Nancy Hunter interview recording, 1993 July 01
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Leslie Brown | You were a close, poor family? | 0:11 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | A close, poor family. We always had plenty to eat and plenty to wear, as it was. I don't know anything to tell you about my childhood, no more than, as I just said, we were poor people. That's all. | 0:19 |
Leslie Brown | Well, where did you grow up? | 0:36 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | We grew up on out —I don't know which way you come from Tillery. You're probably 125, I guess. But we grew up right around in this —not in Enfield. We was out in the country. We grew up out there. | 0:39 |
Leslie Brown | You said you grew up out in the country. | 1:00 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Right. | 1:01 |
Leslie Brown | What did your family do? | 1:05 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | As I said, we was on the farm, and that's where my father —All of us, all the children, it was eight of us children, and we all just worked the farm until our parents died. Then we all left here and went away. I came back here about it'll be 21 years now. I never went to Brick School. I did finish local school. But when I left here, I furthered my education in Newark, New Jersey. | 1:09 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | I left here when I was real young when I left here, and I got married while I was here, real young, married. Marriage didn't work out, but there was four children. And then the other part of it was city life until about 29 years. I worked while I was there, and I went to school and took up nursing and that. As I said, I don't even know too much to tell you about it. That's the truth. | 1:45 |
Leslie Brown | Well, let's go back and talk about the farm. | 2:26 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | The farm I didn't like. | 2:31 |
Leslie Brown | You didn't like the farm? | 2:32 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | I didn't like the farm. Mm-mm, no. | 2:34 |
Leslie Brown | Why didn't you? | 2:35 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | I just didn't. Outside, I didn't like outside, no way working in the field. I never did like it. I didn't do too much of that. But the rest of the children, they did, but I didn't do too much out in the field. | 2:38 |
Leslie Brown | Did your family own the land? | 2:55 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yes, they did, some parts, and some part my father sharecropped, as you called it. | 2:58 |
Leslie Brown | What did the house look like? | 3:10 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | It was a two-room log house. That's what it was. | 3:14 |
Leslie Brown | Under your arm. | 3:19 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Two-room log house, that's what it was, and we had a kitchen that stood out from the house. | 3:21 |
Leslie Brown | The kitchen was detached from the house? | 3:30 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | From the house. Yeah, from the house. So we would have to walk across the yard to get to the kitchen, about as far as it is to that next mobile home over there. We children wasn't allowed to do too much. We stayed around close. We would go and visit the friends that was around, but they were so far away that we didn't hardly visit, just the family. | 3:33 |
Leslie Brown | Well, how did you meet the friends that you had? | 4:08 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | When we were going to school. I couldn't say we had any friends more than going to school and back home. That's all. Because we was living right in walking distance of a school, which was on this highway out there, 301. They called it Hayward Rosenwald school. I think that's what it was. As far as friends, because back in that day, we were poor and the people that was a little better off, they didn't mix. | 4:10 |
Leslie Brown | They didn't? | 4:47 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | No, no, no. Mm-mm. Just these later years since I got back here, now those people that we didn't know, we knew them because we went to church. But mm-mm. You was in the class just like you said segregation. Mostly, that's the way it was. Anybody that had much more than we had, we wasn't classed in their class. It's been— | 4:50 |
Leslie Brown | How did they separate you out? | 5:20 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | They just didn't bother with us. As I say, after our parents passed, all of us left Enfield. I have a sister now in Jersey. I have a daughter and a son in Jersey. I don't know whether they thought it made us any better or what because we run away. We tried to better ourselves from what we grew up to be. I don't know. Everybody was just different. That's the way it was all through our childhood. That's the way it was. | 5:22 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | We lived right around the corner from a lot of people, but they was in their group and we was in our group. Go to school, we would mingle. We would play at school, but that was it. So it's been segregation not only with what segregation is about now. But when we were coming up, it was segregation, too. Because, as I said, if the next Black person had a little bit more than we had, we wasn't classified in that. That's- | 6:16 |
Leslie Brown | Does that have to do with skin color, too? | 7:01 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yep, a lot to do with skin color. A lot to do with that because when I got married, these people, they was real light-skinned. They really didn't want me in the family. But then that's a lot of reason why the marriage didn't hold up. We all now just like it's a different group of people. It didn't bother me. When I was a child, it might would bother me because I said, "Well—" | 7:02 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | My sister that died some years ago, she never got over it. I think she just hated the people. But it don't bother me now because I've learned better. These people that didn't want to associate with us, well, now they associate. They'll talk, and they'll carry on just like nothing, just like they were always there for us. But that's just the way it was. | 7:45 |
Leslie Brown | So people who were a little better off didn't help the people who were a little poor? | 8:16 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Mm-mm. No. Mm-mm. No. | 8:22 |
Leslie Brown | Do you remember any specific incident? | 8:32 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | No, uh-uh. No, I don't remember no specific incident why it was like that. See, because my parents, they never sat down and talked to us about different things. Because a lot of things now people ask me, I don't even know anything about it. Just like this girl, she came around wanting to —She was getting up the background of some people. I have heard the name, but how their life was, I couldn't tell her because Bernice Bronson, she lives right around on Cofield Street, I think, or Pope Street, one of them. | 8:34 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | But anyway, she and her daughter was here a while ago, not too long ago. They was asking me about different people. As I say, I knew the names. But as far as associating with them or how they were brought up, I couldn't tell them because, see, most parents, they mostly would sit down and talk to the children, I guess. But see, we didn't have no common family discussions. We didn't have any of that. Uh-uh. | 9:25 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | All we had was dos and don'ts. You don't do this and you don't do that. So that's the way we were brought up with dos and don'ts. | 10:04 |
Leslie Brown | What were some of the dos and what were some of the don'ts? | 10:13 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | When you was getting up in age and they thought you might meet a boy or something like that and you might do something you wasn't supposed to do, they would always tell you that. "You don't do that, and you don't do this." Just dos and don'ts. | 10:21 |
Leslie Brown | What were some— | 10:44 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | We had to go to church. We had to go to school as far as we could go. Every Sunday, we would have to get up and go to Sunday school even if it wasn't a service Sunday because we only had service, at that time, once a month. But we was always in church and always —So those values, they stick with me because I still go to church. I love to go to church all the time. I'm mostly in church all the time. | 10:49 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | But other than that, I can't —Now, my brother that died, well, I used to sit down and talk to him before he died. I don't have any brothers living now. It's just only two of us living, my sister that's in East Orange, New Jersey, and myself. But he used to sit down, and he could tell us a whole lot. But after he died I said, "Well—" As I said, my mother and father, I don't know why people didn't —They didn't want the children to know anything. I don't know why that was. | 11:19 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | I mean my family, I don't know about anybody else's family. But that's what happened to us when we were coming up. You didn't know nothing. | 11:54 |
