Sandra Wilson interview record, 1994 June 09
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Stacey Scales | Are we on? | 0:00 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Hello? | 0:05 |
Stacey Scales | Okay. First of all, state your name. | 0:13 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | My name is Sandra Moye Wilson. | 0:15 |
Stacey Scales | Where were you born? | 0:17 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Durham, North Carolina. | 0:18 |
Stacey Scales | What year? | 0:19 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | 1945. | 0:19 |
Stacey Scales | Can you tell us a little bit about your family? | 0:19 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Yes. I am from a family of 14. I am the ninth child of 14. There was nine boys and five girls. | 0:26 |
Stacey Scales | Wow. Can you tell us a little bit about your parents? | 0:33 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | My mom is still living. My father is deceased. My mom is now 80. My mother was born in Columbia, South Carolina. My dad was born in South Carolina also, but my mother was mostly raised before, up in Pennsylvania, at an early age. She moved to Durham, North Carolina when she was a teenager. She met my father, married him. She only wanted one child, and she ended up with 14. | 0:38 |
Stacey Scales | What attracted them to this area? | 1:13 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Work, and my uncle was still working here as the groundskeeper for the Durham Athletic Park. My mother came along to visit, and she liked the place and stayed. | 1:17 |
Kara Miles (?) | Was the park segregated? | 1:29 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Yes, they had their separate games. | 1:31 |
Kara Miles (?) | What were their names, your parents names? | 1:32 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Evelyn and Jake Wilson. | 1:32 |
Kara Miles (?) | Do you know when your father was born? | 1:32 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | My father was born in 1907, and my mother was born in 1914. | 1:43 |
Kara Miles (?) | When they moved here to Durham, where did they live? [indistinct 00:01:55] | 1:49 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Yes. I think my mom first—We called it North Durham. They call it Old North Durham. Yeah, mother left and lived on Glendale Avenue, not too far from here. | 2:03 |
Kara Miles (?) | What was it like growing up here? Well, at the time, a lot of sadness. | 2:16 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | My household was always happy. Outside of my house was sadness, because there were a lot of places we could go and couldn't go, a lot of things we could do and couldn't do. For instance, if we went downtown, downtown Main Street, there was certain places that if we went in, we were not able to use the bathroom facilities nor drink from the water fountains. But if we went in the Black area, which was known as Hayti, we could eat and drink anywhere we please. It always kept my father and my mother angry, at the time. | 2:19 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | This one time, my parents wouldn't let us go to the White theater downtown. We had to only go to the Black ones because of the segregation. My dad always had a lot of pride. My father couldn't read and write, but he had a lot of pride about how we were treated. I think it made my father angry person. I think of my father then an angry person when I was young. | 2:54 |
Kara Miles (?) | Did you ever talk about or your parents ever talk about any incidents in your life growing up? | 3:20 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Oh, yeah. My father was raised on a sharecropper farm, and he was treated real mean as a child. My mom was not. My mom's mother and grandmother worked on the campus of Benedict College in South Carolina, but she didn't see that much of it, I guess, until she went into town. My mother was a maid. | 3:28 |
Kara Miles (?) | Do you remember anything your father told you about being a sharecropper? | 3:52 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Yeah, they worked him as though they wasn't making anything, and they could talk to any kind of way. Head of, that's what the man wanted to do, but my father as a child was real rebellious, and he refused to be hit and pushed on. Because when my father was a young man, I think one of them hit him, and my father hit him back, and he had to leave South Carolina. | 4:00 |
Kara Miles (?) | Did he ever talk about money, how much he made as a sharecropper? | 4:27 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | He never told us, but he just talked about how much it was never enough. Because he came from a large family also. He came from a family of eight. | 4:35 |
Kara Miles (?) | Did you have memories of your grandparents? | 4:38 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | My grandparents, I never knew them. They were deceased by the time I was born. | 4:49 |
Stacey Scales | Do you know [indistinct 00:04:55]? | 4:49 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | My dad worked and my mom worked, but my mom made most of the decisions concerning how money was distributed. But I think it was on equal grounds, but I always felt that my mom was the chief. She was more vocal. My dad was quiet. When he talked, we did listen, because he was a quiet man. I think he kept a lot of his feelings bottled up inside of him. Sometimes he would talk to us about it, or if we didn't do good in school, as good as they thought that we would, he would tell us, "You're going to do better than that. You're going to be better than me. You don't want to live [indistinct 00:05:46]. One day things are going to get better." | 5:00 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | I used to understand what he was talking about. Because when you're a child, you notice some things, but some things you don't notice until you are an adult and you're—Not really adult. Maybe when I was about six or seven, I started noticing a difference in how people were treated. Because I had good parents, and I could tell, when we went downtown and we were thirst or something, and my mom would say, "No, you can't have any water. Wait until we get to—" such-and-such place, "Then you can get some water." Then most of the time, they would feed us before they carried us. | 5:49 |
