in Franklin County. | 0:28 |
Chris Stewart | You were born in Franklin? | 0:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, that's— | 0:30 |
Chris Stewart | Now I understand you want us. | 0:30 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 0:33 |
Chris Stewart | When did you come here? | 0:33 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I came to Durham in 1956. | 0:35 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, you did? And how old were you when you came here? | 0:38 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | When I came to Durham, I was about 26. | 0:40 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, so you spent a good portion of your life. What did you do in Franklin County? | 0:43 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, I grew up there as a farm boy. Went to school, went in the army, came back to Franklin County, stayed about four years then I moved to Durham. | 0:47 |
Chris Stewart | Did you work on the farm with your family? | 1:00 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 1:03 |
Chris Stewart | How many kids were in your family? | 1:04 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | There were five of us, four boys and one girl. | 1:05 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, poor girl. | 1:07 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | We made a tomboy out of her. | 1:09 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, I bet. Did your parents own your farm or did they? | 1:10 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, it was a family farm, but we didn't own. My mother's peoples owned the farm. | 1:14 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, they did? | 1:20 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 1:21 |
Chris Stewart | So did your mother's family live all around you? | 1:22 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 1:25 |
Chris Stewart | So you had aunts and uncles. | 1:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right. | 1:28 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember much about them? | 1:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Some of the younger ones I do but a lot of the older ones died before I got to see them, got to meet them. Yeah. | 1:33 |
Chris Stewart | Did either of your grandparents live? | 1:40 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, I remember my mother's parents, both of them. Grandparents, her dad and her mother, I remember them, and I remember my great-grandmother. | 1:41 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, really? | 1:49 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. My great-grandmother was a slave girl. | 1:49 |
Chris Stewart | She was? | 1:49 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 1:49 |
Chris Stewart | Did she ever tell you any stories about that time? | 1:55 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, we were so little. She told us a lot of stories about slavery, but because at the time when slavery, it was over, she was a young girl. | 1:57 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 2:07 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | She was about 14 or 15 years old, and then she married earlier and began to raise her family. And on my mother's side, their family was a multiracial family life, multiracial-like because my great-grandmother's husband, he was of Spanish background. | 2:07 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, really? Was this all in Franklin County still? | 2:33 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. I don't know how he got here though. | 2:39 |
Chris Stewart | Oh. | 2:40 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I don't know where he got here in the Spanish-American War, how he got here. | 2:40 |
Chris Stewart | Oh. | 2:41 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I don't know how he got here. But anyway, they were Spanish, and she was African. And when she died, she died 1951, she was over 100 then. | 2:41 |
Chris Stewart | Well, whoa. She died in 1951? | 2:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And she was over 100 then. | 2:57 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. That's really impressive. | 2:57 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And she hated anybody call her Mammy. That was the word for mama, to call her Mammy, yeah. | 3:09 |
Chris Stewart | Did she have land? | 3:17 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, she didn't have any land. No, she didn't have any land. | 3:19 |
Chris Stewart | So who did she live with when she was getting older? | 3:21 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well she married and she and her husband lived. Well, when she got older, she lived with my aunt, and that's when she died at years when she was in her late age. She was living with her daughter which was my aunt, my great-aunt at least. She was living with one of her daughters. | 3:26 |
Chris Stewart | And she was in her eighties. Your great-aunt was in her eighties when your great-grandmother died? | 3:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. She was in her good, yeah, she was an old lady too. | 3:53 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 3:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 3:54 |
Chris Stewart | So she didn't tell you much about, talked too much about slavery. Did she talk to you much about her life at all from when she got married? | 3:55 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Seemed like she tried to block a lot of that out. | 4:06 |
Chris Stewart | Really? | 4:06 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. Seemed like she thought, because she would start telling some things about, she remember her brothers being sold, she would start crying, always start crying. Seemed like it was too painful for her to talk about it too much. | 4:10 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. | 4:15 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And seems she just blocked it out. | 4:16 |
Chris Stewart | Right. So of course you wouldn't push her on. | 4:18 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No. We were small too. And she couldn't read, she couldn't write. She'd cook a lot of cookies and we'd sneak them from. As long as we didn't get them all, she couldn't miss them, we always said that. And it was a kicking thing for us to do, see. | 4:21 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. | 4:31 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, kids. Yeah. And she used to tell us about how she used to, how her dad used to get whippings and, like a child and all that kind of stuff. And she wouldn't talk too much about it because I don't know if it was painful to her or what. | 4:41 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. What about your grandmother? Do you remember anything that your grandmother or grandfather told you? Any stories about when they grew up or? | 4:55 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Now my grandmother, she got married early. Long back when she talked, there wasn't much, they didn't go to school much, and seemed like when they waved from the picture I gained from it, when they would see somebody that they figured would take care of them, they'd get married. And so she married my grandpa, he was a lot older than she was, but he was working at sawmill and he had a job. And so she married him at an early age, at about 16 I believe she said she was. And then she had 13 children. | 5:05 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. Did all of her children live to adulthood? Do you know? | 5:41 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | All of them lived built to adulthood I think but one, he got struck by lightning back in 1910, I believe we were 15 years old. But the rest of them lived to be adults. | 5:45 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 5:55 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | In fact, the last one just died last year. He was 78. | 5:56 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. So did all of her? This is your mother's mother. | 6:00 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right. | 6:05 |
Chris Stewart | Not father. And did your mother grow up on the farm then? | 6:05 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 6:09 |
Chris Stewart | What kind of stuff did they farm? | 6:10 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Tobacco, cotton, corn, cane, wheat, oats. | 6:13 |
Chris Stewart | Did they own their farm? | 6:21 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. Grandpapa owned his farm, yeah. | 6:25 |
Chris Stewart | So do you have any sense of how many acres your family, your extended family had up there? | 6:25 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | My granddad had 52 acres of land. He said he was working for this White family and said the man took a liking to him. Said the man told him, says back then land was cheap. He said the man told him. My granddad name was Robert Norville. Said he told him, he said, "Rob, what you ought to do, buy your acre of land every month." He'll work for $12 a month, said he bought a acre of land a month. A dollar a month for a year. | 6:35 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 7:06 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And he bought that farm with 52 acres of land in it. And he built his house out of logs. I remember that log house just as good, I can. | 7:07 |
Chris Stewart | Do you know if it's still standing? | 7:16 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, it's gone, because last time I through there, I went down and looked at it, it was gone. And he built two big rooms out of logs, and right in the middle of it it was a great big rock chimney with a opening on both sides. And that fireplace was this high, you could walk up in it almost. And then off from it, I'd say about 10 or 15 yards, he built the kitchen. The kitchen was off from the house. | 7:18 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 7:41 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And the well between the kitchen and the house. | 7:42 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, wow. That's fantastic. | 7:45 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And I used to love to go in that kitchen because it was so big. The table could sit in the middle of the floor and you had the room to run, we can roll around in the kitchen and play. And a big apple tree right at the back. | 7:48 |
Chris Stewart | So you got to spend a lot of time with your grandparents? | 7:59 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, on my mother's side, yeah, I spent a lot. I spent a whole lot of time with them because. | 8:01 |
Chris Stewart | Were they in land right next to you? Or did they live, how far away did you think? | 8:05 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, when my mother got married, we lived on one side of the county and they lived on the other side of the county. We would go down there maybe two times a year. But all my mother's sisters lived right around. But my dad, he moved out from them when he married my mama, he took her across town. | 8:09 |
Chris Stewart | Why do you think he did that? | 8:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I don't know. | 8:26 |
Chris Stewart | Get her away from that family. | 8:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Could have been. | 8:26 |
Chris Stewart | So your mother grew up in a very large family. | 8:33 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 8:36 |
Chris Stewart | What about your father? Do you know what size? | 8:36 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | My daddy's family wasn't quite that large. Let me say he had Uncle Arthur, Uncle Burle, and Uncle Jack. There was five of them boys and two girls. | 8:40 |
Chris Stewart | Did he also grow up in Franklin County? | 8:52 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. Well, they came from Warren County. | 8:54 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, they did? | 8:55 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. They came from Warren County, my daddy. | 8:56 |
Chris Stewart | So where did he meet your mom? Do you know? | 8:57 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, see, they came from Warren County, he was a little boy. | 9:01 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. | 9:05 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | When my daddy was a year old, my grandmother had another baby and she died in that childbirth, and then my dad was raised without a mama. His older sisters was his mama, that's all the mama he knew. And my granddad didn't marry no more, he was 21 years old almost. He was grown. So he raised his children without a wife home. | 9:09 |
Chris Stewart | Your grandfather on your father's side, how old was he when his wife died? Did you say he was 21? | 9:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, I don't know how old he was. I said he didn't marry no more until my daddy was 21 years old. I don't know how old he was, but when my daddy's baby brother was born, his wife died. My dad's mother, she died so he didn't ever remember his mama. My dad never, didn't know what his mama looked like, so he was raised by his sisters. And my granddad, he didn't marry until my dad was grown. | 9:37 |
Chris Stewart | He's busy raising those kids. | 10:08 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Busy raising those kids. Plus he was a preacher too, see. | 10:08 |
Chris Stewart | Oh. | 10:14 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He was a Baptist preacher. | 10:14 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah? | 10:15 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 10:15 |
Chris Stewart | So why do you think he didn't, what do you think being a Baptist preacher has to do with him not— | 10:16 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I don't know why. Excuse me, I don't know why he wouldn't get married again. And I don't think my daddy knew, unless he just enjoyed being single. | 10:21 |
Chris Stewart | So where did he have his own church? Or did he move around to preach? | 10:35 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He moved around to preach mostly. But see, when he died, when his wife died in Warren County, then he moved to Franklin County where his wife's sisters and all lived. | 10:40 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. | 10:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And my dad's aunt raised his baby brother. He was raised with the Joneses. So a lot of people thought he was a Jones, but he was actually the Brodies. | 10:50 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 11:03 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 11:04 |
Chris Stewart | Huh. So your dad ended up coming then to Franklin County. | 11:05 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right, they moved to Franklin County from Warren County. | 11:12 |
Chris Stewart | So how did your mom and dad meet, do you know? | 11:14 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I think they, well he moved down in the neighborhood. They was in school together. | 11:23 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. | 11:23 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | They moved down. He moved down the neighborhood that they was living in. | 11:23 |
Chris Stewart | Do you know what school that was? | 11:23 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Eagle Rock. | 11:25 |
Chris Stewart | Eagle Rock. | 11:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Eagle. That old, they done restored that building now. | 11:27 |
Chris Stewart | So it's still there. | 11:35 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | It's still there. | 11:36 |
Chris Stewart | Whereabouts in Franklin County? | 11:37 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | It's out from a little place called Mapleville. When you leave Franklin County get on 56 highway going toward Rocky Mount, when you get to Mapleville, instead of going to Rocky Mount, you bear right. Go up the hill about a hundred yards and you bear right again. Or even if you go down 98, you follow 98 all the way through Bunn. When you get through Bunn right there, that's where you get to Lake Royale, you take a left and go up, and take your right by. | 11:39 |
Chris Stewart | So this school has been restored. | 12:13 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | It's been restored. | 12:13 |
Chris Stewart | It was. And then when your mom and dad went to, it was. | 12:19 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | A one room school shelter. One room. | 12:21 |
Chris Stewart | And how long? | 12:24 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And they used for more than a school. They use it for the whole community thing. They used it for church, Sunday School, revival, all that and school. | 12:25 |
Chris Stewart | How wide an area did it attract people from? Do you know? | 12:37 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | That thing, about all of the eastern part of Franklin County. | 12:41 |
Chris Stewart | Is this a school that, I mean did you go to this? | 12:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, I didn't go this school because we grew up on the opposite side of town. | 12:50 |
Chris Stewart | Western side of it. | 12:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right. And they continued to use their school until the school consolidated I believe in '47 or '48 when the public school system was consolidated. Not integrated, consolidated. | 12:57 |
Chris Stewart | I don't know what you mean when you say that, consolidated. | 13:09 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | You know what I mean? Okay. | 13:12 |
Chris Stewart | Well, I mean, so they just made school, they made a bigger Black school somewhere? | 13:12 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, see here what happened. Okay, in Franklin County, most of these Black schools in the Franklin level affiliated with a church. | 13:18 |
Chris Stewart | Right, okay. | 13:25 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Most of them were. Okay, let's see, that was that neighborhood of Eagle Rock. Lettes Hall. | 13:28 |
Chris Stewart | What was the name of that one? | 13:35 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Eagle Rock. | 13:36 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. | 13:37 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Lettes Hall. | 13:38 |
Chris Stewart | Something Hall did you say? | 13:40 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Lettes Hall. | 13:42 |
Chris Stewart | Ladies Hall? | 13:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Lettes. | 13:43 |
Chris Stewart | Let us? Like in let us eat? | 13:44 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | What they spelled that Lettes. | 13:46 |
Chris Stewart | L-E-T-T-E-S? | 13:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. Lettes Hall. Then Nelson Chapel Baptist Church had a school. | 13:49 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 14:05 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Walnut Grove Baptist Church had a school. | 14:05 |
Chris Stewart | Warren Grove. | 14:07 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Walnut Grove. | 14:08 |
