Eullia Francis interview recording, 1993 June 29
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Sonya Ramsey | Area where you grew up? | 0:01 |
Eullia Francis | I was born about two miles right across the woods over here in 1916. April 16, 1916. This is where I've been all my life. I went to school. My first day in school, I was five years old then. I went to school just a little way from where I was born, right across the road. That was at McDaniels School. | 0:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Do you have any remembrances of your grandparents when you were growing up? | 0:47 |
Eullia Francis | I remember my mother's mother and that's all I remember on her side. I don't remember anybody on my father's side. | 0:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. What was your grandmother on your mother's side, what was she like? | 1:03 |
Eullia Francis | She was Winnie Wade. Her name was Winnie Wade. She was a little, small, dark skinned lady, very talkative. | 1:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did she ever tell you any stories? | 1:23 |
Eullia Francis | No. No. We weren't around her that much. | 1:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | What were your parents like? Could you talk some about your parents? | 1:32 |
Eullia Francis | My mother, did I talk to her? | 1:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | No, I'm sorry. Could you talk some about your parents? | 1:42 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, tell you about them? Oh, yeah. Yeah. My mother and father. My father was Ambers Goins and my mother was Minnie Goins and they were good parents. Good parents, religious people. I was brought up in a religious home. If I'm telling you what you want. | 1:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | That's fine. That's fine. | 2:11 |
Eullia Francis | There was 10 of us, 10 children; six girls and four boys. What is it? It's two girls passed. It's six of us living, four deceased. | 2:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were your parents from Halifax County, too? | 2:41 |
Eullia Francis | Halifax County. | 2:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 2:45 |
Eullia Francis | Yeah, they were born and raised in Halifax County. | 2:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did your parents do for a living? | 2:47 |
Eullia Francis | Well, farmed. Farmed all our life. | 2:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. What kind of crops did your father raise? | 2:54 |
Eullia Francis | Cotton, corn, peanuts. Then in the later years, they raised tobacco. But they didn't raise tobacco all the time. | 2:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your father and mother, did they own their own land or did they rent from other people? | 3:16 |
Eullia Francis | Well, when I was a child, we were renting, but they bought their home. They owned their home. | 3:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your mother work with your father in the fields? | 3:29 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, yeah. Yes, yes. | 3:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your family have a garden, too? | 3:35 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, yeah. We had everything. Then, we lived at home. We lived at home then. All our food was raised at home. We had our cow milk, butter, chickens, eggs, all of that. We practically lived at home. It wasn't like it is now. We have to go to town to buy everything. No, we lived at home. | 3:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your mother make your clothes, too? | 4:16 |
Eullia Francis | No, she didn't sew. She didn't sew. | 4:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | When you were growing up, what did you and your brothers and sisters do for fun around the house? | 4:24 |
Eullia Francis | Just played. We went to church on Sunday, Sunday school and church all day Sunday and come back home and play and work the rest of the week. That's all. We had nowhere to go. We didn't know what a movie was. | 4:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of games did you play when you were playing games? | 4:42 |
Eullia Francis | I don't know what, pitty pat and hide and go seek, hide and seek, just anything come to hang that we wanted to play. | 4:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | In your family, who made the decisions about money and things. | 5:06 |
Eullia Francis | In my family? | 5:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | Which one of your parents or both? Did they both? | 5:11 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, my parents. Oh, yeah. Both of them together. But practically then, the women stayed at home. The men did the going. Papa would go to town to buy the food. In the fall, when we'd start the school, that's when Mama would go to town. They'd go to town together to buy our winter clothes, our school clothing. But other than that, very seldom she went to town. She'd just tell them what we needed and he did it. | 5:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | How were the children punished in your family? | 6:00 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, we got whippings. Mine, I did and mine, too. Yeah, we got whippings. We knew the rules and regulations at home. We knew what we were supposed to do. We knew if we did anything that we weren't supposed to do, we knew what was coming and it came. | 6:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did brothers and sisters, you had so many brothers and sisters, did they discipline each other, too? Did the older brothers and sisters discipline the younger brothers and sisters? | 6:33 |
Eullia Francis | The older ones always disciplined the younger ones when Mama and Papa left the house. They'd always tell the younger ones, "Now you do what Jane say," or whoever the oldest one was. "You better do what they say do." They did the best they could. | 6:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of chores did you have to do around the home when you were growing up? | 7:10 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, we had our work to do and everybody knew what they were supposed to do and we did it. When we come from school at evenings, we had to change clothes and pull our clothes off. We'd get in wood and pick up chips to start the fire the next morning and all that kind of stuff, but everybody knew what they were supposed to do. | 7:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Everybody had certain ones? | 7:46 |