Leslie Brown | What kinds of things did your brother used to tell you? | 12:09 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | He used to tell me about the older people that I used to hear the names mentioned. I would ask him. I'd say, "Who was So—and-so?" And he would sit down, and he would tell us. But he would tell me because I was always after —Well, none of us never talked that much. But after I left here and was in Newark, New Jersey, and working, then I had to start talking. So I guess I talk too much now, I guess. I don't know. | 12:12 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | But anyway, I would always ask him about different people that I could remember the name, but I didn't remember what they could do because I was small. And then they were older people, and they was dying out. I would always ask him did he remember So-and-so. Just like there was a family of people, they was Knights, I think. He would tell me who this one was and who that one was and all that. But I can't remember. I just know what he would tell me. | 12:49 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Now, the children around here now, they grew up since I did because I'm 73 years old. You know now that they don't know nothing way back there. So I don't have anybody to talk to. I got a daughter in South Carolina. Well, my children mostly, they were raised in Jersey, so they don't know anything about down here too much. But anyway, I'd call my sister. My sister, she's younger than I am, and she don't even remember. She can't help me out none because people always asking me about this one and that one. | 13:22 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Just like these people that was trying to get the history on these people I was telling you about. This man, I remember the name but I don't know anything about him because I was a small child when he died. I remember when he died, and I remember my father. They was living in the country, too. My father, on the mule and wagon, he went over where this man was living. He got his body. Then, they wasn't in no casket, in just the box that they made. | 14:20 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | My father and this man, they didn't embalm at that time like they do now. Right now, in my mind, I can envision seeing my father on that wagon. He had this handkerchief tied over his nose because the man was smelling. His name was Peter Duncan, they called him. I can remember that. So when I called my sister and asked her, I said, "Do you remember Peter Duncan?" She don't remember. "I don't remember." Everybody that's older than I am at our church, Smith Chapel Baptist Church up the road about four miles up there on the right as you going north, and I wanted to ask all those people after the girl came here and was asking me about Peter Duncan. | 14:58 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | I said, "Now, girl, I'm going to tell you the truth. I don't know anything about Peter Duncan. just the name, that's all." So I went to church. I tried to find out something because this lady that I know, she lived near Peter Duncan at that time. I know where they lived and all of that. But she didn't know nothing. She didn't know anything. And then this fellow, Johnny Wade, he didn't know anything. He is 80-something years old, and he couldn't tell me anything about Peter Duncan. So I said, "Mm-mm." | 15:46 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | But I did hear a lot of names. But as far as what their background was, I can't tell you, and not too much about my own background, no more than what I've already told you because we were poor. I'm telling you, we came up poor. But my father, I appreciate what they did for me. Now, we always had plenty to eat, and we had just this two-room log cabin house. Well, they made space enough in there for all of us to sleep because some of the children had gotten married anyway and gone and moved out. | 16:24 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | One of my sisters, she got killed in '37 right on that highway out there. She could sew very well, so she would make all our clothes. We had as much as the poor person at that time could have because my father raised his meat hogs, and he had his corn and potatoes. My mama made a garden. We had plenty doing the garden season. She would always can food. So we didn't go hungry for anything. We was well-fed, but we were just poor. That's all. We just didn't have any money. So that's the way it was. | 17:15 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | And then, as I said, the people that had more than us, I don't know whether they thought they was better than we were or what, but they just didn't associate. My father, he was a well-known —Now, if we had a death or anything like that, we'll say that the people did because I remember when my sister got killed in this accident. She was on the way coming into Enfield town here. A big old International truck ran into the wagon, and it killed her instantly, knocked my father. | 18:10 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | It shook him up so bad, before he died, he lost his mind. My sister had a daughter. She didn't get hurt. And then my baby sister, she was on the wagon, but she didn't get hurt. So they was able to go back to the house and tell them what had happened. It wasn't no money out of that. So I don't know what happened to that. I really don't. But anyway, the sister that's in Jersey, it did, it really messed her leg up. She was in the hospital, I guess, about eight months because they had the skin graft and two or three times to get her so she could be able to walk. | 18:52 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | It didn't break the bone or anything. It just like you would skin something. It just tore all that flesh right on down. So we had it pretty rough. But thanks the Lord, we came through it pretty good. | 19:45 |
Leslie Brown | Now, when your sister was in the hospital, what hospital did she go into? | 20:02 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Lord, Lord, Lord. It was a hospital over there in Rocky Mount at that time. What was the name of that hospital? It's not there anymore because they built a new hospital. What's the name? Lord, please let me think. I guess I'm getting Alzheimer's. What in the world was the name of that hospital there? Because at one time, they didn't allow Black people in there, not unless you had some money. I don't know how in the world she got in there. Lord have mercy. I can't even remember the name of the hospital now. But she— | 20:07 |
Leslie Brown | Do you remember what year that was? | 20:47 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Uh-huh, 1937. I remember that because I had already gotten married at a young age, and I was pregnant with my second child. That was September. I remember that very well. That was September of 1937 because my daughter was born in June of '38. | 20:49 |
Leslie Brown | It wasn't a segregated hospital? | 21:17 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | No, if you had some money, anybody that had money, they could go in there. But they didn't allow too many Black people in there. | 21:20 |
Leslie Brown | Was she on the same ward as other Whites or was she in a separate ward for just Blacks? | 21:34 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | She was in a separate ward just for Blacks. | 21:39 |
Leslie Brown | Do you remember— | 21:47 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Lord have mercy. I wish I could think of the hospital. | 21:50 |
Leslie Brown | Do you remember if she had a Black doctor or White doctor? | 21:50 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | I can't remember that either. I don't know because I don't even know whether they was letting Black doctors doctor there at that time or not. I don't know. | 21:54 |
Leslie Brown | Do you remember if there were any Black doctors in Enfield at all? | 22:07 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Well, let me see. I— | 22:13 |
Leslie Brown | Or anywhere around here at all? | 22:14 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Not at that time. I can't remember. I don't even know because it was a Dr. DuBissette here. I don't know whether he was Black or White. I'm going to tell you the truth because I know when we would get sick because I know I had pneumonia about three times when I was a child. I know it was a White doctor that came every time. So I don't think. At that time, I don't think it was. | 22:16 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Let me see now. Since I've been back here, somebody did tell me that a Dr. Bryant was here. I think he was Black, but he didn't stay too long. | 22:49 |