Stacey Scales | How did that make you feel? | 6:24 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | I just felt that my mom was just being mean. I didn't know any better. Then when she tell me, "You can't drink from that because you're not allowed," and then she would say, "Now, what did that say," I would say, "White only." She would say, "What did that say?" [indistinct 00:06:33] say Colored. I would ask her, "Why is it like that?" She said, "Because they think that we're animals." That what she used to tell us sometimes. Then I said, "We are not dogs and cats." Then she would explain to us. My mom was a real good person. She would explain to us what was really happening. | 6:26 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | She would always read and make sure you read and understood what we read. We would have to sit down like I'm doing with you, and I did my homework. I'd have to explain what I did. If I wrote a sentence or had to make up something, I had to know why I made it up. When I was in grade school, they would want to know why when I wrote something, like a report, I'd always write about my family or something we did, because to me, our family was the most important thing to me. That's the only place I felt happy was with my brothers and sisters. | 7:03 |
Kara Miles (?) | How was it though? How did your parents manage a house with 14 kids? | 7:39 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | They did. My mom worked and had babies, and my dad worked. When my older brother and sisters got older, they worked. All my older brothers went into the military. After they finished high school, went into the military. They would have an allotment, and they would send it back home to my mom, to help. We've always helped each other. | 7:44 |
Kara Miles (?) | What service did your brothers go in? | 8:03 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | I had four that was in the Air Force, and one was in the Army. | 8:03 |
Stacey Scales | At the time, were they able to take advantage of some of the positions in Air Force, whatever? | 8:03 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Yes. My brothers, two of them, while in Air Force, went to college. One finished while he was in the Air Force, and one finished when he retired from the military. My oldest brother was in the Army. He also get his degree from Central. My brother next to him went to Durham Tech, and they finished their education that way. They finally did it. | 8:20 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Then I had my older sisters. They all went on through high school, finished, and went to school to become nurses. All my sisters older than me, except one, are nurses. The other one is a social worker in Philadelphia. She works at a school in Philadelphia. | 8:50 |
Kara Miles (?) | Where did you sisters go for nursing? | 9:15 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | They started out at Durham Tech—used to have a program—and they ended up at Central when it was North Carolina College. | 9:18 |
Kara Miles (?) | Did your father talk to you—You said a lot of times you could sense that he was an angry man. Did he ever talk to what was going on in Durham at the time, how it was segregated feeling? | 9:28 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | He talked about it. His actions was better than his talking. We didn't attend. We didn't go. We didn't do. We went where people was like we were, who were happy, and we would have a good time. I knew about the other places, but I was not allowed to go. He said if they thought their children was too good, sticking up for me, so was I. I didn't care. | 9:43 |
Kara Miles (?) | Where did you go for recreation? Did you ever have fun somewhere? | 10:04 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | My recollection was always spent in the library. I was always a reader. I would walk from this side of town to the other side, to the library. | 10:14 |
Stacey Scales | [indistinct 00:10:26] | 10:24 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | [indistinct 00:10:28] one, which is still there today. Then they used to have a truck, a bookmobile that would come around sometimes and deposit books. We had, in the summertime, Bible school. The church had something going. | 10:28 |
Stacey Scales | Did it come to the neighborhood? | 10:44 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Yeah. Then the churches always had something for you to do in the summertime. | 10:47 |
Stacey Scales | Did he ever speak to you about African American history? | 10:49 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | My mom taught me. My mom taught us. All I didn't read, she taught. My mamma was a well-versed person. I knew all of Paul Laurence Dunbar. I knew all about Charles Chestnut. I knew all of that from my mother, what I didn't read, because we didn't learn it in school. What we learned in school, in my opinion, was very derogatory about my own people. I used to wonder why, if my mom knew about these people, why I never saw any of them in the books. Because I was always real curious and always asking questions. Sometimes, I'd be tell, "Wouldn't you just hush and go and sit down somewhere? Read your book," because I was real inquisitive and still am. I haven't changed that much, just got older. That's how I really, really learned. | 10:55 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Then the ladies at the library, if you go in there and you play, you would have a learning lesson, because they would let you dust the books. Then they would tell you things. They had story times. They always had something going on, so the library was really the place that I found a lot of joy. | 11:45 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | My brothers would like to go to the John Avery Boys Club. They learned how to hike. They learned how to do all kinds of things. But I was never an outdoors person, so it didn't phase me at all. | 12:05 |
