Elvenia Russel interview recording, 1993 June 23
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, neighborhood where you grew up when you were growing up? | 0:01 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Sort of. I guess. I grew up down this road right here where you go into a place they call [indistinct 00:00:15] | 0:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. That's in Tillery? | 0:12 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Mm-hmm. | 0:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 0:12 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | And that's where my parents lived for—I don't know how many years, but anyway I grew up and they moved when I was about six, to [indistinct 00:00:31] and then they moved to another place. It's still in Tillery, it's just across, and they definitely had their farm there. | 0:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | They were farmers? | 0:41 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Mm-hmm. | 0:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of crops did they farm? | 0:42 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Corn, peanuts, cotton, soybean, cane. | 0:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, wow. | 0:53 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah. Tobacco. | 0:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | Gosh. | 0:55 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | That's about all. And gardening, of course they had their garden. | 0:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did they own their own land or did they work for other people? | 1:01 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, first they owned their own land. No, first, they were working for somebody else, that was with this farm. Then they bought them a farm over there and moved to a place called Rainbow. | 1:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Rainbow? | 1:18 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Mm-hmm. | 1:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 1:24 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | And that's where they bought them a home and built them a house over there. | 1:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | When you were a little girl, did you have to help out on the farm? | 1:26 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yes. | 1:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of chores did you have to do? | 1:32 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | What kind of work I had to do? | 1:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 1:33 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I do a little bit of all of it on the farm. I had to plow, chop, do it all just like the men did. | 1:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | How many brothers and sisters do you have? | 1:42 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I had four brothers and two sisters, but we wasn't living together. They live with their mother and father, but I was a—I called it an offspring, I guess that's what you call it. My grandparents raised me. | 1:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Do you have any remembrances of your grandparents? Anything they told you that you'd like to share? | 2:10 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Had any what? | 2:19 |
Sonya Ramsey | Remembrances of your grandparents. Any special things they taught you that you'd like to share? | 2:20 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No. They didn't tell me nothing. | 2:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did they give you any advice or anything? | 2:25 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | They talked to me and told me about different things and how things would be in life growing up. | 2:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of things did they teach you? | 2:43 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I don't know. It's been so long. They would talk about how the time would get, and what to expect when raising—coming up in life and like that. It's been so long I can't hardly [indistinct 00:03:04] it. | 2:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did you and your friends do for fun after your chores were done? | 3:10 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | What? | 3:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why did you and your friends do for fun after your chores were done? | 3:12 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, we just play somewhere and sit down somewhere in the cool and talk. | 3:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of games did you play? | 3:18 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | We play different kinds of games. We play hopscotch, jumping rope, running, playing ball. Things like that. | 3:19 |
Sonya Ramsey | Who were some of the important people to you in your neighborhood that you looked up to? | 3:35 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, especially the old people. | 3:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why was that? | 3:48 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Huh? | 3:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why was that? | 3:48 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I don't know, I always liked the old people better than I did the young— | 3:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you think they were nicer? | 3:56 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yes. And it seemed like things they would talk to and tell me about, seems like I got more interest in that than I did with the young people. | 3:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have any special older person in your life that you remember? | 4:09 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Oh, I did remember an old lady called Anna Johnson, and [indistinct 00:04:24] I used to stick around them a lot and talked to them. | 4:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | And you said you grew up with your grandmother? | 4:28 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | And grandfather. | 4:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | And grandfather? | 4:32 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Mm-hmm. | 4:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were there any other relatives living near you? | 4:33 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, they raised another child. It was my grandfather's sisters son and so that's the way that went like that. He wasn't old as I was so he went to school, got a chance to go to school in a way more than I did. | 4:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. So it was [indistinct 00:05:04] | 5:00 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah. So we went as sister and brother. | 5:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Who made the decisions in your grandparents household about—Who made the decisions about money and things like that in your grandparents household? | 5:07 