Leslie Brown | Do you remember anything about Dr. DuBissette? | 23:03 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Mm-mm, just the name. That's all. Just the name. I was real small because, as I say, my father never let us come to town even just to look around. We didn't never do that until we got up like teenagers or something. Then he would bring us into town the fall of the year after crops was housed, bring us to town. But other than that, mm-mm. | 23:06 |
Leslie Brown | Well, what would you do when your father would bring you to town? | 23:37 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | We didn't do nothing but just walk and look. That's all because there wasn't that many stores that was open at that time. So we would just walk, just to say we had been to Enfield. | 23:40 |
Leslie Brown | So you'd just walk and look, but you wouldn't shop? | 23:58 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah. He would give us some money. Well, as the children grew up, he would always —He would take the older ones and he would bring them to town. After the crops was housed, he would harvest. He would give each child some money to spend, buy whatever they wanted. So we would buy little different things, something for your hair or something like that. But no, mm-mm. | 24:00 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | We just has our childhood, really. It was exciting to us because we didn't know no better. We thought it was all right for us because we got along all right. But exciting childhood, I guess it was exciting. I don't know. But that's the way it was. | 24:41 |
Leslie Brown | You said you went to a Rosenwald School. | 25:06 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | That's what the name it was out there on —When you got almost to Enfield —I don't know. You come out 125 or 481? | 25:08 |
Leslie Brown | I think 481. | 25:18 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah. I think a part of that building is still standing there now, I think, up there on 301 out there. On this side of the highway, we lived on this side of the highway across. We could just walk right across the field to the school. | 25:24 |
Leslie Brown | What kind of school was it? | 25:52 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | It was just a grade school. I don't know. At that time, that's what they called. It was elementary school. I think it went up to about the 10th grade at that time. | 25:53 |
Leslie Brown | Did your parents have to pay anything for you to go? | 26:03 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | There? No, uh-uh. No. | 26:05 |
Leslie Brown | Do you remember anything about the school being built at all? | 26:11 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | No, uh-uh. I don't remember when it was built. I did hear some people talking about another school before they built that school. They had a little log school or something sit on the side out there. I don't know whether I was born or not, but I know I didn't go there to the school. But I've heard them talk about it. | 26:13 |
Leslie Brown | When you finished the Rosenwald School, where did you go? | 26:43 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | We didn't go anyplace after that. Up to the 10th grade and that was it until I left here. | 26:47 |
Leslie Brown | So the Rosenwald School only went up to 10th grade? | 26:55 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | 10th grade. | 26:57 |
Leslie Brown | How many rooms did the school have? | 27:00 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | It had two rooms. | 27:01 |
Leslie Brown | Do you remember the teachers? | 27:07 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | The teachers that I had when I was going, you mean? | 27:09 |
Leslie Brown | Mm-hmm. | 27:15 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Room one was named Alberta Silver and Annie Neville. | 27:27 |
Leslie Brown | What was her name? Sorry. | 27:29 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Huh? | 27:30 |
Leslie Brown | What was the other one's name? | 27:30 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Annie Neville. | 27:31 |
Leslie Brown | Okay. | 27:31 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | And then when they would get a teacher, she would stay there for about —If she taught this session, she would come back next year. So we had mostly the same teacher every year, mostly. But I do remember. Then they cut it down to just one teacher there. Reverend McKinley Nicholson, he taught out there for a good while. | 27:38 |
Leslie Brown | Were your teachers Black? | 28:15 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah, they were Black. Mrs. Ruth Fields, she taught there for quite a while. I think that's all the teachers that I had there because they would repeat over and over. | 28:21 |
Leslie Brown | What were the teachers like? | 28:47 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | What do you mean? The attitudes? | 28:51 |
Leslie Brown | Mm-hmm. | 28:53 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | They had good attitudes if you were good. At that time, you had to mind your teacher. You couldn't talk back to your teacher. You could ask the questions and all of that. But they were very good teachers. They took up a lot of time with the children that they had to handle because after it was down to just one teacher, she would have to have all the grades from primary on up. Yeah. But teachers was nice, very nice. | 28:55 |
Leslie Brown | Why did they cut it back to only one teacher? | 29:33 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | I don't know why they did that. But they just closed one of the rooms off. I don't know. I never knew why. I guess because a lot of the children, they started to, I guess, after they would finish that 10th grade, they'd go away. Then it would be smaller children. But I don't know why they just stopped it to just one teacher. But the teachers was real nice. All of them was real nice. | 29:36 |
Leslie Brown | Did they ever play favorites? | 30:19 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | One of them. That's Alberta Silver. Yeah. She always said I was her favorite. But other than that, no. They would treat everybody else mostly the same, all the children the same. | 30:23 |
Leslie Brown | Did you ever see the teachers outside of school? | 30:42 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | No, uh-uh, because they didn't live right here in Enfield. They would always come from another town, and I never did see them. | 30:47 |
Leslie Brown | So the teachers came from another town every day to teach in Enfield? | 30:57 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | No, they would live with somebody here in Enfield while they were —Yeah, they would live with them. That was the rural school. But then Inborden elementary school down here, you hear of that, where they had different teachers and all of that. But I never went to Inborden. | 31:00 |
Leslie Brown | You said you didn't go to the Brick School, but did you know anything about it? | 31:30 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Mm-mm. Not a thing about Brick School. | 31:33 |
Leslie Brown | Did they know anybody who went to the Brick School? | 31:36 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Well, now that since I've been back here I do because the lady I was talking to the other day, Julia Exum, I guess you hear that name, well, she went there. This man that I took care of his wife —Well, since I've been back here, I've been a community worker from one house to the other when people sick because I did go to school for —I started for a nurse, but then I got hurt on the job and I had to drop out. And then I wasn't able to go back because I hurt my back lifting a patient. | 31:38 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | But anyway, when I came back here and everybody heard that I was a nurse's aide, everybody that was sick, they wanted Nancy Hunter. "Nancy Hunter." I said, "Well, I'm not but one person." I said, "You have to split me open, I guess." Because everybody wanted me to come and wait on them because I try to treat the patients good. When sick people are sick, you have a lot to go through because the attitude changes from one minute to the next. | 32:25 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | You had to have patience with them. When I first came back here, Minnie Cotton, she was sick. So when she heard about it. Well, Minnie Cotton, I had known her from childhood, but she was one of those in the little upper class. So she didn't bother with us too much. But after I came back here, she heard that I was here and she remembered me. So I took care of her for four years until she passed. And then from there —Oh, boy. And from there— | 32:57 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | —Minnie Cotton, I went to Elizabeth Cofield. She was Julia Exum's sister-in-law. I worked with her for three years. Excuse me. Her husband, he passed before she did. So then I stayed and took care of her. But she didn't live something like about almost five —She lived about five months after he passed. So then I started with Julia's niece, Thomas Cofield's daughter, Claudia. I started with her. So I worked there, I guess, about two years with her. | 33:44 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | So then I went into the hospice, working with hospice, and did all over everywhere. Meals on Wheels and don't drive, so you can imagine how that it is. But people has been very good, come to drive me. So I don't have no complaints about that. I wish I had more to tell you, but I just can't remember. | 34:31 |