Stacey Scales | At what point in your life were you considered an adult? | 12:19 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Believe it or not, if I tell you this, it'll be funny, but I always felt that I was grown when I was about 10 years old. (laughs) | 12:26 |
Stacey Scales | What made you feel that way? | 12:32 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Because, at that time, at 10, I could take my other brothers and sisters and walk them to the library by myself. I was the older one. You didn't have sense of fright. You really didn't realize, because we had to walk through the White neighborhood to get across town. It never dawned on me that sometimes it was dangerous. They would shout from their porches, say things to you, but we didn't pay any attention to them. We would just keep on going like they didn't exist, really. It wasn't like they would throw things or come out and jump on you and attack you. They didn't do that. There was a lot of verbal things said to you, but we would keep on going. | 12:35 |
Stacey Scales | [indistinct 00:13:24] you or your parents in an organization that maybe protested [indistinct 00:13:24]? | 13:23 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | I did. I joined the youth movement of the civil rights movement, NAACP and all of that, as a child. We protested and picketed and went to jail and all that good stuff. Then when we had a real massive voter registration drive, I helped work with that, and I helped people register to vote. One of the biggest ones we've had in this city in a long time. I think we had a larger, maybe about two or three years ago when we had presidential election, but this is when they just had a massive surge on the Board of Election in getting Blacks elected. Because we have a strong political stronghold here. Black people, as a whole, when they get together and they want something done and there's been a lot of injustice, they will rally around each other, and they'll try to vote people in that we think are going to do something for the benefit of our race. | 13:26 |
Kara Miles (?) | When did you join the—I'm guessing you probably joined the youth group of the NAACP. | 14:25 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | I had to be maybe 13 of 14, about 13, 14 years old. You had to be a certain age before they would really let you start picketing. So I had to be about 14, between 14 and 15. | 14:34 |
Kara Miles (?) | In terms of joining, when you think of, as I said, a child today joining an organization, what were some of the things they tried to get across to you [indistinct 00:14:59]— | 14:36 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | They would explain to us why we was picketing, what we was doing ti for, how you personally felt. They just didn't say, "Come on, we're going to put you on the line." You had to really know what you was doing and what the cause really was. Most of us knew what the cause was because we lived it all our life, and we got tired all the segregated things. We could spend money downtown, but we couldn't enjoy the fruits of nothing downtown without being harassed. It was not done harshly, but it was in ways. Some places you would go, they would say things. When you walked in, a bunch of men would be sitting around. They would say things, nigger this and niggers that and just call you different names. Why stand and endure something like that when you don't have to if you don't want to? | 14:59 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Most of the time, when I really got angry, real, real angry—I had to be about 14. I'll never forget. I went downtown, my sister and I. During the summertime, we was going to the picnic at the church. | 15:50 |
Stacey Scales | What church? | 16:04 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | We went in. We was going with Union Baptist Church, which still stands. We was going with them to a picnic. That's where most the Blacks went, to the park in Raleigh, Chavis Park, which was all Black— | 16:04 |
Stacey Scales | Chavis? | 16:19 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | —but they had a swimming pool. Chavis. | 16:20 |
Stacey Scales | Chavis? | 16:22 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Mm-hmm. We brought shorts, and we went. I wanted to stay in that park. I had it in my hand to pay for it. I had been standing there, and this clerk kept ignoring me. She would never acknowledge me. She would only turn around when a bunch of White people came she could wait on. She made me wait to wait on me. When she finally decided to wait on me, I set it down and walked out. My sister kept telling me, "Come on, Cassandra, and pay for it." I said, "No, I'm not going to pay for it. Look how long I was standing there and she didn't want to." | 16:23 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | I said, "Now I'm thirsty." I said, "I'm going over there and drink some water." She said, "You can't drink that water." I looked around, and told my sister, I said, "The water is the same color, really." She said, "That's Colored and that's White. You know you're supposed to go over there." I said, "I'm not going over there. I'm not going to drink from there. I'm going to drink me some from here." She said, "You can't. We would get in trouble, and we might go to jail." I said, "Then we just won't get no water at all." | 17:05 