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Both of them together. Yeah. | 5:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | And were they both farmers or did you just— | 5:25 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah, farmers. Yeah, they did. | 5:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | And you said y'all had your own garden? | 5:30 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah. | 5:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of things—Vegetables did you grow in your garden? | 5:34 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well they had cabbage, butter beans, white potatoes, you name it, that's it. Like everything in a garden. Then they gave me a chance by—I don't know, I've always been a peculiar child. I had me a little garden all by myself. | 5:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | All by yourself? Okay. What things did you grow? | 5:53 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, I had string beans, cabbages, butter beans, carrots, okras, you name it. | 5:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did that take a lot of time for you to do it? | 6:11 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No. | 6:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 6:14 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No, because I get up early in the morning, go out there and work it half of the time. | 6:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said your brother got to go to school more than you did? | 6:24 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Mm-hmm. Because I had to work on the farm, mostly. My granddaddy was a farmer and then he worked—Him and another old man digging wells. Then he would come by and tell me, "Tomorrow I want yo to do such- and-such a thing, plow or break some land or whatever." Until I go and say, "I can't get this pump started." Sometimes I would cry. | 6:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, because of the work? | 6:59 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Nah, I was determined to go to school. What I was determined to go for was a nurse. | 7:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Why did you want to be a nurse? | 7:09 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I don't know. That was my whole determine, was going to be a nurse. | 7:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever see—Did a nurse help you once when you were younger or something? Is that where you got the idea? | 7:17 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, I used to go around and I see different people, how they were and all. And I was just determined I just wanted to be a nurse. | 7:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was your first school that you went to? | 7:34 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Chestnut Grove just down the road. | 7:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you have any memory of your teachers there? | 7:40 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I know some of the teachers, Emma Warren, Sally Taylor and Linelle Clark. I forgot my [indistinct 00:08:01] name but he was a Clark too. He was the principal of the school. | 7:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your teachers live in the same town as you did or they live other places? | 8:06 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | They lived in Scotland Neck, some of them did and some of them lived right down the road in a house and they had to walk back and forth to school. | 8:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was your favorite subjects? Do you know your favorite subjects? | 8:18 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, no. I like geography and arithmetic and different things like that. | 8:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. How did the teachers punish their students? | 8:33 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, they would make them stay in at either 12:00 or either the first period. They made them stay in or in the corner or something like that. They would whop them sometimes. Then they would get them a paddle and paddle them in the hand or they would stand in a corner on one foot for about an hour or two— | 8:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | Stand on one foot? [indistinct 00:08:59] Is that right? | 8:58 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | When they get a chair they slip. They cheated, they'll put their foot down sometimes til they think they're looking at them, then they hop back up. | 8:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you remember if your teachers ever played favorites with the students or anything like that? | 9:13 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah, they get out and play ball and games just like we did. | 9:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, they did? Okay. | 9:19 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Running and ripping. They played ball too, jump rope. | 9:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did the teachers ever do anything outside of teaching for the children and things like that? | 9:31 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, they'd make different posters and put on the wall. Pictures and things like that. | 9:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | How long did you go to that? | 9:45 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, that's as far as I ever went to that one. I went to the seventh grade and I got sick, and I didn't have to stop. So I'm so sorry now. I wished I had listened to this Clark lady and her husband. They begged me to come back, but I had done missed a term and I thought it was too late. | 9:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | That'd be hard to catch up. | 10:07 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Right. So I had a bad leg and my right leg got bad, and I had to go to the hospital and I stayed there about 10 days I guess. | 10:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, you had to go to the hospital? | 10:27 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Old hospital in Roanoke Rapids. | 10:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was that a Black hospital or a White hospital? | 10:27 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | It was both. | 10:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Both? They had both Black and White? | 10:28 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Mm-hmm. Right. | 10:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did they treat their Black patients? | 10:30 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well it seemed like to me—it's been so long, it was in 1940, I think they treated them all— | 10:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | [indistinct 00:10:37]. And you stayed there for 10 days? | 10:36 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | 10 days. | 10:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you scared? | 10:36 