Leslie Brown | Well, you said you went north to get your training? | 34:53 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Uh-huh. After I got there, well —You see all these burns? Well, I went into a laundry. From that, I came out of working because I never seen a laundry before. How you do shirts, it's just a person standing up and you just put the shirt on. But they didn't have that new machine at that time. They had this, you had to put your sleeves on this thing. It was like a arm. It's just as hot as it could be. I walked by and burned my —See these things? | 34:57 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | But right here, now that's me doing all that in the oven, cooking. So that right there. Yeah. But over here, now that's these right here. I put everything on them. It looked like I did nothing. Maybe I didn't use it long enough. And then from there, I said, "Oh, boy." I said, "I think I want to go into the hospital and do some nursing." So from there, I went to Staten Island, New York, over there. It was a hospital for retarded children. | 35:29 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | I started out there. If you work real good and everything, they evaluate you all the time. I was in the group that they evaluated. I got a lot of training, reading and mostly just listening to everything that I could listen to and the understanding. What I didn't understand, I would ask questions. That helped me a whole lot. Then they sent me out to school. But as I say, I hurt my back and I hurt my knee there. I had to have surgery on the back end the knee. | 36:00 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | So then they retired me from there with disability. So I said, "Well, I guess I'll go back home to North Carolina." So I came back here in '75, and that's when everybody just fell right in on me here then. I've been moving ever since, walking and all that. I was talking to Ms. Becky Roger this morning. I'm like, "You're not as old as I am." I told Becky, "Shut up." I said, "I'm older than you are." I said, "I'm 73 years old." "No, I don't believe it." Talking about, "You just shut your mouth." | 36:47 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Talking about, "And the way you get about." Talking about, "Uh-uh." Talking about, "I don't believe it." I said, "Well, I'm only going by what my mother said. I don't know because," I said, "I had to take her word for it." But nobody believes I'm 73 years old. No, because I saw you when you stopped and started to staring when I said —Nobody believes I'm 73 years old. October the 8th of this year, I'll be 74 years old. | 37:31 |
Leslie Brown | Well, how old were you when you got married? | 37:59 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Oh, don't even ask that. I don't even want that to go on that tape. | 38:04 |
Leslie Brown | Okay. Were you married when you went to New Jersey? | 38:13 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Uh-huh. Yeah. | 38:13 |
Leslie Brown | Why did you choose New Jersey? Or how did you pick New Jersey? | 38:15 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Well, my husband, he had a brother up there who had been up there practically all his life. So he wanted us to come up there. When we left, my mother-in-law said, "Y'all ain't going to be together up there." So I don't know. I wasn't doing nothing but going to work because, shoot, I ain't never been one of those types that would run around. I ain't putting all the blame on him because it takes two birds to make it and break it. | 38:17 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | So the marriage, it ended when we was in Jersey. So he came back. He lives in Ahoskie now and came back. I stayed on because I had three of the children. I had a son there live right across the street then. So I had three of the children with me. Two of them, they were old enough to get a job. But the baby girl, she was still in school. So I said, "Now I got to do something to take care of these children." I said, "I can't go out here talking about prostituting. I don't know nothing about that stuff." | 38:50 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | I said, "Another thing, you get killed behind that." I said, "I don't want to do it, no way, because that's not my thing." But anyway, I worked different jobs until I started this training in the hospital. So from there, it was the restaurant and waitress work. I used to do that a lot. And then everybody when they got to know me —I'm not putting nothing on myself. But I was such a good worker. Everybody wanted me to come. I said, I can't do that." | 39:31 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Just like here, everybody, they have heard about how well I take care of the patients. This lady, she called me last week, I think, just before —I don't know. It wasn't you I talked to that day. No. But anyway, the one that I was talking to told me you would be here today. This lady, she had called me and wanted me five days a week to cook, now, a White lady. I said, "No, no, no. I can't do that five days a week." I don't know who gave her my name. But her mother-in-law or sister-in-law or somebody, she's a cancer patient. | 40:12 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | So she wanted me to go wait on her mother-in-law or sister-in-law, whoever it was. So I said, "Now, I don't know nothing about fixing no food." White people is something else to get along with, some of them. They all got their ways, but some of them try to act a little different than the others. So I told her. I said, "My schedule is so filled up." I said, "I don't know what to do." Because five days I'm gone with the Meals on Wheels. But it don't take that long to deliver them. | 40:56 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | When did she want me to come and cook? So I don't know. I said, "Let me check it out," I said, "and I'll get back to you." I said, "The 1st of the month, I'll get back to you." I ain't called her because it's too much because, see, with hospice patients, you are not supposed to cook. You're not supposed to. You're supposed go one day a week. You can make a phone call, but it's left up to you if you want to visit them more than one day. | 41:34 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | But that's the procedure, one day a week, and you can call them, see how they're doing. But she wanted me five days. I said, "Mm-mm. No." And then this lady that the fourth Sunday of this month, she'll be dead two years. That was a Black lady. She had cancer. During the time that she was getting in the last stage, I guess, of the cancer, her husband started losing his eyesight. I think I started with her something like April of that year, and she died. | 42:03 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Well, she went on through. I was with her a year. And then after she passed, every time he would get ready to go to the doctor, see about his eyes, he would always call me. This week, Tuesday and yesterday, I was gone all day with him because he had a cataract removed. He had surgery on both his eyes last year. We had to go to Durham then, down there to the eyecare center down there. And then I picks up his laundry and do that and try to keep his house in order a little bit. So I got my hands quite full. | 42:51 |
Leslie Brown | Did you ever work for White people before you went to New Jersey? | 43:39 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | No, mm-mm. Some after I got to Jersey, I did. | 43:51 |
Leslie Brown | What was that like? | 43:55 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | I didn't have to cook. They just wanted me to come in and do a little cleaning like that, no ironing or nothing like that. But this lady wanted me to do some cleaning. I said, "I ain't able to do no cleaning there." Wouldn't do it anyhow, not now. Uh-uh. And then again, they wouldn't want to pay you or anything. That's the thing about it. They could put them in the nursing home. But see, they know that they going to have to pay a lot of money to put them in there. So they going to try to keep them out of the nursing home and try to find somebody that they can work to death to take care of them. | 43:56 |
