Ada McWilliams interview recording, 1993 June 29
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Rhonda Mawhood | —grow up? | 0:00 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I grew up here in Halifax County on the eastern part of South Carolina, maybe about six miles from here. | 0:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Of North Carolina? | 0:13 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Uh-huh. Six miles right here in Enfield. Six miles out in the country, in the rural district. I'll put it like that. And I lived on a farm. I grew up on a farm. And it was nine girls and two boys. And a set of twins on the end, which was my sister and I. And— | 0:14 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Are you identical twins? | 0:39 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. | 0:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I see. Yes, you are. | 0:43 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. And this is when we were babies. And everybody asked us, "Well, who are you, and who's your twin sister?" So my mother always said that, "This is Ada and this is Hazel." We didn't have any twin names because they had named out I think, of children. So they just gave us what they wanted to. But anyway, I love it and my twin sister love it. And so we grew up farming, planting most anything that most farmers plant. And it was great. It was great living on the farm. And we all went to school and some went as far as they could. Some had to work on the farm. | 0:47 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And some of the sisters left home early to get a job in the city. And I had a brother to leave home when we were four, my twin and I were four years old, to work in this city. And my dad is still farmed, so we had to work on the farm and go to school too. And so some dropped out and some didn't. So my twin sister and I—there was two more sisters that finished high school and they went on, took up beauty culture. | 1:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Your sisters also? | 2:05 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Uh-huh. I have two other sisters. One of them has passed on. That's a beautician. And then I have a sister that lives in D.C. In fact, I have two sisters live in D.C. One is a beautician. Well, both of them are beautician. One has retired. And my twin sister's still doing hair. But like I'm doing hair. And everybody in the family lived up until 75 to be old people. | 2:06 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | See, I had a brother to die. My oldest brother died in '75. And after then nobody—we were blessed that everybody lived until '88. In '88 we lost three sisters, the year of '88. And of course it was a pill to swallow. It was a pill to swallow. But we dealt with that too because we just say that God gave them to us until they reached a decent age. Because one was 82 and the other one was 81 and one was 73. So since then, everybody is doing good and in good health. And now my oldest sister is 90 years old. She's living it. Getting around very well. And I have another sister that's 83 and another sister that's 73. They live here in Enfield at the home house, which is on Franklin Street. | 2:41 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | So everything is coming along real good, real good. My twin sister and I, we are the babies. And so father died at the age of 70 and my mother died at the age of 65. And so I think we have been blessed. We are very blessed. And during the time that we farmed, we had tobacco, cotton, and peanuts and corn. And you better believe it, we worked hard on it. Yeah, we really did. Very hard. But we enjoyed it. Yeah, we enjoyed it because we didn't have—we had strict parents but they weren't mean. They were strict on us. And we didn't want it like that in the beginning, but now we feel very happy that they were strict. | 3:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Can you tell me, just so we're thinking the same way, what the difference is between strict parents and mean parents? | 4:50 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well, mean parents to me, they don't want you to go nowhere. They just want you to stay there and work hard from morning to night. But strict parents, they say, "You know can go if you want to come to town, but don't go to that place and don't go to that because—" like a joint. I said maybe a joint with what we call the joint was where there was a piccolo and drinking and we couldn't go there. So I guess that's what I'm talking about being strict on it. But they never was mean, because they always—they would let us go where we wanted to go. But please don't go to those named places that they have talked about. They were dangerous. | 4:56 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | So we did what they said. We didn't like it then, because that was the very place we wanted to go. That was really the place that we wanted to go. But we didn't go because see we had an uncle that was always there and he was just waiting to see us come in. And then he would tell our daddy. And we definitely, we didn't mind him telling my mom, but we didn't want him to tell our daddy. | 5:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Why not? | 6:15 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | He would fuss. He would fuss at us. And he said, "Well, I told you not to go." And so, "Yeah, you did." But when we got out of your eyesight we went. Sneaky. Sneaky in there. But anyway, we couldn't stay any longer because once we saw our uncle, we did make a detour. Yes, indeed. But at that time it really wasn't that fun. Funny. It wasn't funny at all. But it's funny now. We talk, all of us talk about it. All of us talk about it. And I had a niece. Well, the niece grew up in the home with us. It was my oldest niece. And it was a funny thing. She always took—she always could go place that we couldn't go and we never could understand that because, but now I do. But I said because grandparents they think a lot of them grandchildren and they trust them grandchildren maybe more so than they did us. | 6:16 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And they said so we could go with her if we wanted to, but a lot of times we didn't want to go because we knew where she was going. She could go to a joint or where the piccolo was. And we couldn't. I mean, come back, she grew up in our home and she did most of the things that she wanted to do. But she got out of everything, whatever it was. If her grandpa got behind her, she'll take off in a minute. But she grew up sort of being the head of the farm because my youngest brother had to go in service and my niece had to take over and she loved the outside work. | 7:22 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What was the difference in age between your niece and you? | 8:11 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well, maybe seven years. Seven years. And she passed in '87. | 8:13 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And she's younger than you? | 8:20 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | She was younger than we are. Yeah. She passed in '87. She had cancer. But it was really amazing the way she handled it. We just couldn't believe that she handled it like that. She talked about it. And she lived in D.C with my twin sister and she had those CVs in her room and she would talk to the truck drivers out on the highway and she had talked to them so much until they knew who she was. So because she called herself the Cancer Lady. | 8:25 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And so she'd be in there just talking about, "This I the Cancer Lady," and they'd talk right back. And they'd be talking back to her and they said, "See you next time. Go on." Yeah. And that made us feel real good because she was accepting that cancer. And she would sometimes write to her cousins and tell them about her cancer. And she was hoping that nobody in the family would ever have it because nobody knew what she was going through it. But she was able to handle it and she did. She handled it very well up until she passed. Yeah. | 9:07 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I'd like to ask you more about your twin, Mrs. Williams. What was that like growing up? | 9:54 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh, okay. Okay. We had fun. We had fun all through the years. And we are still having fun. We started out elementary school together. Mama never sent us to school dressed different. Not even the slip. I don't even think we wore different panties. We wore clothes alike until we graduate from high school. And well at times the teachers didn't know us apart, particularly the men teachers. They didn't know us apart. And I never will forget our French teacher in high school and he did not know us a part. And my twin sister knew French better than I did, so I made the same mark she made. | 9:58 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | So he didn't know us a part. And what was so funny, he would try so hard to tell us apart—and we never twisted around. We never moved from one seat to another. We always sat in the same seat. But seemed like he still couldn't get our names straight enough. So what good mark he gave Hazel, he gave it to me too. Our father didn't know us apart. No, he didn't ever. When he learned us apart, we were married and he knew that my twin sister had this child. Because her son, her oldest child was about like 51 years old. So she had child regular while before I did. Maybe about six years or something like that. But anyway, he knew that she had the baby and I didn't have no baby. And this was Hazel. He knew Hazel had the baby. But we could fool him so good. We could just fool him to death. | 10:53 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Because see, he only called one name and that was Ada. And I'm Ada. And if she was around, she went too. She would answer to it. Yeah, she would answer to it. And it was just so fun. So much fun. And even now that we have gotten older, when I go to D.C, if we go out shopping, whatever, if I say, "Well Hazel, I want to go and look for me a dress." If I see a dress that I like, she'll like it too. So she said, "Well, I'm going to get me one too." So then we end up with dresses alike. And when she come home, we dress alike and go down the street and nobody knows who is who. Nobody knows who is who. And what was really so funny, she had—her husband was just about the pitifullist man that I had ever seen. | 11:56 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | He was really pitiful. And this maybe about two, maybe about five years ago. Well, he was used to what Hazel was wearing, but he wasn't used of what I was wearing because I was living here. But when I would go up there sometime I would just put on one of Hazel's dusters, house coats, or whatever, a pants or something like that. And so I was standing in the kitchen washing dishes. And so he came off the back porch. He had been doing some work in the garden and he came in and he did like that. I said, "What in the H is wrong with you?" Rhonda, he was so sad. He was just so sad. He was so hurt. He didn't know what to do. He said, "Excuse me, please, Ada. I thought, shoot." And we just laugh. | 12:50 |
Rhonda Mawhood | He had patted your backside, just for the tape. For the tape. | 13:46 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Popped me on the hip. And Hazel laughed at him, because he was about to pitifullist man you had ever heard. He went in the living room and sat down in the dark. Because the evening was getting late. It was getting dark outside. And he came in for the afternoon. And he went in, sat in the dark. He was so sad. He hated it so bad because he said, "That wasn't supposed to happen to him." It was sad. But we laughed about it. Well, to tell you the truth, I felt sorry for him. I really felt sorry. I didn't get angry with him. Not one bit. But when I said, "Well, what in the H is wrong with you?" I wouldn't come out with—am I supposed to say that for the tape? That was okay? | 13:51 |
Rhonda Mawhood | If you like. | 14:40 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well, when I say H, that's know exactly what I'm talking about. And we just have had a lot of fun like that. And sometime our sisters have gotten us confused too. Sometimes they don't know us apart. | 14:42 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When you were growing up did you ever deliberately fool people? | 14:58 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh, yeah. Yeah. We have done that so many times. Yeah, we've done that. Well, see, because we delivered the food. My twin sister's husband, this was before we got married. And the guy that I was dating, well, he grew up with us. And we were in Rocky Mount visiting somebody. And so when I got out—all of us were on the same car. And when I got out the car, I walked sort of to the side. And when Hazel got out the car, she walked sort of to the side. So I just walked over there, Hazel's husband caught her by the arm and he went right on with me because he didn't know. He didn't know. But my boyfriend knew different. He knew different. But Hazel's husband didn't. I said, "Hazel," I said, "Your husband is so pitiful." We don't know what to say about him. But he just laughed. He just laughed. He said, "Sometime I just don't know what to say about y'all." | 15:03 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And he said, "Sometime we looked just so much alike until it really—" He said he just couldn't understand it, because he had never dealt with no twins being so much alike. Somebody asked him, said, "Well, it's a wonder you didn't marry the wrong one." He said, "No, because they knew better than to let me do that." But it was fun. It was so, so much fun. And just like I say, we are 70 years old now and we are still having fun. We still fool the people. Now, when she come, when my twin sister come home, you can't get her to go uptown by herself. And see, she drive and I don't drive. And so when we get ready to go up to town, I said, "Well Hazel, just go up to Byrd's and get maybe this loaf of bread." She said, "Put something on. Come on go, because I'm not going by myself." | 16:01 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Because she said, "I'm not going to have anybody angry with you because I do not know all these people." And they'll said, "Well, wonder what was wrong with Ada. She didn't speak." And that happened with the both of us together just last month. They were down here for a wedding and we went out to Byrd's, and my son and I were in Byrd's and she was outside. | 16:53 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | She had pushed the cart outside and one of our friends from down the street, Nurse Rogers. And so she said, "Hi, Ada." So Hazel doesn't hear that well. So she didn't pay Nurse Rogers too much mind and she didn't hear her. So Hazel just kept walking. So when Nurse Rogers got embarrassed. She said—no, she saw my son outside Byrd's. And so she said, "You know what? So I just saw your mother and said she act like she didn't know me." So my son said, "But that wasn't my mother." Said, "that was my aunt." And Nurse Rogers opened her mouth. And so she didn't know what to say. She said, "this isn't supposed to happen to me." And so when she came, and Hazel came back in the store, I was telling Hazel about it. She had to go and find Nurse Rogers because she didn't want that to happen. | 17:20 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | She knew Nurse Rogers just like I did. And so we are still fooling. We are having fun about it. And I guess we always will. Yeah, yeah. We talked last night. I rang for about an hour. Most of the time she calls me. She said, "well, you let me call you." And then sometime I'll slip up and call her. Because she said, "Well, you don't have no husband to help with the bill so let me call." I said, "fine, no problem." And her children, they treat me as their mother and she has taken my oldest son from me. | 18:18 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I can't even say anything about him. And he doesn't call her Aunt Hazel, he calls her The Lady. See, he lives in D.C. Now, all her children, she has three children. I have two. And she enjoy my son more so than she does hers because hers live in Maryland and my son lives in D.C. So he can always go by, see how they're doing. And so she just go ahead on him and talk to me just like he's hers. So I accept it. As long as it's her. But both of my kids, they love her to death. Yeah, they do. | 19:05 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Well, I'd like to go back. I forgot to ask you earlier, did your parents own the land that they farmed? | 19:48 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. | 19:55 |