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, no. The only thing that scared me was I was scared they might come in and talk about they might have to go to cutting. | 10:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. You didn't have to have surgery or anything? | 10:51 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No, they didn't give me no surgery. They just kept dressing it and keep it up, so finally it would heal up. | 10:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | After you got well, what did you do after that? | 11:06 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I still worked on the farm, and then I went to a place right back of the house called Royal Park Nursing Home, and I used to walk from my house, across the swamp, they called it. And I worked some days over there. | 11:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did you do there at the nursing home? | 11:27 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, I go in there some days. I go in in the morning time. I clean up and then if there was a patient to have a bath, I washed him up, put his clothes on. And then, from that I just went from different things, I washed some, clean and cook. Did it all. | 11:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Are you still living with your grandparents at that time? | 11:53 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Mm-hmm. Yes, I was, so then finally I got married in 1944. And I still was with them for a while, because they were old and had got sickly. | 11:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | You got married in 1944? That was during the war. How did that affect your family? | 12:11 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah. It didn't bother them so much right at that time. | 12:19 |
Sonya Ramsey | You didn't know anybody that had to go away to war? | 12:22 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No. It sure didn't. So I just stay right there for a while til finally I got me a place to go. | 12:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you meet your husband? | 12:33 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, I met him, they call across the water on [indistinct 00:12:42], how they call it, Northampton County. I was over there with my aunt. Went over like you go visit, like that. That's where I met him. | 12:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did you notice about him when you met him? | 12:58 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Huh? | 12:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did you notice about him when you met him? | 13:04 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | What did I know about him? | 13:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did you notice about him? | 13:04 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | When I first met him, it didn't faze me. I just went on, and so finally he came over to this side with my aunt. And so then we set down and talked. So then he kept on and then after a while, they moved over on this side. He worked for a log wood man. | 13:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, he worked for a logging—okay. | 13:27 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | So then, I got to see him more then. Then after that me and him just decided to get married. | 13:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. What was your wedding like? What kind of wedding did you have? | 13:44 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I didn't have a wedding dress. We only went to the Justice of the Peace to get married. I didn't never want no wedding. | 13:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why not? | 13:54 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I don't know. I just didn't want one. | 13:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Like a big ceremony? | 13:54 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No. I didn't want to have all that big ceremony to stay together, what I always say, about 15 to 20 minutes. | 14:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. You said after you were married you still lived with your grandparents and they were ill at the time? | 14:09 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Uh-huh. | 14:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | And then you moved into your own [indistinct 00:14:20] | 14:17 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No. I moved out of that, I moved on a place down on the other side of Tillery. On [indistinct 00:14:27] farm. And I stayed down there a while, and then we got this place. And that's where we moved. Yeah, we moved. | 14:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said you moved passed Tillery Farms? | 14:38 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Charles Tillery. | 14:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. But who owns those farms? | 14:43 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Huh? | 14:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Didn't Black people own those farms? | 14:45 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I really don't know but I know that it was a White man had it when I moved in. | 14:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 14:58 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | He just rented me the house. | 14:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 14:58 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I didn't have to work on his farm or nothing. I wanted to go out there. | 14:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, that's nice. And did your husband always work at the log— | 15:02 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Mm-hmm. Yeah, he did. He still was working in log wood. | 15:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | So how long did you live when you moved out of Tillery? How long did you live there? | 15:11 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Where? | 15:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | When you moved—after you moved from your grandparents? | 15:16 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | About two or three years I reckon. | 15:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. And then you moved here? | 15:21 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Right. | 15:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Right. You've been here ever since? | 15:26 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah. | 15:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 15:30 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Over 30 some years now. | 15:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. How is Tillery changed throughout the years? | 15:37 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | It changed a whole life. So much it don't even look like no more Tillery. | 15:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | Really? In what ways has it changed? | 15:54 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | What did you say? | 15:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | In what ways has it changed? | 15:54 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | The store, no more store. | 15:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | No more stores, they had more stores? | 15:54 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | One little pitiful store up there now, and that's it. | 15:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why do you think the stores left? | 16:00 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I don't really know, all I know is—well some of the people where was running the store, some of them died. Died out. So that's the way that went. I said, "Well go ahead." I call it a ghost town now. | 16:03 |