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | I left and I walked down the street to the Hayti area, went in the doughnut shop, which is a place I love. They got me some water, no problem, and I didn't have to spend a dime. I just wanted some water. When we got home, my sister told my mom what I did. My told me. She said, "Now, Sandra, you know you're not supposed to drink from that." She said, "But I understand how you feel," she said, "Because I can see the anger in you a lot." She said every time we go downtown, I would never want anything, because I didn't want my mamma to spend money at that store, because I couldn't have no water, I couldn't go to that bathroom. But she had to buy things from the store. | 17:31 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | I just used to get angry, and they just wondered why I was angry. Then finally, one day, I was sitting out with my mom, was talking to her, and I asked her. I said, "Do you love me?" She said, "Yeah. Why you ask stuff like that?" I said, "Then why you spend your money in those stores when we can't go to the bathroom in there?" She explained to me that they're like that. She said, "But you just wait and get older. Things got to change." She said, "This is good compared to when me and your dad came up." It was worse than that. | 18:15 |
Kara Miles (?) | What did she say to you? | 18:49 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | She was talking about how they had to travel. If they was going to travel, they Black people always tried to travel in the daytime and not at night, because they was, a lot of time, attacked and beat and killed, and the women was raped, and all kind of things would happen. She said somebody had a beef with anyone. They think you looked at a White woman, how they would do Black men. She was saying, "Don't put yourself in danger if you don't have to." | 18:54 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Still to this day, we talk about how I feel about the Black man and the White man. Don't see how Black women, as a whole, can stand and hold a conversation with a White, Black female, or what and talk about the Black man, because I feel like they deserve more respect than they get from Black females. I have nothing bad to say about them with a White person. I would talk to you, because you're a sister, about what I have to say, because you can relate to what I'm saying. But there's nothing they can relate to me, because of the way they have did them all these years, have given the Black man a sense of, to me, sometimes, the anger that they feel. Because they'll put the two of us on a job, and they going to treat me better than they would him, because they're always going to look down on him. But why they're afraid of the Black man, I don't know. He's only a man. | 19:24 |
Stacey Scales | Do you think your value [indistinct 00:20:33] your mother shopping at the stores and you not wanting to say that they were different? | 20:32 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | They were different, but the same. Now, I shop there in some stores. Most of them have closed. I do my shopping because there's not that many Black businesses around to shop from. Being a person that don't drive, you shop where you can. My mother shopped there, because she didn't have no other choice. I do have a choice. They had Black, probably, dressmakers, but my mother couldn't afford it, and my mother couldn't sew. She had too many kids to buy for. So wherever she could get a bargain, that's what she did. I do in a store and I feel like they're not giving me the attention that I need, I walk out. I might say something to them. A long time ago, if I'd say it, they'd put me in jail or carry us away and beat me half to death for being smart. | 20:43 |
Stacey Scales | The family had—You had eight— | 21:48 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | 14. | 21:48 |
Stacey Scales | 14, I'm sorry. That was eight— | 21:48 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Nine boys— | 21:50 |
Stacey Scales | Nine boys. | 21:51 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | —and five girls. | 21:52 |
Stacey Scales | Five girls. How did everyone get clothes? Were there ever hard times for food? Was it a community action? | 21:53 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | No. If there was a hard time, I didn't know anything about it, because I always had food. I always had clothes. I'm sure it was hard for my parents, but every day I sat at the table, I had food. I had something to eat. | 22:05 |
Stacey Scales | Was there a doctor? | 22:23 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | My mother always took us to the doctor and always took us to the [indistinct 00:22:31] for a checkup. She would take us to the Health Department for some things, and we went to Lincoln Hospital. It had a clinic that the people used, and it wasn't that much. A lot of times, it was the Black hospital, which is now the Health Center. She made sure we stayed healthy. Because we used to tease about that. We'd spend the day with the root doctor, because he believed in curing everything. We weren't sick that much, because he made sure we weren't. He had mixed up and give us something. I used to say, "He's going to kill us one day." But as children, we were really never sick. We used to have perfect attendance in school. Only sickness I started having, I started taking care of myself. My dad just didn't trust White people. He just really didn't have no belief in them at all. | 22:24 |
Stacey Scales | What did he do when he came to the city? What was the occupation? | 23:26 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | He worked anywhere he could. My mom said he worked at a shoe shop once. I think he probably did some kind of work for [indistinct 00:23:42] as a brick mason or at a lumberyard or something, until he got on at Liggett and Myers factory. He worked there until he retired. By my dad putting his age up, I think—and he couldn't read and write—I think they did some injustice to him, far as my dad worked over 30 years. My dad worked, I think, about 40, 45 years at the factory. | 23:35 |