Eullia Francis | Everybody had certain things to do. | 7:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. What was your job? Do you remember your jobs around the house that you had to do? | 7:51 |
Eullia Francis | Anything. I tell you. In the house, and especially on the Sundays, we didn't have much, but my mother was particular and she liked clean things. She was clean. Sunday mornings, she would take the oldest girl, which was Cathleen. I'm the second in my family. She would help cook breakfast and get dinner. But my job was to clean the house, to make the beds and dust. That was my job at the house. | 7:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | What were the holidays like in your home growing up? | 8:45 |
Eullia Francis | At Christmas, that was the big day, Christmas. When Christmas come, we didn't go to town like children go to town now, every Saturday and anytime. Papa would take us to town Christmas Eve. That's the only time. We would go to town in the summer, just before August, when our revival was coming up and we'd get a new dress, or shoes, or whatever. We'd go then. That was all. | 8:49 |
Eullia Francis | Easter, sometimes we would get something for Easter and sometimes we didn't. We just wore what we had and we didn't make no fuss about it. That was that. | 9:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | What other things did you do? You went to town on Christmas? | 9:48 |
Eullia Francis | Christmas Eve, yeah. | 9:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | Christmas Eve. Did your parents take you to buy gifts then or they just took you to town to see what was there? | 9:53 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, yeah. Papa would give us what he was going to give us. He would give us what he was going to give us. If it was $2, if he'd give us $2 apiece, we could take it and do what we want with it. I know one Christmas, he gave, I don't know whether it was $2 or what, but it was three of us then, the three of us. I know I took $1. I spent $1 on a necktie for one of my boyfriends. It didn't cost me 25 cent, the tie did. That's the way we worked. | 10:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. You mentioned your parents were very religious and things. Could you describe, what denomination were they? | 11:01 |
Eullia Francis | Baptist. | 11:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Baptist, okay. Could you talk about what, can't talk today, what revival was like back then? | 11:04 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, it was good. It was good. | 11:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | What happened during revival? | 11:11 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, a revival. Our revival was always third week in August. Coming up to that, like now, in the fourth day in July, we would be what they call laying by crop, getting the crop all clean, all the grass and everything out of the crop and getting ready for the third week. We would go. The revival would start at 10:00 on Monday morning. People back then, they prepared for the revival. | 11:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did they prepare for it? What do you mean, by cooking? How did they prepare for the revival? | 11:56 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, out in the field. They'd work hard. All of us would work hard to get everything clean so we wouldn't have anything to do in the field when the revival come. Then we wouldn't have nothing to do but attend church from Monday through Friday. That was all day. At 10:00 a prayer meeting would start and that would last until about 12:00 or 11:30. Then they'd turn out. Then they'd have the spread on the ground, dinner. Everybody'd bring dinner. Everybody'd eat. | 12:00 |
Eullia Francis | About 2:00, we'd go back inside for the evening service. The preacher would preach and they had it then. They'd call it the mourner's bench. The children were mostly from 10 to 12 years old go to the mourner's bench and they'd sing and pray over them. They'd come through shouting. Oh, they'd have a good time. It's not like it is now. | 12:42 |
Eullia Francis | That was all the week until Friday night. We would stay, sometimes 12:00 when we'd get home at night. Some of us were walking, too. We didn't have a car. Everybody didn't have cars like they have now. Some would walk. Some had a mule and wagon, children asleep. You don't know nothing about that. | 13:19 |
Sonya Ramsey | A little bit. Were you baptized? | 13:49 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, yeah. | 13:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | Could you talk about that experience? What was that like? | 13:51 |
Eullia Francis | Yes, I was baptized. I joined the church when I was 12 years old. The church, I guess you passed it right out here, Daniels Chapel Baptist Church. I went to the mourner's bench, like I said. I remember when I found Christ. It was on a Thursday afternoon around 4:00, between 3:30, 4:00. They were singing and praying and just having a time. I remember when I came through. I came through. I didn't know what had happened. Something hit me and I had been shouting and jumping. They hold you and fan you. | 13:54 |
Eullia Francis | When I came through, they were still singing and praying. When I came through I said, "What happened?" That was a good feeling. That was a good feeling. Some of my children tease me now sometimes when we get talking about it. I say, "It's a feeling I never had before." They say, "You haven't had it since." I say, "Oh, yes, I have. I had it since." | 14:39 |
Eullia Francis | I joined the church. I sang in the choir. We went to Sunday school every Sunday because we didn't have nowhere else to go. That's it. I've been in the church all my life. | 14:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | Where were you? Were you baptized nearby? | 15:30 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. I was baptized, let me see, about eight miles from here in this direction. Over there, we call it Beaver Dam Swamp. It was in the woods then. They baptized in the woods. That was on third Sunday morning in September. That's when the baptizing was. | 15:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | How often did they do the baptizing? | 16:00 |