Sonya Ramsey | You think so? | 16:20 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | That'd be dark up there, and just that old big store on this side. | 16:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you ever think about moving away? | 16:23 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Who me? | 16:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | No? Why not? | 16:23 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I just don't want to go. I'm satisfied right here. | 16:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask you. When did you have your first child? | 16:39 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | In '44, December. | 16:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | You have a boy or a girl? | 16:40 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Girl. Yeah. She's about your height. And I reckon just about your size. | 16:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | How many children did you have all together? | 16:58 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Six. | 17:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | Six? Okay. | 17:06 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Two girls and four boys. | 17:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have them in the hospital or— | 17:06 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, all of them were born at home but two. | 17:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | With the midwife? | 17:11 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Mm-hmm. Yeah. | 17:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. How did you find the midwife? Did everybody know who she was? | 17:14 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, I knew her by she was coming to the house. My uncles' wife was living there with us at that time. She had five or six kids. That's how we learned about the midwife. | 17:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. When your children were little, when you were working, who helped you take care of your children? | 17:37 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, my grandparents. And once in a while after my aunt moved in, then she would see after them and I continued to work. | 17:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | What were the holidays like here? | 17:53 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | They were good days back then. Yeah. | 17:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of things happened? | 17:57 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | We would go sometime to a big ballgame or some little carnival or whatever they had. We'd just go to different places. Christmastime, we just stayed home most of the time. | 18:03 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did you do at home? | 18:21 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well it was cooking time. We're doing a lot of cooking. Other than that, we just stayed home. I know I've never been a rambling person. | 18:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. I wanted to ask you, when you were growing up, when you were a little girl, did you ever play with White children? | 18:37 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No. | 18:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | They weren't any White people around? | 18:47 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No. No White people around. | 18:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your grandparents ever tell you anything about White people? How to behave around them? | 18:50 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No. They just always taught us to say, "Yes, ma'am. Yes, sir." Like that to people. No, I've never been in rotation with Whites. | 18:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | The Tillery or Enfield or farther on up the road, did they have signs, like segregated signs and things like that. | 19:15 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Segregated? Not as I know of. I didn't know about all of that. | 19:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did Blacks and Whites get along? | 19:26 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | So far as I know, they looked like to me they got along all right. | 19:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Where there any problems where White people attack Black people or anything like that? | 19:54 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Hit them? | 19:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Hit them or hurt them? | 19:54 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No, not that I know of. Looked like to me, I reckon in a way, they got along better than they do now. | 19:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, really? | 19:54 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Sure did. That's the way it run, back there they didn't seem to be too prejudiced back there then. | 19:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever know any Black people that broke the rules or did things that broke the laws against segregation and things like that? | 20:08 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No, I don't. I can't think right now. I don't know about at all that. | 20:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | They drank out of the White water fountain or use the White bathroom, anything like that? | 20:18 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | We had different places. Some places you can go in to use, some places you couldn't. That's the way that were. | 20:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | When you were growing up, did you go to church? | 20:27 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Go to where? | 20:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you go to church when you were growing up? | 20:43 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I loved it. | 20:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Huh? | 20:45 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I loved it. | 20:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. What church did you attend? | 20:46 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I went to different ones. I went to my church, it's down here at Tillery, Galilee. And then I went to this church that is called Chestnut. And I