Rhonda Mawhood | They owned it? | 19:57 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes, they did. | 19:57 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did they— | 19:59 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | My father sold the land before, maybe about a couple of years before he passed and he bought a home up here in town. But he owned his land. | 20:01 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And did he buy that himself or did he inherit it? | 20:14 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. He bought it himself. No, he did not inherit it. He bought it himself. Because his mother and father never owned any land. In fact, I don't remember them saying anything about their farms. I can't remember that. But they, I'm sure they did because there wasn't anything else to do. But as far back as I can remember, my daddy—no. The first farm that we lived on, we sharecropped. But we were there for maybe until my twin sister and I were 13 years old. And well, to me, it seemed like it was our farm because that's all I knew. I didn't ever see nobody else there. Nobody else came by. | 20:18 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And so until we got ready to move after my daddy bought a farm farther down in the rural district. And the White people came. But they were so friendly until—I just thought they were there. But then I found out that it was their home, their land. And so I guess we didn't work any harder there than we did on our own land. Because some of them have to get up before day in the morning, go to work and work until dawn. Well, we did that when we were on our own farm. Because just like I said, my daddy, he kept us going. Yeah, he kept us going and he made sure that we worked the fields. | 21:13 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you remember your parents talking about people—when they were share cropping before they owned their own land, do you remember your parents talking about people who owned the land? | 22:10 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Somewhat. Not that much really. Somewhat. I really don't know. Because all I have heard my mother say that when she was having babies she had to work in the field. And I had a sister that always would do the cooking because my mother would rather work in the fields. And I've heard her say so many times that at that time there were nursing babies all the time. And of course, they've gone back to that now. And she would come home and nurse the baby and then go back to the fields and work until the afternoon. I've heard her say that so many times. Because she was having babies every other year, so somebody had to stay home to help take care of the babies. And so I never knew whether the people that owned the farm—to me, I never really knew that they were sort of strict on you, for you to do this and do that, you had to do it. | 22:21 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I don't remember that too much. Because just like I say, we had to do for my daddy, just like we did for them. So it all seemed the same. If they were tight on us, if the White people was tight on us, my daddy was too. So that's about as much as I know about it. I know some of them—I can remember some of the other people saying how strict the White people were with them. They had to work from sun up to sun down. But just like I said, we had to go out early but—well, we were out there as early as some of the Black people were. | 23:39 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | But it was fun doing it. But I don't think I would want to do it again. I really don't. I don't think I would want to do it again. But we enjoyed it. We enjoyed it. And particularly after Papa bought some land of his own, we really enjoyed it. But just like I say, even when we were on this other land, the White people weren't that strict with us. And I can remember, as far as Jim Crow, that wasn't on the farm. It was getting on the buses and the trains, because we had to go in the back. But at that time I thought that was what we were supposed to do until it changed. Yeah. | 24:27 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you play with White children when you were growing up? | 25:30 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. It was a White family that lived next door to us. And I'll tell you, I never thought of them as being White. I really did. I never thought about them as being White until after I got older. Because this lady, this White lady, she had one son and a daughter. And they came to our house just like we went to their house. They ate at our house just like we ate at their house. And so I don't think they never realized that they were White until after they got older. I really don't. And we always enjoyed it. They recognize us even until after they passed. All of them have passed now that lived—the ones that lived next door. Now, we run across some of them. Some of the older heads every once in a while now. And they are real friendly. It's a guy that, a White guy that goes out to the nutrition site every day with us. And he was—so, what was I saying? | 25:32 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You were talking about the White people who lived next door to you. | 26:48 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh, okay. Yes. Yeah. And just like I say, the guy that's going to the site. See, I go to the nutrition site every day except Monday. And that's where we eat, Black and White. And this White guy, but he didn't grow up on the farm, but his uncle did right near our farm. And a lot of times we get to talking about that now. And at that time, back when we were growing up, now they always said that he was a Klansman. But I didn't know it because I didn't know nothing about no Klansman at that time. But you wouldn't think he was now. You would not think he was no Klansman or ever known anything about a Klansman. | 26:51 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you think that he was at one time? | 27:41 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | All I know is what they said. What the other people have said. But to me, he's too nice to be a Klansman as far as I—no way. They're saying the Klansman. And he is very nice. Very, very nice. And we just enjoy him so much. | 27:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | The place where you lived next door to the White family, was that after your parents bought their own land? | 28:01 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Uh-huh. Uh-huh. | 28:06 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. So these people were farmers who owned their own land? | 28:08 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Right. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. | 28:11 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So you say that you continued to know them as you grew up? | 28:11 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah. Until they passed away. Yeah. Because it was the lady, her husband, her mother and father. And she had a son and a daughter. And I knew them until all of them passed. And they always recognized us and we recognized them. And see, just like I said, when we grew up with them, I just thought this is the way it was supposed to have been. But I learned better after I got older. But they still seemed the same. They didn't change, not at all. | 28:16 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How did you learn better, Mrs. Williams? | 28:53 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Huh? | 28:54 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How did you learn better? | 28:54 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | What you mean? | 29:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | About how things were between White and Black? | 29:00 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh, by being in school. Being in school, I learned about the Black and the White, and how far ahead maybe the White would be, farther than the Black. But to tell you the truth, that really never bothered me too much because, see, the people, the White people that lived next door to us, wasn't none of them going to school with me. But yet, I just thought that this is the way it's supposed to have been. And then after we were in school and nobody were going, no White people were going to school with us. So I just figured that's the way it was supposed to have been. But they treated us the same. They treated us the same. But of course it was some of them that were near us, maybe here in town. Because see, I've been here all my life. And of course we would run up against some of them here in town and they would be different. But I never had no problem. I never had no problem with them. | 29:03 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How did your parents teach you to behave towards White people when you were growing up? | 30:20 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well, they always told us that skin was only—no, they would always tell us color was only skin deep. And if the White didn't want us to be around them, well, you do like they want you to do. You just don't have to be around them. Stay on your side. And so we just learned to do that. But they never really talked to us against them. They never did. And I know my father then because my father was crazy about White people. Yes, he liked White people. He never taught us against them. But my mother, well, she was quiet and she never did do a whole lot of talking. He always did the talking mostly for her. But whatever way it was, as long as it wasn't any violence, it was fine. | 30:25 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Why do you say your father was crazy about White people? | 31:38 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I guess it was because he grew up on the White farm. But see, that was just the farm that we were on. He had been on this farm way before—I mean, right after he and my mom got married. And that was all he knew. Just he loved them. Because they let him—you wouldn't have never thought that that was the White people farm. Because just like I did and the rest of my sisters, even my brother, we thought it was our daddy's farm. But it wasn't his farm, it was the White people's farm. But he was treated so nice. Yeah, he was treated nice. So we were just a lucky family. Didn't get ahold of that. Let's say, how do you fix it? People that didn't like Black people. White people that didn't like Black people. | 31:41 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Racists? | 32:39 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I'll put it like that. Racists. Racists. Racists. That's the way I put it. That's the best way I can put it. Yeah. | 32:39 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. I'd like to ask you about school a little bit, Mrs. Williams. Where did you go to school? | 33:00 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | What you mean? From the beginning? | 33:01 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Sure. | 33:01 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh, okay. I went to Inborden School here in Enfield. Well, it was an integrated school at that time. And I graduated from Inborden. That was elementary school into high school. I graduated and went to Brick High School. God [indistinct 00:33:23] spotted the world. Well, to tell you the truth, I thought I really thought I was in college when I went to Brick School. Because see, when I first heard talk of Brick school, I thought—I mean it was college. Because I had two sisters to go there before my twin sister and I went there. And the year that they went, they had just closed the college down. And so it was great. I really did like that. So we went there for four years and we graduated in '42 from Brick School. | 33:01 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You mentioned that some of your sisters went to The Brick School. Did all of the children in the family go to Brick School? | 33:58 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | No, no, no. It was just two other girls. The other one stopped in elementary school. And one of my sisters graduated from Smithfield High School. She was there living in the hospital with my sister, which was a nurse there at the hospital there in Smithfield. So she graduated from there. And all the other ones was—they were sort of dropouts and they left and went to the city and got jobs. Also, my brother. Of course, my brother went in service. | 34:03 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And so what do you remember about The Brick School or about your teachers or your classes? | 34:37 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh, my teachers was, they were all wonderful. They were wonderful. We had a lot of fun with the teachers because they didn't know, just like I said, some of them didn't know us apart. And sometimes they would just go somewhere and sit in the corner because we were the only twins there that dressed alike. It was maybe a couple more twins. But they didn't dress alike. And so they could easily tell them apart. And so we had a lot of fun there. And the teachers was great. We had an English teacher, she was marvelous. And she was tight. She was tight on us. Gladys Hamlin was from Tarboro— | 34:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Gladys Hamlin? | 35:32 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Mm-hmm. I never will forget her. And she was pretty. She just was as pretty as she could be. But she was tight as could be. She wasn't no mean teacher. She wasn't a mean teacher. But she wanted you to get it. And you had to know it when you left. When you left for school, when you walked down that aisle, you have to learnt what she had you to learn. Yeah, she was good. She was really good. | 35:34 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What would she do if you didn't know, you or another student, didn't know your lessons one day? | 36:03 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh, she would flunk you. Yeah, she would flunk you. She definitely would flunk you in a minute. And I don't know whether the other ones wanted to be flunked, but I didn't. No. Because see, we were so many days we were afraid that we weren't going to be able to go to school because we didn't know when Papa going to say, "you have to stay home today and get the potatoes up," or either, pick this cotton," and whatever. The days that we were there, we studied it. Yeah, it was sort of rough, studying by the lamp light. But we did. It was great. That was all we knew about, the lamps. A lot of times when I see my teachers now I just wants to hug them. But it's a very few of them living now. | 36:11 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I really don't know whether any of them is. I don't think none of the teachers are living now that taught me at Brick School. I think everybody has gone on. Yes, it is. My home economic teacher, she's still living. She's in New Jersey. But her home is here. | 37:17 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you remember her name? | 37:34 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, Dorothy. Her name is Dorothy Bailey. | 37:37 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Bailey? | 37:37 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Bailey. She's a Dorothy Horns now. She