Eullia Francis | Once a year. | 16:03 |
Sonya Ramsey | Once a year, okay. | 16:03 |
Eullia Francis | Once a year. Ours was every September, third Sunday in September. Third Sunday in September, everybody that had children to be baptized, they were up that morning getting ready. They cooked the dinner on Saturday because when you go to church, they wouldn't come back until after church was over. That was way in the afternoon. They carried it down. We would go in the mule and wagon because Papa didn't have a car then. We'd go to the baptizing and everybody looked like was there that was in the woods. | 16:05 |
Eullia Francis | It was glorious because we're doing that around the pond, pond water. Oh, they would sing those good old hymns and everybody was singing. The echo, through the woods you could hear it, a mile or more away. They'd be shouting and singing. They'd be dipping them under water. That's where I was baptized, about eight miles from here. | 16:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you nervous about it? Were you nervous about going into the pond or anything? | 17:24 |
Eullia Francis | I wasn't that nervous. I was more excited to see what it was all about. I wasn't that afraid. | 17:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | After they baptized people, what happened next after that? | 17:31 |
Eullia Francis | After, they would baptize and after each one would come out the water, the parents would take them and they'd have a little place back there, they'd change the clothes, get your wet clothes off. They'd have the clothes there to put on and they'd dress us right there. | 17:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 18:06 |
Eullia Francis | Then after everybody finished, got dressed, everybody would load up and go back to the church. Then they'd start service. When they'd get to the church, the deacons and the deaconess would line up the candidates and let everybody line up. They'd march them to the church singing the good old hymns. | 18:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of hymns did they sing? | 18:36 |
Eullia Francis | Some of them, good gracious. Now I wouldn't think of one. That good one. Oh, my gosh. | 18:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | That's okay. We can go on. They were singing and then what did they do? | 19:02 |
Eullia Francis | They'd march them on into church and we'd take the front seat. The candidates take the front seat and then the preacher would take over then. The deacons and the members, they would come around and give you the right hand of fellowship, welcome you to the church. Then the preacher then would have you stand, telling you what they expect of you. You come in to work and you work wherever you can work best. If you want to usher, or sing in the choir, or whatever. It was like that. It was nice. I enjoyed it back then. I wish my children could have seen some of that because it's so different now from what it was then. Some things, they don't even know. | 19:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask you about, you said you went to McDaniels School. | 20:20 |
Eullia Francis | Yes. | 20:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you have any special remembrances of that school? What was it like? | 20:27 |
Eullia Francis | Much better than they are today. | 20:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Really? In what way? | 20:34 |
Eullia Francis | In the way of the children being disciplined. When the children went to school then, they did what the teachers said. It was a very few that they would have to send home. When I was there, nobody was sent home because the children always did what the teachers said do. The teacher didn't have much trouble with them like they do now. | 20:37 |
Eullia Francis | Whatever the teacher told them to do, we did it and was glad to do it. If we, as we grew up, like teenagers and all. If we did anything that we weren't supposed to do, the teacher would see the parents. Then the parents would come and talk to the teacher. If it was anything bad, you got a whipping and we knew that. So the teachers didn't have the trouble then like they have now with these children. | 21:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you have any remembrances of a favorite teacher when you were in elementary school? | 22:00 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hancer Shipman from Maxton, North Carolina was my favorite teacher. She taught me from the fifth grade through the seventh, good teacher. I love her. She's gone now, but Hancer M. Shipman was her name. She was from Maxton, North Carolina. She was the principal of the school. | 22:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was was she one of your favorites? What kind of things did she do? | 22:38 |
Eullia Francis | I don't know. I just loved her. She was just a good person. I just loved her. But it was several other teachers there, too, with her like Miss Patterson and Miss Hodges, several of them. But Shipman just stood out. She was my favorite. All the rest of them were nice, too, but I just loved Miss Shipman. | 22:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did she and the other teachers do things for the children besides just the teaching in the classroom? Do they ever help the children in other ways? | 23:10 |
Eullia Francis | Yeah. When holidays were coming up like Easter. Easter was coming where they'd have Easter programs. Yeah, they'd have Easter programs. Then when we were in school, when everybody got to school in the morning, everybody assembled. Yeah, everybody assembled and they read the Scripture and a prayer and a song. We had a song and a prayer. Then everybody went to their separate rooms. | 23:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did they have a lunchroom at your elementary school? | 24:05 |
Eullia Francis | No, no, no. We didn't have a lunchroom. Everybody carried their lunch. | 24:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | What happened to children who didn't have any lunch to bring? What would the teachers do? Did they help them? | 24:14 |