went to Mountain View, and then I went to another called Tillery Chapel. | 20:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Did they have a different service each Sunday at each church or everybody went to the different churches? | 21:00 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well on the third Sunday they went to a different—they went to Mountain View and Galilee. Not Galilee, Tillery Chapel and then on the first Sunday, the only church I know around here was Galilee and then on second Sunday, it was Chestnut. We went to Sunday school. It was the first Sunday school I ever knew about was Chestnut. | 21:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. What kind of things did they teach you at Sunday school? | 21:39 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | They used to teach us different little lesson and so forth and like that about the Lord and different things. So we just had a good time and then in June, the 9th, we always had Children's Day. They cooked cakes and made a big barrel of lemon water and we just stayed out there and enjoyed that. They say a poem or a speech, or whatever they call it. And do a little singing. | 21:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Did you sing in the choir? | 22:17 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yes, I sung in the choir. I'd say a poem or something like that. I would like to be doing something. | 22:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, that's good. Were those Baptist churches? Were you baptized? | 22:31 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah. | 22:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Where were you baptized? Do you remember? | 22:36 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah, just across the mill run, they call it, this bridge over there by Tillery Chapel Church, back down there in that big mill run. | 22:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Were you nervous about it? Going in the river? | 22:43 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, sort of at first, but after I got out there, I was all right. | 22:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was it a big event? | 22:53 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Just a big pond. That big pond where you see on that side of the road. | 22:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did a lot of people come to see the people get baptized? | 23:03 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Whoo. Don't say a word. Cars would be parked so far you couldn't get down there, you had to walk so far. | 23:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | When you were baptized, were a lot of other people baptized with you? | 23:12 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah, me and a cousin of mine [indistinct 00:23:20] Sally Anne Warren, and her sister Betty Mae, Christine Howard. It just was a big group of us. | 23:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | So it's like a big celebration? | 23:33 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah. | 23:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. When they do after you were baptized? | 23:39 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | After they were baptized, we went up to church and wiped off and changed clothes. Then we had to march in at the service. Had to march in and they'd stand and then tell everybody to get their seat. And then we sit down, and then the man go into his preaching. | 23:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay, then go back to the start the service? | 24:03 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah, then he come around and give you right-hand fellowship. And that's the way that went. | 24:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | After you get married, did you attend the same churches? | 24:22 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Mm-hmm. Up until today. | 24:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 24:25 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I still attend the same churches. One time here, one time there. I go to one church one Sunday, another church the next Sunday, like that. | 24:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said your husband worked at the logging company. What did he do there? | 24:35 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, he worked out in the woods where they had what they called a cross cut saw. So one man on one end, another man on the other end and they'd saw down them trees. Saw them big trees down out there. Then about 4:00, 4:30 they came home. | 24:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | [indistinct 00:25:17] Did a lot of people work with your husband at the logging mill? A lot of other Black people? What kind of other jobs did Black people have around Tillery? | 25:17 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Just the biggest thing there was, along back there then was the logging. In the wood. Log wood. Back there then. So I guess that's all he ever knew and he came down and that's what they were doing. Were going from one place to another. | 25:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | So did he have to travel a lot? | 25:46 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Who me? | 25:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Your husband? | 25:46 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Oh, yeah. | 25:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | He did? | 25:46 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah, sometimes he would have to stay till the weekend. He would leave home on Monday morning and didn't come back til Friday afternoon. Just log, log, log. Guess you could say he had been logwood wild. | 25:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | What do you mean by that? | 26:00 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well that's an old word he just used, he'd say, "Go, logwood wild." | 26:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did he ever talk about—did he work with White people or Black people? | 26:20 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | He worked with both. | 26:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Both. Okay. Did he ever tell you any stories that happened to him while he's working? | 26:24 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No, he didn't say. He liked what he was doing and then, I'll tell you, he was a man, if you mess with him, pushed on the [indistinct 00:26:40] now he will get you off his case. | 26:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | Really? | 26:46 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | He will cuss them out and keep on going and then he would knock them out too. | 26:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Really? He was strong. | 26:52 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah. But they didn't bother him too much. | 26:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said that you worked in a nursing home. It's kind of like being a