Leslie Brown | How old were you when you went to New Jersey? | 44:43 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | I ain't going to tell you that. | 44:45 |
Leslie Brown | You're not going to tell me that. | 44:45 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Wait a minute. I don't mind. I don't mind telling you anything because it's done passed and gone now. (laughs) Passed and gone. When I got married, I told you I wasn't going to tell you, I was 15 years old when I got married, right? I didn't have to get married, but my head was telling me to leave home, right, and I know that would be the only way that I would get away from home if I got married, right? And I guess that's why the marriage didn't work out. So I don't mind telling you since you got me wound up. (laughs) So no, I don't mind telling. | 44:48 |
Leslie Brown | So, well, then let's—since you raised it. When you got married, where did you live? | 45:25 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | I lived with my husband's people. That was a— | 45:31 |
Leslie Brown | You lived with his family? | 45:35 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah. That was a mistake. | 45:36 |
Leslie Brown | Why was that? | 45:38 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | See, because I just eloped right on away from home one day. Left home and got married. Just eloped. Then I was afraid to go back home. | 45:40 |
Leslie Brown | Why were you afraid to go back home? | 45:50 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Because, see, my mama didn't know I had this plan in my mind. My daddy didn't know I had it planned, and I know my daddy would probably kill me, I guess, all that young getting married. I didn't have to get married. No, I wasn't pregnant or anything like that. I'm going to tell you. I ain't going to put that on tape, though. | 45:54 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | One reason I wanted to—When he said go to Newark, I said, "Oh, boy. I be out of here—" His brother's wife—Well, the brother's dead now that was living at that time, but his wife is still living. We stay in touch, but she is sick now. And she wanted me to come up back up there and take care of her. I said, "Lord—" I would love to go and take care of her, but I said, "I have a little mess here," right? So you have to look out what you do have. | 0:06 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | It might not be so much, but it's—What they say? Something about, somebody's plunder is another man's, somebody else's wealth or something like that. I don't know how it go. | 0:45 |
Leslie Brown | Did you work at all? When you first got married, did you work? | 1:01 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | On the farm, honey. Still, I was still on the farm. | 1:03 |
Leslie Brown | You were still on the farm. So there were farmers? | 1:11 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah, they were farmer too. Yeah, they was farmers also. | 1:16 |
Leslie Brown | So you continued to work just on another farm? | 1:16 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yes, on another farm. | 1:16 |
Leslie Brown | What kind of work did you do? | 1:16 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Well, I was working well into summertime. Well, after I got married, I said, "Well, I guess I have to do it." But when I was home, I didn't have to do it because I'd always pull fast tricks that I couldn't. | 1:17 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | If I go out in the field when I was home and it was real hot, my daddy said, "You got to go out here and chop these peanuts or chop this—" I'd go out there and drink so much water until it's—Goes right back. I'd get sick in the stomach. And I said, "I'm getting out of this field." So he'll say, "Go to the house, gal, because you sick." Wasn't nothing wrong with me. And the other ones would get so mad—They tell you, "You always doing that." | 1:30 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | And then, I'd make pretend the horehound, that had a smell to it, and that would make me sick. Everybody said, "I don't know what was wrong with you." I tell a lot of people now, like Julia Exum, you know. We've become very good friends when I was helping out in her family, and we still good friends I think. But anyway, the horehound, it would do something to me. I would get sick. I started vomiting. Go into the house. I said, "Boy—When the other children come to the house, boy they are ready to beat me up." | 2:00 |
Leslie Brown | And did they? | 2:36 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | No. They know better than to touch me because when my daddy didn't allow one—He didn't allow us to fight one another. You better not. If you did, you had to be away from the house. You had to be somewhere way out there. So then when I got married, I did stick to the field a bit. And even when I was pregnant, I would go in the field and help out. But at that house, I just dreaded going to that house because that mother-in-law was something else. | 2:38 |
Leslie Brown | She was in charge. | 3:10 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah. | 3:11 |
Leslie Brown | And in what way did she take charge? | 3:15 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | We had our own bedroom. But the way that this house was built, it had the kitchen and everything was right together. But instead, I couldn't go out of the door and go into the kitchen door. She would always lock that door. Then I would have to go through her bedroom, and she even have her bedroom door locked sometimes. That was a problem. | 3:20 |
Leslie Brown | So his parents didn't approve either? | 3:49 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | No. Because they was real light people, real light people. Because one of her daughters, she married a real Black man. He was Black. You won't say he was Brown or something like that. He was Black, and they didn't get along at all. So I don't know whether it was from that or not, but that was the story behind it. Then all that family that's living, oh boy, they thinking ain't nothing like me now. I said boy—Because my sister and Jerry—Carla can't stand them. I said, "You got to forget about it." I said, "Don't bother." | 3:51 |
Leslie Brown | How did you meet the man who became your husband? | 4:41 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | We went to school together. We went to school together, all of us. | 4:45 |
Leslie Brown | Did you date? | 4:53 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Well, he and my father, he would let boys come to the house. But honey, child, he kept his door open, and we had to keep our door open. We couldn't close no doors between us. And 9:00, and they said you, "I don't know. You don't know about that." You do. 9:00 come, he call bedtime. And if they stayed 10 minutes over that, boy—Ooh! My father would get a fit. He better get out of here. No, he would get a fit. | 4:55 |
Leslie Brown | Did you ever go anywhere together? | 5:34 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | With the boy? No. If we did now, that brother—my last brother that died, he was the chaperone. We couldn't go nowhere. He would have to be right there with us all the time. Yeah. | 5:43 |
Leslie Brown | Then how did you arrange to elope? | 5:47 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | I just, in my mind, I don't know where my mother was that day. It was early May. I can remember because I got married 25th of May 1935. I can remember that. And I don't know where my mother was that day. Well, I don't know where my father was either, but I just made a little bundle of clothes and took them out— | 5:53 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | My sister, one that she just didn't get over people. If they thought there was more than you were when they were growing up, that just stayed right in her. She didn't ever get it out of her. And she lived on the farm too, but I had to go through a little sketch of woods. So when I got everybody straight, I just took off and went to her house. Then that was on a Friday. Saturday, we were standing at the Justice of the Peace to get— | 6:17 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | I had a cousin, she was the instigator of it all. And then after—She went with, up Halifax, at the courthouse. Went up there, pushed my age way up, and all that stuff. No problem. Got married—And then, oh boy. It was something after that. | 6:48 |
Leslie Brown | Had he asked you to marry him? | 7:12 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah, we had planned— | 7:16 |
Leslie Brown | Made plans. | 7:16 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | We had made plans. Didn't know what we were doing, no way. I didn't. If he did, I didn't. | 7:16 |