Eullia Francis | They would ask them, see to them. They'd ask them about their lunch and tell them to tell their parents to fix them something. Some children that had lunch, what they didn't want, they'd tell them to divide with them. That's all about that. We didn't have a lunchroom. We had a few, that was just one family. They were adopted children. It was three of them. It was two twins and a sister, two twin boys and a sister. They didn't ever bring any food. If they saw it, they took it. That was the biggest problem the teachers had among the children like that, but the poor things were hungry. They wanted something to eat, they'd get it. | 24:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your teachers ever play favorites among the students that you remember? | 25:41 |
Eullia Francis | Well, it wasn't that noticeable, I'll say. But it was some that they really liked, but they knew how to handle it. It wasn't right out so the children could tell it right out. But they had some, yeah. | 25:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you a teacher's pet? Were you one of the favorites? | 26:19 |
Eullia Francis | No. No, I wasn't a real pet. I don't know. I carried myself in a way that they would always call me if it was something they wanted and say, "Go tell Eullia to come here." I always liked reciting poems. They would always single me out if they wanted something. We had a play one time there. They had this girl and this boy, Cofia Scott and Carol Whitaker. Carol was an easy girl, easy and quiet. She couldn't act that part like they wanted it acted. | 26:24 |
Eullia Francis | So we were out playing ball one day and someone cheered and said, "Leah," They called me Leah. "Miss Shipman said come there." I said, "Oh, Lord. What have I done?" That scared me because I know I hadn't done nothing, but what was she sending for me for? We were out playing ball. So when I walked in, she and Miss Patterson were sitting down there, talking. They were grinning, too. Miss Shipman said, "Can you learn this part that Carol had?" I had seen the play, seen them practice, too. I said, "I'll try." She said, "Okay, copy that out." She told me to go over there and copy that out. She said, "I want you to learn it just as quick as you can." In a day or two, I knew it. | 27:37 |
Eullia Francis | They would always call me for things like that because they thought I could do it. I could learn. I could pick it up fast. I'm not bragging, but that's all about the picking. | 28:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did they have high school in the area? Did you get to go to high school? | 28:54 |
Eullia Francis | High school was at east, no. When I was here, they had just opened Eastman High School then. I got far as the eighth grade and that's far as I got. | 28:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to go back and ask you about your parents. Did they ever tell you anything about White people, or about segregation, or how to behave around White people or things when you were growing up? | 29:17 |
Eullia Francis | Papa always, they always act like, on a White man was superior. The White man, we have to do what the White man say. He believed in that. He was good, but most all of them back there, they thought that when the White man come around, you got to be on your Ps and Qs. I never thought that. | 29:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why did you think differently? | 30:07 |
Eullia Francis | I just thought from what I had read so far, I said, "They are no better than we are. He's nothing but a man, only he's White and we're Black." Like it was, we were sharecropping then, you see. In the fall, we'd be shaking peanuts. All of us, shaking peanuts. Sam Peterson was the man who was, working for his farm. He would come out in the field some days. He was a good man, a good White man. Papa worked just like he wanted to work. He wasn't there all the time standing over him telling him what to do and, "Do this tomorrow and do that." He didn't do that. | 30:09 |
Eullia Francis | But he would come out. When he'd come out in the field, we'd look and see him coming. It'd be in September and be hot. He'd come and stand in line in his white shirt. We'd cheer and we'd say, "Let's throw dirt all over him." We'd get busy just shaking peanuts, throwing them. | 31:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did he get dirty? | 31:40 |
Eullia Francis | Not that dirty. Papa would, we'd be working, doing it for meanness, wanting to throw it on him anyway. Papa would say, "You all wait until he get out the way." We'd say, "We want to fill his eyes full of dirt." See, that's the way we were. But they respected the White, but I never did. I said, "He's a White. He's just another person." That's the way I always felt about it. But back then, they respected the White man. | 31:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did the White people treat the Black people in your area? Did you have much contact with Whites aside from the man? | 32:22 |
Eullia Francis | No, no. We never did. The closest Whites we lived to were about a half a mile or something like that from us. We didn't have any contact with White children. | 32:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever hear stories about any racial violence happening when you were growing up to Black people or any Whites who mistreated Blacks? | 32:50 |
Eullia Francis | It was very few back then. It was very few then. When we heard it, it was— | 33:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said you went to the eighth grade. What did you do after that? You just remained at home and stuff? | 33:17 |
Eullia Francis | Yeah, stayed home and worked until I married. | 33:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | When did you marry? How old? | 33:28 |
Eullia Francis | 1934. | 33:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 33:33 |
Eullia Francis | 1934. | 33:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you meet your husband? | 33:36 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, we went to school together. We grew up together. | 33:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 33:44 |
Eullia Francis | I told you where I lived, where I was raised back then. His home was right down there behind the woods. So we went to school. | 33:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you friends then? Were you always sweethearts? | 33:58 |