nurse and stuff. Did you work with White patients or Black patients? | 26:58 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Both, but most of them was White. | 27:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | White? | 27:09 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Mm-hmm. | 27:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did they treat you there? | 27:11 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | How did they treat me? | 27:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 27:14 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, sometime you run across a hateful one. Then again, you know, most of the rest of them was pretty nice. | 27:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | When you got up with a mean person, how did you react to that? | 27:25 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I just tell them right up—well, one old lady, she hated the house she lived in. So she just tell me—well she called me Viney. So she'd say, "Viney, I want you to clean up such-and-such a room today or either under her bed." Or something like that. She'd say, "I'd like for you to get some boxes from under her bed and clean out." | 27:29 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | And one of them told me one day, said, "If you go under there, come under my bed." Said, "What she was going to do, she was going to kick me." I said, "Well Lord, I hate that." I said, "I'm going to tell you right now, if you feel like you want to kick me, you better kind of cool your nerves because I tell you the truth, I'm going to take you by one leg and I'm going to give you one jerk and you see that fireplace over there? I'm going to land you right across it." I stayed there and worked there until she passed. Then she became to like me. | 27:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. You stood up. | 28:25 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yes, I'd tell them right up, "Y'all can't wait on yourself and you can't do for yourself and so you might as well not—as my old parents used to say, 'Take the bitter with the sweet.'" I said, "And try to do what you can and appreciate what people do for you." That's what I used to tell them and get them straightened out right quick. | 28:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | You say you're active in church, did you participate any other clubs or activity? | 28:51 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, whatever I'm called on to do over there I'll be trying to do. That's just all I been doing lately. Whatever I can do and help somebody out. | 28:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | And charity? By doing the charity thing? | 29:14 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yes I did. But I just never had a special job or nothing like that. Only thing I ever worked was just [indistinct 00:29:35] on the farm. I just worked at two or three different nursing homes. | 29:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you still keep your garden and things like that? | 29:38 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Mm-hmm. I'd be home in plenty of time to work the garden, housing, whatever I want to do. And I get up early in the morning, and I'd feed the children some food. And now if they were awake and wanted to get up. I always had it so the oldest one would know what to do. I would tell her and I would tell the rest of them, "Whatever your sister tells you to do, that's what y'all better do." | 29:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. They had to mind their older brothers and sisters? | 30:09 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | So I didn't have no problem with my children, raising them or nothing like that. | 30:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of other values did you try to instill in your children? | 30:17 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, there won't much else to do but working on the farm, I can say that I go back to the farm. Some of them had a lot of tobacco. I would do the looping of the tobacco on a stick for them. | 30:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you learn how to do that? | 30:38 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Just stand there watching. | 30:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | Really? | 30:40 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Mm-hmm. I was always quick to catch on. | 30:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | It sounds like you were. | 30:44 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | So I will go out and whatever I see the rest of them do, I thought, "I can try it too." So I did. So come to find out, I could loop, put it on. | 30:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | I have another question, [indistinct 00:31:06]. I was going to ask, I want to go back to when you were in the hospital. Did most Black people go to the doctor a lot and go to the hospital? | 31:06 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | When was that? | 31:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | When you were young. When you were growing up? | 31:25 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | The first time I ever went, I went for my right leg. | 31:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have a Black doctor or White doctor? | 31:30 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well one was a Black and the other one was White. | 31:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. When people got sick, when they didn't have to go to the hospital, what kind of things did they do? Did they call the doctor, did they do other things? | 31:39 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah. They will call a doctor and he'll come out, examine you and tell you I guess what they thought it was, right. Come out to the house, check you out, 9 times out of 10 whatever they told you, you had, that's what you had. | 31:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | I want to ask you—now I know what I wanted to ask you. When you were first married and everything, what kind of things that you and your husband do for fun? | 32:05 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, we would just sit down and talk sometimes and we would play sometimes. | 32:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you ever go dancing and things like that? | 32:18 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No, he never liked nothing like that. | 32:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why was that? | 32:18 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I don't know. He just didn't like no—he said, "A whole lot of foolishness." He called it that. | 32:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 32:28 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | He let me go sometime, but I always, when I was growing up I never even cared to much for dancing and stuff. I went to one little Christmas party one time, and we and we were having fun and people across the hall got to acting up and I just hit the porch and we went on home. | 32:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | What do you mean acting up? They'd start fighting? | 32:57 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Mm-hmm. | 32:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. You decided to leave? So it was time to leave? | 33:00 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah, "It's time to go now." I left my friend that night. He was hollering, "Where you—I'm going home now to [indistinct 00:33:09]." | 33:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | How do people travel? Did they have cars or things like that? | 33:00 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No, we have to travel on pat and turner, walk on your two feet. Day and night. It was fun back there then. The road would be full of people. Girls and boys. Sometimes your parents be along there with you. Yeah, we just go to the school house. They'd have something out there. A show or something out there. Sometimes we would go out there at night. The road would just be full of people and we just talk and this group had to turn off and keep going home, and then I turn, had to turn off and that's the way we went. | 33:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you ever afraid to walking at night? | 33:58 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No. I wasn't afraid. | 34:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | You think it was safer back then than now? | 34:03 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | To me, it was. I wouldn't get in the road now, talk about walking for nothing. I had a ways to walk from here to a house way up the road to the last brick house. The people, I don't know. They look like they want to run over you and everything, but I slacked up on that. I had to walk every day. Supposed to walk every day, but I just—people just don't care nothing about you now, they'll just run over you and think nothing of it. So I just walk. | 34:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said when you went into the house with a White man and everything, how did he treat your family? | 34:46 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | So far as I know, he treated them nice. | 34:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | Treated them nice? Was there other Black people too or just [indistinct 00:34:58] | 34:53 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, after we went there, I think, and got the house in shape, then some more people wanted the house. And so finally—we didn't go up there to stay no way. We just went to Tillery till we got somewhere to go. | 34:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever have much contact after your marriage with your parents and your other brothers and sisters? | 35:12 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | With my parents? | 35:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 35:12 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, I went to see them just like I always did. Would go see them like that. Other than that, I didn't never turn my back on them or nothing like that. | 35:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did they still own their own land? | 35:12 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Mm-hmm. They did back there then. But how it got away, I don't know. | 35:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | They ended up losing everything? | 35:12 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah. They lost their home. Lost the farm and everything like that. | 35:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was that during the Depression or after that? | 35:12 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | It must have been after the Depression or something like that because they wasn't making that much on the farm. | 35:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever keep in contact with your brothers and sisters? | 35:12 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah, I got in contact with them. I kept in contact with them because I used to go, me and my grandmother, like I said, walking was fun then. Me and her used to walk from this side of the river to the other side to the farm over there where they lived at. Then later we started to go down to the river bridge and there was a store down there and catch a bus because it was about 15 or 20 cent. We would catch a Trailways sometimes. Sometimes we just walk on. | 36:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | Where did the bus go? Did they go all around? | 36:35 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | It would go to Northfolk. | 36:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, Northfolk. Also, did you take trips to Northfolk [indistinct 00:36:57]? | 36:36 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Well, later years I did. My sister moved out there. Then I used to go out there. | 36:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you like Norfolk? | 36:55 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Uh-uh. | 36:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, why not? | 36:55 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I don't know. It looked to smokey out there or something. I just didn't like it. | 37:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | You don't like the big city? | 37:34 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No, I never like no city. Give me the country. | 37:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why do you like this country better? | 37:34 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Because I can spread just like I want. I just don't like no city. I go once in a while in the city. But I just don't like to go to live. It's too close up. They got the houses too close up. Then you're in this door and I go in this door. | 37:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | You don't like to be crowded in the houses? | 37:42 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No. Especially if I got to go stay and they go upstairs. | 37:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, you can hear them next door? | 37:53 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | I just don't like it. I never did. My cousin tell me all the time, "Why don't you come and live in Jersey with us?" | 38:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | New Jersey? | 38:14 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | Yeah. No, y'all just stay right up there. Yeah. I just don't want to be up there. I'll go to visit once in a while, like that. I just don't want to go up there and stay day in and—I may get used to it like down here but I just ain't never like to city. | 38:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I can't think of anything else. Is there anything else you'd like to add? | 38:32 |
Elvenia Philips Russel | No. Not as far as I can think right now. | 38:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay— | 38:50 |
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