Kara Miles (?) | Did he ever talk about his job? | 24:10 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Yeah, he talked about it. He said he just go to work. He worked and do what he was told, and he's leave and come home. As he got older, a lot of the younger people that came in and worked, they used to tease us. Say, "Your daddy just ride us up and down in the elevator." As he got older and his health started declining a little, they gave him something easier to do, but he was about dead then, as far as I was concerned. He had had a couple strokes, and I don't think he realized what they were. I know he came. I saw him one day, and he was limping. I wondered why was he limping. He just stayed here at home and limp. My father wouldn't go to the doctor. Finally, when my brother retired from the military, he started making him go to the doctor and realized he had multiple strokes, and that was the reason why he was crippled. He continued having them. I think my father lived about five years after that time. He died in '75. The means he retired in '70, about '69 or '70. | 24:11 |
Kara Miles (?) | When he first worked for Liggett & Myers, was it segregated, all the Black folks here, and all the White? | 25:08 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | I'm not sure, but I think they all worked side by side. They didn't hire anybody but poor White and Blacks to do the hard work. Every now and then, they would give one of them a little job as a supervisor or something like that, but it wasn't—They got along. They got along. Just after work, they just went their separate ways. As a matter of fact, when I lived down the street here on Rockford Street, my nextdoor neighbors was White people, and in the back of me. They could play with us as long as nobody saw them. But we couldn't go downtown holding no hands. People look at you like you was crazy for that. | 25:23 |
Kara Miles (?) | What were his hours, if you remember? | 26:08 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | I think my dad had to be at work at 6:30 in the morning, and he worked till 3:00 in the afternoon. Around 3:00, 3:30, he got off. | 26:11 |
Kara Miles (?) | But when he came home, you could just tell he would be tired? | 26:15 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Yeah, he would be tired. He would take a bath and eat his dinner. He had too much to say. Best just to [indistinct 00:26:32] Most of the time, when your parents came home, they was real, real tired. | 26:25 |
Stacey Scales | Did they go to church somewhere? | 26:34 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | My mom was. My dad, I think he lost his soul, whatever, about God and everything else, because he just—But in later years, he had a change of heart, and he joined a church and was real active till the day he died. We were so happy, because I could remember as a child, my dad fussing about going to the church. "[indistinct 00:27:06] dressing up children for y'all going, sitting up in the church. Them looking like God going to walk through the door." (laughs) It was funny at the time, because we would snicker. My mom said, "Just don't tell your dad about this," and would go on out the door with my mom, walking. Then later on, we started attending Catholic church. I attended that from age, maybe, eight until I was 15. | 26:40 |
Kara Miles (?) | What was the name of the church? | 27:34 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Holy Cross Mission, the one right next to [indistinct 00:27:38]. Matter of fact, my brother and his family still goes there. My brother was an altar boy. Some of my relatives in Philadelphia still go to Catholic church, and the children go to parochial school. | 27:36 |
Kara Miles (?) | Why were they going to school? | 27:54 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Probably discontent, trying to reach out. My mom always been the type of person who want to reach out and try something else. She had known about parochial schools before they did anyway, because my mom went to a private school. | 27:59 |
Kara Miles (?) | She did? | 28:21 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Mm-hmm. | 28:21 |
Kara Miles (?) | Do you know the name? | 28:21 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | I sure don't. But she went to private school. But she went to private school as a child. My dad, I don't think he ever did. He probably went on outside of school [indistinct 00:28:30] going inside. My dad always said he had to work. He was the oldest child in his family. | 28:21 |
Kara Miles (?) | Do you know how long she went to school? | 28:43 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | How long my mother? My mother went to school there. When my mother finished school, you finished school around 10th grade. My mother went all the way, so she finished high school. | 28:47 |
Kara Miles (?) | Was Bennett College her first job? | 28:52 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | No, my grandmother's job. My mamma's first job was bring a housewife. That's what my mom's first job was. The first time she worked, I think she said that—I'm trying to think. How many children did she have when she first got the job at the factory? Maybe she had already had five or six children then. | 28:58 |
Kara Miles (?) | Was that near here? | 29:27 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Yeah. | 29:27 |
Kara Miles (?) | [indistinct 00:29:28]— | 29:27 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | My mother worked at the American factory. When she changed, they used to call it green season. They would work in the summer and on into the fall. Then they wouldn't work no more until the next year. That's why they call it the green season. I was thinking. I was right out there yesterday. Harvest started. Tobacco was brought into the warehouses. They cured tobacco. When she got tired of doing that, she finally started working at the university as a maid. That's where she retired. | 29:29 |