Eullia Francis | Yeah. Yes. | 34:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did everyone always think y'all would get married? | 34:03 |
Eullia Francis | No. No, I don't think so. | 34:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was it a surprise when you did? Or did people know? How long did y'all date? | 34:11 |
Eullia Francis | We went together about, really went together about two years, about two years. | 34:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was your wedding like? | 34:32 |
Eullia Francis | We just got married. We went to the justice of the peace and just got married and that was it. | 34:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | And after you were married, where did you live then? | 34:42 |
Eullia Francis | I lived at home with Papa and those because he left after that and he went to Washington to get a job. He didn't stay there too long. He stayed there a month, maybe two months, and then he came on back. Then we moved down here with his people. We stayed in the house a year with them. Then we moved out and moved, it was a little house right up there. It's a trailer up there now, but it was an old house, a two-room house up there and we moved in there. | 34:46 |
Eullia Francis | We lived there. Two children were born there. Then after that, the people that owned this place, they sold this place to us, and they moved to Washington, to Baltimore. This is where we've been ever since. | 35:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever want to leave Halifax County? Did you ever want to leave Halifax County or move away or did you always want to remain here? | 36:01 |
Eullia Francis | I had never been nowhere. I had never been out of Halifax County, so no. No, I never worried about it. No, I never worried about it. I was born here and I was used to what was going on or what I had to do, so I never really, and I never wanted to go to the city anyway. | 36:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why did you not want to go to the city? | 36:38 |
Eullia Francis | I don't know. I don't know. I just didn't want to go. From what they had said about it and the way they talked about it, I don't want to go there, so I never bothered about it. | 36:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your husband, was he a farmer also? | 36:42 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, yeah. Yeah. All this land right here, Patricia, yeah. I worked every foot of it right here. | 36:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you adjust from being a daughter with your mother to being the woman of the house and having your own home? | 37:06 |
Eullia Francis | Well, it's what I had to do and I just fell right in there. | 37:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your mother and your sisters help you with things, just getting settled and things like that? | 37:23 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, yeah. Yeah. My parents helped me, but I was the next oldest to my oldest sister, then I was next. | 37:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your mom ever give you any advice about how to be a good wife and things like that? | 37:39 |
Eullia Francis | Well, yeah. Yeah, she'd tell you. Back there, women weren't like they are today. The women back there believed in, the man was the man of the house and everybody's supposed to do what he say. They say, "You got to do this." You know he's the boss there. You got to do what he say. Women back then, they did what they said, whether it was right or wrong. | 37:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | What if they didn't believe that it was right or something? Did they do it? | 38:31 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, yeah. Some did because my mother-in-law did. She did a lot of it. I guess she was giving me hints, too. | 38:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was it hard for you to follow that advice? | 38:48 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, no. No because I always said, "The man is supposed to be the head of the house." Like I've told myself, he can be wrong, too. If he tell you something to do and you know it's wrong, then what? You know, well, you got to do it. I said, oh, no. I don't believe in that and I never did. If he's wrong, he's just wrong. | 38:50 |
Eullia Francis | You know how they are. Some are different. Some are just mean and tell you to do things just because he has the authority to tell you to do it, "And you're going to do it." I said, "No, I don't do that. If he's wrong, I'm not going along with it." That's the way I've been. | 39:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever have any problems because of that idea or that philosophy? Did you ever have any conflicts because of that in your married life? | 39:54 |
Eullia Francis | Well, yes. Some. | 40:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you work them out? | 40:05 |
Eullia Francis | In a way, I would just tell him in the beginning. I said, "Now, I'll go along with you when you are right." I said, "But if you get the devil in you and just going to tell me to do something because you're supposed to be the boss," I said, "don't look for me to do it because I'm not." It's some things that he just knew I wasn't going to do it if it was wrong. I say if it's right, it's all right. I say, "But don't come playing tricks just to," and sometimes they test you out. They'll scare you. I think he found out. | 40:14 |
Eullia Francis | He had told me sometime, he has told me that. He said, "You don't have no sense no way." He said, "You are not like the other women." I said, "No." He might would go on to do what he want to do, but I wasn't with it and he knew that. That's the way we got along with that. But his mother now, she believed, you got to do what that man says. You got to do what that man say. I said, "Right or wrong?" Well, he is the boss. | 40:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. When you first moved into your own home, y'all were farming then? | 42:03 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, yeah. | 42:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of crops did y'all farm on your own farm? | 42:08 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, we had this farm from that trailer back up here to our farm. We bought it from these people that lived here, the Scotts. It was seven acres. We had seven acres here and we farmed this ourselves. We had nine children. Yeah, nine children. | 42:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you, when you were raising your children, how did you have time to work and then take care of your babies? | 42:40 |
Eullia Francis | I did it. I did it. It was tough. It was rough, but I did it. | 42:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of things did you do? You have someone come help you with the babies? | 42:51 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, no. No, I did it myself. I worked in the field, but I would get up a morning. I was always an early riser because my daddy raised us like that. I would get up time enough to cook breakfast and tend to the baby, fix his formula and all that. Then I'd go on to the field and chop, chop a while and go back to the house. | 42:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you bring the baby with you or you leave the baby? Did you leave the baby in the house or bring the baby with you? | 43:31 |
Eullia Francis | He was in the house. I have taken them in the field and put them under a tree in the field. | 43:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | Then what did you do? You said you went out in the morning and you would chop. Then what did you do after that? | 43:45 |
Eullia Francis | Then I had to come back to the house at about 11:00 or something to fix dinner. It was just fix the quickest thing you could fix so you get back to the field. I worked and raised them all. They all grown. My baby is 45. | 43:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask you, what kind of values did your parents give you and teach you about? What kind of things did they teach you about life? What was their attitude about life? | 44:18 |
Eullia Francis | Papa would always say you worked, work, and be honest in your dealings. He taught us that and I'm so glad he did. He said, "Be honest in your dealings." They just tell us to be good, treat people like you wanted them to treat you. Does that answer your question? | 44:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, that's fine. Yeah. When you were growing up and your family was sharecropping, did any of the White people ever try to cheat your father? The land owner, he ever try to cheat your father? | 45:12 |
Eullia Francis | Now, I don't know about that. I don't know about that. I never heard him say anything about it because he kept up with what he did. We didn't know too much about his business then. We were just children. We didn't tend to that. But I never heard him say it. He always said that he was a good man. From what I learned after I grew up to know about that, he was a good person to deal with because he never was out to Papa's like some of these people, out first thing in the morning to see what you were doing, and telling you what to do the next day. He wasn't like that. | 45:23 |
Eullia Francis | I think he was a pretty good person, but he was a White man and they take from you. They could take it. I'm sure all of them did it. I got some, anyway. | 46:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was it like one year when you had a really good crop as compared to when you had a bad season, bad crop? | 46:37 |
Eullia Francis | It was tough. It was tough, but we managed to get by. | 46:50 |
Eullia Francis | Things that we got when things were good, we had to do without the dresses that we used. If we got a new dress for Christmas or Easter, we couldn't do it. Papa would say, "Everything come in short this year." And said, "I can't do this. I can't do that." You Understand? But we never fused, we just took whatever they gave us. | 0:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I remember you got married 1934? | 0:36 |
Eullia Francis | Yeah. | 0:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | That's a little bit after the depression. | 0:37 |
Eullia Francis | Depression. It was a depression. | 0:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | I bet it effected your family. | 0:42 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, that effected everybody. That depression affected everybody then. Everybody was in the same boat but nobody had nothing. | 0:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did the government ever help your family or things like that and help the Black people in the community? Roosevelt and things like that? | 1:02 |
Eullia Francis | When the war was on, but this is after I grew up, after I was married when we had that to have stamps for ration, sugar and all of that stuff. | 1:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | Well, how did that affect your family? Did you have anybody in the family had to go off to war? | 1:32 |
Eullia Francis | No, not in my family. I mean, not in my family but I had a brother to go. Yeah. I had a brother to go or two rather. One of the older brothers and the baby boy went. | 1:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did they ever talk about what happened to them when they went and stuff? | 1:55 |
Eullia Francis | My brother Cleveland, he was wounded and this was World War II. He was wounded over there, but the other one got by all right. | 1:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did they ever talk about how they were treated as Black people by the service and by the military people? | 2:16 |
Eullia Francis | Yeah. Again, they would talk about that. They'd talk about the difference between how they were treated different from the White soldiers. | 2:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did they think about that? What did they think? | 2:35 |
Eullia Francis | Well, they knew it was wrong but they were there and there was nothing they could do about it. They had to take what was given to them but they would tell some awful things. | 2:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you remember any specific stories they told? | 2:54 |
Eullia Francis | I can't put my finger right on some of them right now but some of it was, I mean, it was bad. Some of it would all make you cry the way they tell it. | 2:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. You had your own farm and then I guess I'm going from there. Then how long were you farming before you started having your children? | 3:15 |