Leslie Brown | So when did you tell your parents? | 7:25 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Well, they found, oh, boy—That same evening that I left home. See, I left my mother a note. Told her I was going to get married, and told the big tale, and that I was pregnant. I told the biggest lie could have been made. After a while I looked out, here come my brother on the—Riding his knee right over to my sister's. I said, "Oh, here he come." | 7:27 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | So when he brought the news, my daddy said, "You better get married. You better get married." That Saturday morning, we got up—He was at his mama's house because she lived right across the field from my sister. So we went on to Halifax, up at the courthouse, and got me married. | 7:54 |
Leslie Brown | Did you get dressed up? | 8:09 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah, this cousin of mine, she dressed me up real nice, because she had a little bit more than I. But see, I hadn't planned to get married really. I just told him that I was going on—I just want to go leave home. And I was going. I said, "Now, I'm going." I'm going on to Jersey. I said, "That's where I'm going." Shoot, it turned out that "You better get married." Yeah. | 8:15 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | So I think the first few nights I stayed with my sister, right. Yes, boy, I'm telling you. | 8:42 |
Leslie Brown | So why did you want to leave home so bad? | 8:45 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Just like these teenagers are today, I guess. They don't stay home, most of them. They just said, "I'm leaving home." It wasn't nothing wrong, why I couldn't have stayed home, but I don't know. I don't even know why. I just want to do something that I didn't know nothing about. That was all. | 8:56 |
Leslie Brown | You said that you didn't go out. You didn't go to movies— | 9:22 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | No. | 9:26 |
Leslie Brown | Or stuff like that? | 9:26 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | There wasn't even no movie over here in Enfield, I don't think at that time. No. We didn't have nowhere to go unless we did—Now this cousin that I was telling you about, they lived about three or four miles from us. So sometime, my father would let us go visit them because their mother was my first cousin. And my father was Black as that right there, and he didn't like no Black folks. Just as black as that thing. And he would want to try to pick for us I guess, so I don't know. But no, he didn't like Black folks. But if a light-skinned boy would come to the house, oh, that was all right. Because I know my sister that I went to her house after I left home. Now, her husband was real light. And I think my father—That man could stay there all night, I guess. He didn't ever call bedtime on him. But anybody else a little darker, he called bedtime on you. You better get out. | 9:28 |
Leslie Brown | Did you ever listen to music? | 10:46 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah, one of these old things they call a Victrola. Yeah, we had that. And we had a lot of records. And we would dance and carry on, but then we would have to do that not letting him know we were dancing. | 10:48 |
Leslie Brown | What kind of music did you listen to? | 11:05 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | We listened to—Lord, have mercy. It was, I would say, maybe they called it rock and roll back then, but it was more like some old way down South blues or something. | 11:07 |
Leslie Brown | Do you remember any of the artists? | 11:23 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | No, I sure don't. | 11:31 |
Leslie Brown | And you had records? Big 78 records? | 11:33 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah, they would crank it up like that. | 11:36 |
Leslie Brown | And who would come and dance? | 11:38 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Well, when the fellas was there we would dance real light when they didn't know what we were doing. Oh, boy. Yeah, so that was our fun right there. | 11:40 |
Leslie Brown | But your father could hear the music. He didn't mind listening to the blues? | 11:59 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | No, he didn't mind. | 12:00 |
Leslie Brown | Did he like the blues and didn't tell you? | 12:04 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah, he might liked it and didn't tell us. Yes. | 12:08 |
Leslie Brown | And what kind of dancing? | 12:12 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Well, what they call the Charleston and two-step, and we didn't ever waltz or anything like that. Oh, but that Charleston, boy. Now I don't even dance anymore, after I got married I didn't dance, because, boy, I could do up some Charleston, they called it. Yeah, but you had to be on your Ps and Qs. My father was named Henry Jones. So when Henry Jones was around, you had to be on your Ps and Qs. Yeah. | 12:16 |
Leslie Brown | Did you ever go to any Piccolo houses? | 12:44 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | No. Well in the city, they call them, what? Bars, taverns. That was the only time I ever went, when I was in Jersey. I went there a few times, and I never could drink. I tried to do that, drink. Girlfriends that I met at work, right? I tried to drink. I couldn't drink because I'd get sick. Oh Lord, have mercy. I'd be almost dead. So I told him, I said I got to cut you all a loose. So after that, my friends vanished. I would go out—I would see them at work or something like that. But as far as talking about going out a night on the town? Mm-mm. Now my sister-in-law that's in Jersey now, that they used to have dances because she belonged to a club. And I would go there after I was in Jersey, but I couldn't drink—Mm-mm. | 12:54 |
Leslie Brown | There were a lot of people from the South in Jersey? | 13:48 |
Leslie Brown | Were there a lot of people from the South- | 13:50 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah. Every time you turn around I could see somebody from down here. We in North Carolina. And I said, my goodness. And Newark, that was the stomping ground. When everybody left Enfield, North Carolina, that's where they would stop in, Newark. | 13:53 |
Leslie Brown | Why is that? | 14:11 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | I don't know why it was. I really don't. But we went there because my husband's brother was there, but I don't know why. But everybody—Those cousins, the one that slipped me away when I got married. That's where they are today, right in Jersey. But then she had a brother. She had a couple of brothers. They went on into Ohio. But the most of them is right there in Newark, New Jersey. In Newark, now I can't even find my way around. I go visit my daughter sometimes because she lives there. Look, I don't even like to go and visit her anymore. Because Newark, they tore it up during the time of the riot up there. They just messed that place up. And then all the big-shot people moved out and left it for the Black folks and the Puerto Ricans. So it's just a mess. Don't even look like it did when I first went there. | 14:12 |
Leslie Brown | Could you tell me about the trip to New Jersey? Did you drive? | 15:18 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | When I left here? A train was coming through here. I don't know what—It seemed like they called it the '89 or something, but we left on the train. And we had shipped all our clothes and everything. And I think we got into Newark, it was something like early morning. It wasn't quite day, but it was early morning. And then we got a cab, and we went on out to his brother's house. And I can know he was living on Hunterdon Street. I think it was 491 Hunterdon Street. So that's where we stayed until we got an apartment. And then we got an apartment down—Place they called down in the neck. But that was on Market Street, right below the Penn Station. | 15:22 |
Leslie Brown | What was the train trip like? | 16:18 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | The train trip, it was nice. | 16:20 |
Leslie Brown | Do you remember much about it? Do you remember if you rode in a separate car for Black people? | 16:28 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yes, we were in a separate car for Black people. And once, coming from Jersey then, from Newark, on the bus. We were riding the bus back down then. And the bus was loaded. And it was only one vacant seat. And that was beside a White woman, but she wouldn't let me sit there. | 16:31 |
Leslie Brown | You had to stand? | 16:55 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | No, some Black person got up and gave me seat because I had a baby in my arms. "You can't sit here." Because mostly, you had to go in the back. And they would take up the whole—All the seats mostly. They would just leave a few seats in the back. Because this seat was almost into the back. I think it was about it—It wasn't even dozen seats in the back for the Black folks. Because Black folks had to sit in the back, right? So she was all back there, all the way back there. | 17:01 |
Leslie Brown | What were the other things about segregation that you remember? Do you remember if the train station was segregated? | 17:36 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah, everything was segregated. And your water, where you go drink, your fountains. They had everything—They had a White and a Black sign. Yeah, White and Black signs, yeah. | 17:42 |
Leslie Brown | Were there any places in Enfield that you couldn't go? Where Blacks weren't allowed to go? | 17:58 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Well, I left there so young, I don't know. That's the truth. But from what I could hear when I got back here, it was. Because I think they even had a march or something here, about the segregation thing. But in Jersey, it was just as segregated as in the South. | 18:08 |
Leslie Brown | The same way? | 18:31 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | You had the White waiting room and the Black waiting room. | 18:32 |
Leslie Brown | In New Jersey? | 18:34 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Uh-huh. And a lot of places, like restaurants, you couldn't go. And I remember, we was traveling back down here by car, but then me and my husband were separated. We had been already broken up. My sister, she married one of the brothers too. We married two brothers. And they're marriage ended, but they friends. But see, my husband, not even friends with his children. The wife he have now, because he got remarried again, which is his first cousin. | 18:34 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | But she don't even allow the children to go see the father. But my sister, her husband, they are friends, and the children. Because they were down here last November. Because my ex brother-in-law, he died. He lived in Rich Square. So, and they all came down for his funeral. But as I was saying, my brother-in-law, he was driving down. Because my sister, the one that I told you I lived at her house when I left home—Her daughter had passed. So when we was coming down to the funeral, oh, the funeral—And quite natural, you going to stop and get something to eat. So we didn't get out of the car and go in the place. So my brother-in-law, he being so light, they thought he was White. | 19:14 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | So he went in and was ordering the food. And I don't know, someone must have looked out and saw—No, he came back to the car to tell us what they had, and what they were serving, and what did we want. And they saw him come to the car. They wouldn't give him that food. They wouldn't let him have it. Don't know. They didn't have it. They couldn't sell it or nothing. | 20:15 |
Leslie Brown | And what did you think of that? | 20:42 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | So what I think of it? I thought it was real dumb and foolish. Because we wasn't inside the place. They didn't want us to have the food because we were Black. So I said, no—So after that, then I don't know—But then, it started getting a little better. And when we would come down, we could go into places. Oh, that phone kills me. | 20:45 |
Leslie Brown | You were telling me about segregation. | 21:15 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah, from the North on back down to the South. Yeah, because it was a lot of places up there, when I first went there, that Black people couldn't go. But then, because I was there for 27 years, so things beginning to change a little bit. You could go into these places because they had your bathroom, the White and the Black bathrooms, and all of that. It was just as segregated up there as it was down here. | 21:18 |
Leslie Brown | So what does Jim Crow mean? You've been Jim Crowed. | 21:55 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Well, I don't know. From my point of view, it's the same thing—Before they said segregation, I think that's what they called it, Jim Crow. Yeah, you'd be on one side just like the White on—You know how segregation is. Yeah, so that's what I always thought it was. Because you couldn't go to no place that a White person went when they were still calling it Jim Crow. But it might have another name. I don't know, they might—Another definition for it I guess, now. | 22:00 |
Leslie Brown | So it feel like you were treated like a second class citizen? | 22:34 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yes and no, I guess. Yes. There's a lot of places that I have been that—Yeah, right here in Enfield, the people that I was just telling you about thought they had a little more than—I thought I was—And at one time, I just thought, well, maybe I am second class or something like that. | 22:42 |
Leslie Brown | Did you vote? | 23:16 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah. I registered. My first time voting was when I was in Newark. I'm registered there, so I continue on since I got back down here. | 23:21 |
Leslie Brown | Do you remember Joe Louis? Boxer? Brown Bomber? | 23:44 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Joe Louis? | 23:55 |
Leslie Brown | Joe Louis, the boxer. | 23:56 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah. Yeah. | 23:57 |
Leslie Brown | What did people think of Joe Louis? | 23:59 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Well, when Joe first started, when he first came on the scene—It was about Muhammad Ali. Thought it was the greatest thing in the world. I think, then, just had radios, and you could hear whenever. And boy, they would set up all night just to hear Joe Louis fight. And I think some of them almost had heart attacks if he ever got knocked out. Yeah. | 24:02 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | And I used to do, as I said, to help further my educating, I'd do a lot of reading. Then I try to get something that's going help me to know what it means. So even in my Bible study, I get all them books over there on the end. Even in Bible work, I get a lot of books that help me to understand, and that's the way it is about everything that I read. And just like yesterday. And things that come out in the paper—If it's some Black person and they have made a big achievement or something like that, I always cut it out and make me a scrapbook. So I'm always reading a lot and still try to better. I said, I don't know whether my brain going to accept it so much because it's getting old and dusty I guess, but I'm always reading something and cutting out this and that. But I got to get my scrapbook up-to-date, because it's not up-to-date. I've been running, so I haven't got it in. | 24:38 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | But then when you go back, you can look over it and see things, so when this happened. And there's a little child, it's a girl right on the corner where you turn to come around here. Right there in that house, she has got cerebral palsy, I think it is. And she's 31-years-old, but she went to school. She finished high school. And now, she wants this—Try living at home so you won't have to go away to places. But she's doing very well, so they had her picture in the paper and her mother's picture. I cut it out. I said, "Let me get it out." I said, "Then, I can let my grandchildren see how people can just go head on." Because you got a handicap, that don't say that you just have to sit all the time. | 25:54 |
Leslie Brown | How did you get your news when you were growing up? How did you get the news? | 26:55 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | News? Come on now, we didn't have any. Because at our house, we didn't even have a radio. They didn't have no radio. | 27:02 |
Leslie Brown | Newspaper? | 27:12 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | We ain't had no newspaper either. Sure, we didn't. | 27:13 |
Leslie Brown | How'd you get the gossip? | 27:14 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | That's one thing. We didn't all ever gossip. I do more gossiping now than I did when I was a child. And I said, boy—And then, I don't like the gossip. Because people now, they take gossip the wrong way. But there's something that's important if it come up—See just like this lady was just calling then, about she won't know if [indistinct 00:27:44] Williams was home in Enfield. So that's the undertaker up there on 301, just right up street there. | 27:20 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | And they always call him and want to borrow or something from him. So I told them, no he's not here, but I give him the message. So she liked the gossip, about this one, about that one. See, I don't like to gossip about people. And even if I see them doing something, I have heard that they were doing something—I said, "This is all hearsay." I said, "I don't know nothing about it, and I don't even know the person." So I really don't like the gossip. But some people, they don't feel like they can live unless they gossip. | 27:53 |
Leslie Brown | When you were in New Jersey, how did you hear about people back home in North Carolina? | 28:31 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Well, I had a friend, girl I used to write every day and all of that. But I was working. But then, I would do a lot of communicating, writing. And then they would just tell me about the people back home, what they was doing, and all that. And when I— | 28:37 |
Leslie Brown | You'd write letters? | 29:01 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Yeah, I don't like to write anymore. | 29:03 |
Leslie Brown | Who would you write to? | 29:05 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | The people that I knew around here. And when I left, "Be sure to write. Be sure to write." I'd get their address, and I'd drop them a few lines. But when I moved back here, when I came back here, just to live permanent—Oh boy, I had a phone bill gone too bad. Oh, phone bill would be over a $100 every month, every month. I'm calling back to Jersey. I said, "Boy, this has got to stop." And I got one, she was my beautician when I was in Newark, and we lost contact of each other for a long time. | 29:06 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | And I said, this is the wrongest thing. You gone and found me again. She writes every month, and I don't like to write anymore, but I will answer her letters. Because one will be coming in here sometime next week. I said, oh, Lord—I was looking at the calendar there today. I said, "Willis will be sending a letter soon." She hasn't missed a month from writing since we got together again. And that's been over—What's this, '80? This '93, right? And we got back together in '80. We start to correspond again in '80. I told her, I said, "Now, I don't like to write." I said, "That's not my cup of tea." She will write, "I've been here, I've been there—" I said, "And I'm still right here in Enfield, not going in the place." But it's nice to hear from her. Because she and her husband, they do a lot of traveling. She got married again, and she's retired beautician now. So then her husband, he's retired. So they do a lot of getting about. | 29:51 |
Leslie Brown | Did your parents ever to write letters? | 31:18 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | No, my father, he couldn't read or write. But my mother, she could read and write. And I don't remember her writing too many letters. She had one brother that lived in Homestead, Pennsylvania, and she used to write to him every once in a while. | 31:21 |
Leslie Brown | Did you know your grandparents? Either side? | 31:45 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | On either side, I didn't know. Now, I know my father had two sisters, and that was all that I knew about that. But both of them is dead now. But on my mother's side, I never knew no grandparents. I didn't know any of her sisters or anything. And she did have some sisters. Yeah, I did, yes, and her two brothers. I did know her two brothers. One was named Lee Pittman. She was a Pittman. And the other was named Sam. And Uncle Sam, he lived in Rocky Mount. And he died. And then his daughter, she moved. | 31:50 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Moved to Baltimore. And his daughter, it was two of the children. And both of them moved to Baltimore. And the girl was named Susan. What that boy was named? They didn't call him nothing but Brother. And when they nickname and don't ever call the name, you don't hardly ever know that name. So Susan, she died couple of years ago. Yeah, and I did know she had another brother named Redmond Pittman. He lived right across, over there, but he's dead too. And all of his children is dead. I think all of them dead, but one girl, Mary. She lives in Hartford, Connecticut. So we just get together with Christmas cards every year. We send cards to each other. Because they all has said the health is not good now. | 32:38 |
Leslie Brown | I have one last question. | 33:45 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | All right. | 33:49 |
Leslie Brown | How has your life been different from your mother's life? | 33:49 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | How has it been different? Well, let me see. Well, I did get to learn a little more than what she did. Getting around different people. Because the way I feel, if you don't associate with somebody—Associate with somebody that want associate with you. And to learn something, you have to be with somebody that knows a little more—Know more than you know. So my life, yeah, it has been much different from my mother's. But I thank God for her because that was my mother. But it has been quite different. | 33:51 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Because see, and with me, my life is much different from my sister that's in Jersey. Because I like to associate, since I know that I can associate with people. I don't care how they were back years ago. Now if I can associate with them, I'm going on associate with them, but see? She'll stand back. And I don't know of anybody that my mother—She was just a home type person. She didn't get out. But somebody would come by where she would sit and talk with her. But and too, my mother at a young age, she came down with the rheumatoid arthritis or whatever it is, and she couldn't get about too much. | 34:41 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | But other than that, yeah, I would say my life is different from hers. And maybe if she had the chance to get away and see what the other part of the world is like, maybe it would've been different. But when you just stay in one place, you don't even know what the other part is all about until you get out there. And then, you can just see about how things are going. And I'm always trying to find something that's a little different. Because every day, somebody saying, "Come, go here. Come, go there." And I can't go all them places. But as I said, associating with different people that you can associate with and you can learn from people if you want to. But if you don't want to, you ain't going to learn nothing. | 35:27 |
Leslie Brown | And how is your life now different from your life when you were on the farm? | 36:42 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Oh, my life is much different than it was when I was on the farm because—Well, I guess the farm life was all right, but I just didn't like the farm. That's one thing. I didn't like farm work. But I don't know really how to explain it, but—I don't know. I guess when I was in Jersey, getting up every morning and looking forward to going to work, and coming back home. And then getting into little programs that would keep you busy then, working with those kids like I did when I was in Jersey. So I said maybe that's different than—Well, I know it's much different it was when I was on the farm. And children now, even in church, all the children seem like they just like to flock to me. | 36:44 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | Because I don't know, I like children. But sometimes now, how parents raise their children now, they don't bring them up. Some will respect you and some won't. And then more especially, if you spoil that child, they going to say—Because I got some right across the street, they just are spoiled and talk back to the parents over there. And I just sit and look at them when they start doing that. And she got one over there that's supposed to start school this time. Her birthday came too late last year, because it was November to start you at five for kindergarten. And it was too late. So this year, she'll be able to go. So I was telling the other day, I said, "You better sit down and talk to each other." But I can't talk to my in-law, that's my son's wife over there. | 37:47 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | But the children, I don't know. That's a mixed up thing. I'm going to leave that alone too. I'm going to leave that definite alone. But they need to teach them some values, but they not teaching them anything. They won't take them to church. They won't do nothing. So whenever they go to church, I take them. But I told her the other day, "You better start the teaching—" I said, "Because when she starts school, that's not going to be like it is there." She's going to have to go under the teacher's rules, but you can't spank them anymore. So I don't know what they're going to do. But see that child that's starting this time, she want to have her way. | 38:48 |
Nancy Jones Hunter | And if she don't get her way, then she going pout and run off in the corner. But when her grandmother—See, that's her grandmother over there. She'll let her do whatever she wants to do. So I don't know, but I hope everything works out for them. | 39:39 |
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