Kara Miles (?) | Did she ever tell you about any stories over there? | 29:55 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | My mother, she liked working, because my mom is the type of person she'd get you told. She didn't care who you was. If you say something to her, she would say it in a real nice way. She wouldn't say it like I would, because sometimes I'd go off and [indistinct 00:30:17] know how to come back. But my mom would do it in a different way, in a different tone, a different voice. I guess it was the tone of the voice. She— | 30:02 |
Kara Miles (?) | How was she able to get out to Duke? Drive a car? | 30:27 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | No, she would ride the bus. My parents, both parents rode the bus up until my brothers joined the military and they bought my dad a car. | 30:35 |
Stacey Scales | Oh, cool. | 30:45 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Bought them a Buick. We used to call it a dino. It looked like it was longer than this room. My other sisters that were younger, they were teenagers, and they would want to ride with it. They would hide in the car. I was proud to riding, because I didn't know no better. They said, "We'll be out, all you little children." They didn't want to be with the little one, because we would be just looking, I guess. My sisters, yeah, we just jumping up and looking like we're crazy. But we was so happy to be riding, because we even walked most of the places we went. Sometimes we would ride the bus, but it would be a lot of us, and there was only certain seats that we could sit in on the bus. Most of the time we got on the bus, it was already crowded, and you always let the older person sit down. Then my mom would have all those kids. We were looking, because usually don't have nowhere to sit. So we used to walk everywhere. Everybody had a partner that they held hands with. | 30:45 |
Kara Miles (?) | Who was your partner? | 31:38 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | My youngest sister, Diane. | 31:41 |
Stacey Scales | Did most families in the community have a car? | 31:44 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | No. It was a treat for anybody to have a car or television. I can remember I was in third or fourth grade before we was able to purchase a television. It was black and white. I have a brother and sister, Bill and Virginia, that charged the kids in the neighborhood to see the television. My mom spanked them when she knew that that's what they were doing. They were charging the other kids in the neighborhood to watch to TV. I wondered how all of a sudden the house was crowded. Everybody was sitting around on the floor, looking at the television. | 31:47 |
Kara Miles (?) | How much did they charge? | 32:23 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Charged probably about a nickel or a penny. My brother always was trying to make money. | 32:25 |
Kara Miles (?) | Which brother was it? | 32:29 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | My brother, Bill. Matter of fact, we have the same birthday. I'm born on his birthday. Yeah, a lot of our birthdays are like that. He was charging people. Yeah, he always loved to make money. My sister was going along with it. Wondered why they always had all the candy and bubblegum and stuff. They were making money. I discovered that that's what they were doing, and I told her. I told on them, because they weren't supposed to be doing that. They was charging. | 32:31 |
Stacey Scales | Was the house owned by your family or did you rent? | 33:07 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | No, my parents rented. It's big. It's still standing. The house is down—It's a big house. It had a lot of rooms in it. But eventually my parents did buy a house down in the county, in the Braggtown area. | 33:11 |
Stacey Scales | When was that? | 33:21 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | That was in 1954 or '54, something. Maybe '54. They bought a house, and then my parents split up, but they always remained friends. My father ate with us every Sunday, come over every Saturday. When we would ask my mom why he wasn't there, she said it was between the two of them, and to this day I don't know. Because I was taught you don't ask [indistinct 00:34:01] and I still don't do that. But they remained friends. She took care of him when he got older and was sick. She made sure he was looked after. Then, at one point, he moved in with one of my older brothers. Then she said he needed his own place, and she went and found an apartment for him, a little efficiency, and decorated it, and he moved in there. He'd come by Sunday and pick her up, and they'd go to church. She finally got him into the church, and he would come and eat dinner with us every Sunday. Even when we all had our own places and moved away, it would seem like Sundays we would gather at my mom's and still have dinner. | 33:22 |
Stacey Scales | You all had the car. Did you all ever take a long trip, any long ones that you know of? | 34:41 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | No, not in the car. No. I think as far as my dad was Winston-Salem, where eventually his family relocated. That's about as far as we went in the car, until we got older. Then, in the summertime, my mom would let us go to Philadelphia. Then we would ride the train or the bus. We would sit in the back of the bus, even on the Greyhound. On the train, you sat in the back, but it was fun back there. It was fun. | 34:45 |