married a guy, a doctor from Rocky Mountain. And she was our home-ec teacher. And I really think she is the only one that's living. I know my English teacher died, and my biology teacher died, and the French teacher died, and math teacher died. Everybody has gone on. But they were wonderful people. Yeah. | 37:39 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did they have any favorites among the students do you think? | 38:13 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. He was a man teacher and he had some favorites. But, well everybody said that Hazel and I were his favorites. But I don't know. We always thought that we were favorites because we were twins. As far as was anything else, I never paid no attention to that. But back at that time, just like I say, you didn't see twins that dressed alike all the time. And so the teachers always would admire us because we were dressed alike. And so we really didn't think it was no big deal at that time. But now, to me, it's a big deal because I said, "Well, Mama had a lot that to think about and do to keep us dressed every day alike." And just think how many more she had had to dress, because we were the babies. | 38:17 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | So everybody just admired us. And just like I say, we never thought about the people were really admiring us that much until after we got up. And we'll talk about it now. We said, "We must've been somebody. Everybody's admiring us." But back at that time, we never thought about it. It didn't make no difference. We just were going and was dressing alike. And so many times we didn't want to dress alike. Yeah, we didn't want to dress alike. We would get up and be angry sometimes with each other. Because Mama said, "You're going to have to wear this." "I don't want to wear this. I want to wear the other. I want to wear another dress and let her wear what she want." Didn't happen like that. | 39:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Why do you think that your mother was so determined that you would dress alike? | 40:08 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I really don't know. She was just that type of mother. She was that type of mother. She was adorable. She was really adorable, quiet person. And she didn't have to say what to do, but one time. And we knew that she meant it. And if she said, "You're going to dress alike as long as I live." So you might as well forget it. And that's what we did. Up until she left this world, we dressed alike. And just like I said it, we were so used to doing, at times now we'll still dress alike and enjoy it still. | 40:16 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you go to church when you were growing up? | 40:55 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh, yeah. Oh, yes, yes, yes. We grew up in the church. | 40:58 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Which one? | 41:00 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | We were born in the church. Right here, First Baptist Church. | 41:01 |
Rhonda Mawhood | First Baptist? | 41:04 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah. We were born right down—it's just a block away from here. But we were living about six miles away from the church at that time when we were born. But we started Sunday School. And when we started Sunday School we had to walk six miles. But to me, it was like a mile because we had walked so much. Nobody had no car at that time. And so later in the years Papa got a car. But we grew up in the First Baptist Church. We were baptized there. And I've been there ever since. I've been there ever since. For a while, I sung in the choir and then I found out I couldn't sing. I'd rather do something else. | 41:04 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And so I'm the church nurse now. Yeah, I'm the church nurse. And all of my sisters and my brothers were baptized at First Baptist. Well, not at First Baptist. In the creek down 301. Because maybe in the last 10 years maybe they put a pool in the church. But we all were baptized in the swamp, a creek or whatever you call it. And it was fun then. At times now I just wish we could go to a baptize and to be out in the creek. Although, I'm scared of everything that's out there. But it seems like, I don't know, it seems like everybody's just so religious. And I just love that singing. That singing, it sounds so good. But it sounds good now, but it sound better then. But I enjoy church. I enjoy Sunday School. And I'm the president of one of the auxiliaries at my church and which I'm not too proud of, but I was elected. So I'm handling it the best way I know how, because everybody cooperate with me and help me. And we have a wonderful pastor. Yeah. So it's great. Really great. | 42:07 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How did you get ready to go to church when you were growing up? | 43:51 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh, everybody was running to each other and trying to find this and find that. Because Mama always—well, it was another sister of mine, she was the one that had to place the clothes in the drawer, because everybody had their drawer. But sometimes you be in such a hurry, you be done forgot what drawer your clothes are in. And therefore, sometimes you'll be pulling out every drawer to get to your clothes. But we manage it. Because she would always tell us, "Just stop and go to your drawer and get your clothes out." And that's how we managed. Everybody that would be at home, they had their separate drawer. And of course my brother, well, my oldest brother, see I really don't know too much about him because he left when we were like four years old. But my baby brother was always there because he is just above my twin sister and I. And we always said he was just so rotten, he was just spoiled and everything. | 43:54 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Because nobody wanted no more girls in the house. And so it was a sister there that would definitely keep his clothes out. She would iron his shorts and everything and place them in the drawer. And nobody better not bother that drawer, because she had put them in there. And he wouldn't let nobody bother. So it was a lot of fun going to the drawer and to get the clothes out. But after my brother was born and maybe two years later, my twin sister and I came. And we were born on Christmas Eve. And one of my sisters say, she would say, she said it up until she died, she said, "We would tell Mama and Papa put them in a bag and take them to the creek. We don't need no more girls in this house." | 45:01 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | We just laughed that off. But I don't think they were playing. I don't think they were playing. I really don't think they were playing. Because it was—see, my oldest brother was the second child. And then all down through the years, the rest of them was girls. And then when they got to my brother, they just said, "Well this is it, Mama. I know you're not going to have anymore." So— | 45:57 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | They laugh about it all the time. They get to talking about, "We didn't want no more girls in that house." I said, "Well," I said, "We are here." We are here. But it was so much fun. It was so much fun. | 0:03 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You were telling me five of you became beauticians. | 0:17 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Four. | 0:23 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Four of you. | 0:23 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Uh-huh. | 0:23 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Beauticians, okay. And so why is it, do you think that so many women in your family became— | 0:24 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well, my sister that was living in Rocky Mountain, but she is in Maryland now, she was a fresh beautician. She went to school in Richmond, Apex Beauty School and seemed nice. When she would do hair and do our hair, it was so pretty and shine, just shines beautiful. It's just so pretty. And so, well, at that time, my twin sister and I, we had maybe hair to the shoulders and she would fix it so pretty. And so after—let's see, it was when we graduate. Well, my twin sister got married, couldn't we graduate. So I went on to beauty school. That was one of, I either wanted to go to beauty school or go to nursing school. And my parents weren't able to send me to nursing school so I took the second choice. I said, "Well, I'll go to beauty school." | 0:34 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | So I went to beauty school in Durham at DeShazor. And so that's where another girlfriend of mine went the same time I went and we were roommates and maybe, well, after my twin sisters had her first baby, then she went. She said, "Well." Seemed like we were just, if whatever she did, I wanted to do it too. Whatever I did, she wanted to do it. So she decided she wanted to go to beauty school. So she went to Durham too, to DeShazor. | 1:39 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And we worked together here, right here in Fayetteville until she left and went to D.C, he and her husband and she's been doing hair since she been there. And we enjoyed doing hair but seemed like, just like I said, looked like when, but the sister, the other sister that's a beautician where she has passed on now, I guess she wanted to do it because she thought we were doing so well because she went after my twin sister and I went. But she was older than we are. And everybody looked like just wanted to do hair, wanted everybody to look pretty I guess. So I guess that's the way it was. We enjoyed it. We enjoyed it. So we have been doing hair for a long time. | 2:13 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So when you came back to Enfield to, well, I guess maybe I should ask you before, sorry. Before I ask you that, what year was it that you went to DeShazor's? | 3:00 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | In '43. | 3:14 |
Rhonda Mawhood | '43. What do you remember about studying at DeShazor's? | 3:18 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well, we started hygiene and we started, we had the dummy to work on, we did the hair, and we studied the bones of the body. We had to know all that because we learned most of that when you're in high school. But we had to go over that and we let how to keep your nails in shape and how to keep, well, they didn't talk about the toes too much at that time, but they did talk about the nails and well, at first I really never, I thought I didn't know that we were going to press hair like I had seen my sister press hair because see I just figured that maybe they were going to be using some type of chemical and one would use a straightening comb. | 3:21 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | But I found out that after I went that they were using a straightening comb at that time just as much or more than they were the perms. I learned about the perms after I had finished beauty culture. And we had a lot of fun learning that, it was really fun because we wanted to hurry up and finish so we could get out and make the big buck and so have some money of your own. Yeah. So we did, my girlfriend and I finished and then after just like I said, after I finished, my twin sister, she had her babies. She had three children and then she decided she would go—no, she didn't. After she had the first child because my mother kept her child, and so then she went. | 4:17 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And do what do you remember about Mrs. DeShazor? Madame DeShazor. | 5:10 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Madame DeShazor. DeShazor, she was a cat bird. She was something else. She was real foxy, but she was nice. She was really nice, but she was just as foxy as she wanted to be. Yeah, she was foxy up until she died. Very foxy. I mean what I mean by foxy, she dressed. She dressed in some of the finest clothes and well, some of the finest jewelry. Yeah, she did. And seemed like they moved her shop somewhere else because the shop was always on Fayetteville Street. But they moved it from Fayetteville Street to somewhere. I can't remember what street they moved it on. | 5:17 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | But I liked it, I really enjoyed going there. And we stayed in the dormitory for a while because the dormitory was right across from DeShazor's. But at that time, Camp Butler was there and the soldiers was walking the street day and night, especially fresh of the month. Or maybe I said weekends and we were afraid and because the kids were in and out at the dormitory and they would leave the doors open. Wasn't nobody think about shutting no, locking no doors. But my girlfriend and I moved into a private home and we stayed there until we graduated. So we didn't stay in the dorm too long. And my twin sister didn't stay in the dorm in at all. She stayed in a private home. | 6:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How did you get the money to go to beauty school? | 6:57 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | My father. My father gave it, and didn't have that much either. And when we would come home, we would pack food to take back, but the food would run out and then we would have to, we couldn't call because nobody had no phones. So we would've to write for somebody that sent us food so they would get on. My father had a car at that time and they would get on the car and bring us food. But I never forget, one time we were in this private home and our money ran out and we didn't have no money to get no food. | 7:00 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And you know what we ate? We ate some raw white sweet potatoes. We ate some raw sweet potatoes until my dad, this was maybe on a Friday. And because, see my daddy couldn't get up there during the week because he was working on the farm. So they came up on Saturday and bought us some money and bought some food. But that's why the sweet potato was so good. It was so good. I never will forget that. Yes. But it was enjoyable though. Seemed like you learned things the hard way. But it was good though. | 7:40 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So when you came back to Enfield to work, where did you work? | 8:18 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I worked at Lillie Belle Cofield's, beauty shop that's going down on Railroad Street. I worked there for six months, worked my premise out. And then after, well my sister worked there too. My sister Isabelle, the one that's dead, she worked there with us also. And then my father opened a beauty shop for us in Newton right next door to Cofield's Funeral Home here in Enfield. And oh, we just thought that was wonderful. It didn't take no whole lot of money at that time, but you did what you had to do. He sacrificed for us because we didn't have it, but he sacrificed for us. And we had about six booths. We had about six booths, but it was only three working there. And so was it three and four? It was four of us working there. My twin— | 8:21 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Four sisters? | 9:26 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Three sisters and a girlfriend I was—so back at that time you were just only getting a dollar and a half for haircuts for hair. At that time, it seemed like it was a lot of money. Yeah, a lot of money. But we managed. We would start working early in the morning. Some of the customers would get there before we would get there and built a fire in the street so that they would stay warm because we didn't have nobody to go and open the place up to make a fire. We had to make the fire when we would get there because I was rooming right maybe right up the street from that place. But they would stay right there and with that fire, and keep that fire in that street to keep warm until we open that door. And because weekends, you didn't make no appointments, you just take them as come. And on Saturdays that's when it was, everybody would be crowding in