Chris Stewart | Walnut Grove. | 14:10 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | That school is still there. I don't know whether they're going to restore it or not, but it's still there. If I get enough money, I'm going to have it restored. | 14:12 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 14:15 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | If I get enough money. And I don't know whether Rocky Chapel had a school or not. And I don't know whether Hickory Grove had one or not. I'm going to question though. | 14:16 |
Chris Stewart | Hickory Grove might have, and what was the other one that you said? | 14:31 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Rocky Chapel may have had one. | 14:33 |
Chris Stewart | Rocky Chapel? | 14:36 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Rocky Chapel. Want to question though, but I know Walnut Grove. | 14:37 |
Chris Stewart | These may have. | 14:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, I know Walnut Grove, Nelson Chapel. Eagle Rock was a community school, it wasn't affiliated with the church. | 14:42 |
Chris Stewart | So you had all these different schools. So when you talk about consolidation, you're talking about consolidating these different schools. | 14:50 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right. | 14:56 |
Chris Stewart | Into how many of them, did they? | 14:56 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay, when they consolidated those schools every, everybody went to Louisburg School or either Bunn's School. Yeah, Louisburg one, the one in Bunn called Gethsemane. Gethsemane High, went from one grade two or 12. And the school in Louisburg, they'd call this Franklin County Training School. | 14:58 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. And did that have elementary school as well? | 15:34 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Elementary through high school. | 15:42 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 15:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Grade one through 12. | 15:44 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. So which of these schools did you go to? | 15:45 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I went to Franklin County Training School, and I went to a school called Sukey Young Crossroads School. | 15:51 |
Chris Stewart | What was that one again? | 15:56 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | (laughs) That's a rough name. | 16:04 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay. I'll go to the start. I started out, the school I started in called Ford Chapel. That was on a different side of Franklin County. | 16:04 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 16:11 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Now Ford Chapel was a little area just like Eagle Rock. It was a school, it was a community. Okay. It was a community thing. And where it got the name Ford Chapel from, because it'd be the Ford Farm. | 16:12 |
Chris Stewart | Oh sure. Yes. | 16:24 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | See the Fords own all that land. And I don't know whether Ford designated that form somebody bought it or how it got to be. I don't know whether, the Fords might have designated land. But anyway, it was a one room school, grades one to seven, had one teacher. Okay, I went there, then I moved from there. I went to a school called Allen Chapel School. | 16:24 |
Chris Stewart | And was this now in the western part of the county? | 16:53 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | That's northwest part of the county. | 17:03 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 17:06 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | That when left there, I went to Sukey Young Crossroads. | 17:06 |
Chris Stewart | Now you got to spell that for me, (Brodie laughs) I got Young Crossroads. | 17:08 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | S-Y—Sukey Young Crossroads School, it's out on Highway 56, 61 if you're going towards Centerville. | 17:17 |
Chris Stewart | Highway what. | 17:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | 561, that's the Centerville Highway. And I went down, now that that school went from one through eight. In 1950, no, 1947 they put the eighth grade in there so I went to that through eighth grade. Then I went to Franklin Training School next. | 17:31 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, for high school? | 17:51 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | For high school. | 17:53 |
Chris Stewart | Did the rest of your siblings go to the same schools as well? | 17:57 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yes, mm-hmm. | 18:04 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. In your house in Franklin County, how many people lived in your house? Did other relatives besides your immediate family? | 18:05 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, just the immediate family. My dad was funny about that, he didn't want anybody living there but us. | 18:13 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, really? How come you think that's the case? | 18:17 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He wanted to raise it. | 18:23 |
Chris Stewart | He ever say anything? | 18:23 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, he didn't say but he wanted to raise his family the way he wanted to raise, he was kind of strict. He was. | 18:24 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, so he didn't want anybody watching over how he raised his family. | 18:27 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He didn't want anybody know how he raised his, that's why he moved out to his self all the way across town. | 18:31 |
Chris Stewart | So you must have been working on the farm. | 18:39 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, we was farmers. | 18:41 |
Chris Stewart | What was your day like when you were a kid? When you were going to school and working on the farm? | 18:43 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay. During the beginning of the year, you would go to school and after me and my brother got a little side of the work, sometime we'd alternate days. My dad had to keep somebody out of school to work, he alternate days with us. He wouldn't keep us all both at the same day. Keep me out there, keep my older brother out there. Two years different than our age. | 18:48 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. | 19:09 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And so he keep me out one day and keep him out there. So we always averaged at least four days a week in school. Very seldom we missed one day a week out school, unless it was just extreme emergency because my dad had to keep us in school. See when my older brother first started school in 1936, my dad had to buy his books from the store. The state wasn't furnishing books for us. | 19:10 |
Chris Stewart | Oh. | 19:40 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | My dad had to buy his books for the first two years, I know. I think the state started paying for the books in 1938, I believe it was. | 19:42 |
Chris Stewart | And is that when you started school in '38? | 19:49 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 19:51 |
Chris Stewart | Where did he buy them? | 19:51 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | It was a book store downtown somewhere he bought them from, I don't know where they bought it from the Department of Education or where most likely. | 19:53 |
Chris Stewart | In what city? | 19:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Out in Louisburg, Carolina. Franklin County. | 19:54 |
Chris Stewart | He went down in and bought them in Louisburg. Huh. So did you have to do chores before you went to school? | 20:06 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, we all had. My job in the morning was feed the pigs. And then after got a little large and my job become milking the cow. I become the milk man, I have to milk the cow. | 20:11 |
Chris Stewart | How many cows did you have? | 20:27 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Two. And we would always had to cut enough wood to carry my mama through until we come out of school, until my dad to come out. | 20:30 |
Chris Stewart | When you milked the cows, did you, was it just enough milk for your family or did you share with other people in— | 20:39 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well we had, no, we always had enough milk to share if somebody needs, we always had enough to share. | 20:46 |
Chris Stewart | With your relatives that lived around? | 20:51 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, anybody wanted some milk, we already had enough to give milk and butter. | 20:53 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 20:58 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And eggs. | 20:58 |
Chris Stewart | They had chickens too? | 20:58 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, we had chicken. | 20:59 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. Yeah. What about your sisters? Did they go to school too and? | 21:01 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, my sister always went to school. | 21:05 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. So your father didn't pull them out? | 21:08 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He didn't never pull them out, no. Uh-uh. | 21:09 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. What kind of work did they do on the farm? | 21:11 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Daddy wouldn't let her do too much. | 21:15 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, yeah? | 21:15 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He wouldn't let my sister do, we had one sister so he wouldn't let her do too much. Mom wasn't send her to the field to learn to work, Dad sent her back home. | 21:18 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, really? | 21:24 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. He didn't want her to work in the field. See we never, my daddy never was sharecropped but three years I can remember. My dad, he always rented standing rent. He would rent a man's farm and furnish himself. | 21:26 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 21:40 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | But I remember in now in 1944. '44, yeah. 1944. My mother got sick with, she had typhoid fever. | 21:40 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, wow. | 21:50 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | So she came to Duke, she stayed a whole month. And while she was at Duke Hospital, the man my dad was half-sharing with made my dad, we had to move because my dad wouldn't keep us out out of school to pull strings off tobacco sticks. Oh. So he told my dad, he said, "You bad influence on my people. Oh, you got to find somewhere else to go." So that was when my daddy and my grandmama's cousin, he owned a large farm down there and he heard about it. So he rented my dad a part of his farm because we was growing up a little bit then, we were getting to be teenagers. So he rented my dad a part of his farm, that's where my dad stayed and raised all of us until just we got about grown. | 21:51 |
Chris Stewart | So that was the only time that your dad had to sharecrop? | 22:35 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | That I know about. | 22:38 |
Chris Stewart | Right. So when he would rent, he would just pay? Would he just pay a certain amount and rent it for the year? | 22:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right. | 22:47 |
Chris Stewart | And then, were the crops that he made on that— | 22:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, he. | 22:50 |
Chris Stewart | Would split them or they were his? | 22:51 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | It was his. | 22:52 |
Chris Stewart | And he had all his own equipment. | 22:53 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right, yeah. We had mules, wagon, tools, and all the equipment. | 22:55 |
Chris Stewart | Right. So how did you know how it worked when he was cropping then with this guy? | 23:00 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, the year he cropped, the three years he cropped, he had his own tools then. But the man wouldn't let us use our tools, he wanted to buy my dad's mule and wagon. My dad wouldn't sell them to him. | 23:05 |
Chris Stewart | Smart man. | 23:18 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He wouldn't sell them to him so he kept him. So we'd go, we kept our wagon. See, he had a big stable way down where he kept, all the mules stayed in. The man had about eight mules. All the tools stayed down there at his area, all the stables and everything. And so he would let my daddy turn our mule into the pasture. Well, but there was some arrangement they made from feeding the mule when the mule wasn't working. He had to pay the mule's feed when he wasn't working see. And my dad had to work his own mules, and after my dad wouldn't buy, after my dad wouldn't sell the mule to him, he told him, "Well," said, "You can work your mule, I'm not going to pay you for them during the summer." Said, "When you said when get the whole crop in, you have to buy feed for your mules." Dad went along with it says, "I'm not going to give him away, I'm going to keep him." And then when we moved, we had all our stuff again. | 23:19 |
Chris Stewart | So this was before you went over to northwestern—? | 24:21 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. That was from 1941. | 24:29 |
Chris Stewart | This is when you were still in grade school. | 24:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, from 1941 to 1944. | 24:33 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. Who was this guy he was working for? | 24:33 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Man name was Nick Perry. | 24:36 |
Chris Stewart | Nick what? | 24:40 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Nick Perry. | 24:40 |
Chris Stewart | How do you spell his last name? | 24:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | His name was Nichols, but we called him Nick. | 24:43 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 24:45 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Nick Perry. P-E-R-R-Y. Got a great big farm out there. P-E-R-R-Y. | 24:46 |
Chris Stewart | P-E. | 24:51 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | R-R. | 24:51 |
Chris Stewart | R-O. | 24:52 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, man. Nick Perry. | 24:54 |
Chris Stewart | How many people were working, how many people were sharecropping on his or farming on his land? | 24:56 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | 1, 2, 3, 4. Four families. | 25:00 |
Chris Stewart | Were the other families? | 25:03 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Rest of them half-sharing. They're sharecrop. | 25:04 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. So your dad and he didn't get along. | 25:09 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, they didn't get along because he told my dad he was the first darkie he ever got a book on. | 25:11 |
Chris Stewart | Oh. | 25:12 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He told my dad, said, "You the first darkie ever had a book on me. Don't count no book on me." See everything we do, my dad would write. | 25:12 |
Chris Stewart | Write down. | 25:23 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Write there. He told my dad, "You a bad influence on my men." | 25:24 |
Chris Stewart | Were any of the other farmers, did they also have bad relationships with him or was your dad just? | 25:30 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Dad was the only one. Daddy stood out. Well see, my daddy, the way my daddy got off to this man, when my daddy was small boy, kid raised him up. My granddad stayed on the Harris farm. And Mr. Clyde Harris' wife was Mr. Nick Perry's great aunt I believe. | 25:37 |
Chris Stewart | Clyde Harris is the name of the guy that your grandfather. | 26:07 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Grew up. My granddaddy lived with. And I asked who my daddy, he raised all his children there. When my daddy left. | 26:09 |
Chris Stewart | So Nick Perry was who? | 26:17 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I think it was Clyde Harris's wife was Mr. Nick Perry's either aunt or there was some relation. There was something related. And that's how my daddy learned about him. And that that's how my daddy got to move on to man's farm with all his equipment. See? And after he got there, I know Mr. Nick told my daddy one day, he said yeah, he says, "I already heard you were stubborn." He said, "But I ain't scared of you." Said, "Everybody around here is scared of you," he said, "but you don't scare me." And he told my daddy, he says, "Don't no darkie carry no book on me." Said "You making it bad for all my men. I can't handle my men because of you." | 26:19 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 27:10 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And so after my mama got sick, she went to the hospital and I don't know whether thing got behind in work. But anyway, he told my dad, you got to find somewhere to go, you can't stay here. Not here. Back then, you had to make your bargain for the next year before Christmas. | 27:11 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 27:28 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He told me, he said, "I can't rent you my, you can't have my farm. No, you got find somewhere to move to." | 27:28 |
Chris Stewart | Were there other things that you remember? Other kinds of conflicts between your dad and this Perry guy besides school and besides him keeping a book? Your dad keeping a book on him, keeping track of it? | 27:31 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, my. | 27:46 |
Chris Stewart | During the three years? | 27:49 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, my daddy used to take the tobacco to town. My dad was from half of year, when he carried tobacco to the warehouse, he would tell the warehouse master. See, Mr. Clyde Harris owned the warehouse too. And so when it comes to daddy's tobacco, dad would tell them, say make the check Perry and Brodie, said make it in two. | 27:55 |
Chris Stewart | Oh. | 28:13 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And he didn't like that. Rest of the guy, they'd sell the guy, Nick would pick the check up. But daddy, he didn't like when they would bring the check back to get him his, he would keep his. | 28:14 |
Chris Stewart | Was this Clyde Harris guy. | 28:25 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | See the Harris, they were on a big farm too. And they were real wealthy people. | 28:29 |
Chris Stewart | Were they more, I mean it sounds like the Nick Perry was not a very fair guy. | 28:31 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, he wasn't as large as they was either. | 28:31 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. | 28:39 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | See he was a, you couldn't call him a small farmer. He was intermediate farmer. But the Harris was a large, they was a large farmer. They owned warehouse and Small Harris was a banker. And one of the Harris men was the postmaster. And they run the town, the Harrises, the McKinneys. | 28:40 |
Chris Stewart | McKinneys? | 28:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. The Allens and the Fords and the Tuckers, they ran the town. And they ran the town. A lot of them was down there still, they're down there. | 28:47 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember any stories about how they treated their worker, the people who farmed their land, these big landowners? Not necessarily Nick Perry, but the bigger landowners? | 29:16 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I understand the McKinney farm were kind of rough. | 29:31 |
Chris Stewart | Really? | 29:34 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm. | 29:34 |
Chris Stewart | What do you mean by kind of rough? | 29:35 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Once you got there, you were stuck, you couldn't get away. | 29:37 |
Chris Stewart | Oh. | 29:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | See they would, you couldn't never pay out. | 29:42 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, so like you were saying what Nick Perry was doing? | 29:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. Once you got there, you couldn't never pay out seemed like. The McKinney farm. And it used to be a farm called the Leonard farm. I think the Leonard boys used to own that farm back, but I think Leonard boys went busted behind that stuff somehow. They was a big, big time farmer one time way back here years ago. | 29:50 |
Chris Stewart | These are people all in Franklin County? | 30:04 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. See, Franklin County was a rural, strictly a farm with no industries over there at all. The only industry that was a cotton gin. | 30:06 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, yeah. | 30:12 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | That was the only industry in Franklin Cotton was a cotton gin. | 30:17 |
Chris Stewart | Were these people— | 30:24 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And saw mill. | 30:24 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 30:24 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And a lot of large farmers had log, tractor land, they had their own saw mill. See when the guys come in there and when the farm land, when farming end, they go the saw mill and work, go saw mill work. And Pruitt, now, I don't think it was Pruitt had much farm now, he was a big lumber man over in there. A lot of people worked in there for mighty not nothing. | 30:24 |
Chris Stewart | All these men that you're talking about, were they also political leaders? | 30:50 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 30:54 |
Chris Stewart | And they- | 30:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | They ran the county. | 30:54 |
Chris Stewart | All the money. | 30:57 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | They ran, all the money. They ran everything. | 30:57 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. So basically, I mean they made the decisions. | 31:02 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | They made the decision. They made the decisions because even was Nick Perry, he weren't a decision making joker because he wasn't in. | 31:03 |
Chris Stewart | Didn't have enough. | 31:10 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, he didn't have enough pull to be in that because he had to buy some of them guys. | 31:11 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, yeah. | 31:15 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. He had to buy from them guys. He had to sell his tobacco in those guys' warehouse. | 31:15 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. So you said you started going to school at Ford Chapel School. And this is the area that we're talking about, right? Was when you were at Mr. Perry's? | 31:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, we was at. No, when I was at the Allen Chapel school, that's the area I was at. | 31:38 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. | 31:43 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | See, when I was at Ford Chapel School, we was on the Ford Plantation, Ford Farm. | 31:46 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, that was when you were really young? | 31:50 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, really young. | 31:52 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. | 31:52 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | My daddy rented, he rented that farm. Yes, he rented that farm from the Ford because one thing, he wasn't too large of a tobacco lot on that area. So that's why he let my daddy rented, big farm. But they have small tobacco allotment. | 31:55 |
Chris Stewart | Couldn't make much money. | 32:13 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. My dad's children was small and wouldn't so much buy he could tend no way, so we had to make up the rest of on corn and wheat and cotton and stuff. | 32:16 |
Chris Stewart | In your household, who was in charge of making decisions? | 32:22 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | My dad. | 32:26 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah? Decisions about where you would live, decisions about how to raise the kids. | 32:27 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | My daddy. | 32:35 |
Chris Stewart | Your daddy made all the decisions about the household? | 32:36 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, he made them decisions. He was household leader. | 32:38 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 32:39 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And we all respected that. | 32:39 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah, I bet. | 32:44 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | It was just that, that what he said was it. | 32:44 |
Chris Stewart | That's not unusual. | 32:44 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 32:44 |
Chris Stewart | When you were growing up, were there any places where you were not supposed to go? Bad areas in the county where you as a child you were forbidden to go but maybe? | 32:52 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, from a bad standpoint or racial standpoint? | 33:04 |
Chris Stewart | Either one. | 33:07 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | To tell you the truth now, Franklin County was so poor. The Jim Crow law did a whole lot to the poor Whites. It kept them down too. | 33:08 |
Chris Stewart | What do you mean? | 33:23 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | In order to hold the Blacks down, a lot of Whites had to be held down with them. | 33:26 |
Chris Stewart | Can you give me an example of what you mean when you say that? | 33:32 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay, now you take, now see, it seemed like back in those days if a man had, I'd say he had five girls and one boy, he had to buy him a farm because nobody won't rent no farm. He had to buy him a farm. Now I know of a Black family in Franklin County, I know two of them. One of them is the Massenbury family. Mr. Silas Massenbury had 10 girls. | 33:35 |
Chris Stewart | What is it? How do you spell their name? | 34:08 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Massenbury. | 34:10 |
Chris Stewart | A-N, okay. U-R-Y? | 34:11 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 34:12 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 34:13 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | They got a big nursing home over there now called Silasville Nursing Home in Franklin County. And now Mr. Silas had 10 girls and all his boys are younger than his girls but about one. | 34:15 |
Chris Stewart | Now, is this a White family? | 34:28 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, this is a Black family. Now he had to buy him farm. | 34:30 |
Chris Stewart | Because he had all those girls. | 34:33 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He couldn't, no one would rent him one. They wouldn't trust enough land with him to raise his family, and had nothing but girls. | 34:35 |
Chris Stewart | They needed to have man to raise. | 34:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Boy, needed that man. Needed strong backs out there. Okay. So he went and bought him a farm, great big farm. See, land was cheap back in those days. I reckon Mr. Massenbury bought him eleven hundred acres of land already. And he bought it and he hung with it. And them girls got in and worked just like men. And now Mr. Silas Massenbury, he's dead, but they still got their land. They still got their land. Educated one of them, that was the last one because they've educated him. That's why the family still got that land. And he's the backbone of all of them now. He got two nursing homes over there. It's called the Massenbury Nursing Home. And if you look on the nursing home, listen, you'll find him in there, and the last I heard from him, he's talking about opening one in Rocky Mount, a nursing home. | 34:47 |
Chris Stewart | And he probably made, are you saying that he made his money off his land? | 35:43 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Off his land. | 35:47 |
Chris Stewart | By the land. | 35:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Off his land. | 35:48 |
Chris Stewart | So you think that the same, that farmers wouldn't rent to rent to White families who didn't have boys as well. | 35:49 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | If they were poor, no, they wouldn't do it either. They caught it hard too because we was living on the Ford Farm, some, I don't know, Black and White grew together. They were poor and we was poor, they'd come to us for milk, butter, and eggs. My dad was renting, they was half sharing. | 35:57 |
Chris Stewart | And your dad was what? | 36:17 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. My dad was renting. They borrowed our wagon, but they kept a new wagon, they borrowed our wagon, borrowed our tools. And actually we just, children, we just played together, Black and White. It didn't matter. | 36:20 |
Chris Stewart | And it didn't bother either of the families? | 36:39 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Uh-uh. | 36:43 |
Chris Stewart | What about the wealthier people in? | 36:43 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | There wasn't no wealthier peoples in that area. | 36:45 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. | 36:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | All them was in town. That side of the land, that side of the city, all the peoples owned the land, stayed in town. | 36:48 |
Chris Stewart | Now would that kind of thing happen in town as well then? | 36:55 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Now, it wasn't much in town to go to. Wasn't there but a big county store. Now they had a little moving picture house, the Black go upstairs and White go downstairs. But if you was with some of the big, say if you went down there with some of the big guys' children, you could go in with them if you want to. | 36:58 |
Chris Stewart | You mean you could go into any place if you were going with one of the rich peoples' children? | 37:24 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. Nobody wouldn't bother you. | 37:29 |
Chris Stewart | Really? | 37:31 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Uh-uh, because they called the shots any daggum way. | 37:31 |
Chris Stewart | Regardless of if you were a woman or a man? | 37:36 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No. I'm talking about little kids now. Ain't talking about when you grew up and be of some size. That's long when you a little kid. | 37:37 |
Chris Stewart | What age do you think then that kind of flexibility that you're talking about or that kind of friendships? What age did it? | 37:46 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, publicly, it would come in at I think early teen. Real early, real early. | 38:04 |
Chris Stewart | So 10, 11? | 38:04 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. It would come on in then, yeah. | 38:04 |
Chris Stewart | So what about when I said bad places, what about racially? Were there any bad places that you should? | 38:08 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Oh, yeah. It was a lot of little juke joints out on the road. If you go by there early in the morning, wasn't many cars that you could stop. But if you go through there, especially on weekends, see more than one car there. Best keep on going. Best keep on going. | 38:18 |
Chris Stewart | What would go on there? | 38:41 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, somebody's going to do something to you, some people spit on you, call you, make a funny, bad remark at you, or call you a name or something. | 38:42 |
Chris Stewart | So these are White juke joints? | 38:52 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 38:53 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. Were there any Black juke joints in the community? | 38:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | They had some Black juke joints, yeah. | 38:57 |
Chris Stewart | Did you ever go to them? | 38:59 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | After I got the size, I would sneak there. Yeah. | 39:00 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. What went on in those? | 39:03 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Oh, they sell white liquor, gamble. | 39:05 |
Chris Stewart | Was there any music in them? | 39:09 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, most of them. Well seemed, like I said, two of them picking guitar. That's where it's the way back somebody. The music man was a guitar picker, something like that. And then back in, just before World War II, a little few Piccolo. Every once in a while you hear one Piccolo, maybe one Piccolo in the area. And everybody was flocked there. | 39:14 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. | 39:33 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Everybody would flock there because that was all. You thought it was you was seeing something pretty because a man had a Piccolo. It's like you was, that's all you ever seen. | 39:33 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah, right. | 39:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | It's all. | 39:47 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 39:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And it wasn't that many cars. The person had a car was, if you, they make four or five trips to carry people, 15, 20 cents a piece. | 39:48 |
Chris Stewart | So then how'd you get around? | 39:58 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | People drove. | 40:01 |
Chris Stewart | Did you have a car, your family? | 40:01 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-mm. | 40:03 |
Chris Stewart | So did you travel by wagon and mule? | 40:03 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, a long time ago we drove out. Drove by wagon, yeah. | 40:05 |
Chris Stewart | Were there any places in the county that you didn't want to travel to because your family didn't feel safe? | 40:10 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, you always would try to be off, be out of certain neighborhoods. I said a lot of White neighborhoods before sundown, because you don't want to have by sun down. And if you were walking out at night, see car lights coming. See very few Blacks had cars then, and unless the car made a sound and you recognize who it was before it got to you, you ought to get out where they couldn't see you till the car pass. | 40:21 |
Chris Stewart | If you were walking along the side of the road? | 40:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, because you don't never know what would happen. I've been run by jokers, I don't know them, they don't know me, but I'd outrun them. | 40:48 |
Chris Stewart | Really? | 40:55 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 40:55 |
Chris Stewart | When was this? | 40:56 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Oh, that was back just before World War II. I was a little bitty boy there. | 40:57 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. What happened? Do you remember what happened? | 41:00 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Nothing happened. You'd be— | 41:04 |
Chris Stewart | You were just walking along, and somebody would try to run you off? | 41:05 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Get out of the car and run at you, see you run. | 41:09 |
Chris Stewart | Where did you go? | 41:14 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Down through woods, anywhere you could. | 41:15 |
Chris Stewart | And you lost them, and you just. | 41:15 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | You'd lose them. | 41:15 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. | 41:15 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 41:15 |
Chris Stewart | And you said that happens to, that happened to you a couple of times? | 41:21 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, sure. | 41:24 |
Chris Stewart | Your friends too? | 41:24 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 41:24 |
Chris Stewart | You have no idea why they're after you? They're just after you. | 41:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, to see you run. | 41:30 |
Chris Stewart | They're after you because you're Black. | 41:30 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Black, see you run because they figure you're scared of them. That's the way it was. | 41:30 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. So you went to school, to the Allen Chapel School while you were living on. | 41:38 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Nick Perry's. | 41:46 |
Chris Stewart | Nick Perry's farm. | 41:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right. | 41:47 |
Chris Stewart | And then you moved to northwestern Franklin County, right? And that's when you were renting from your uncle? | 41:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, my mama's great uncle, yeah. | 41:55 |
Chris Stewart | Your mom's great uncle. | 41:58 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | His name was Frank. Frank Fogg. | 41:59 |
Chris Stewart | And how much land did he have? | 42:04 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Frank had about 800 acres, I believe it was. | 42:06 |
Chris Stewart | He had 100 acres? | 42:09 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right at 800 of them. | 42:09 |
Chris Stewart | 800 acres? | 42:12 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right at it, yeah. | 42:13 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. And was he renting to? | 42:15 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, most of. | 42:20 |
Chris Stewart | His family? | 42:20 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. Most of the family stayed there. His son, two of his sons stayed there, owned the farm. We was on the farm. And his other son, his house was there vacant, but he didn't stay and he worked at a shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia. | 42:20 |
Chris Stewart | He must have been a pretty wealthy man. | 42:37 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He was pretty wealthy. He put the first thousand dollars up to build this Franklin County Training School here. | 42:39 |
Chris Stewart | He did. So was he the Black leader in Franklin County? | 42:44 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | In that particular area, yeah. | 42:48 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah? So what other kinds of things do you remember about him in terms of as a leader in your, did he do? I mean- | 42:50 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He had a pretty big political pull too. He could get things done when knowing, but he could speak for you and get you out of trouble. That's how much pull he had. | 43:03 |
Chris Stewart | So you knew if you were in trouble that you'd go to him? | 43:12 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, he could. | 43:15 |
Chris Stewart | For basically anybody. | 43:15 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Basically anybody in that area that knew him, he knew them, he could put a good word in for you. He could put a strong fella when he come down to the political pull. | 43:18 |
Chris Stewart | Did he ever run for any office while on in his life? | 43:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No. Uh-uh. He never ran for the office. He never wanted no office. He was a deacon in the church, at Walnut Grove Baptist Church. | 43:29 |
Chris Stewart | Here. Okay. | 43:41 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. He was a deacon down there. | 43:41 |
Chris Stewart | And he was your mom's great-uncle. | 43:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Let me see now, way that thing worked now, his mama. Wait a minute. His mama and my great-grandmama were sisters, that's the way it was. His mama, my great-grandma was sisters. His daddy and my great-granddaddy were brothers. | 43:50 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. Wow. | 44:04 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 44:06 |
Chris Stewart | That's amazing. | 44:07 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. That's the way it was. | 44:09 |
Chris Stewart | That's amazing. | 44:09 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 44:09 |
Chris Stewart | So when he died, did the land get divided up between family? | 44:14 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, the children got it. Yeah. | 44:16 |
Chris Stewart | The children got it, did you ever end up getting any of the land? | 44:19 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I ain't ever been involved. I got some now, ain't ever been involved in it. No, I can still go in there and buy in it real, real cheap, but I never done that. Since I came Durham and bought up in Durham, I haven't been able to get away from it. | 44:20 |
Chris Stewart | Stay here. | 44:32 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | But I had thought about when I retired, go back down there and get me a little lot and build me a house down there. That's what I want to do, I don't know I'll be able to do it or not but that's my goal. | 44:35 |
Chris Stewart | I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. | 44:52 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I hope I could do it. I'll go down and build me house right from where we used to stay, if I wanted to get me a house there. | 44:52 |
Chris Stewart | That'd be great. | 44:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | It would be nice if I could just do it. | 44:54 |
Chris Stewart | What was I going to ask? One question I was going to ask you. Do you remember any really sad times when you were a child? Anything that really made you sad? | 44:55 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, we didn't go through too much disaster. Nothing but just death in the family and stuff of that nature. We went through a whole lot of that seemed like. But just to have disasters, we didn't have too much of it. | 45:12 |
Chris Stewart | Did you consider your childhood to be pretty happy for the most part? | 45:32 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I believe it was in that day, I believe we were pretty happy. Yeah, every neighborhood we lived in seemed like my mother and dad was an idol to everybody seemed like. | 45:36 |
Chris Stewart | Oh. | 45:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 45:48 |
Chris Stewart | That must have been nice. | 45:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | It was, they did. | 45:49 |
Chris Stewart | What kinds of things did you learn in school when you went to school? What kinds of things did they teach you? | 45:51 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well. | 45:57 |
Chris Stewart | Subjects or. | 45:57 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, we had English, math, history, science, biology. | 45:58 |
Chris Stewart | Did they ever teach you any Black history? | 46:06 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Uh-uh. I remember the first year that the North Carolina history came out, that was on a green book. See we got hand me down books for a long time. | 46:08 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 46:17 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And in that North Carolina history book, it would be pages cut out. And I've always wanted to get a North Carolina history book to find out what those pages contained that was cut out. But haven't ever get me one yet. But I believe on page 57 through about 96 was cut out of every one of those history books, and I don't know what was on it. | 46:18 |
Chris Stewart | That's a good 30 pages. | 46:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 46:48 |
Chris Stewart | Good stuff. Wow. What were your favorite subjects? Do you remember? | 46:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | My favorite subject was science. | 46:57 |
Chris Stewart | And how come? | 46:58 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I don't know why I just liked science. | 46:58 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah? | 46:58 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | But since I got, now my favorite subject is. | 46:58 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, it just seemed like it's a lot of things that has gone on that hadn't been all been, some of them I don't believe been put in the book. One thing I want to do, I want to really track my family roots down further than I have. But seem like I ain't had time to do it. | 0:01 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I wanted to go to Warren County. See my parents came out of Warren County, some of them came out of Granville County. And since I've been working here at Duke, I've seen a lot of people that came out of the far north part of Preston County that carries the same last name as my mother's maiden name. That's where they came from. And I can see the features in some of them. I can see the favor in some of them. | 0:23 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. So because you want to learn about your family— | 0:56 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, I want to learn about them and there's a lot of more things I want to learn to learn about. | 1:05 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. Did you graduate from high school? | 1:08 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 1:09 |
Chris Stewart | From the Franklin County School. | 1:09 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right, Franklin. | 1:09 |
Chris Stewart | What point in your life, this is kind of a hard question, but you can think about it. At what point in your life did people start treating you like an adult? Or did you feel like you were an adult? | 1:12 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay. Yeah. That is a hard question. You right about that. Say, okay. One thing. One thing, when you realize you was a adult back in those days, of when you was eligible for the draft. See, I was in the Korean War draft and that's one thing made me feel like then that I was a man. | 1:28 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And two, long years ago, seemed like you was a jury by being, everybody wanted to take their strength and prove themselves a man. See, that was the way to prove yourself a man. Excuse me. Well, your strength. And somehow or not, I never bought that too much. I never did buy that. I really was because I was always a small built fella, and I wasn't always that muscular as strong. I was strong as I think I thought I should've been. But after I was called for the draft then I did feel more like a man than I did until then. | 2:01 |
Chris Stewart | What would young men do to try and, I mean, you said that they would have to— | 2:45 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well along in then, fertilizer come in a 200 pound bag. | 2:54 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 2:56 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. They pick it up and put on your shoulder. | 2:56 |
Chris Stewart | Oh God. | 2:58 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And I never cared too much about that. | 3:04 |
Chris Stewart | I can't imagine why. | 3:05 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I never cared too much about that. | 3:10 |
Chris Stewart | Really? So it would be kind of a contest? | 3:12 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. But that was one way of showing your manhood, was through strength. | 3:16 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 3:22 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 3:22 |
Chris Stewart | So when did you go into the— | 3:22 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I went in the service in 1951. | 3:25 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. Were you married before you came in? | 3:27 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No. I was single. | 3:28 |
Chris Stewart | And you went into the, did you actually go to Korea? | 3:31 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, I went to Korea. I was in Korea. Well, I went to Japan. I did both my tour of duty in Japan. | 3:34 |
Chris Stewart | How long after you were done at Franklin County Training? | 3:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, I came out of school and went in the service. | 3:45 |
Chris Stewart | Boom. Just like that? | 3:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, just like that. | 3:48 |
Chris Stewart | You were drafted right away? | 3:50 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, I was drafted. | 3:51 |
Chris Stewart | How many other people in your area were drafted? | 3:52 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | A bunch of my classmates were drafted. Bunch of them went, we went together. It was about, at that moment it was about 260 some of us went there, went to the be examined together. | 3:55 |
Chris Stewart | How big was this school? | 4:04 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | See, that was the largest Black school in Franklin County. In fact, at that particular time, we were the largest school in Franklin County White or Black. We was the only school in Franklin County had a football club. | 4:12 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 4:21 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | The only school that had a football club. Our coach, Mr. Conway, I think Conway came from Greensboro. I think Conway from Greensboro. And he organized a football team. And we were playing, we were running. | 4:23 |
Chris Stewart | You were on the football team? | 4:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, I played foot— | 4:43 |
Chris Stewart | What position did you play? | 4:44 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, it's called running back now, but it was called halfback then. | 4:46 |
Chris Stewart | Oh yeah? | 4:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. I was a running. | 4:49 |
Chris Stewart | Were you good? | 4:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I thought I was. I thought I ran good. | 4:54 |
Chris Stewart | Did you win? | 4:55 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yep. We won the championship in 1948. | 4:56 |
Chris Stewart | Did you play other Black high schools? | 5:00 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, the school on this way, but we played Hillside and then we played it's Lincoln High now, but they called Orange County Training School then. | 5:02 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 5:13 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | See all Black schools were called Training School. Played Orange County Training School. Well, Hillside was still Hillside. And HI and Henderson were still HI. But in Nash County Training School, Warren County Training School, Franklin County Training School. And it was Wake County Training Training School. We never played Wake County, but we played the rest of them. | 5:15 |
Chris Stewart | And you won the championship? | 5:36 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | We won the Champion in 1948. | 5:38 |
Chris Stewart | How did you celebrate when you won? | 5:39 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | On what we didn't do? We had a little fun though. I don't know what we didn't do. We didn't drink no beer though. | 5:41 |
Chris Stewart | Where'd you go? | 5:51 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | We didn't drink no beer. | 5:51 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 5:51 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Like no beers. | 5:51 |
Chris Stewart | Well, what did you do? | 5:55 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | We'd up and have a social. Let's all have a party. | 5:55 |
Chris Stewart | At the high school? | 5:59 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | At the school. | 5:59 |
Chris Stewart | With both boys and girls coming to celebrate? | 6:00 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. We had a good time. | 6:03 |
Chris Stewart | Did the school have a band of any sort? | 6:11 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, we had a good band. We had a nice band. Yeah, we had a complete, complete band. We had a pretty good band instructor. His name was Jones, I think he left there and came to Central. Yeah, I think he left there and came to Central. They haven't had a good band since. For three years, we had a good band. And then after Mr. Jones left, the band left, seemed like. Couldn't get another music teacher. | 6:11 |
Chris Stewart | So you went into the Army then? 1951. And where did you do your basic? | 6:33 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I did my basic training in Camp Breckenridge Kentucky. It's a youth core camp now. | 6:41 |
Chris Stewart | Now was your basic segregated? | 6:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No. When I went in service, I think I was in the first cycle of the integrated Army. I was in the first cycle of the integrated Army, White and Black together. | 6:49 |
Chris Stewart | What was it like? | 7:05 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, I had never been in the Army before and a lot of my width had never been in the Army before. And it seems strange, but we went all through basic training without any racial incidents. | 7:08 |
Chris Stewart | Really? | 7:23 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | That's the honest God truth. Because now all our carry men, I don't think we had no Black carry men. The first Black carry men I saw was after I had gone overseas and came back. Then they had Black carry men. All the carry men was White and all the officer was White. | 7:24 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | When I got to Texas, see there was still a lot of segregated outfits left from World War II. But I was in the first training cycle to go through from this jump integrated. When we got to Texas, after we finished basic training, they finished advanced training in Texas. See we left basic training, went to Texas, and went to the artillery school for eight weeks. | 7:40 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | When we came out of artillery school, we was shipped to an all Black battalion, the 32nd Automatic Weapon Battalion. Then we were sent, all of us were sent overseas. The whole battalion. | 8:07 |
Chris Stewart | When you went overseas, you were sent with an all Black? | 8:22 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | All Black outfit. Went overseas from the battalion exec all the way down were Black. | 8:24 |
Chris Stewart | Why? | 8:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | That was the 32nd Automatic Weapon Battalion. I don't know whether that was the old 96 or what. | 8:30 |
Chris Stewart | So it was an older battalion? | 8:36 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. All old guys in there was either World War II veteran or they had been in there, we were young guys. | 8:40 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 8:45 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And so we all us Black in that outfit. So— | 8:46 |
Chris Stewart | Go ahead. | 8:49 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | So they shipped us overseas. When we got overseas, they broke the outfit down, just tore all the pieces. Just tore it up and everybody went to all White or integrated White outfits that was over there. That was already all White. They integrated everything over there. Everything in Japan was integrated. | 8:51 |
Chris Stewart | Were there any incidences in Japan? | 9:10 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | There wasn't none in there. We didn't have, I think we had about one. We had about one or two racial incidents in the outfit that we was. I heard about a lot of them around from them, but there wasn't any actually in the outfit we were in. | 9:13 |
Chris Stewart | You said there were about one or two? | 9:23 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 9:23 |
Chris Stewart | What happened? | 9:24 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | One night we was out, we was off base. We wasn't on base. Was out in Misawa, at Misawa. That's a little village out in Japan. And they had a club out there called the 21 Club. They had to set the club up. Oh, I say back in the early part of '54, actually maybe before the Korean War even started, maybe. Because wasn't in that area but White soldiers. | 9:28 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And so as we moved over there, the outfit got integrated, we started, some of the guys would go over, go in there, go in there. And one night some Air Force, it was air base it was on. One night we was in there, and this guy name was Parnell Brown. He was a Black guy. He was from Hendersonville, Tennessee. | 10:02 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And these White Air Force guys came in. We was in the Army. These Air Force guys came in and all the patrolmen who were there was Air Force patrolmen. And it wasn't only racially motivated, but it seemed like it was unit motivated. See the Army and the Air Force, when they'd meet up on Liberty, they'd fight one another. People don't realize that. But the Army and the Navy, the Air Force, they all fight one another. | 10:25 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And these Air Force guys came in and Brown sat at the bar and they pour a pitcher of beer on brown and called him a nigger. And when they did, all the Army guys and Air Force got to fight, it was a brawl. It was just a brawl. Army fighting the Air Force. And then it boiled down to a racial thing. | 11:00 |
Chris Stewart | So it started out as a just sort of a general brawl? | 11:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | A unit, yeah. | 11:29 |
Chris Stewart | And then it ended up to be Blacks against Whites. | 11:30 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | A racial thing, right. | 11:30 |
Chris Stewart | What ended up happening to Parnell Brown and the rest of the people who were fighting? | 11:35 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well when we caught, somehow or another, they got Brown and were going to tie him out to a Jeep and going to drag him. And they put up a human barricade to stop it and got him. And it almost escalated into a real serious matter. | 11:42 |
Chris Stewart | Like maybe a lynching? | 12:01 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. But somehow or other, we got it stopped. | 12:04 |
Chris Stewart | How did you stop it? | 12:08 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | We formed a human barricade. | 12:10 |
Chris Stewart | To stop the Jeep. | 12:13 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | To stop the Jeep. And then the CIDs got into it. | 12:15 |
Chris Stewart | What is a CID? | 12:16 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | That was a Civilian Detective, Civilian Intelligence Detective, or what have. | 12:17 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 12:21 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And I think they washed it under the rug because nothing was ever done about it. They washed it under the rug. | 12:21 |
Chris Stewart | Really? Did Parnell Brown stay in the Army? | 12:21 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, he stayed. He stayed in the service. He stayed in. But they washed it under the rug because it died on the island. But that was the last one. They never had another incident come up. | 12:30 |
Chris Stewart | You said you also heard about things that were going on as well. | 12:50 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 12:53 |
Chris Stewart | What kinds of things did you hear about? As serious as this? | 12:53 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Oh, down in Tokyo we was Blacks and Whites fighting. Now there was certain places down there that the White soldiers didn't even allow the Black soldiers. See I wasn't one of those stations right in Tokyo, but down right in Tokyo, I understand places down there. See I had a brother was in the Navy in Tokyo. He was telling about, said certain place in Tokyo, they didn't want the Black soldier to go. Black soldier, sailor. The White guy had it sewed up. | 12:56 |
Chris Stewart | How long were you in the Army? | 13:21 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I was in the Army two years. | 13:22 |
Chris Stewart | I want to say did it get any better? But I mean, I'm not sure that that's the question. Did the armed forces, did the Army sort of get control of these things after a while? Or? | 13:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, somehow they quieted down. I don't know what happened. You wouldn't hear about it no more. But see now, the whole outfit, the whole 753rd outfit I was in, it was what you call a glass ceiling in there from a promotion standpoint of Black soldier because you couldn't get no rank in there. That was one reason I came out, I got out. | 13:44 |
Chris Stewart | How high could you go? | 14:07 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Highest ranking guy I saw in there was a corporal. | 14:08 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 14:08 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | If I could have saw any advantage in the future, no, I would've stayed in. | 14:10 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 14:13 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | But it wasn't a future for a Black soldier. Not in that particular outfit. See if I would've reenlisted, they would've sent me right back to that outfit. Because when I was talking to the recruiter sergeant, he was talking about reenlisting. I made a deal with him. I said, "Okay." I said, "I'll reenlist providing I can go to the Caribbean." | 14:14 |
Chris Stewart | To where? | 14:34 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | To the Caribbean. | 14:34 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. | 14:34 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I said, "I'll reenlist if I go to the Caribbean." He said, "Well if you reenlist." I know some of the guys did reenlist and was shot right back to the same outfit. | 14:36 |
Chris Stewart | Did a lot of the Blacks in the Army get shipped over to this area? Or were they spread out all around? | 14:49 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, they spread us out. What they done now, it was 12 officers sent into that outfit. 12 officers at one point. And they broke up every outfit over there. | 14:54 |
Chris Stewart | Why did you want to go to the Caribbean? | 15:04 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I just wanted to get out of the Far East. | 15:06 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 15:09 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I want to see whether it was, I knew it was too racially over there for you. It was racial in the Army then among them. When it comes to promotions and duty assignments, it was racial. | 15:09 |
Chris Stewart | Did you sleep in the same? Did White and Blacks live in the same barracks? | 15:25 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yep, slept in the same barracks. | 15:25 |
Chris Stewart | So physically there was integration. | 15:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right. | 15:31 |
Chris Stewart | But you knew that there were the limits. | 15:32 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | You knew to the limits. Physically it was integration, physically on paper. Yeah. | 15:34 |
Chris Stewart | Did White soldiers, Black soldiers fraternize together? Did they go out and drink together? | 15:38 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, we'd go out and drink together. You went across some good guys in there. But it was still groups that still hung in that group. And it was groups of Black did the same daggum thing. Now the section that I was in, I was in headquarters section. I was one of the only Black in there. And in order for you to go out, you had to go out and integrate with the base because we had to keep a tactical formation at all time. Everybody couldn't go out on past the same time. | 15:44 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 16:12 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And maybe me and two guys is signed on passing night. Two more guys signed on passing tomorrow night. And by me being the on that's Black, we had to go out and pass. And people run by and ride by and said different things. Especially the Air Force because we was guarding the air base. See the Army was the minority on that particular base, the Army was. | 16:13 |
Chris Stewart | Was the Air Force integrated? Or was it just the Army? | 16:43 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 16:43 |
Chris Stewart | The Air Force? | 16:43 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, the Air Force integrated. Yeah. | 16:43 |
Chris Stewart | But you think that the Air Force was worse? | 16:44 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well the Air Force, I never was in the Air Force. I was on the Air Force base. Air Force tours of duty seemed like was lighter than ours. They didn't have the same tour of duty that we had. We was their guard. We were guarding their base. | 16:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | See most of the Air Force's prime mission is from the ground to the air. If and only all the ground function was ours. And so you would see them, but you didn't know what they were doing. And all the ground maneuver was our responsibility. | 17:07 |
Chris Stewart | Why do you think that the people in the Air Force and the Army don't get along? Or didn't get along at the— | 17:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I don't know why. It's just a ego thing. They still do it today. It's just an ego thing. That's all. | 17:33 |
Chris Stewart | Do you think that race relations in the Air Force were worse than race relations in the Army when you were there? | 17:33 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I think from a glass ceiling standpoint, yes. Because there wasn't that many pilots. Wasn't no Black pilots then. There was some Black pilots in World War II. But after World War II went and end, I didn't see too many Black pilots. Excuse me. | 17:50 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Now General Benjamin Davis, he was in the Air Force. He was a top general. His father was in the Army. His father was general in the Army. And I think Benjamin Davis is still living. I believe he is. | 18:06 |
Chris Stewart | Benjamin Davis? | 18:20 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Benjamin O. Davis. I believe he's still living. I don't know whether he's a brigadier general or lieutenant general. I think he's still living because I believe— | 18:20 |
Chris Stewart | He was a Black general? | 18:30 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, he was in the Air Force. I believe he's a four star general, I believe. | 18:33 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 18:34 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I believe he is, if I'm mistaken. His dad was a brigadier general. He was in the Army, the daddy was. | 18:35 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. So you were in the Army for two years and then you decided not to reenlist. | 18:44 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I decided not to reenlist. If I could have got some concrete evidence of some future, I would've stayed in Army. I liked the Army. But we had our little first sergeant. He was a racial guy. He was a racial guy. And then he was a guy that, there was a lot of Whites now he treated dirty too. A lot of White boys he treated dirty. | 18:50 |
Chris Stewart | What do you mean when you say a racial guy? | 19:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, he was a—Okay, we used to go out, we have pass. We have a guard mount every evening at 5:00 o'clock. And had a little thing set up that says the best dressed guy or either the most sharpest guy won't have to walk the guard. They'd call it a super numer. You're super, see. | 19:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And every time one of the Black guys make, every time a officer come by and pick a Black guy for the super numer sitting on guard that night. Oh, first starting to find some reason to put him on detail. Make him do something. Put them on details every time. | 19:51 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | See, every evening the guard roster would go up, it's be 15 or 20 people picked on guard duty. There'd always be one man extra. It's one man extra all the time. Because after they have guard inspection, which man creates the best, the most merit, would be the super guard. He got to stand and look, he don't have to walk off. | 20:15 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | But every time, old joy, he would make you do something. I don't know if he do it for spite or what. And seemed like the guys, some of the White guys from the lower parts of the state, like Louisiana, Mississippi, or Arkansas, we in the lower parts state. See old Sergeant Hyer, he was from Seattle, Washington. | 20:38 |
Chris Stewart | This guy that you're talking about was Sergeant High? | 21:04 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Sergeant Hyer, he was the first sergeant. | 21:07 |
Chris Stewart | Hyatt? | 21:08 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Hyer, H-Y-E-R. He was from Seattle, Washington. And seeing as all the guys, all the White boys from Kentucky, any southern White boy, he had something against him. He was mean. He was hateful to him. | 21:10 |
Chris Stewart | Oh really? | 21:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. He was hard on them. He slapped one of the boy one night. And also, and non-comm ain't supposed to slap no guy. But the guy fouled him. The guy like whooped him. | 21:26 |
Chris Stewart | Oh wow. | 21:38 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 21:39 |
Chris Stewart | He fought right back. | 21:39 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, he fought. He fought him back. | 21:42 |
Chris Stewart | Did he get into trouble? | 21:44 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, because if he was told anybody about it, he'd got in trouble. | 21:45 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, yeah. | 21:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He'd hoist it up. So he always had, seemed like a edge on for that guy. And the guy name was Miller, I'll never forget. Guy name was Miller. And he slapped the boy and busted a lip. And he went to him like White on rice. And they fought. | 21:52 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And he was just kind of an arrogant guy. Among all the southern White boys. He didn't have no respect, no more respect than them than he did for the Black. But seemed like the guy from Midwest, or New York, and places like that, they got along with him. | 22:06 |
Chris Stewart | With the sergeant? | 22:24 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. And I know we had a softball, excuse me. We had a softball team. He picked all them guys for the softball team. Did nothing for the other White boy get on. That's what he picked. He's just an attitude guy. | 22:25 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah, sounds like it. | 22:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And so that's one thing kind of pushed me out from reenlisting. I saw how he was and that kind pushed me out from reenlisting. But I was talking about reenlisting and he made a crack one day. Told me said, "You know, if you reenlist, you got four them all months to stay over here." I was like, "Uh huh." And so I asked the recruiting sergeant about reenlisting and transfer. He said he couldn't guarantee that. So I wouldn't reenlist. | 22:45 |
Chris Stewart | What job did you do while you were in? | 23:08 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I was a gunner. I was a gunner on a 120 millimeter. | 23:10 |
Chris Stewart | I mean were you involved in any battles? | 23:17 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, the gun I was on was so large, we was on the front line from the side of that gun. But the target we were firing, because we could couldn't see them, no way. | 23:19 |
Chris Stewart | Really? | 23:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | We fired by radar control. | 23:30 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. | 23:34 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. Radar fresh come out. Radar, we fly by radar and computer. Yeah. | 23:35 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 23:36 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 23:36 |
Chris Stewart | So you got out in '53? | 23:40 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Three. | 23:42 |
Chris Stewart | And where'd you go when you got out? | 23:43 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | When I got done in 1953, went home, I stayed around. I took about a two weeks vacation. Then I got me a job there. They had just built a new hospital in Franklin County. It was called Franklin Memorial then, now it's called Franklin Region. I went there, got me a job up there. And I worked there from, I forget when I came out here. I worked there until '56. Then I came to Duke. | 23:45 |
Chris Stewart | What did you do there? | 24:11 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, I was a orderly over there. What they called— | 24:12 |
Chris Stewart | Orderly? | 24:14 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, they called them clinical assistants over here at Duke. | 24:15 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. | 24:16 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. I was a orderly over there. And so I left there and I came to Duke and got a job at the golf course. | 24:16 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, what'd you do at the golf course? | 24:23 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, it was a jungle. We helped build the golf course over there. | 24:25 |
Chris Stewart | You built the golf course? | 24:28 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I helped build the golf course over there. | 24:31 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 24:34 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I helped build Duke University Golf Course. I sure did. I pulled every little green and tee over there. I flattened it out with the tractor. | 24:35 |
Chris Stewart | How many people were working on it? | 24:40 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | See it was a bunch of them out there. But Duke had, see the crew I was on, one to about six of them. About eight of us, was it eight of us? Because it was four guys, two drivers. Yes, eight of us. | 24:47 |
Chris Stewart | How long were you working on it? | 24:56 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | See I worked out there the whole summer of '56. And then when I got back, I transferred into the hospital and I worked in the hospital for about a year. And then I left. Couldn't make no money, so I left and went to Crescent, S.H. Kress & Company. | 24:59 |
Chris Stewart | To Crest? | 25:15 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I went to S.H. Kress & Company and I worked there. I worked at S.H. Kress & Company until in the '60s. I was there when the sit down came. | 25:15 |
Chris Stewart | You were there? | 25:15 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I worked there through the sit down, the sit-in. | 25:15 |
Chris Stewart | Let me, I got to get some of this stuff down here. Then the Duke Golf Course, then Duke Hospital. Then Kress— | 25:15 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | S.H. Kress & Company. K-R-E-S-S. | 25:16 |
Chris Stewart | You were working there when the sit-ins were happening? Wow. | 25:52 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, I was right there when the sit-in coming. I was there the first day they came in and sat. | 25:54 |
Chris Stewart | What? Tell me about it. What did you know? | 25:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, actually what happened, it started in Greensboro on Saturday. And so somebody came in the store that Saturday evening. Said, "You know?" They said. In fact it was on the news about the City in Greensboro. And so somebody came in and said, "I wonder what's going to happen down here?" There's nothing happening Saturday. | 26:02 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | So I told my wife, I said, "You know one thing?" I said, "I bet you we have a sit-in today." So she said, "Maybe not." Said, "Maybe they'll wait." And so I said, "Okay." So I went on to work that Monday morning and the store, I always go work at 7:30 in the morning. The store wasn't open until 9:00 and the soda lunch counter downstairs open at 9:15. | 26:28 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | When that soda lunch counter opened, I was standing at the bottom of the step. I looked coming down the step. It was all the Duke University seemed like and all of North Carolina Center. It was called North Carolina College then. | 26:53 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 27:05 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | They came down there and just [indistinct 00:27:08] the counter. And so Mr. L.W. Payne was the manager there then. | 27:05 |
Chris Stewart | Delbert Payne? | 27:13 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | L.W. Payne. | 27:17 |
Chris Stewart | L.W. | 27:20 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. He was the manager there then. And so they closed the lunch counter down. They said, "We can't be serving nobody." So they just blocked it. | 27:21 |
Chris Stewart | So now you said there were Duke University students and North Carolina College students. They weren't coming in there together? | 27:32 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yes, they did too. | 27:38 |
Chris Stewart | They came in there together? | 27:39 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | They came in there together. | 27:41 |
Chris Stewart | The Duke students and the North Carolina College students came in to have a sit-in. | 27:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | They came in together. See Duke students supported North Carolina College student. North Carolina College student came in first and Duke student came in behind and supported me. Yeah, they was there. | 27:47 |
Chris Stewart | What'd you think about it? | 27:56 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, I knew something had to be done and I was expecting it. And I had always questioned it because I knew about 75% of Kress's customers were Black. Because all our customers were Black other than some of the lunch people. The stuff Kress was selling, they didn't want it. At that particular time, nobody didn't want it. | 28:03 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And so every day for about a week, they'd barricade the counter. So then Mr. Payne come, he said, "We're going to take the seats up." So then they took all the seats up. Well see, in the meantime, Rose's had always had a standup counter. Rose's five and 10. They was down there in the area about where, got a club there called Powerhouse now. Rose was in that building. | 28:29 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 29:00 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And Rose had always had a standup bar. So everybody stopped coming to Kress's, they went to Rose's. Rose and Silver. Well see, they hit Kress's and Woolworths. Woolworths was on one corner, Kress on the far corner. So Kress took all the seats up. They still blocked the counters because they still didn't want to serve no Black. And Walgreens was across the street. And they hit Walgreens too. | 29:00 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And then they run a picket line, the whole, from where Mangum Street crosses Main Street, that whole block was pickets on both sides the street. | 29:27 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 29:40 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Walking the picket line. And so I don't know what happened, but Mr. Payne, they caught him into something. I don't know what happened. But anyway, New York office, the home office of Kress's, they came here and fired him. Yeah. They fired him on the spot and put Mr. W.K Boger in there. | 29:40 |
Chris Stewart | W.K. | 30:01 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | W.K. Boger. | 30:02 |
Chris Stewart | B? | 30:04 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | O-G-E-R. They put him in there. And so he told me, he said Arthur, he says, "I got a job to do, same as you got a job to do." So, yeah, he said, "How long you been at Kress?" I said, "I've been here along six or seven years now." He said, "Well, I'm going to take you up off the floor." Said, "I'm going to put you in a stockroom." He said, "Kress had never had a Black stockroom master. I'm going to put you up there." He said, "I don't care who don't like it, I'm going to put you up there." So they put me in stockroom and stockroom clerk. | 30:05 |
Chris Stewart | You were stockroom manager? | 30:38 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, I was stockroom clerk. | 30:42 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. There'd never been a Black— | 30:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He said, "There ain't never been one, I'm going to put you up there." He said, "In there." I had to receive all freight come in. | 30:47 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 30:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He said, "Anybody don't want you to receive the freights, I tell them, carry it back. Tell them I told you to tell them carry it back." So he said, "You going to have a lot of problem." Said, "But you handle it the best way you can." I said, "Okay." So I went in there. | 30:50 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And so Mr. Boger, he said, "Now in order for me to get going, I got to have somebody arrested." So he had a whole bunch of student arrested. Him and the man that, warden, I believe man's warden name was Strong, I believe. He was from Arizona. | 31:01 |
Chris Stewart | He had the students arrested? | 31:24 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, he had a bunch of students arrested. | 31:25 |
Chris Stewart | How come Mr. Boger had students arrested? | 31:27 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He had them arrested on a trespassing charge. | 31:29 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 31:32 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | See then they had put, they made a little old sign, said, "Lunch counter is open to—" How did the little sign read? It read, "Invited guests only." | 31:33 |
Chris Stewart | Oh. | 31:44 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Lunch counter's open to invited guests. If you was uninvited guests, they arrested. If you was Black, you was uninvited guests. Said arrest all the Black students and put them in. Some of the White students too, all them wouldn't move. Put them in jail too. In fact they arrested, they booked them. | 31:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And so I think a jury threw all them mess out. And I'm finally think what? I believe the thing stayed closed then until they opened back up on an integrated basis. I believe before the Civil Rights Bill passed. | 31:59 |
Chris Stewart | '63. | 32:19 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 32:20 |
Chris Stewart | Did people talk about, before the sit-in started, I mean you got here to Durham in '56, right? | 32:21 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-hmm. | 32:29 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember hearing people talking about doing this kind of stuff? Or even doing anything before 1960 when you— | 32:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, no. I ain't have. The first was heard about was when those two students sitting in Greensboro. | 32:38 |
Chris Stewart | Greensboro? | 32:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. That was the first time we heard about. Course now everybody had known. Everybody knew up until then that it was illegal. They knew it was illegal. And I think everybody was waiting for somebody to make the move. And they was trying to, they didn't know what strategy to use. | 32:48 |
Chris Stewart | Did people talk about it at church? | 33:13 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, it was talked about at church because, well, when the first bus bar out come up in Alabama, and they put that bus company out of business there, then they begin to circulate through the churches and through the different congregations that it was going to have to break down the segregated bar some way somehow. And they was trying to figure out a strategy to use. They were trying to figure out a strategy. And after when that started in Greensboro, everybody supported it. | 33:15 |
Chris Stewart | Now you mentioned to me your wife, but you didn't tell me how you met her. | 33:58 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay. When I came out of the service, it was kind of a, well it was a blind date to me, but she was setting it up all the time. | 34:07 |
Chris Stewart | Oh yes. | 34:21 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | But it was blind to me. I was maneuvered into the point. | 34:22 |
Chris Stewart | How was she setting it up? | 34:22 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well see, I knew her brother. Me and her brother are classmate, excuse me. She was a little younger than I was. And she was a good friend to a cousin of mine. | 34:31 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And when I went, during the time I was in service, I used to write my cousin every once in a while. We would always write one. She write me and I sent her pictures of me. She sent her, I sent her. And she got one of my pictures. She said, "I'm going to find this man when he come out. When he come up, I'm going to." | 34:44 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And so my cousin got into the deal of it. And so I didn't know what she was maneuvering me around to. And after I met her, I was glad I met her. I said, "Oh." So everything I asked, she was agreeing with. I wanted, could I come and see her? Could I take her out? And she was agreeing. | 35:05 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And then that's when we started going together. She said, "Yes, I had you in mind." Said, "I will track, I'm going to track you down." I said, "Oh, you kidding?" She said, "Yes and me and Lula set that trap up for you. I told Lulu I had to meet you." | 35:26 |
Chris Stewart | Who's Lulu? | 35:27 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | That was my cousin Lula. Her name was Lula. | 35:27 |
Chris Stewart | Lula. | 35:27 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. That's how I went out. That's why she and I worked. Kind of a blind date that. | 35:27 |
Chris Stewart | Where'd you go? | 35:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | At least it was blind to me. I believe we went to a dance that night. We did. We went to a dance. Yeah, we did. Went to a dance. | 35:51 |
Chris Stewart | So is she from Franklin County too? | 35:57 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 35:58 |
Chris Stewart | So you met her. | 35:58 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, she's from Franklin County, but she originally came from Warren County, Halifax County, at least. Yeah. Down between Infield and Littleton down in there. That's where she came from. | 36:00 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 36:09 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 36:09 |
Chris Stewart | So you met her then when you came back? | 36:11 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right when I came back. | 36:13 |
Chris Stewart | To work for, yeah. | 36:14 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 36:16 |
Chris Stewart | Worked for. Did you meet her when you were working at the hospital there? | 36:16 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I met her the time I came by back. | 36:19 |
Chris Stewart | Right away? | 36:21 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. I met her. I met her the second day I came back because I knew my cousin kept maneuvering me around and I knew she wasn't trying to date me. But she always want, she kept maneuvering me around, maneuvering me around, and then when we got to the house, she was like, "I got a girl I want you to meet." Oh, Lord. I went, that's who it was. | 36:22 |
Chris Stewart | So how long did you court? | 36:36 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Oh, about a year. Yeah. | 36:41 |
Chris Stewart | Where'd you get married? | 36:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | We got married in Franklin County. | 36:43 |
Chris Stewart | At where in Franklin County. | 36:45 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | At the Reverend S.G. Dunston's house. At the preacher's house. That was her uncle. He married us. | 36:49 |
Chris Stewart | Did you invite many people to the wedding? | 36:55 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No. I had a small wedding. Small wedding. Yeah. I had a small wedding. | 36:57 |
Chris Stewart | Where'd you go on your honeymoon? | 37:01 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, we came to Durham. We left Durham, we went to Virginia for about a week or so. Then I come back and went to work. | 37:03 |
Chris Stewart | So did you rent a house then? Or where did you stay? | 37:13 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, she was in school. She stayed in school the rest of the year out. And then I rented a house and next year we moved to Durham. | 37:17 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. So she was still at the Franklin? | 37:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Country Training school. Yeah. | 37:29 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 37:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 37:29 |
Chris Stewart | So she finished out school? | 37:30 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. She was a majorette. | 37:31 |
Chris Stewart | Oh. | 37:31 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Cheerleaders are called, they call her majorettes then, no they'll call them cheerleader. | 37:39 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. So how many children did you have? | 37:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I got six. | 37:45 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 37:46 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. They all— | 37:46 |
Chris Stewart | Are they still living around here? | 37:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yep. They're all grown. | 37:50 |
Chris Stewart | Really? | 37:53 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And I got six grand. | 37:53 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. That's nice. | 37:53 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 37:53 |
Chris Stewart | So do your children still live around here? | 37:56 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 37:58 |
Chris Stewart | So you can see them? | 37:58 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-hmm. | 37:58 |
Chris Stewart | Well that's great. | 37:59 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 38:00 |
Chris Stewart | So you can see your grandchildren too? | 38:00 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 38:02 |
Chris Stewart | When are you going to be able to retire, do you think? | 38:05 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Oh, I got about four more years. | 38:08 |
Chris Stewart | Really? That's not bad. | 38:10 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, not bad. | 38:12 |
Chris Stewart | Maybe you can get that house. | 38:13 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I hope I can. I hope I can. I had the one I got paid for in three more years going to put it on the market and sell it and go to Enfield. That's what I wanted to do. | 38:14 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember ever having any heroes as a young person? Any people that you really looked up to, either in your own community or nationally? Any? | 38:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I'll tell you my idol in my high school year was my football coach. That was my idol, was T.E Conway. He was my idol. That's a fact. | 38:39 |
Chris Stewart | Why? | 38:53 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well Mr. Conway seemed like he was somebody I could rely on. And he always me feel proud of myself. He always told me, "You can do it. You can do it. I got faith in you. You can do it. And have faith in yourself." He always give me that initiative to push. And he seemed like he was a up Black guy too. He's a decent guy. I liked him. | 38:54 |
Chris Stewart | He's the guy that you had, that you went to the championship in '48? | 39:20 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. He's the one. He's the one. I had a lot of respect for him. A lot of respect. | 39:23 |
Chris Stewart | How long was he the football coach there? | 39:27 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He was the only one I know there. He was the only one. He was there for years. Conway was there. He was there until they integrated school into the White. And then when it went into a White school, he was a coach there. So he was a coach until he died or until he retired. I think he retired one year and died the next year. Yeah. He lived one year after he retired. | 39:27 |
Chris Stewart | This is kind of a hard question too, but I'm going to ask it. | 39:57 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay. | 40:00 |
Chris Stewart | Can you remember a time in your life either in Franklin County or you kind of mentioned a little bit in the Army or even in Durham County, where you felt like you were treated like a second class citizen? | 40:01 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, yeah. Yeah. There's been times like that, you remember. That's so many times that you get to the point you feel it's a way of life for a long, long time. You feel like a second class citizen. Yeah. | 40:14 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Because see within the power structure of Durham and everyday life, see it used to be they had a little old bureau here called the Durham Merchants Association. And every transaction that a Black person did, every transaction a Black person did, and wasn't that many Whites in there. But see you got a lot of Whites that live on the same level as Blacks. And everything, every transaction they would do, would always be in that little sheet. And it would circulate around between the little Merchants Association, little guys. | 40:31 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And then since here in recent years, that little thing been abolished. See, you don't hear no more about it. And you don't know why it was abolished and you can't never get to the bottom and find out where it started at. And they had a list on you. Okay. What you did? Okay, where you went and did a transaction at, it was in that little old file. | 40:42 |
Chris Stewart | Durham Merchants Association. | 40:46 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Durham Merchants Association. | 41:10 |
Chris Stewart | So they kept track of you kept track of— | 41:21 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Kept track of All the Blacks. All the Black was in there. Everything, all your business was in there. They knew what you was going to do or how you were going to do. They wanted to block it, they could block you. It was in there. | 41:57 |
Chris Stewart | Was the Merchants Association Black as well as White? | 42:10 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, it was all White. | 42:19 |
Chris Stewart | So it was White people watching out? | 42:19 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Weren't no Black in the Merchant Association. | 42:19 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 42:19 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I ain't never known no Black merchant been in there. | 42:20 |
Chris Stewart | So you felt like you were being watched? | 42:22 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. You were being watched. You were being watched. | 42:24 |
Chris Stewart | And you said that you haven't heard much about it lately? | 42:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No. I don't know what happened to it. Anyway, that little old building right there across from, when you come down Mangum Street on where highway crosses and Mangum at, that building there, that used to be it. | 42:31 |
Chris Stewart | Really? | 42:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | They built that building and then they kind of faded away. | 42:50 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 42:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Don't know what happened to it because there was one across the street were it. And when they built the new one across the street, it just vanished, seemed like. | 42:54 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember any things happening to people because they were being watched? If there was something that they did supposedly wrong, according to the White people, would something happen to them? Like they could lose a job? Or? | 43:06 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Oh, yeah. You could lose a job behind that little stuff. Heck yeah. Sure, because the information was passed between among them and all them little people that you had to deal with was in that little thing. Everything was in there but the power company, the utility company couldn't join it. The utility company couldn't be a member. They were controlled by the utility commission out of Raleigh. But everything else was in it. | 43:22 |
Chris Stewart | How about in Franklin County? Were there? | 43:56 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I don't know about it. See, I did most of my transaction in Durham County after I got grown. And I don't whether they had one or not. I can't say. But since you mentioned that, I'm going ask around somebody to find out. | 44:02 |
Chris Stewart | Maybe some of those members that— | 44:21 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, I'm going to ask somebody and find out. I'm quite sure they did though. I'm quite sure. But I never contacted any in that number because I never dealt with too much transactions out of Franklin since I been grown. But I'm going to ask somebody about that. I'm glad you mentioned that. | 44:21 |
Chris Stewart | Well, is there anything else that you'd like to tell me about? Talk to me about? Anything that you think I should have asked you about? | 44:37 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | See I listen, there's nothing to talk about all day long. | 44:54 |
Chris Stewart | I know. | 44:57 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | To tell you the truth. And just get the mess together. Now really, I really, when it come coming down to right down just blatant racism, I found more of that in Durham County than Franklin County. | 44:57 |
Chris Stewart | Why do you think that's so? | 45:25 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well you take now really blatant racism out of Franklin County, in order to hurt too many Blacks, you had to hurt a whole lot of Whites. Because you had a lot of poor Whites in Franklin County. | 45:29 |
Chris Stewart | You think that's because there are a lot of poor people in general in Franklin County? | 45:46 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, there's a lot of poor people over there. See, a lot of them. Yeah. And when you come right down to see. And too, in Durham County, you had a lot of Blacks dealing in political powers. See? But see in Franklin County, a lot of people that had a lot of numbers, but they wasn't be in the political power. You got a whole lot of Blacks in Franklin County that live good financially, but they wasn't in the political power. | 45:53 |
Chris Stewart | So do you think that that's connected to why there's more racism in Durham County then? | 46:24 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 46:30 |
Chris Stewart | How do you think that's connected? | 46:31 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well see, in order to be racist, you got to have some power. You got not much power, ain't much racist you can be. You ain't got no power. And see you got a little Black power structure in Durham. And also see you got Mechanics and Farmers Bank. You got North Carolina Mutual. Now at— | 46:33 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | —the only two local banks you got in Durham now is Mechanic and Farmer Bank and CCB. The Wachovia, First Union, all those banks are out of town banks. The only home bank is CCB and Mechanic and Farmer. All rest of all of the banks home office is somewhere else. | 0:01 |
Chris Stewart | I just have to write down all the names. | 0:36 |
Chris Stewart | Well, I tell you what I need to do next is I need to just fill out some forms. | 0:44 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay. | 0:51 |
Chris Stewart | And I'm going to go ahead and leave the tape player on while I fill out the forms. | 0:52 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay. | 0:54 |
Chris Stewart | The first form that I need to fill out is just biographical information. So it's like your genealogy, kind of, what you were saying. Information about you, about your family. Basically, names, birth dates, if you can remember. If you can't remember, we just go on. No big deal. But anything that you can think of. And it's a long form, but we'll get through it fast, I promise. | 0:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay, great. | 1:30 |
Chris Stewart | Okay, last name first. Brodie, right? D-I-E? | 1:31 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-hmm. | 1:35 |
Chris Stewart | Do you have a middle name? | 1:36 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Leonard. L-E-O-N-A-R-D. | 1:37 |
Chris Stewart | Arthur. And your current address? | 1:46 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | 200 Cushman Street. | 1:48 |
Chris Stewart | And that's Durham? | 1:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-hmm. | 1:55 |
Chris Stewart | And what's the zip? | 1:57 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | 27703. | 1:58 |
Chris Stewart | And your home phone? | 2:00 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | 596-8986. | 2:01 |
Chris Stewart | And your work phone? | 2:01 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Let me see what- | 2:08 |
Chris Stewart | I actually have it. | 2:08 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Oh, I got it right up there, for you. | 2:10 |
Chris Stewart | I have it. | 2:11 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay, you got it. | 2:11 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. Do you have a nickname? | 2:14 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Oh, they call me Sunnie. S-U-N-N-I-E | 2:16 |
Chris Stewart | I-E. | 2:20 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-hmm. Because that was my- | 2:23 |
Chris Stewart | How'd you get that nickname? | 2:24 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I got that nickname from—you'd be surprised, I got that nickname from a White girl and a Black girl, give me name when I was a little, little boy. Pearl Per and Justine Foster. They gave me that name, Sunnie. | 2:29 |
Chris Stewart | A White girl gave— | 2:49 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | A White girl and a Black girl gave me that name. | 2:50 |
Chris Stewart | Why did they call you that? | 2:53 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I don't know why. | 2:54 |
Chris Stewart | Because you were a little boy? | 2:56 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | They said I was always smiling. They said name after a little guy in the funny papers, always smiling. They called me Sunnie. | 2:57 |
Chris Stewart | Oh. | 3:03 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Pearl Per and Justine Foster. I was a little bit of boy then, and that name followed me all the way through Franklin County. | 3:06 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 3:16 |
Chris Stewart | That's what happens, usually with nicknames, right? | 3:16 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Certain neighborhoods, I did go in, and they call me a thing, but they don't know "Who you talking about?" (laughs) They said, "Oh, you mean Sun," "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah." "That's what his name is? Oh, I think that was just—" (laughs) | 3:17 |
Chris Stewart | Your birthdate? | 3:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | You want to know that? | 3:31 |
Chris Stewart | You don't have to tell me if you don't want. | 3:31 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I ain't going tell you that. | 3:31 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. Where were you born? | 3:37 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Franklin County. Louisburg, Franklin County. | 3:37 |
Chris Stewart | U-R-G or E-R-G? | 3:53 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | L-O-U-I-S-B-U-R-G. | 3:55 |
Chris Stewart | B-U-R-G. That's right. Yeah. And you're currently married? | 3:56 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 3:59 |
Chris Stewart | And what's your wife's name? | 4:01 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Hattie Alston Brodie. Her maiden name, Alston. I let her keep her maiden name. | 4:03 |
Chris Stewart | That's nice. A-U-S— | 4:10 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | A-L-S-T-O-N. | 4:14 |
Chris Stewart | A-L—oh, Alston. T-O-N? | 4:16 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-hmm. | 4:18 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. Do you want to give me your wife's birthdate? | 4:21 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Ooh, she will shoot me. | 4:23 |
Chris Stewart | She'll shoot you, huh? | 4:25 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | She'll shoot me. | 4:26 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. Where was your wife born? | 4:27 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | She born in Halifax County. | 4:29 |
Chris Stewart | And does your wife work outside of the house? | 4:37 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Not now. She's retired now. | 4:39 |
Chris Stewart | She's retired? | 4:39 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. She's a housewife now. | 4:43 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. Your mother's name? | 4:45 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Her maiden name was Addlean Norwood. That was her maiden name. | 4:50 |
Chris Stewart | Norwood, | 4:50 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | N-O-R-W-O-O-D. That's her maiden name. | 4:51 |
Chris Stewart | Addlean is her first name? | 4:56 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-hmm. A-D-D-L-E-A-N. | 4:57 |
Chris Stewart | And she's a Brodie? | 4:59 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right. | 5:00 |
Chris Stewart | And do you know your mother's birthdate? | 5:03 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mama's birthday was January the 28th, 1903. | 5:05 |
Chris Stewart | 1903? | 5:08 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-hmm. | 5:08 |
Chris Stewart | And is she still alive? | 5:16 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, she died. | 5:16 |
Chris Stewart | Do you know when that day— | 5:18 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | She died June 13, 1958. | 5:20 |
Chris Stewart | And where was she born, do you know? | 5:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mama was born in Nash County, I believe it was. Nash or Franklin County. It's Nash or Franklin. | 5:29 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 5:39 |
Chris Stewart | And your mother was a farmer? | 5:39 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 5:41 |
Chris Stewart | And your father's name? | 5:44 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Alfred Lee Brodie. | 5:45 |
Chris Stewart | And your father's birthdate? | 5:53 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He was on February the 12th, 1899. | 5:55 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 5:57 |
Chris Stewart | And is your father still alive? | 5:57 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No. He's deceased too. He died January 28th, 1963. | 6:06 |
Chris Stewart | He had a long life. And your father was born? | 6:12 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He born Warren County. | 6:17 |
Chris Stewart | And your father was a farmer also? | 6:25 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-hmm. | 6:27 |
Chris Stewart | We're just getting through this like nothing. Okay. Now we have brothers and sisters. | 6:34 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | My older brother named Robert Brodie. | 6:39 |
Chris Stewart | And do you know his birthdate? | 6:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | His birthday— | 6:44 |
Chris Stewart | Ballpark figure? | 6:46 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | His birthday is—April 18th, 1930. | 6:49 |
Chris Stewart | Is he still alive? | 6:58 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 6:59 |
Chris Stewart | And was he born in— | 7:00 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Franklin County. | 7:01 |
Chris Stewart | Franklin County? | 7:01 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 7:02 |
Chris Stewart | And he's next? | 7:07 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, I was next, and then I got brother under me. | 7:09 |
Chris Stewart | I'll just put you, and then I'll put the next person, because we already got all your information. | 7:11 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | His name is James Isaac. Well, he's deceased. | 7:16 |
Chris Stewart | James Isaac? | 7:20 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 7:21 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I-S-S-A-C. | 7:21 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember his birthday? | 7:25 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | October 19th, 1933. | 7:28 |
Chris Stewart | But he died? | 7:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 7:29 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember around when he died? | 7:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Cardiac arrest. | 7:38 |
Chris Stewart | Cardiac arrest, he died of? When was this? | 7:39 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He was 34 when he died. He died in 1960— | 7:43 |
Chris Stewart | Seven? | 7:45 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Seven. Yeah. | 7:45 |
Chris Stewart | And was he born in Franklin County, as well? | 7:46 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-hmm. | 7:46 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 7:46 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Next, my sister's name is Edith Brodie. Yeah. Edith Brodie Godfrey. She lives in Chesapeake, Virginia. | 7:55 |
Chris Stewart | She lives in Chesapeake, Virginia? | 8:10 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. She was born in Franklin County too. | 8:14 |
Chris Stewart | And do you remember her birthday? | 8:14 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | April 14th, 1936. | 8:17 |
Chris Stewart | You're really good. I'm serious. You are really good. 1936? | 8:18 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 8:26 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 8:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | The baby boy, his name was Norwood Pete Brodie. | 8:26 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 8:28 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He born March 11th, 1941. | 8:35 |
Chris Stewart | Is he still alive? | 8:42 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 8:42 |
Chris Stewart | And he was born in Franklin— | 8:43 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Franklin County too, yeah. | 8:44 |
Chris Stewart | And you're number two. Okay. How about your children? | 8:49 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | My oldest child named Valerie Gail Brodie. | 8:54 |
Chris Stewart | G-A-Y-L, or G-A-I-L? | 9:01 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | G-A-I-L. | 9:02 |
Chris Stewart | And she was born— | 9:06 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | In Franklin County. | 9:08 |
Chris Stewart | And what's her birthday? | 9:10 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | November 15th, 1955. | 9:13 |
Chris Stewart | She's still alive? | 9:18 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, she's still alive. | 9:19 |
Chris Stewart | Next? | 9:20 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Next one is Sidney Arthur Brodie. | 9:20 |
Chris Stewart | Named after you? | 9:20 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 9:20 |
Chris Stewart | Born in? | 9:20 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Durham County. | 9:20 |
Chris Stewart | Durham. | 9:59 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | His birthday is June 10th, 1957. | 10:03 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 10:03 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Next one is Robert Arthur Brodie. | 10:03 |
Chris Stewart | Named after your brother? | 10:03 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And my dad. | 10:03 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah, and your dad. | 10:03 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He born August the 12th, 1958. | 10:03 |
Chris Stewart | Durham? | 10:03 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Durham. | 10:03 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Last one's named Leonard Wayne Brodie. | 10:03 |
Chris Stewart | Is the Wayne from your wife's side of the family? | 10:11 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, that's just the name we picked up. | 10:13 |
Chris Stewart | Oh. | 10:16 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He was born—oh yeah, Durham County. He was born December 24th, 1959. | 10:16 |
Chris Stewart | Day before Christmas. | 10:17 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Day before Christmas. | 10:17 |
Chris Stewart | 1959? | 10:17 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | '59. | 10:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And the next one is Michael Dexter Brodie. | 10:29 |
Chris Stewart | You were running out of names, right? | 10:30 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Running out of names. | 10:32 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Had to get back and get Michael. Michael Dexter. | 10:33 |
Chris Stewart | Mm-hmm. | 10:41 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | He was born October the 14th, 1964. | 10:41 |
Chris Stewart | And you have grandchildren, yes? Six. | 10:49 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, and I got another—I got Donna Yvette going on the bottom there. | 10:51 |
Chris Stewart | Oh. | 10:56 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Donna Yvette. | 10:56 |
Chris Stewart | Oh. | 10:58 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, Donna Brodie Wade— | 10:58 |
Chris Stewart | Right. I'm sorry. Y-V-E-T-T-E? | 11:00 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-hmm. Wade Brodie. | 11:04 |
Chris Stewart | Brodie Wade? | 11:06 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Brodie Wade, I mean. | 11:07 |
Chris Stewart | W-A-D-E? | 11:10 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 11:12 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 11:14 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | She born in Durham. Her birthday was November 11th, 1967. | 11:15 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. And you have six grandchildren, right? | 11:27 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yes, six. | 11:31 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 11:32 |
Chris Stewart | We're doing good. We're doing really good. | 11:33 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Doing good. | 11:35 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. Now we're going to go through places that you lived, and I actually took down some of them. But you first lived in Eastern Franklin County? | 11:36 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-hmm. | 11:47 |
Chris Stewart | And that was from—you said, to like 1945? | 12:01 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, you see we moved out of eastern part of Franklin County in 1935. | 12:08 |
Chris Stewart | '45. | 12:10 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | '35. | 12:10 |
Chris Stewart | '35? | 12:10 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | 1935. | 12:10 |
Chris Stewart | To 1935. Okay. | 12:11 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay. We moved up into the [indistinct 00:12:24] county, the southwest part, stayed up there until 1941. | 12:14 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 12:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Then we moved over into the city, by Island Chapel. That would be the northwest side. | 12:54 |
Chris Stewart | That was till 1944? | 12:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | 1944. Yeah. | 12:54 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 12:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Then we moved down in the northeast section, [indistinct 00:13:01]. That's where we— | 12:58 |
Chris Stewart | That's where you stayed until you went into the army. | 13:02 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right. | 13:05 |
Chris Stewart | '51. And then you were in the Army. | 13:05 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right. | 13:08 |
Chris Stewart | Let's see, how am I going to do this? Well, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll just go Army, to 1953. And then when you came back, you were— | 13:12 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I stayed down there about a year after I come back. | 13:25 |
Chris Stewart | You stayed in Franklin County? | 13:28 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, about a year after I come back. | 13:29 |
Chris Stewart | In the same place? | 13:31 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, in that same area. | 13:32 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. And then one year after— | 13:32 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And then I moved in up in this little town of Louisburg. I stayed there about three years. Then I came to Durham in '56. About two and a half, three years, then I came to Durham in '56. | 13:45 |
Chris Stewart | And then you came to Durham? | 14:01 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Right. | 14:02 |
Chris Stewart | And you've lived here? Till now. | 14:02 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-hmm. Till now. | 14:06 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. I've got the schools that you did, so I think we can just skip this section because I wrote those down in my notes, so we don't even have to worry about that. | 14:10 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay. | 14:17 |
Chris Stewart | But now we're onto jobs. | 14:18 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay. | 14:20 |
Chris Stewart | So if you could list for me the most important jobs that you had—that you felt like you had. | 14:22 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay. The most important job I felt like I had was when I was working for the United States government. | 14:30 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, what—in the army? | 14:35 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, I was working for the veteran administration. | 14:37 |
Chris Stewart | When was that? | 14:40 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I worked at the VA from—I worked at VA in 1960. See part time I working at Kresge's. I work at the VA then, too. | 14:41 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, I see. And this was in Durham? | 14:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. Veteran Administration— | 14:55 |
Chris Stewart | What was your job? | 14:57 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I was a nursing assistant. | 14:58 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. Are there any other jobs that you want me to put down on here? | 15:07 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, I did a lot of—I think for about 10 years I did a lot of subcontracting work right here in Durham. That's when—so you run into a whole lot of racist stuff trying to contract. | 15:14 |
Chris Stewart | You were subcontracting, so you were self-employed then? | 15:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, me and a guy named Cleveland Hayes. We were working together. We was mostly subcontractors. | 15:33 |
Chris Stewart | What kind of stuff—when were you doing this, first of all? | 15:38 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | From about 1974 up until about 1981. | 15:39 |
Chris Stewart | And what kind of stuff did you run into? | 15:39 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, we were doing general repair work. Well, we did some repair work out here. We put a seal in the library over there, Perkins Library. We built a wall at Trent. And see now that's where you run a lot of racism, we started dealing with contractors and stuff. You go up to places like IBM and like Burton, or even Duke, for instance, at that particular time. We came up, asked them some bidding on some of their additional jobs like remodeling, moving. They give you the run around. They say they don't have anything open, but you'll see a White company going to work. | 15:53 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And even the state of North Carolina, they had a kind of a bond deal. Now, all the work they had done at Buckner, Camp Buckner, the state hospital over there. We'd go over there and ask about work. In order for us to get any work out of the state, we would have to get a general contractor to come in and bid on it. And he lets you have what he wants you to have. And that's really where your racist stuff is. When you come down to economic, that's why your racial problems, it's done—it's a block, everywhere you turn it's a block. | 16:44 |
Chris Stewart | Is that one of the reasons why you left Duke Hospital, or Duke here, the first time? | 17:28 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-hmm. | 17:33 |
Chris Stewart | Because you said you weren't getting paid very well. Do you think that it— | 17:34 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, when I first came to Duke, they wasn't paying. Now they ain't paying today, they ain't making anybody rich now. But you just had a job and that was all. No security, no benefits, no nothing. | 17:37 |
Chris Stewart | How'd you get that job? The first job that you got here? | 17:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | When I first came to Duke, I got it through the employment office. I think what they had started it doing, I believe they was kind of feeling their way through with that golf course. I believe they were going to let outside contractors do it. In fact, he did do it. But in the beginning when we came here, we wasn't even hired through Duke's personnel. I was hired from downtown, see? | 17:59 |
Chris Stewart | They didn't hire any Black folks through Duke's personnel? | 18:25 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, they were, but at that particular time when we were hired, we were hired downtown at the employment office and then we came out here and we were working about a week before we was hired through Duke's personnel. So what I believe was happening, I believe they were going to let a private contractor do it, then they decided they would take over themselves and do it. So that's how we got in there. | 18:27 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And so after we started working out there, and in there, when they got all the stuff cleaned up, we pulled all the greens and tees. We did all the work then. So then that's when I really believed Duke really took the whole thing over, I believe. | 18:54 |
Chris Stewart | How'd you get the job here in the dining center? | 19:12 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | In dining center? Okay. When I came back to Duke this last time, I came back, I came out here to work three days, and been here 11 years. See, after I stopped, I just gave up contract because it was so rough then. We just go in that recession back in the late '70s, under the Nixon administration. So I just gave up. | 19:15 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | So I came out here to work three days to help move the store from the West Union building to the Bryant Center. And I've been here since. That was in 1981. And so, I worked six months on a part-time basis. Well, I was making full hours, but I wasn't as a full-time employee. | 19:36 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah, yeah. | 20:13 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And so then an opening came up driving the sandwich truck at night, from six in the evening to three in the morning. So I took it. | 20:13 |
Chris Stewart | And when was that? In the '80s? | 20:23 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, that was in '80, 82. March of '80, '82. And so, I drove that I that truck until about '85, I believe. '84 or '85. So they abolished that nighttime shift. And so then they bought me—there's a regular sandwich truck. | 20:25 |
Chris Stewart | I've heard about this. | 20:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. Like you see on construction site. I drove that to—I believe they pulled that off in '88. '88 or '89, they deleted that. So then I opened a snack bar in Mayer Court. The name of Arthur's. | 20:49 |
Chris Stewart | [indistinct 00:21:09] I've heard of that. | 21:08 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, so he put me down there. I stayed in there four years. I think it's four years, but this is the first year I've been over here. | 21:11 |
Chris Stewart | How come they closed down Arthur's? | 21:17 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, from the way they had tightened the security on the dorm, wasn't but one way in and out. And I think it was kind of inconvenient to a lot of the students to go way around the building and get in there. And two, I think they wanted it out from down there because they wanted that space for something else anyway. That's another thing I believe, they wanted it out from down there. So that's when they opened this place over here. | 21:20 |
Chris Stewart | Do you like it better over here? | 21:49 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, I like it all right over here. I just have a lot of memories about Mayer Court, because it was the first setup, see, the first operation. I cut my eye teeth down there. I like it over here, but I like it down there also. I wish we could have put this down there. | 21:51 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. | 22:05 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 22:05 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. | 22:06 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I just wish that. But I like it. I like it over here. | 22:07 |
Chris Stewart | Mm-hmm. Do you have any other jobs that you want me to put on here? Any of your earlier jobs, maybe, or— | 22:09 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, that's about all the jobs I had, just about. | 22:19 |
Chris Stewart | Well, you were farming for a while? | 22:23 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Oh yeah. I farmed— | 22:23 |
Chris Stewart | —when you were in the army. | 22:23 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Oh, yeah. I farmed for years. | 22:28 |
Chris Stewart | Give yourself a break, here. | 22:28 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. I farmed all my life. In fact, I loved it. | 22:29 |
Chris Stewart | See, there you go. | 22:33 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I really didn't realize how much I love farming until in recent years. The older I get the more I realize what a break I had. And I believe I could have did a better job farming, than I've done anything else, too. I believe I could have. | 22:34 |
Chris Stewart | Do you regret moving? | 22:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I regret leaving the farm, sure do. I regret it. The older I get, the more I regret it. | 22:50 |
Chris Stewart | Why? | 22:56 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Just so much I miss. | 22:57 |
Chris Stewart | What do you miss? | 22:59 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I miss the fresh air. I believe I missed a lot of prosperity by leaving the farm. I do. | 23:01 |
Chris Stewart | That Durham council thing, that merchant's association thing. | 23:12 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-hmm. Yeah. I believe I missed a lot of prosperity by leaving the farm. I believe I could maneuvered better in Franklin County than I could in Durham County. | 23:17 |
Chris Stewart | Do you think that maybe you could have owned land and that would've— | 23:29 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I'd be able to own more land than I have, if I'd stayed in Franklin County. I sure do. | 23:32 |
Chris Stewart | Well, I hope you get it. | 23:32 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I hope so. | 23:32 |
Chris Stewart | Have you ever received any awards or held any offices or anything? | 23:41 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | When you say— | 23:48 |
Chris Stewart | In church— | 23:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I should say yes, but I can't say yes. | 23:51 |
Chris Stewart | No, you shouldn't. You— | 23:53 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Now, of course. Now all the time I was up until I was in the Army, I was the secretary of the Sunday School, Community Sunday School. | 23:56 |
Chris Stewart | Oh. | 24:04 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I was secretary of that, see? | 24:05 |
Chris Stewart | This is when you were in the Army? | 24:08 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, that's before I went in the Army. | 24:09 |
Chris Stewart | This was before you went in the Army? | 24:11 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, before I went in the army. That my normal high school years. | 24:13 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 24:15 |
Chris Stewart | So this is prior to 1951. | 24:17 |
Chris Stewart | Do you go to church now? | 24:22 |
Chris Stewart | Do you belong to a church? | 24:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, I belong to- | 24:26 |
Chris Stewart | Let's put it this way, not if you go to church. | 24:26 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, I belong to a church. | 24:29 |
Chris Stewart | What church do you belong to? | 24:30 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, currently I belong to Oak Grove Free Baptist Church in Durham. But over in Franklin County, I'm still a member of Walnut Grove Baptist Church. | 24:33 |
Chris Stewart | Okay, let's put that down— | 24:43 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | That's where I was baptized in. | 24:44 |
Chris Stewart | Oak Grove. | 24:44 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | That's the family church. Currently affiliated with Oak Grove. | 24:49 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. Now do you go to church? | 25:06 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yes. I go. I don't go every Sunday. | 25:09 |
Chris Stewart | Now, I'm not putting any guilt on you. | 25:14 |
Chris Stewart | Do you not like church? | 25:17 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, I like church. | 25:18 |
Chris Stewart | You just don't— | 25:19 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Well, I work a lot on Sundays and— | 25:21 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. | 25:22 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | And I'm not available. It seems like more I stay out of church, the more I can find excuse to stay out, see? And so I regularly have an excuse, and I don't have excuse. | 25:23 |
Chris Stewart | Does your wife go to church? | 25:36 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, she's pretty active in church. | 25:37 |
Chris Stewart | Does she get mad at you because you don't go to church? | 25:40 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | She fusses about, I think she done got tired of bugging me about going. She don't say as much as she used to. | 25:42 |
Chris Stewart | Get old, you stop fussing? | 25:49 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah, I reckon she gets tired. | 25:52 |
Chris Stewart | Do you belong to any organizations? | 25:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I was a Mason. | 25:57 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 25:58 |
Chris Stewart | Anything else that you want me to put down? | 26:03 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | No, no. | 26:04 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 26:10 |
Chris Stewart | You were in the army from 1951 to 1953. | 26:10 |
Chris Stewart | Do you have any hobbies or anything like that that you want- | 26:12 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Oh, I love sports. | 26:22 |
Chris Stewart | Sports. | 26:22 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I love sports and I love Carpenter. I like the carpentry, yeah. I likes to build, and whittle, and stuff. I likes to paint. And I like to cook. | 26:26 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, you're a cook— | 26:40 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I love to cook. | 26:40 |
Chris Stewart | What kind of stuff do you cook? | 26:40 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I'm always experimenting with something. | 26:47 |
Chris Stewart | Huh? | 26:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I'm always experimenting with something to cook. | 26:48 |
Chris Stewart | Really? | 26:48 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. I like to cook. | 26:48 |
Chris Stewart | That'll be great too, if you get back to Franklin County. | 26:51 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Yeah. | 26:53 |
Chris Stewart | You can have yourself a garden and cook fresh stuff. | 26:54 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | That's right. That's the truth. | 26:56 |
Chris Stewart | Okay, we have one more thing to do. What this is, is this is an interview agreement and what it is, is it's that, if you sign this, you agree to let us transcribe these tapes and put them at Perkins Library. | 26:58 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay. | 27:17 |
Chris Stewart | And keep them in the manuscript collection. You have two choices. You can give us the interview agreement with no restrictions or you can give us an interview agreement with restrictions. We'd really like you to give us this. | 27:17 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | I don't see no reason to get any restrictions. | 27:30 |
Chris Stewart | Then let me just fill this out here. I want to you to look at it so that you see that. | 27:33 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | That's the truth, man. But it's the truth. So ain't nothing to restrict. | 27:43 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. You fill out the stuff, then. | 27:47 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | There ain't nothing to restrict. | 27:49 |
Chris Stewart | I put away the other piece of paper that tells me your address. | 27:55 |
Chris Stewart | 200? | 27:59 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Cushman Street. | 28:00 |
Chris Stewart | Cushman. | 28:01 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | C-U-S-H-M-A-N. | 28:03 |
Chris Stewart | 277— | 28:12 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | 03. | 28:12 |
Chris Stewart | 03. | 28:12 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Mm-hmm. | 28:12 |
Chris Stewart | And it is May 28th, 1993. | 28:14 |
Chris Stewart | That'll be marked on this. Then all that I need you to do is to sign your name right here in that blank line. | 28:14 |
Arthur Leonard Brodie | Okay. | 28:51 |
Item Info
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