Eullia Francis | Well, I farmed all my life. I mean— | 3:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | I mean, I guess, how long were you married with your own married life before you started having your children? Did you start after you got married right away? | 3:32 |
Eullia Francis | Yes. I was used to it and I learned how to handle it so I could work there and do this too, the housework and the children too. | 3:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do most of the women have big families? | 3:59 |
Eullia Francis | Everybody. | 4:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why was that? Why did they have such big families? | 4:02 |
Eullia Francis | Well, we just had them. One thing, back then they didn't know about all this other stuff like they know now like the pills and all this birth control thing. They didn't know it and well, they didn't know about it. They just went on and just [indistinct 00:04:32]. Every house down here was a crowd of children too, 8 and 10, 9 and 10 in each family. | 4:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have your babies in the hospital? | 4:42 |
Eullia Francis | Not the first. At home with a midwife. I've had the doctor for the last two. I had the doctor. He was in [indistinct 00:04:59] Dr. Brian. | 4:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have a Black midwife or something? | 4:59 |
Eullia Francis | Oh yeah. | 5:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you know her before? | 5:03 |
Eullia Francis | Oh yeah. I knew her. | 5:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | When you had your baby, was it just her helping you or did you have other people? | 5:09 |
Eullia Francis | Just her. | 5:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have— | 5:15 |
Eullia Francis | And sometimes my mother-in-law was with me. | 5:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | You didn't have anesthesia back then, did you? | 5:22 |
Eullia Francis | Oh no. | 5:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | It could have hurt really bad, huh? | 5:27 |
Eullia Francis | Yeah because we didn't have nothing for no pain. Yeah, but it was just so, took it as a comes. The good Lord took care of us. | 5:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I guess I wanted to ask you, with your children, what kind of values did you instill in your children to make them so successful? | 5:43 |
Eullia Francis | I told them just like papa always told us, "You have to work for a living. When you work, you don't care what it is, you be honest in your dealings with people. If you work for a man, you get out there and work for a man today, give them a good day's worth. Don't beat a chief." | 5:53 |
Eullia Francis | I worked here on our farm for my children. I only had three boys and they grew up. When they get big enough to plow, the men, they give it over to the boys. I have plowed a many day all around here for my boy. That boy was here last night, for him, he's the middle boy. For he and David, that's the oldest boy to go to school. | 6:23 |
Eullia Francis | Because sometimes my husband would get up and he'd go on out to tell him what to do. "You all have to stay here today and plow. I want you to go there and plow. When you finish that, go over there, do something." | 7:01 |
Eullia Francis | I'd be fixing breakfast. I would tell the boys, they would come in say, "Mother, Daddy told us we had to stay here today and plow." I said, "Well, you go out there and hook the mules up." Of course, I couldn't put the gear on them. I said, "You go out there and hook the mules up and tie them to the pole." | 7:21 |
Eullia Francis | I said, "And you come on in here and get your breakfast and get ready to go to school." I said, "You go to school. I'll plow until you come back." I said, "But when you get out of school, you come straight here and take the plow." And they would. Then I would come on to the house and do what I had to do, but I sent them to school the best I could. | 7:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why did you think education was so important for your children? | 8:28 |
Eullia Francis | I always told them that. I say, "You have to go to school. You have to learn to read and write so you can—" I said, "Because you have to go through life, and you can't go through life without reading and writing." Then some people you know where we had just a few people around that couldn't read and write. | 8:31 |
Eullia Francis | Now my mother couldn't read or write. I said, "Oh, you look at this one or that one." I said, "He can't read or she can't write." I said, "That's bad." I said, "Now, but they are grown. They have got by this far." I said, "But you won't be able to do that." I said, "You will sufferer if you don't learn to read and write and go to school and learn and keep going." That's what, so there. | 8:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. There was something else I wanted ask you. You tell me so many things. Okay. Aside from your work, did you belong to any clubs or any associations like NAACP? | 9:31 |
Eullia Francis | Oh yeah. I belonged to—Again, I'm a member of the— | 9:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | How long have you been? When did you first join in the 1920s? | 9:54 |
Eullia Francis | Oh my. I've been in it for years now. | 9:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | Maybe the forties or the fifties or the sixties? | 10:03 |
Eullia Francis | Oh yeah. Well I said— | 10:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | The 1950s? | 10:10 |
Eullia Francis | —fifties. Yeah, the fifties. Yeah. | 10:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why did you decide to join that organization? | 10:11 |
Eullia Francis | Because I figured it was good for the Black people. I had read all back there, I was reading about all the happenings down in the South. However, they were treating the Black people and such like that Emmett Till case. You know about that? I said, "Yeah." I said, "All Black people ought to join in." I've been at our people around that didn't care— | 10:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | You tried to talk to them? | 10:44 |
Eullia Francis | —but talk to them and tell them. Yeah. But because I would go to all the Emancipation Proclamation meetings we have every first year. Oh yeah, we do it. | 10:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | What were those meetings like? What were they like? | 10:59 |