there. You work all day long up until night, sometime 12 o'clock at night for a dollar and a half a head. | 9:27 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And so who were your customers? What kind of ladies? | 10:37 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well, they were working ladies. Yeah, they were working ladies. A lot of them worked at the factories and on the farms. And so they weren't getting much either. And so that's really pay no more than a dollar and a half, sometime some of them thought the dollar and a half was too much because they weren't making that much. But well maybe it was, well it was one more shop besides our shop. And that was the shop that we worked in, Lillie Belle Cofield Shop, and so they were the only two shops at that time. | 10:47 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What was your shop called? | 11:26 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Huh? | 11:27 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What was your shop called? | 11:28 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Lafayette. | 11:30 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Lafayette. | 11:30 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Lafayette Beauty Shop. And so when we moved from there, we moved over on Franklin Street and that's where my daddy was living. He bought the house on Franklin Street when he sold the farm. And that's where he sold the farm and he bought the house over there. He fixed a room especially to do hair. And so it was two sisters, my sister that passed and myself, worked there because my twin sister had gone to DC at that time. And so we worked there until my sister Isabelle went to the city, and when she went to the city is when I opened up here. | 11:31 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And when was that Mrs. Williams? | 12:18 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | That was in the '50s. I'm not able to tell you right now but it was in the '50s. | 12:25 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You opened up your shop then I guess? | 12:29 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And so that's where I've been ever since. Yeah. | 12:30 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did women ever come by the shop just to talk? | 12:37 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, just to talk. And sometimes someone would come by, bring me a sandwich. So just with come by and say, "I didn't come here to have my hair done today. I just wanted to talk to you." And so we'd talk. Beauty shop talks, to be talking about other folks, what happened? Gossip. Gossip. So nothing, we wouldn't be saying nothing really too bad, but just talking in general. And sometimes some of us would come and get the hair done in there after I finished the hair. They would sit and talk too, for maybe another hour when nobody would be in no hurry unless they had to go to work. | 12:39 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did women ever talk about politics in the shop? | 13:22 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Not too much. It's a funny thing. People don't want to get on politics too much. And I never really talked about it that much because I don't know that much about politics. I don't know. It wasn't a subject that I enjoyed. It wasn't really a subject that I enjoyed. | 13:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Were there ever disagreements among women? | 13:47 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, sometimes. And well, a lot of times when they started disagreeing, well, I'd be so busy working, I could easily get off that subject because I'll start concentrating on my work. But a lot of times they would disagree. Disagree who was going to be the president and whether I like that person or not. And I don't think he's going to do what he's supposed to do. And the president hadn't even got in the seat then. So I said, "well—" I was just waiting for that time to see what he was going to do. So some do good and some don't. Like I say, I never enjoyed talking about politics too much. Wasn't one of my favorite subjects. | 13:49 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Are you a member of any organizations, siblings? | 14:43 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | No more than the cosmetology association that we go to every year in different cities. | 14:54 |
Rhonda Mawhood | The North Carolina State Cosmetology? | 15:04 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah. And I used to go. Back in the years, I used to go real often, but after I got older, I didn't go as often. I went year before last to Durham. And last year, now this year it was in Fayetteville. I went. Yeah, I went last year. This year it was in Fayetteville but I didn't go. | 15:06 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And I saw a plaque saying you're a member of the National Beauty Cultures League also? | 15:29 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, we a member of that. And we don't, our club, in fact the whole club was a member but it has gotten smaller so we don't attend that much. We always be recognized. But we sent in our dues but we don't attend the national too much. But the national, we don't attend that too much. But here in North Carolina we do. Yeah. And you saw the plumber, right? They had given me and they gave one of the other girls 40 years of work all over. | 15:34 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So when you first started going to the state conventions, what kinds of things would they talk about in the 1950s, '40s, '50s, '60s? | 16:19 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh. | 16:32 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What happened at the conventions? | 16:32 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well, most of the things that I was really interested in was the hairstyles and they taught a lot of that. And they were doing hair cutting and well, I was interested in the perms all chemicals because we didn't learn too much about that in schools. Some of the stuff you have to get to it after you get out of school. And so we would even have classes at the convention for hair cutting and hair perms and all kinds of hairstyles and things. But it was easy at that time. But now, it's so different. It's so different. But I guess the young people really enjoy it because they are really putting some beautiful styles out here. But just like I said, those styles you have to deal with chemicals, and I can't do it. But I enjoyed looking on and I was afraid to get too close to it when they were using chemicals. | 16:34 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Because just even last year, we went to Dudley's, a manufacturing place in Greensboro, and they have a large place there. They make Dudley product there. And I wanted to go through there, but I was afraid because I didn't want any of that chemical to even get on me. I didn't even want to smell it, but I would've loved to gone through that. But that's where they make all of their products and they have a school there. Some of the members of our beautician club went to this school and we went all through the school and they even had a nice cafeteria. And even where Dudley himself lived, we visit his home, and that was just like a showroom, it was beautiful. And he had one of the largest Frigidaires that I had ever seen in a home. It was wider than from here to there. It was a beautiful home and they got the White in there also. But it's a Black organization. It is. It's really nice so I enjoyed that very much. | 17:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What kinds of hairstyles were popular in the '40s and '50s? | 19:13 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | The pageboys and the pompadours, they were very, very popular. And marcel curls were popular too. And a lot of times the ones that maybe lived on the farm, they rather have the marcel curls because soda curls would last them until they get back, to get it done the next time. | 19:19 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How often would they come to get their hair cut? | 19:47 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Some couldn't come, but once a month. And then every once in a while we would have maybe the school teachers maybe we would do their hair twice a week, so that's just the way it was. Those people that lived on the farm, see they couldn't afford to get their hair done but once a month, and was going to try to keep it until they get back. But some of them couldn't, but anyway, they had it right for this particular Sunday. They kept it through the, well, if the weather was hot, it was little rough on it because everybody was sweating and carrying on. But anyway, in the wintertime they could keep it much longer. Yeah, longer. | 19:50 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Because it was a lot of thickheaded people. I mean, they had some thick hair, I mean thick. When I said thick, I mean thick. And I can remember some of the days that I cried to have hair so thick. And this is when I first came out of school, I thought it was the worst thing that ever could happen for anybody to have thick hair like that and then come to the beauty shop and you do all that hair for a dollar and a half. I thought it was the worst thing, but I didn't have no choice. I said, "once I get it done." I said, "Well, there's been a dollar and a half." | 20:40 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | But that was what we had to do. But I'm sure I've enjoyed, because I know I enjoyed it because I would've walked out. I wouldn't have stayed with beauty culture. But when I went to school, this is what I wanted to learn, and so I stuck with it. I stopped doing hair about maybe a couple years once. I went to the peanut mill to work, wanted me some extra money. And so I worked for about a couple years. But I still did have Saturdays, I was here for my customers on Saturday. | 21:22 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And what were you doing at the peanut mill? | 22:04 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Sorting out peanuts. The belt was coming down, you was picking out the good peanuts from the bad ones. | 22:06 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Which did you like better, working at the peanut mill or being a beautician? | 22:14 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Being a beautician. But I just wanted to do something else. I really liked doing hair but it seemed like I wasn't making enough money doing hair. I wanted to make some money, that they paid you more at the peanut mill and I wanted to make some of that. But then after I worked there for about two years, then I said, "well." I picked up quite a few customers by working at the peanut mill. They found out I was a beautician so they came to me. So after I found out that, I guess after I got older. I was getting older all the time because I wasn't no young person at that time. And I said, "Well, I guess I'm better stick to one job." So that's what I did. But I enjoyed working at the peanut mill also. That was just something different. Something different. | 22:18 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When did your sister move to Washington? 1950s, you told me? | 23:12 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Uh-huh. In the '50s. | 23:17 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And did she continue doing beauty work there? | 23:18 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes, uh-huh. | 23:20 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Where is she working? | 23:21 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | She's working on Georgia Avenue. On Georgia Avenue. She's been there ever since. She been in D.C but she wasn't in the same shop. She was maybe down farther on Georgia Avenue. That shop closed up and then she moved further up so she just had a booth. She didn't have no shop up. She said she definitely didn't want that responsibility in the city. So she only had a booth and she's still just, she got a booth. So she's thinking about retiring another year. So I said, "Well, what are you going to do? You going home and have your place at home?" She said, no, no, no. Uh-huh. | 23:22 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So what's the name of the shop your sister works in, in Washington? | 24:08 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh, Renee. | 24:11 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Renee. | 24:12 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Renee be the shop. | 24:13 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So when did you marry, Mrs. Williams? | 24:21 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I married, I got married in June 3rd of '47. | 24:27 |
Rhonda Mawhood | '47. And where did you meet your husband? | 24:33 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Right here in Enfield. He had just come out of service and believe it was when I was, we had the beauty shop in Newton, like what we call it Newton next to the Cofield's Funeral Home on Polk Street. And that's where I met him. And I guess we dated for about three years and then '47, we got married. And we had, in the next three years I had a son. And then maybe three years later I had another son, and that was the only two I had. And my oldest son lives in D.C. and he finished high school in Clearfield, Utah. He went in the Job Corps. And so that's where he finished and he had a ready made job when he went to D.C. They sent him from Utah to D.C., and what he did at that time, he worked with the Job Corps there and he took kids on trips and those that, he went out to check the ones out that wanted to go into the Job Corps. And so he worked there for about maybe 10 years and then later didn't, after 10 years he started working at Giant's. | 24:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And where, I'm sorry? | 26:28 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | That's Giant's, that's one of the largest supermarkets in Maryland in DC and so he's been, he's the assistant manager of the produce department there so he's doing real good. He has been married, and he has one daughter, but he and his wife separated so he hasn't married anymore but he has his daughter. And my son, my baby son, after he graduated from high school here at the middle school. But middle school neighbors the high school. And he went in, no, he went to Kittrell College. And I'm sure you've heard of Kittrell College. | 26:30 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Yeah. | 27:17 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And he went there for a year, then he went in service and he stayed in service up until maybe, I can't remember the years right now. But anyway, he retired in the service and then, well, the year before he retired, he came and got his high school girlfriend. He was in California and he came and got her and took her back to California and married her and they were there for 17 years. They decide to move back here. So they've been here for two years, and they both are working in Rocky Mountain. They have two children. And so they live right here in Enfield, they have bought here. And she works at the community hospital in Rocky Mountain, and he works at Coastal Plains. He's take care of all the insurances at Coastal Plains. Yes, so I see them real often. Yes. | 27:18 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What did your husband do? | 28:37 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | My husband was a barber. | 28:38 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Really? | 28:41 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes, he was a barber. | 28:41 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And where was his shop? | 28:44 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well, he worked in a shop with, he worked at King's Barbershop going to Inborden School, you know where that is? Yeah, that's where he worked. When he first started out, he worked at the barbershop