Kara Miles (?) | Did you have to [indistinct 00:35:23] parents? With 14 kids— | 35:22 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | We had what we call the boys' room and the girls' room, and my mom and dad's bedroom. There was only five girls, so the girls' room wasn't quite as crowded as the boys' room. But there was beds, and you might wake up with somebody's leg somewhere. You always had to fight for your spot. We all had a certain spot we wanted to sleep in. Some wet the bed and some didn't. The one's that didn't wet the bed got showered too. In the morning, it was a ritual. My mom was bathing my [indistinct 00:36:01] in the morning. | 35:26 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | It was okay, because my brother, my older brothers, they were a lot of fun. They were like little daddies to the little ones. I was considered one of the little ones. They were like our daddies. They really looked after us, too. They tried to make sure we were happy. They would clown and put on—We would put on talent shows for each other. We would have fun. We would have fun like that. Like I said, sleeping, it was if I can pick it here. Let's see. I think there was three beds in the boys' room and two in the girls' room. Me and my two younger sisters slept together, and my two older sisters slept together. There was never room for nobody to spend the night, that's for sure. | 36:00 |
Stacey Scales | Can you describe how holidays were, family gatherings? | 37:02 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | They were fun. | 37:07 |
Stacey Scales | Yeah? | 37:08 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Yeah. We had fun. Always had fun. A lot of people ask me that. How in a family of 14? I said, because my parents always made us feel like we were richest thing in the world. We probably was as poor as dirt, but we never saw that. When I realized that I was poor, I was an adult, living alone. I didn't see it as a child, because they always made our home happy. Even with the separation of my parents, my mamma always made that we were happy. Because she was happy-go-lucky. My mom would dance. She would read stories to us. | 37:08 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | She would get out there and turn rope and play games with her, her and the other ladies in the neighborhood, with kids. A lot of kids liked to congregate in our yard, because it always happy-go-lucky up there. My mom liked to—In the summertime, her and some of the ladies in the neighborhood would get together and cook cookout for us and have us a picnic. They would play music and have a good time. A lot of people were wandering down the street from me, maybe across the street. They want to know houses, one of those good time houses that sell alcohol. We used to call them liquor houses when I was coming up. | 37:51 |
Stacey Scales | Were you allowed to go there? | 38:24 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | No, we weren't allowed to go. We could hear the music and see people going in and out. They might wave at you. My mom— | 38:25 |
Stacey Scales | You never snuck down there? | 38:31 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | A couple times I did, just to hear the music, you know? But my mother wasn't a drinker. Every now and then my dad would take a drink, but he would always drink outside. We used to laugh, and we laugh about it now at family reunions. I said, "Jake never drank in the house." She said, "No, I didn't allow the mess in the house." My mamma call it Indian fire water. She said, "I didn't allow it in the house." He would drink it outside. We knew when he had a drink. He's come in, "My house, my children, my wife—" That's where we got the story about the White people, what devils they were, how evil they were. Don't ever trust them. They would come out there. Yeah, I'd sneak down there. Some of my best friends' parents had some of them houses, but I better not get caught. | 38:33 |
Stacey Scales | Were there any other places that you weren't allowed to go? | 39:23 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Yeah. I wasn't allowed to be roaming downtown by myself. I wasn't allowed to go Daddy Grace church. | 39:32 |
Kara Miles (?) | What's that? | 39:48 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Remember Daddy Grace? You don't know nothing about that, Sweet Daddy Grace? | 39:48 |
Stacey Scales | No. | 39:49 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Jesus House of Prayer for All People? He had churches all over the country. He was going to come back. He was a man, had long hair, long fingernails. There was a group who believed he was God. He was like a prophet. "You have a dollar for our Father Divine?" You should read about Daddy Grace. He was interesting type. | 39:51 |
Stacey Scales | What do you mean? | 40:12 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Because they, when you went in—This is what we was told, but never did. That's true. I slipped in one time, me and my sisters. They had this little tub up in the front where you put your money in there. They had a band in there. I mean a horn section. There's still a horn section in that church. It was very nice, very upbeat, and very moving, but at the time, we were just told not to go there because they was practicing a religion that my parents wasn't comfortable with, with him saying that he was God, and the people believing that he was God and he was going to rise and come back just like Jesus did. It never happened. They're still waiting. We just didn't go there. You could pass by there and stand on the outside. He had a lot of followers, now. Don't think it was just two or three people. This church would be packed. | 40:16 |
Kara Miles (?) | Where was it? | 41:11 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | It was down there on Roxboro Street, on the other end of this street. | 41:16 |