Eullia Francis | Well, they would have a banquet and they would have a special person, some higher person to come in and talk, like I can't think of his name. A president who just went out. | 11:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Thurgood Marshall? | 11:22 |
Eullia Francis | Oh no, not Thurgood Marshall. I can't think of his name right now. But anyway, we'd have them to come and speak at that. Who's going to be the speaker? They said, "Well, such and such a one." Also, I want to hear him then if something, he was supposed to be good. We have that every year at Roanoke Rapids. Before then, we'd always have it at Halifax, at the courthouse New Year's Day. | 11:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever participate in voter registration and things like that? | 11:57 |
Eullia Francis | Oh yeah. | 11:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Could you talk some about that experience? | 12:01 |
Eullia Francis | Yeah. Well I've helped them at the polls. Then coming up to that, we'd go talk to the people around, find out who had registered and who voted. Some turn you down and they'd make you mad because there's no need of us voting. The White man's going do what he's going do anyway, and that make you mad but we'd talk to him to tell him, "Be sure to come vote but register." Yeah, all of that. | 12:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did White people make it hard for Blacks to register? | 12:56 |
Eullia Francis | At first. Yeah. When it first started, oh yeah, it was hard. Yeah, we had several incidents. Had one down infield with my brother-in-law there. He's gone now. Yeah. When he went to register, they wouldn't let him register. He came back and he went to Halifax and got the law, the officers and they went down there and when they finished he went through with it. | 12:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | This was the 1950s or the 1960s? | 13:38 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, this was the fifties. | 13:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | The fifties? | 13:38 |
Eullia Francis | Yeah, the fifties. | 13:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | When you registered to vote, did you have a hard time? | 13:44 |
Eullia Francis | No, I didn't. No, I didn't have any trouble at all. I went right in and went right out. | 13:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you involved in any other political activities like that and things like that with the NAACP? Did you ever work with trying to better the schools and things like that? | 13:54 |
Eullia Francis | Well, now they would have programs at schools and having the parents and all to come, and they had certain programs and I was always with that. Then they would ask me like they get certain ones as a committee or to go to see the ones that weren't that interested in that work. | 14:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever get any problems from White people who knew what you were trying to do and things like that? | 14:55 |
Eullia Francis | No, I've never been in anything like that. | 14:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | You mentioned earlier that you like to read poetry. Did you continue with that after you were married, reading your poetry and things like that? | 15:05 |
Eullia Francis | Yeah. I do that now. I mean, everybody after they found out I could. Well, when it first started and in boarding school down there, they would have programs like the Negro History Week. Then they would have somebody saying, and after they find out I like Paul Lawrence Dunbar pieces. They'd always have me to come and say a Paul Lawrence Dunbar piece and yeah, I still do. Yeah, people try to— | 15:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | What is that? How does reading poetry make you feel? What makes you like it so much? | 16:00 |
Eullia Francis | Well, I don't know. I always liked Paul Lawrence Dunbar's pieces. I mean, it was just him and it seemed like just, I don't know, I just liked him. | 16:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you have a favorite line for one of his poems or a favorite refrain for one of his poems? | 16:23 |
Eullia Francis | Lord of Mercy, I can't. | 16:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | That's okay. This is fine. | 16:26 |
Eullia Francis | Because I know The Party. You heard The Party and The Spelling Bee. The Spelling Bee, I always liked that because it would—I can't tell. I mean, I can't say it just that, but it would tell how—I can't even think of the man's name and the name in there. How they were, they were older people. I don't know. It was just beautiful. | 16:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I don't have any more questions. Were you involved in any women's clubs or anything? Do they have women's clubs where women participated in and things like that? | 17:33 |
Eullia Francis | Oh yeah. Now we had the senior citizens. Yeah, we worked with senior citizens and we had the club down here, the infield and I was in that. | 17:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was the club in infield? Was it just women or— | 18:04 |
Eullia Francis | Yeah, it was women. Lord have Mercy was the name of our—I can't even think of the name. | 18:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | May I ask you before why you think, what kind of activities did they do in that club? | 18:20 |
Eullia Francis | We had certain people to come in to teach us how to macrame, crochet and I mean, things like that. Yeah. | 18:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was that during the fifties or the sixties? | 18:47 |
Eullia Francis | Oh, no. Not back then. The fifties and sixties, we didn't do nothing like that back then in the fifties and sixties. Well, this was in the eighties. Yeah, the late seventies and the eighties. | 18:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I guess, I think I have the questions I wanted ask. Is there anything I left out I should ask you about that you've done and want to share? | 19:06 |
Eullia Francis | I don't know. | 19:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Well, I think I'm going to— | 19:09 |
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