that was next door to the beauty shop where we had in next to Cofield's Funeral Home. But the guy died there and so he went to King's Barbershop in right there going to Inborden School. So that's where he worked until he passed. And he passed in '75. Yes, and they said he was one of the best barbers. Yep. | 28:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Were there only Black customers in the shop or only White or both? | 29:34 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Maybe he had maybe one or two White, but mostly Black. Mostly Black, I remember him saying that, "Well, so and so came by today," and I knew he was White and so I was saying, I said, "Well I really didn't know you knew how to cut White people hair because I know their hair is soft." Well, Black people hair round. But he learned how to cut their hair and the reason he learned how to cut that hair, his father was partly Indian, and he had straight hair and so he learned how to cut his father's hair so that's how he learned how to cut White people hair. | 29:40 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Was your father from this area, Mrs. Williams? | 30:28 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Was who. | 30:30 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Was your husband, excuse me. I said father, I meant husband. Was your husband from this area? | 30:31 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well. Maybe in the rural, he was from the rural district. He didn't live here in town when I met him. He was from out in the rural district going toward Eastman School. And he attended [indistinct 00:30:52] School in Wilson. | 30:35 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Yes. | 30:57 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | That's the school he graduated from. | 30:57 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And did he ever tell you stories about what went on in the barbershop during the day? | 31:03 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well, not too much. He'd often talk about the gossip, but my husband was a person, he didn't like gossip. No way, form, or fashion. He did not like gossip so therefore he wouldn't talk to me too much about it. But as far as who came in to get their hair cut for them to try, well, maybe a custom that they were learning how on, he would talk about that person. But as far as a lot of gossip, he didn't really talk about that too much. He never did. He didn't like it. And he was a quiet person anyway, so he wouldn't really talk about too much gossip. Of what people were really doing, he didn't really talk that much about it. He was quiet. | 31:09 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When you were growing up, I'd like to ask you about later, but when you were growing up, who made the decisions in your family? Your dad? | 32:14 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | My daddy. Daddy made this decision and because see, whenever we would go somewhere, wanted to go somewhere and we would ask Mama, she never said, "Yes, you can go." She never said that. She would say, "You have to ask your daddy." And that was what we had to do. But when my children came along, I was the one that made the decision. My husband would always tell them, your brother, you have to ask your mama. It was just vice versa. | 32:23 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Why would you say that is Mrs. McWilliams? | 33:01 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | What saying? | 33:01 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Why would you say that is? | 33:08 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well, the vice versa, because we had to ask our daddy and they had to ask me. | 33:08 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I didn't make it clear, I'm sorry. Why do you think that it came out differently in your own family than it did— | 33:22 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I don't know. I guess it's because just like I said, because my daddy was an outgoing person and we just didn't go unless he said it. But for my husband, he liked being at home, I was the outgoing person. And he always referred the children to me and he would maybe as far as going by getting grocery, he would do that. But going to church, he was scared of church. Going to church, I would've to make the decision about okay, you going to Sunday School this morning. Well, they would say, "Well, daddy said we didn't have to go unless we wanted to." Oh no, no. Uh-uh, I'm the one. You going because I say go. So that's way it was all the time. Yeah, my husband was a quiet guy. | 33:28 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | My daddy was oh boy, yes sir, you have to ask your daddy. If he said no, might as well plan on staying home, because there wasn't no going. And my daddy wasn't no fussy daddy, but my daddy, he had a grayish looking eyes. And he didn't have to do but look at us hard. He didn't, that was all. You'd be gone then, that was all. He looked like—I don't know whether it was the eyes or what, but to me it was, he had those gray looking eyes. And I don't know I guess maybe we thought he was part Indian. Well, I never thought of him being a part Indian. My mother was a part Indian. She was dark and beautiful hair. Beautiful hair. Long hair, huh? | 34:39 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What was her hair like? | 35:38 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh, it was straight hair and long. And my daddy was maybe about my complexion and he had kinky hair. But as he grew old, before my father died, his hair was just as strange as in things. Well, because it turned gray and gray hair will get softer and softer as you get older, it will, because most of my sisters rather ones that grew up with knotty hair because I had some sisters that have beautiful hair waves in it, black. And then I had two or three sisters half kinky, but as they got older and their hair turned gray, and their hair was just as pretty as could be. And I never even thought about hair was like that until I took the course up. And I never, I still don't know why it's softened up. All I know as they got older, it was softened up. | 35:39 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did your mother ever talk about being part Indian, about? | 36:53 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well, she really did not know it until, I tell you, when we found out about she was part Indian, it was when we had our first family reunion and you go to Halifax and you dig up stuff from way back. And that's how we found out she was a part Indian because her father was part Indian because her father was, my mother's father was a Black man. He was real, real Black. But my mother's mother was White as you are. And none of the children were light skinned. They all were dark children. One of the sisters were lighter than the other but she wasn't that light. But my mama's mother was just like a White lady, beautiful white hair. I didn't know her when her hair was any other color besides white. And because we were, a cousin of mine were talking this morning, Lily Marie Smith. And she was saying that somebody was supposed to interview her tomorrow afternoon at seven. I don't know whether it's you or who, but. | 36:57 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I'm not the one but I think I know who it is. That's wonderful. | 38:32 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | She lives on Dixie Street. And so she said, "Well, when they finish with you," said, "I won't have too many questions to answer." I said, well more about the family history than I do. So we laughed about it this morning because I didn't know that you're supposed to interview her until she told me that, because she was going on jury duty today and she'd be there all the week. That's the reason she couldn't see anybody until late in the afternoon. But we talked about that too. So, because see, her grandmother was my grandmother and because her father and my mother were brothers and sisters and they both were Black. And see, I never knew my grandfather but I know they all told me that he was Black. And I don't know whether it was because my grandmother was White or not, all I know she was just White. But I don't think she considered being White. I think she went for Black. | 38:35 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | But when I was about seven years old, she passed. So I can remember my cousin I was talking to this morning, sister we live here in, she was a little girl, must have been about, she was about four years old I think. But she still remember our grandmother. And she has done a lot of researching of the family, more so than I have. And when we had our family reunion in '91, she did a lot of research and with my children and my twin sister's children. They went to Halifax and got a lot of stuff. So I said, "Well okay y'all just do it. Please don't let me do it," because they enjoyed it. I enjoyed listening to them talking about it. But they be talking about who was White and who was Black and someone they didn't know until they went there, Halifax. But I said, "Well, I guess that's in most of the families." So that was all right too. I said, we are here and in the land of the living, tell you. They made us so we are proud to be here. One of those things. | 39:49 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When you were growing up, you said that your sisters had different kinds of hair. Did you do each other's hair when you were growing up? | 41:25 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah. Yes we did. We did each other's hair and enjoyed it. In fact, we even did it before we even took the course up. We did each other's hair, because the older sisters would do the younger ones' hair, one of those. And we used the straightening combs and we didn't have the stoves. They have now I have in the shop. We had to put them over, had to heat them in the wood stove over the lamps with the globe to it. Just put it across there some kind of way and heat it up like that. So I guess that was fun too. | 41:34 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, we definitely had to—everybody in our family, they wanted to have everybody's hair be looking good. I guess everybody wanted to have it look like our mother's hair, but it didn't look like Mother's hair because Mother didn't, Mama didn't have to put no hot comb or anything on her hair. Not none whatsoever. Just had that long pretty hair. And it was three girls. But my mama had hair more like the Indian than the other ones. They had nice hair, soft hair. But my mother had a better grape than any other. | 42:11 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What holidays did your family celebrate when you were growing up? | 42:57 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh, holidays. All holidays. And it was fun celebrating Christmas, Easter, 4th of July. Well, 4th of July, you would be in the fields. Didn't know whether we were going to be able to leave the house to go to a ball game or whatever, picnic or go to the church outing. But we did. Papa would always let us go because mama would always fix that basket for her girls and her two boys, the one boy because I couldn't remember the older one. And so we always enjoyed the holidays. | 43:05 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And at Christmastime, oh, it was great. It was really wonderful at Christmastime because, well, my twin sister and I, my birthday being on the 24th, we would always look for the birthday present then plus the Christmas present. And it would be there. A lot of times, we didn't get the birthday present until Christmas morning, but we always got something extra for their birthday. And then since we have grown up and had children, well, the children just don't mix our birthday with Christmas. They give us something special for birthday and then they give us something special for Christmas. | 43:52 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | But after everybody left home and then at Christmastime everybody would be coming back home and it was really nice. It was really nice. Mama would start cooking about a week ahead of time before Christmas and she would cook and then the older ones would help her cook. My twin sister and I, we never had to help out at Christmastime. We had to get the chips up. Cut the wood, help cut the wood. My brother and I and my twin sister, we had to do all that outside. And one of my sisters had to milk the cow. I never did milk a cow. But we had to keep wood there because they were doing the cooking, that cooking had to go on. | 44:42 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And so, oh, it was be plenty of food there because after everybody left, [indistinct 00:45:49] was in. One of the two sisters was in New York and one was in Connecticut and one was in Baltimore. And they all would come home at Christmastime. They would come home at Christmastime, most of, well maybe during the summer they would come, but not as often as they would at Christmastime so it was great. And they would bring my twin sister and I clothes and they didn't never bring nothing that was different. They would bring us dresses alike. Nobody gave us dresses that were alike. They would always be alike. | 45:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Where did your mother get the clothes for you when you were growing up, for all these children? | 46:29 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | My auntie that lived in Connecticut, she worked for this rich family, White family in Connecticut. | 46:40 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | [indistinct 00:00:02]—and she would send boxes of clothes, and every piece she sent, she would have the name on that dress because she knew the names of all Mama's children. And that's how we got most of our clothes. And then when my oldest sister left, and she also worked for a White family in New York, and this family sent us clothes. | 0:02 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And other than that, it was maybe a store uptown, where my daddy always went to and bought clothes for us—[indistinct 00:00:44], and it was a store—[indistinct 00:00:47]—they were Jews. And they always saved up—my daddy, because they knew that he was coming in, and they knew what he wanted because he had been buying stuff off and on there too. So we always had clothes and food, and we didn't have no whole lot of stuff, but we had had a whole lot of love there, I'll tell you that. And we had change in clothes—yeah, sometimes we buy shoes too little for us and they hurt your feet and we didn't want to tell nobody, and my mama said, "you hopping, you know something's wrong—" | 0:34 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | "Yeah, feet hurt, you know?" | 1:33 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | But then we be done bought the shoes, wore the shoes then, so sometimes we had to wear the shoes out whether they hurt or not. | 1:36 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | So up until that day and to this day, I said I didn't want my children to ever wear a shoe that would hurt their feet because I didn't like it. I don't even want nothing to hurt my feet no, I really don't—but I guess that went on in most families, sometimes you would buy shoes and stuff, and you bought it because you liked it—whether it fitted or not, because you liked that shoe, and you'll come out knowing all the time the shoe was too small, but you still bought that shoe. | 1:46 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | So I guess that's the reason sometimes at our age we still have problems with our feet because we wore shoes that were too little, but that was life. Yeah, that was life. | 2:25 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did your mother ever do any public work? | 2:42 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | No, she never did any public work, she stayed at home—from the time that I could remember, and I know she didn't do it when I didn't remember, because it was too many children there, so she never did any public work—on the farm, that's all. | 2:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And your father farmed— | 3:10 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | The whole time that my mother was having children, he farmed, and she didn't have too much time to work on the farm, because just like I say, the little time she worked on the farm, maybe one of the older girls would stay with the babies. So she was just a house lady. | 3:13 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I'm wondering about some changes that might have taken place. I'm wondering about electricity, when did you first get electricity? | 3:40 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Electricity? This was when we were on the farm—well, like I said, when we moved off the one farm, but we were staying on the White man's farm. My daddy bought his farm farther down—well, when we moved there, we still didn't have no electricity but as the years went by—I don't even remember when they first run the wires down there, but oh, it was great, it seemed like it lit up the whole world—turned the light on. | 3:50 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | But it must have been in the '30s—could have been in the early '30s, as far as I can remember. But oh boy, it was something then. And then my daddy bought a radio, after then, and it was one of those tall radios and I didn't even know nothing about no television, to me it was like a television—But it was one of those tall radios, because a lot of them, they sat on the table, those round ones, but we never got one like that, we had the one that sat on the floor. And I could always remember, we were just like the Waltons, everybody would be stretched out on the floor, listening to this radio—right after we hit the lights—they turned the lights on. | 4:27 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What did you listen to on the radio? | 5:25 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Anything, whatever it was, it sounds good. Whatever, it was—the hillbillies or the Christian songs or whatever, we enjoyed it—even if they talked politics, we enjoyed it because we didn't know what they were talking about, but it was the radio, something we had never had before, so whatever they said, we listened to it—it was great, those was some wonderful days, I'll tell you, wonderful days. | 5:28 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you remember the advertising on the radio? | 6:03 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I don't remember no advertising at all, because it's been so long—I wish I could, but I don't. Yeah, I don't really don't—but it was wonderful. | 6:07 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I know you don't like to talk about politics, but I was wondering when you first voted? | 6:25 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | When I first voted—let's see, it must have been in the '40s, and I'll never will forget it because my father was sick—we had moved off the farm over on Franklin Street here in Enfield—at the moment, I can't really remember who I voted for, but it was one of the presidents, and it could have been President Roosevelt— | 6:32 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | No—maybe it was a little before then—but anyway, my daddy always told us—well see, when we first voted we thought we were going to have to say the Constitution—what was that? | 7:19 |
Rhonda Mawhood | To read the Constitution? | 7:39 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, read the Constitution. But we didn't have to do it—I really had learned it at school, but you know how things get away from you—and he always said, I never will forget it, he said, "I want you to go down and vote today, and I want you to vote Democratic, not Republican." | 7:41 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Although he was a Republican but he didn't want us—and the reason he said he that he didn't want us to vote Republican, he said, "It's going to be better for y'all, as the days go by, as the years go by, it's going to be better for y'all and your children, and that's the reason I want y'all to vote Democrat." | 8:02 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | But at that time I didn't understand it, because I thought maybe he wanted us to be what he was, but he didn't, because he said things are going to get better. | 8:29 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Was this shortly before your father died? | 8:41 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes, shortly before he died. My daddy died in '65—yeah, so I've been voting ever since, I don't miss out on none of it. Yeah, I enjoy it. | 8:45 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And did your husband also vote? | 9:14 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | No. No he did not, he didn't vote—but just like I say, I didn't push him to do things that he didn't want to do, if he didn't want to—it wasn't his religion or anything, but he just didn't vote, so I didn't bother about pushing him, "do what you want to do—" | 9:15 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I knew that I was happy that our daddy taught us to vote. I was happy for that—but he didn't bother with it. | 9:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I was wondering, Mrs. Williams, if you had to give advice to young people today, people my age, and younger—because you have so much experience, what would you tell us about life? | 9:57 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I would say, life isn't easy, and do your best to make the best out of it, because it's rough out there. Very, very rough. And whatever's out here for y'all to get, get it, because we couldn't get it, because it wasn't there for us to get. But go to it and get whatever you can because as long as you live, things are going to get better and better for you. And if it's put in your lap, accept it, because you'll need every bit of it. | 10:17 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And God will take care of you and bless you, for everything that you will do. That's my testimony for all you young folks. | 11:05 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Thank you. | 11:14 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And put God before anything. Put God in your life first, because you will get it—I do believe in it, I do that—yes. And I believe you are going to be blessed, have been blessed, and still being blessed—yeah, I really do. | 11:16 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Thank you very much. | 11:43 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes, you're perfectly welcome. Yes, indeed. So go for it! | 11:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I will. | 11:44 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | [indistinct 00:11:51]. | 11:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Before we finish up, I'd like to ask you just a few little questions, like the name of your parents and so forth. There are some forms that I have to fill in. | 11:55 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh, okay. | 12:05 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Is that okay? | 12:05 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Fine. That's fine. | 12:05 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Great—so a little bit about you and then I'll ask about your family. So your last name is spelled, M-C? Okay, just wanted to make sure. | 12:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And do you have a middle name? | 12:21 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Louise. | 12:28 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And your first name is A-D-A? | 12:32 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | A-D-A. | 12:33 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. And what was your maiden name? | 12:34 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Whitaker. | 12:39 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And you live on Whitaker street. | 12:42 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, how about that? Yes— | 12:42 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So, your mailing address— | 12:49 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | 424. | 12:50 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Whitaker? | 12:50 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Mm-hmm [affirmative]. | 12:50 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And what is your zip, Mrs. McWilliams? | 12:50 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | 27823. | 12:50 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And your telephone number? | 12:50 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | 445-3729. | 13:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And when your name appears on the tape, on the cassette, how do you want to be known? As— | 13:18 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Ada McWilliams. | 13:26 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And your date of birth is December 24th— | 13:38 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. '22. | 13:39 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay, and where were you actually born? | 13:44 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Halifax County. | 13:48 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay, and what was your husband's name? | 13:48 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Napoleon. | 13:56 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And when was your husband born? | 14:04 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | November 13th, 1916. | 14:05 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And he passed in 1975? | 14:06 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. | 14:14 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And where was he born? | 14:17 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Halifax County. | 14:18 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And he was a barber? | 14:23 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. | 14:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Can you tell me your mother's name please? | 14:29 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Eliza Mason Whitaker. | 14:30 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And was Mason her maiden name? | 14:33 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. | 14:41 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And do you know about when your mother was born? | 14:45 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | September the 10th—now the year, I can't remember right offhand, but she was born September the 10th. | 14:47 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you remember what year she passed? | 14:56 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, in '49. | 14:56 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And you told me she was 65 when she passed? | 14:56 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Right. | 14:56 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So she was born around—1884— | 15:05 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | It was '84—something like that, somewhere in that neighborhood. | 15:13 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. And where was she born? | 15:22 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Halifax County. | 15:23 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And for her occupation? | 15:28 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Just a housewife. | 15:31 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. And what was your father's name? | 15:31 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Horace Whitaker. | 15:42 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And do you know when your father was born? | 15:51 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | In February, let's see—February the 2nd, I believe. What year? I don't remember the year. | 15:55 |
Rhonda Mawhood | He passed in 1965? | 16:08 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | No, Papa passed—let's see, it was in the '60s—let's see—'65. Oh yeah, '65. | 16:11 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And he was born in Halifax county? | 16:27 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. | 16:27 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And he was a farmer? | 16:33 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. | 16:34 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Could you tell me the names of your sisters and brothers? | 16:34 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. The names of all of them? | 16:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Sure. | 16:46 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Okay, start at my oldest sister, her name is Netty Jacobs. My brother's name is Forest Whitaker. | 16:46 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Forest? | 17:01 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Forest. | 17:01 |
Rhonda Mawhood | There's an actor now named Forest Whitaker. | 17:04 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, I've seen it on television somewhere—and my next sister was named Mary Ellen Whitaker Johnson. And the next sister was Isabelle Whitaker Edwards. And the next sister, Naomi Whitaker. Yeah, Naomi Whitaker. She hasn't been married. | 17:06 |
Rhonda Mawhood | She never married? | 17:43 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, she did marry, at an early age—what was Naomi's name—because that was back when I could not—Brown, uh huh—Brown. | 17:45 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And the next sister was Ruby Whitaker Lawrence. And the next sister, Virginia Whitaker. She never married. | 18:01 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you ever ask her why she never married? | 18:18 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | She said nobody never asked her. | 18:21 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh— | 18:29 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | That's what she would always say. And my other sister following her: Jane Whitaker, she never married, and she said nobody never asked her, so she didn't get married either. | 18:29 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And were they two of the other beauticians in the— | 18:41 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | No, they worked at the factories—yeah, they worked at factories. And then my brother, Horace Whitaker Jr. And next one, Hazel Whitaker Qualls. | 18:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How do you spell her last name, please? | 19:10 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Q-U-A-L-L-S. | 19:10 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Q-U-A-L-L-S. | 19:10 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And then my name. | 19:11 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So you and Hazel are the last ones? | 19:11 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. | 19:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. And could you tell me the names and the dates of birth of your children, please? | 19:25 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes, the oldest one, Carl McWilliams, C-A-R-L, and he was born March 17th, '51. And Napoleon Junior, February 2nd, '54. | 19:33 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Same date as his father? | 19:57 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah. | 20:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay, and they were both born in Enfield? | 20:01 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | In Enfield. The baby boy was born right here at this house. | 20:07 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Really? | 20:11 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah. | 20:11 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And Carl, where was he born? | 20:11 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | He was born across the track, over on Branch Street. | 20:17 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you have a doctor or a midwife? | 20:23 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | A doctor. The doctor stayed with me both times—at night, because I didn't go to the hospital. | 20:26 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I'm wondering, when you were growing up, when someone in your family got sick, what did you do then? | 20:37 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well, we had a doctor to go to then, at that time it was a hospital here, in Enfield. And my oldest sister was one of the head nurses there, Netty. And this hospital was over on Franklin Street— | 20:43 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Dr. Ducasett—And when he left here, he went to Smithfield and worked with Dr. Furlong. | 20:57 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you know why Dr. Ducasett left here? | 21:06 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | No. I don't know—I really can't get it together. But they say—I don't know whether he had White patients or what—it was something about that, but I can't get that together. So I'm afraid to say— | 21:08 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | But it was something about—well there wasn't anything here, no other hospital here but the Black hospital at that time, and it could have been because of working on White patients, but I'm not sure—it was something close to that, but I'm not sure about it—listen, I was sort of small at that time, and I do believe that it could have been that—but I can't say for sure. | 21:33 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Is your sister, Netty, still living? | 22:06 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. 90 years old. | 22:08 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Goodness. | 22:09 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And very active. Yeah, she has had a couple of falls—the Sunday that the storm had been through here, a few weeks ago. She had a fall right in the house and we had to take her to the hospital and she had 14 stitches put up here, and she bit her lip—but other than that, she's in good health. She's in better health than I am and very independent—so I think she's doing very well. And there's three of them that lives over on Franklin Street in the home house together. She's 90 and the other one is 83 and the other one is 75, and so she's more active than the one that's under her. | 22:14 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | She get out and go to service every Sunday morning, and on Thursday nights—she's a Jehovah Witness, on Tuesdays, she goes to meetings and Wednesdays she goes out in the field working, walking here and there, and then on Thursday night she goes to service—but for the last three weeks she hadn't been able to go because we wouldn't let her go. We want her to stay home and get well. So Sunday was her first Sunday going out, so she called over here, this was Thursday night, she said, "Well I'm going to service tonight, is it okay?" | 23:11 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | So I said, "Well, Nettie, if you feel up to it, go ahead, but if you don't, you got plenty of time, it's going to be dark out there, because they have to go out in the country for service, and I said, "If you don't feel up to it, just don't worry about it." So she said, "Okay." So then about five minutes after that she called me back, she said, "I don't think I'll go." I said, "Well, up to you—" | 23:56 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | So she didn't go. So Sunday she did go to service and she did okay. But all of them sort of look to me because I'm the youngest one here—there's three of them over there, and I call them the Golden Girls, and they're sweet, I have to get on them every once in a while, but they're sweet and they like the name of being the Golden Girls. And so whatever they want to know, if they can do it—they always call me and ask me. | 24:25 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And when they have to go to the doctor, I have to keep up with the appointments, and I'll get my cousin—because I don't drive, or I'll get one of my girlfriends to take them to the doctor. And so that's the way we work things out. And they're fine until they think I'm going somewhere. If I'm going out of town to visit my twin sister—oh, they want me to go and then they don't want me to go. And when I go over there, they'll put up a front, crying— | 25:05 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Say, "If y'all don't quit this, I'm going to scream louder than y'all screaming—" and then they'll say, "Oh, we just kidding, we want you to go!" And then, "Oh no, we don't want you to go, because you're going to stay too long!" And I don't stay too long because I'm not satisfied—because for the last two times that I have gone to visit my twin sister, something would happen—one of my sisters, she fell and she had to go in the hospital, and I said, "Y'all are well right and good until I leave home, then y'all just act up—" | 25:35 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | But they just look forward to me being here—as long as I'm over here in this house and can talk on the phone to them, fine. And if they need me over there I'll go there. And my cousin, little Marie Smith, she helps me out so much with them. And since my son has been back here from California, he is wonderful, a wonderful help. And when he gets depressed and needs some sugar, he goes over there and he get all the sugar, because they just kiss on him all the time. And his wife said, "Go to your aunts now—" | 26:11 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | They just love him to death. And if they get a little paper and they don't know what it means; I have to call Brother—because that's what we called him, "I have to call Brother, so he can see what this paper's all about." And he looks after all of that stuff for me and them. | 26:47 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you think your sisters would be interested in being interviewed for this project? | 27:05 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Who? | 27:05 |
Rhonda Mawhood | The sisters who live together? | 27:05 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I don't know, because I'm afraid that they would get a little nervous. Yeah—I'm afraid that they would get a little nervous, so I wouldn't want to send anybody over there to get them excited—so I reckon we better leave that alone. | 27:10 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Sounds like you have a nice family. | 27:31 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | It is a beautiful family. It is beautiful—I said, we were so blessed, because God kept us all here up until '88—the brother left us in '75, the same year my husband did, and then everybody just stayed here until '88, and we were just so blessed—it was a pill to swallow, but we still thought about how we were just so blessed—because they had gotten up in age when they left us—but that was the way God fixed it, he just took three of them in one year. | 27:33 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | So you don't question him, I tell you—definitely not. So we learned to deal with it and we have always stuck together because this is what Mom and Pop always said, that they wanted us to stick together, and this is what we have done. | 28:13 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And when my twin sister comes—well she always drives down, and so we do a lot of running around for them and taking them to the grocery store and different places, getting stuff like that. So that's the way we got along, we have always got along. Yeah—if we have an argument, it don't last no time, so do what you have to do and go and do it, and be pleased—yeah. Start kissing on each other then—so we get along. Beautifully—yeah, get along beautifully. So we enjoy each other. Yeah, really enjoy—it's just great. | 28:30 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Good. I was asking you about your children, do you have any grandchildren? | 29:21 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. | 29:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How many? | 29:25 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I have three grandchildren. And one great-grandchild. | 29:25 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Really? | 29:30 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. | 29:30 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How old is your great-grandchild? | 29:30 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Two years old. | 29:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh wow— | 29:37 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | That's her picture right there— | 29:38 |
Rhonda Mawhood | The little cutie, in the photo up there? | 29:39 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah—yes indeed. She's a little angel too. | 29:40 |
Rhonda Mawhood | She is— | 29:46 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | She doesn't know me that well but because she lives in Maryland—And I don't see her, you know that often. But I catches up with her. Yeah, I just make her like me anyway—yes. Well, like I said, she doesn't really know me that well, because they don't come down that often, but when I do see her, we get along because I just make her love me anyway. | 29:47 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Her mother lives in Maryland, but my other two grandchildren lives here—that's my youngest son's children—a boy and a girl—and when they first came from California, it took a little while for them to get adjusted here, but they're doing great now. They were born out there and so it made a difference—things weren't like here like it was out there— | 30:22 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | So just a little bit different, but they have learned to adjust themselves and they're doing fine. Yeah, doing great. | 30:49 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So I'd like to list the places you've lived, you've lived in this area for most of your life? | 31:02 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. | 31:07 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. Would you say Enfield? | 31:10 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. Enfield. | 31:11 |
Rhonda Mawhood | But sometimes in the country, and sometimes in the town? | 31:15 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well, see I stayed in the country up until I got married. | 31:18 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So, That's in 1945, I think you told me? | 31:25 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. | 31:25 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And then in the town? | 31:42 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | No, I think I told you I got married in '47. | 31:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | '47. | 31:45 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah. And I have been living right here in town, ever since, I lived on Branch Street, and then in '54, I moved here, and I've been here ever since. | 31:46 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And the first school you went to was the Enfield Graded school? | 32:05 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Uh huh, Enfield Graded School. | 32:22 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And when were you there? | 32:22 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | In the '30s. | 32:22 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. And then you went to— | 32:22 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Brick High School. | 32:22 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And what year did you finish, 1942? | 32:22 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | '42. | 32:22 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And then you went to DeShazors— | 32:22 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | In '43. | 32:22 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And how long was your course at DeShazors? | 32:22 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Six months. | 32:22 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. So the name of your first beauty shop was Lafayette? | 33:46 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Lafayette. | 33:53 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Lafayette Beauty Parlor, or Lafayette? | 33:54 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Huh? | 33:54 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Was it Lafayette Beauty Parlor? | 33:56 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Lafayette Beauty Shop. | 33:58 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And you were there from '44 or '45? | 34:06 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | No, I did my previous work at Lillie Cofield's Beauty Shop. I did that for about a year—about a year and a half, yeah. | 34:14 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Cofield also has funeral homes, don't they? | 34:39 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. | 34:41 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Was her beauty shop called Lillie's, or— | 34:46 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, Lillie's Beauty Shop. | 34:51 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay, and then after Lafayette Beauty shop, where did you work? | 35:00 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | When I left Lilli-Belle, Lillie's Beauty Shop, that's when I went into my own business, and it was named Lafayette Beauty Shop. | 35:06 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And then after that you came here? | 35:15 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, and this is Ada's Beauty Shop. | 35:17 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. And you've been here since the '50s? | 35:18 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes, I moved here in '54. | 35:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Now there's a section here to list offices you've held, and you told me you're the church nurse? | 35:50 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. | 35:58 |
Rhonda Mawhood | At First Baptist? | 35:58 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes. | 35:58 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And you told me you were the— | 36:10 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | President of the Young Women Progressive Club, that's at First Baptist also. And I'm Treasurer of the Enfield Beautician Club. | 36:13 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How many members do you have of that club? | 36:34 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well, we have a list of 12 or 13, but we don't see that many all the time. Sometimes we see about eight or nine, something like that. And we meet at different houses, or different shops, whatever. | 36:41 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How often do you meet? | 37:01 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Once a month. Every Monday after the third Sunday. So we are on vacation this month—well, July and August, because we have already had our meeting for this month. We had that last Monday. | 37:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How long has the club been in existence? | 37:19 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Since '49. And I have been the Treasurer since '49. | 37:21 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What kinds of things would you do together in the club? | 37:29 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well, we have our meetings, and we pay our dues—we pay like $65 a year, and you can break it down to whatever you want to—we have church programs once a year, we have one program—and we go to church together, every second Sunday in April, each year. And we leave a donation of $25 to the church. | 37:32 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And we go to churches here in Enfield, and maybe in [indistinct 00:38:22]—we have members from [indistinct 00:38:23] also, and sometimes we go to church there. But we mostly go to churches here in Enfield. | 38:14 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And then we usually have a fashion show, we don't have one every year, maybe about every one every other year, and we do that in order to raise money for the convention—and we have to pay different fees for convention. | 38:30 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And the things like the fashion show and the church programs, have you been doing that for as long as the club has been in existence? | 38:53 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes, we have been doing that. And we have been on trips also, back in the years we used to go to the beach, but we haven't done that in a long time— | 38:59 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Because it has been just us—the people that are at my age—because everybody has gotten up there in the age, until, maybe the last three or four years we have some younger beauticians, and so that's the reason we didn't bother by going to the beach after we got up in the age— | 39:12 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | So they're young people, they want to be a little different from things, that they want to have—and we do let them do that, whatever they want to do. | 39:33 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | So they haven't said anything about going to the beach, and back in the years, we gave dances and we had little parties, but they haven't said anything about it now, because we don't do that anymore, but maybe the younger people, once they get the swing of it, they will want to do the same thing we did when we were younger. | 39:46 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When you used to go to the beach, would beauticians bring their families with them? | 40:10 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, we would chart a bus, and we would go on the bus and we could carry our families with us if we wanted to, and if they didn't, if they didn't want to go, we would just get everybody who wanted to go to the beach—and we would have a lot of women and maybe men, or whatever, they would pay a certain fee to get on the bus and go. | 40:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What day of the week would you go to the beach? | 40:42 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well we would mostly go on Mondays, because the beauticians wouldn't have to work on Mondays—the shops would be closed. | 40:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And which beach would you go to? | 40:56 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I don't know whether you ever remember the Chawan Beach? Well it's near [indistinct 00:41:01], somewhere down in that area—we always would go there. | 40:56 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I've heard of the Chawan beach, but I'm not sure how you spell it. | 41:10 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | It's C-H-A-W-A-N. | 41:13 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I forgot to ask you this earlier, if you're not too tired could I ask it? | 41:21 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Go ahead. | 41:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you ever know any male beauticians, or male hairdressers? | 41:25 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yes—I knew one that was in school with me, but don't ask me the name because the name has gone from me—and now we have one here, we have Larry Bobbit, he has a shop downtown, and he does hair part-time, because his wife runs the beauty shop, but he does hair part-time himself, because he has another job. And he is really the only one that's here in Enfield that I know of. | 41:33 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | No it's not—there is another one, Sport's beauty shop, that's up on Polk Street, right down the street from Cofield's Funeral Home, and he's a member of our club. He's the only man—male that we have in our club. And he follows everywhere we go and we follow him. | 42:17 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And how old of a man is he? | 42:39 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh, he's in his late forties. | 42:41 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And when you had your shop in the '40s and '50s, did men ever come into the shop? | 42:47 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Very seldom—seemed like it was something that was strange to see one coming into the shop. Sometimes they would come and ask you to give them a shampoo or something like that, but that wasn't often. It was very strange—yeah—and what I mean by strange, is that you just didn't see them coming in there. They would come and bring the wives, but then they would go about their business. | 42:55 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you ever get White women coming into the shop? | 43:20 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | No, I never had any White customers. They would always tell me that they would want me to cut their hair, or they would ask me, "what about putting a perm in my hair?" | 43:22 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I'm sorry, I didn't learn that in school—and we would laugh it off, but I have never ever fixed a White person's hair—this was before I took the course up, I had shampooed hair, and pin curled it—but other than doing the hair in the shop, I never did it. And pin curls—I would twist it up, and stick a barber pin in it, and they would have some curls. | 43:35 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Who did you do that to? | 44:05 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Well the girl that lived next door to me, I would do her hair—well at that time I never thought about that I was going to be a beautician, I always was thinking I wanted to be a nurse—see we didn't have no dryers to dry the hair with, so she would just keep the pin curls in there and let it dry on its own. | 44:07 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And this girl was your friend? | 44:29 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, she was the one that I was saying lived next door to us, and I never thought about it—she was White—I just always thought she was Black—Although her skin was White, but that was just the way we were—taught each other. | 44:35 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Yeah— | 44:50 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | We were real good friends. And I still have some good White friends. Yeah, the girl who met me this morning while I was uptown, and she walked behind me and hugged me to death, because she lives out here in the country, but she works here in town and she was working at a hardware store—she still works at a hardware store, but she has changed hardware stores, and I don't go to that one she works at now because it's a little out of my reach. | 44:54 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | But I used to go to the one she first started working at—I would go in there and we would just talk and talk, and I'd forget I was supposed to come home, we just always found something to talk about, because she lives on the farm now, and we would talk about when I was living on the farm. | 45:18 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | And she walked up behind me this morning, she just grabbed me and hugged me, and I looked around, and I said, "oh Marie! I didn't seen you! I haven't seen in so long!" We hugged and had a lot of fun, walked on down the street together—we had a lot of fun. | 45:35 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, I have a lot of White friends. My children always tell me, "You got more White friends than anybody I have ever heard talk of." | 45:47 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I said, "Well what can you say?" | 45:55 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | To me it still seems like color's just a skin deep thing—and I think just as much of them as I do a Black person—I do. That's the way I am, always been like that. Yeah, always—I just think the world of them. | 46:00 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I had a little White friend—he used to teach at middle school, he was Jim Thorpe, and I took him for my child. | 46:18 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Jim Thorpe? | 46:25 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Did you know Jim Thorpe? | 46:28 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I know that there was an athlete named Jim Thorpe. | 46:30 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | No, this is—oh yeah, it is—but this is Jim Thorpe that lives in Roanoke Rapids. His daddy is a real estate guy, and he taught— | 46:37 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | High school up here, well the school was integrated, so the young crowd, the fight didn't mean no more to them, the Black. So Jim, well he just thought a lot of my son because he was pretty smart and they say what they wanted to say to each other. And so for Jim, whatever brother was in the play, whatever, he would always come and pick brother up and take him to the place or whatever was at the school. Anyway, he started calling me Mom and he still calls me Mom. He's not even up here at the school no more. | 0:02 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | He went out in California, but he was in San Francisco, because my son was in—no, Jim was at Los Angeles, my son was in San Francisco. And he went out there to visit my son's family, and he just learned to love them all. And oh, he just think the world of me. But somehow, Jim got on the wrong track and he was a little alcoholic. And my heart went out for him because I said well, I know this is something don't have to happen to him. But he got his act together. He got it together. So he's doing real good. He's teaching up in Emporium now and he's staying at home. | 0:56 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, Emporium. | 1:42 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah. | 1:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. | 1:43 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | He's teaching in Emporium. And he comes by to see me every once in a while and he just meet me out there, if I'm in the yard, he just hug me and we just hug each other. And let's see, Jim must be in his late forties, or early fifties, or something like that. So we had a lot of fun. I remember back in the years when he always liked to go to Elizabeth City for the other program they had down there. And one year, Millie Jackson was there in person. And he thought the world of Millie Jackson, he just loved her songs. And both of my children had left home, they had gone, brother was out in California and Coral was in D.C. And so he said, "Mom, would you like to ride with me to Elizabeth City?" So I said, "Sure." We left here one afternoon, maybe about this time, and we went to Elizabeth City and heard Millie Jackson. It was in October, I believe, and they had homecoming, but we didn't get down there time enough for the football game, but we did get there in time enough to hear Millie Jackson. | 1:44 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh, it was something to me, because I've always heard talk of Millie Jackson, but I never heard her sing in person, and I just thought I had done something then. So we went and heard Millie Jackson, and came on back home, and I just enjoy. He still calls me Mom. He's a wonderful person. I just take him for my child. And of course, Coral and brother, they fuss with him sometimes, say, "Why you think my mama is your mama? My mama is not White, she is a Black woman." That's what he'll say, "Y'all don't tell me that, please. Color is nothing but skin deep." And he said, "And I just love your mama to death." They can worry him to death, but they just laugh at him about it, so we have fun. We have lot of fun. And I love for somebody call me Mom. I feel like I'm doing something good for them and I feel like they lack what I'm doing for them. | 3:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I'm also thinking about we have a section on this form to list the associations, the organizations you're a member of. So I have the North Carolina State Cosmetologist Association, and the National Beauty Culturists' League, and the Enfield Beauticians Club. Are there any others, ma'am? | 4:13 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | I believe that's all. | 4:33 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Are you a member of the NAACP, by any chance? | 4:36 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | No. I have been once upon a time, but I'm not a member now. But I do what I can to support them, all I can. Everything I can. | 4:39 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you remember when approximately you were a member of the NAACP? | 4:49 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Oh, it was maybe back in the early '60s. | 4:55 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Are there any other hobbies or activities that you'd like me to list here, by any—? | 4:59 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | When I was a young girl, I loved to dance. That was a hobby. And I played basketball. I guess that was about the only two. I like to go to football games, but I don't know that much about it. But I always go with somebody that can tell me what's happening. | 5:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When you played basketball, was that on a high school team? | 5:39 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, on a high school team. My twin sister and I played ball. | 5:46 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You must have driven the other team crazy, seeing the same girl. | 5:51 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Yeah, we did. They would be standing up there, what's wrong with my eyes? I'm seeing double here. They'll tell you, it was something, I tell you. | 5:53 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And is there a saying that you use a lot, or a quote, or a favorite Bible verse or hymn that you would like me to write down here as well? | 6:13 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | My hymn is Amazing Grace. | 6:26 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh. | 6:30 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Amazing Grace and Precious Lord. And a verse is the 23rd Psalm. | 6:30 |
Rhonda Mawhood | My grandmother used to sing Amazing Grace. | 6:48 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Huh? | 6:48 |
Rhonda Mawhood | My grandmother sings it. | 6:50 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | [indistinct 00:06:53]. Oh, that's nice. I just love it to death. And sometimes they sings it a little different from what they did back in the older days now, and it's so pretty. But I said Lord, I love it, and I wished I could sing, but I can't sing. We always used to tell Mama that before she left us, we said, "Mama, we don't know why you didn't have no children that could sing. You don't have the first child that can sing." | 6:52 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did your mother sing? | 7:19 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Nope. | 7:21 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, well. | 7:22 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | So we can understand. My daddy didn't either. Nope, but I always loved good singing. | 7:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I have to ask you to look at a form here, Ms. Williams. In order for us to be able to put this tape in the library so that students and teachers can use it, we need to get your permission. | 7:35 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Okay. | 7:52 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Hello? | 7:52 |
Ada Whitaker McWilliams | Okay. | 7:52 |
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