Stacey Scales | If you went to service, what did they do? | 41:19 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | They just shout all night and holler and waller. It was exciting to me. I always thought it was funny. I just thought they acted real crazy and strange. Now, I know better, that everybody has a right to go on and do with their religion what they believe. But as a child, it was a fun place to be and see, because I had never seen, and the Catholic church is real quiet. When I attended Union Baptist, they weren't like that. That had good singing and Sunday school and all this stuff, but they didn't stay in church all day and all night either. | 41:21 |
Kara Miles (?) | Could we talk a little bit about what you were telling before about the Black business area? | 41:57 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | The Black business area was one of the most profitable, moving places I can remember. I have fond memories of it, because it was always gay, bright, sunny down there. There was things for children to do, as well as the grownup having their good times at night down there. They had the hotels and the clubs and the dances, but they also had the movie houses for the children. They had the Boys Club. They had the Y for the girls. It was just fun. It was fun. The people was always friendly, and they might not have known you, per se, but they knew your parents. You just felt safe there. You would be looked after. You can identify with your own people. You realize that everybody was just like you, and there won't be no problem down there. | 42:09 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | We would go down there on Saturdays and have a good time. We would wait for my dad to come pick us up from the movie. He didn't want my brothers or sisters to walk us back across town. We would go to the movies and stay all day. We would go to the movie, but in the summertime, they had cartoons all day. Then at the next [indistinct 00:43:38] might have westerns or they showed a lot of the Black films there that was running that the time. | 43:12 |
Kara Miles (?) | Do you remember any? | 43:45 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Yeah, I know them, remember them. Mm-hmm. | 43:45 |
Kara Miles (?) | [indistinct 00:43:51]? | 43:45 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | I remember seeing the slapsticks of—There was a Bill Robinson and Stepin Fetchit. It was a comedy there. Then they would have on it Amos and Andy. Then they would have Cabin in the Sky. They would show everything. One time they had a—The show was a film with Paul Robeson singing in it. | 43:52 |
Kara Miles (?) | How much did you watch a movie for? | 44:03 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Five cent. | 44:03 |
Kara Miles (?) | Five? | 44:03 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Five cent. You could pay five cent during the movie, five cent for popcorn, five cent for a hotdog, soda. 25 cent, you could have a good time at the movies. That was a lot of money to me, as a child. A quarter? Girl, you could get a lot of stuff with a quarter. Get me a pickle, a soda, cake, and a sandwich. (laughs) | 44:30 |
Kara Miles (?) | We need it today. | 45:01 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Yeah, we do need it today. | 45:01 |
Kara Miles (?) | How long of a walk was it? Sometimes, you said, you would walk that. | 45:02 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Oh, see. From this end of town to here. It really was about five, six miles from one side of town to the other, that we had to walk. We all didn't do it then. We had to walk when I got to junior high school. In high school we had to walk, too. | 45:20 |
Stacey Scales | How did you see a movie [indistinct 00:45:28] How did you know what movies? | 45:28 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | The Carolina Times was booming. | 45:33 |
Stacey Scales | That was the Black paper? | 45:34 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Yeah. Carolina Times. Then the churches kept up with things and the parents did. The churches was a real informative place to be as a child. We knew what was going on at church. You would be surprised what goes in the church. Most our history come out of the church. Most of the Movement came out of the church. It was first organized in the basement of a church. A lot of our church leaders and Dr. McKissick—You know Floyd McKissick? He was our leader. Matter of fact, he lived on Roxboro Street, too. His son, now, is on the city council, Floyd, Jr. His dad founded Soul City. | 45:37 |
Kara Miles (?) | [indistinct 00:46:27] people who grew up in this who are now very active in the community. | 46:23 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Yeah, very. Most of them are out, children that grew up during the Movement are very active and successful people today, like Floyd, Jr. He's on city council and he's a well-known attorney. Ken Spaulding, well-known attorney and he's the president of the NAACP, oh, not the NAACP, the Committee on the Affairs of Black People. Who did I forget? The Fishers, they are— | 46:33 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | His father was a banker. His mother was a librarian, and wanted to [indistinct 00:00:06] stamp of one library. He owns [indistinct 00:00:08], and so we got a lot of [indistinct 00:00:10] was their very lucrative business. He also—One of the other family benefits is, they have some kind of investment firm. I don't quite know the name of it. It's long. [indistinct 00:00:22] have—He's a lawyer, and like I said, president of the Committee on the Affairs of Black People. | 0:02 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | Let's see. What else? Benefiting hospitals. Oh. Accounting manager, who would— | 0:30 |
Speaker 1 | [Announcement over speaker] Sandra Wilson, can you come to the second floor desk? Sandra Wilson. | 0:42 |
Sandra Moye Wilson | They're calling me for lunch. | 0:42 |
Stacey Scales | Okay. | 0:42 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund