Velma Becton-Fleming interview recording, 1993 August 02
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Velma Becton Fleming | 1935. Prior to that I had gone to kindergarten, which they used to call kindergarten. The school that I went to, it was named the Duffyfield School. That's what we called it, the Duffyfield School. But in later years I learned that it used to be an academy, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Academy. It was a boarding school. And so what happened, we were in the area, the Duffyfield area, as you would call it, Pavytown. | 0:03 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And so therefore we were assigned to go to that school. They did have two schools. They had the West Street School, but we were not within the vicinity. I often wondered when I started school, why did we have a primer, and they didn't. They started with first grade over at West Street. So actually it made us go longer over at the Duffyfield School than the kids did at the West Street School. And it really had sixth grades. Was it sixth grades? Yes, because it had primer, it went up to fifth grade and the primer grade made it sixth grades. | 0:50 |
Velma Becton Fleming | We had outdoor privilege and we had water fountains. Somehow they were, I guess it was canoe shape, if I can remember correctly, in a canoe shape. Canoe. Canoe shaped something. And I think it had to be that you could turn it on by a faucet, because I don't think we were using pumps. But the bathrooms were built of wood, and you just go out there and use them. And of course we had outdoor recess in the dirt. We didn't have paved nothing. We were used in the dirt. | 1:39 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And this might not be good to tell, I don't care about all that. I liked all of my teachers. In fact, the very first day that I went to school, to the primary primer, I idolized my teacher who was named Mrs. Pickett. And I just thought she stayed in school all of the time; she never left that desk. When I come in the morning she was there, when I left in the afternoon, she was still there. So I just thought she was there all of the time. And I made up in my mind that day that I wanted to become a teacher just like her. | 2:21 |
Velma Becton Fleming | So after finishing five grades of it, where she went through to five, I was very petite. And I was known, they called me little Velma, prissy, kind of prissy as they said. I still don't know how I walk today, but they called me prissy. And of course we had the basic subjects, as you would have. They taught kind of old, like north, from North Lee's North. And we learned to count. We learned our alphabets and phonics. | 3:05 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And of course we did have plays. And I did happen to be one of the chorus girls one time. And I was real proud to be that. Very, very proud to be that. And I remember learning my phonics in the second grade. The second grade teacher served as the principal, Mrs. Mofort. Kind of meanie. Kind of mean. And of course we knew that we ran a situation as we were. So we stayed mostly in that environment until we went downtown. We had to go downtown to shop when our parents carried us and to the health center periodically. And of course we realized then that we were another color. We had to stand in line, they jumped in front of us, we couldn't be served. And it was, I guess sort of humiliating. It made you feel as if when I grew up I'm going to really do something with my life and get some of the things that they have. | 3:47 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And of course we went from Duffyfield School to the West Street Grade School. This is a school right here. And it served as a high school too. I went from sixth through 12, sixth grade through 12th grade. I was sort of bashful. I wasn't a very outgoing person. And how we looked during those days, you didn't have all of the things that you would love to have to look pretty. But you had the constellation of saying, one day I'm going to be somebody. I can't remember any particular teacher that I really admired. And I'm sure I did at that time, because it was such a long time. But it was better going that school because we had flush toilets. | 5:01 |
Kara Miles | Oh. | 6:00 |
Velma Becton Fleming | We had gotten promoted and of course we could walk. We lived on Main Street then. So therefore we could walk to school. And I don't remember very much of a lunchroom program. We used to come home for lunch and mama would always have the food ready. We all got out for. Lunch at the same time and we would go back and it was a little store across the street and it was known as Pete's. And Pete would sell these pickles and we would stop there and get one of those pickles and buy a peppermint stick and put it in there and we would kill ourselves eating it. The principal always tell us, he said that those pickles are nasty because he goes and do these things. But that didn't bother us at all. | 6:00 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And we used to have chapel. We used to call it chapel. That's where we would all meet and sing. And we would have a speaker. We had different speakers and of course we would have plays. And the Glee Club and the principal would speak. And we began to learn about our heritage. Then we began to sing Black songs. The music teacher was named Mrs. Powell at that time. And I used to say she could play anything because she would be standing in front of a piano and with her back to it, and she would just go to town. She was about this tall and she would just play. I said, this lady out here, eyes behind her head. But it was interesting. It was interesting. | 6:55 |
Velma Becton Fleming | I was a, I would say a fair student. I wasn't good. I was a fair student. And of course if your parents were maybe in a profession, you were recognized more. See we had segregation within segregation, you understand? And you were somehow judged by that. That too gave you an incentive to want to do good. But we felt the pain because we had to walk in the rain, we didn't have buses. We didn't have paved streets and the roads were kind of ruddy. We didn't have the facilities that the Whites had. They would get the new books and use them and we would get the books behind them. | 8:06 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And they would look like they were new because they cleaned them up and they passed them down to us. And they issued them to us as new books. So therefore we would always be charged a fee if those books got dirty because they were the ones that were supposed to come to us. They would go to them; they used the new set year after year because we always got the hand downs. | 9:10 |
Velma Becton Fleming | I know I was in home economics and then Home Economic Club United began to come out then. I won't go grade by grade just talking. And I began to meet people who were not from the side of town that I was from but from the other side of town. And I began to grow and became friendly with them. And some of them today are still my friends. We went off to college, and the teachers made the best of what it was. Being Black, it didn't take much to make us happy. We didn't need a whole lot. I don't suppose we were as conscientious of it. Then as time began to move on, by the time that I got back and started the teaching, we began to notice the difference in things. | 9:44 |
Kara Miles | Do you think when you were in high school, were you aware that you were getting the hand-me-down books and that the White facilities were better? Were you aware of that then? | 11:09 |
Velma Becton Fleming | I don't think I paid any attention, because we used to have to rent our books. We paid a book fee and as long as the books were clean—We had to cover our books and try to keep them clean. And I don't know if we were as conscientious then about it as it was as we grew older, because not even the teachers would say but so much. Because you couldn't say, not even think out loud because if you did, that was your job. See, the Black teachers definitely couldn't say anything. And when they would belong to the NAACP, I heard, that the superintendent asked them to come out because I guess it was going to cause us to grow. So he asked that they not belong. | 11:26 |
Kara Miles | Was that still going on? What year was it again that you began teaching? | 12:24 |
Velma Becton Fleming | I started teaching in 1954. | 12:28 |
Kara Miles | Was that still going on then, that you weren't supposed to belong to the NAACP? | 12:31 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Mm-hmm. Yes it was. And I began to notice that we were not getting supplies that we needed. We had to buy our supplies, the construction paper and mimeograph. We didn't have mimeograph machines. We used like a gel, whatever you call that stuff; put your master in it, it would come out on the gel, and then you would take it and run your copies from there. Not run, lift your copies off from that. | 12:36 |
Velma Becton Fleming | But it's bad to go forward and then move backwards. For example, I should have said that I was the third child out of six children. There were five girls and one boy. Twins, twin girls were the babies. And I don't know. My best subjects in school, my best subject was math. | 13:11 |
Kara Miles | Is that what you ended up teaching? | 13:57 |
Velma Becton Fleming | I ended up teaching elementary school. All subjects. All subjects were good. | 13:59 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 14:04 |
Velma Becton Fleming | So it was rough. And it was even rougher after we integrated, they didn't help us, to me. To me, not a whole lot. Because little by little we lost what we had. We really lost our culture. We got mixed up somehow in the crowd. And we are just so pleased to do what they are doing until we are not being educated. Our kids were taught, we had good teachers. They taught us well. We knew what we learned because we had wrote. They taught us over, they would review. We learned our tables, and it was wonderful to learn your multiplication tables. You'll always look forward to that. | 14:09 |
Velma Becton Fleming | So you may cut that tape off and let me ask you another question. | 14:58 |
Kara Miles | Okay. Right. [INTERRUPTION] | 15:00 |
Kara Miles | When you were talking about, that your school had a primer and that West Street didn't, do you know why that was? | 15:07 |
Velma Becton Fleming | No, I don't. And believe it or not, it has come to our mind often as adults. We still wonder why did they have a primer, and not have a primer with West Street. We often wondered that. | 15:15 |
Kara Miles | So that meant that you all started school a year earlier. So you went to primer while before West Street children would've started the school? | 15:32 |
Velma Becton Fleming | No. Uh-uh. I assume that they all started school about the same time. What happened to me, why it didn't bother me too much age-wise, I was five. And mama tried to get me in school. So she put me in the primer when I was five. Then by the time I was six I was ready to go to first grade. Because see my birthday was on an even, I was born in September. And they opened in September and closed in May. | 15:41 |
Kara Miles | So that means that for most people at your school children would've been starting primer, but the same age would've been starting first grade over at West Street. | 16:13 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Right, right. | 16:23 |
Kara Miles | So you all would be going to high school a year later. | 16:25 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Right, right, true. And we would be a year older. We certainly would. | 16:28 |
Kara Miles | Yeah. | 16:33 |
Velma Becton Fleming | I don't know why, I really don't. I wondered about that. But they say that school was brought as an overflow school for the kids who couldn't get into West Street. So all the Duffyfield area back there. I guess we were considered the lower income area in this area. You had a lot of smart kids. It didn't come back, I don't guess it came back this far. I mean I wasn't busy. But only the kids from a particular area went there. And I don't know why, really why, they started with the primer. I really don't. | 16:34 |
Kara Miles | So you said that the area you grew up in would've been considered one of the lower income. | 17:22 |
Velma Becton Fleming | I said it like that. We were not rich, but my father always worked for rich White people. And of course we did have privilege of some of their hand-me-downs. And my father would drive their children to school, and he would come by and get his little and drive them to school. But it wasn't anything like a ghetto. No, it wasn't anything like that. It was a neighborhood. It was nice neighborhood, per se. But as you look back, it probably could have been considered maybe one of the lower incomes or, I wouldn't say poverty perhaps. But see over on the—I don't know if I want this recorded or not. | 17:33 |
Velma Becton Fleming | We were divided into classes ourselves. We had the classes of people that those went along with. My daddy was a socialite, but we were children, and daddy grew up here. He was one of those who attended that boarding school. He didn't go to public school, he attended boarding school. And then he left and went away to high school. He said to Livingston in Salisbury, from eighth grade or whatever. I don't know whether he ever finished. But anyway they had two streets here, they were considered the best streets. And that was Burn Street and West Street. And West Street the school was on. We had some of the teachers living back in our area. That's the reason why I say it wasn't exactly. But you could feel a difference. | 18:26 |
Kara Miles | You mentioned that you began learning about your culture, you started singing Black songs and things in school. Did you learn Black history? | 19:32 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Yes we did. I think much of that stuff, we had a sort of, I don't know if we were in the library or not, because we had a public library. Not a school library, but it was on to the school. I think it was called a public library. It was on to the school, the high school part, the high school's low building. It's in here somewhere. Anyway, it was right in the front. I guess the city people used it too. But they would do research and they would tell you about the different ones, George Washington Carver, and the people who were of importance, Benjamin Banneker. And we learned the Negro National Anthem, and so many Negro songs like Summertime. But we only had one week of it. That was February. One week. I think it was fifth grade or seventh grade, we started learning a little bit about it. But you didn't do a whole lot because you didn't want the White man to see. | 19:41 |
Kara Miles | You talked about the plays that you all used to do. | 21:00 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Mm-hmm. | 21:03 |
Kara Miles | What plays would you do? Were these plays you all made up? | 21:05 |
Velma Becton Fleming | We were never creative. We were not encouraged to be creative. Neither were we encouraged to be vocal or articulate. That was the one thing that I vowed that I would do when I started teaching. I would call on each child that I had and get good rapport with them so they can feel comfortable. You don't feel comfortable when one or two people are being called on. And sometimes the child may know the most and says the less. But no, the plays basically to my knowledge were, the teachers would pick out the plays that they wanted to give, and of course the characters. I will try to remember. | 21:10 |
Velma Becton Fleming | I believe they had A Redhead Stepchild, that was one of the plays that I remember. And another one was—Okay, okay, wasn't exactly a play. We did a lot of Paul Lawrence Dunbar's points and what they were depicting. And I believe Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. And we learned to dance off the Swanee River, the song Swanee River, what they called the newspaper shuffle. Teachers would do that. They would make up the steps you were going to use, and practice and practice and practice. When we were going to have something you had to be perfect. And of course it had to be uniform, white tops and blue was just about what it was. I really don't feel like I put my very best foot forward because I never went—I don't know, I never bothered that much about school. Probably something I didn't like that I don't want to tell. | 22:08 |
Kara Miles | You talked about segregation within segregation. | 23:24 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Mm-hmm. | 23:27 |
Kara Miles | Could you tell me more about that? | 23:28 |
Velma Becton Fleming | I think I just did. I told you that some children's parents were teachers, and some were doctors and dentists. And of course it meant a lot in the days of old to have fair skin, it really meant a lot. And those kids had the better breaks. So you knew if you had that kind of background you were going to go places. And sometimes I think that encourages the one who was looked over to say that I'm going to really, really do something. And of course when you do something they say, I knew you were going to do it. No such thing. But we did have segregation within segregation. They didn't speak to everybody. They were just all on a pedestal. That was how they recognized profession for Blacks. | 23:32 |
Kara Miles | So teachers would play favorites with certain kids. | 24:38 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Mm-hmm. They would. Certainly. | 24:46 |
Kara Miles | All teachers or just certain teachers did that? | 24:46 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Maybe the teachers that I had, some of them might have. Of course, I did have one that was really interested in me. In the fifth grade I needed eyeglasses. I always needed eyeglasses. But we had a large family and we just hadn't gotten any glasses. And of course my fifth grade teacher was friendly with my next door neighbor because she taught school in the county. And she would come over and she would tell my mama, Why don't you all buy that girl some glasses. Buy that girl some glasses. So that was when I got my first pair of glasses when I was in the fifth grade. So then I began to see, and I could begin to learn a little more. In this day and time it would be a label for me, LD. Because sometimes when you don't exactly have what you really want, those things can become mental blocks and you don't really feel as you should feel, and sometimes it would hamper the ability. | 24:57 |
Velma Becton Fleming | But they didn't have a label for it then. They had the A row, the B row, the C row, the D row. I don't know what it was. I don't even remember how many kids there were in the classroom. But you did strive to sort of move from one level to the other, in which that might have been the best policy to homogeneously group rather than—Not homo, hetero. Hetero. Because to group all of one kind, I mean it may be competition for them, but then when you group all of the slow learners together, they don't have nothing to look forward to. Everybody looks alike. Nobody can grow from each other. But when we had those rows, we could move from one row to the other. Is this really interesting to you? | 26:15 |
Kara Miles | Yes, yes it is. | 27:06 |
Velma Becton Fleming | If you notice, I haven't done very much talk about the books. | 27:09 |
Kara Miles | Well no that's fine. | 27:12 |
Kara Miles | You talked about that you started meeting people from the other side of town when went to West Street, and you said that made you grow. What do you mean? | 27:15 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Okay. First of all, coming from our section where we were living and moving to that section, gradually, gradually, you get to know other people. But I don't remember whether or not we were just grouped according to the section that we came from because we were from Duffy town area, I don't really know that or not. But it was as we began to get into social clubs, as I named the French Club and the Glee Club and the FHA Club, if you remember the home economic department, you began to learn other girls from the other side. And I guess they began to learn you too. And you sort of became friendly. In fact, I really outgrew the people that I went to school with because some of them had stopped, you didn't bother with girls when they became mothers. That was a thing that was looked down upon. | 27:30 |
Velma Becton Fleming | But we became friends and, to a certain degree, we still are, a lot of those who haven't passed. And especially the boys. My sister always told me, she said, The boys always admired you because you had a nice shape. I don't even remember the boys admiring me. So you didn't have to worry about any dances. But the one thing that we did look forward to was the junior and senior prom. We looked forward to that because that was a time we didn't have a stipulation pass, we could go to the junior and senior prom. That's just how much we had to do. And we would be there in the evening gowns. But I think in 1940, oh shoot, I don't know exactly when it was, anyway, they finally cut it out. But between the year '46 and '47, we did not have a graduating class because it went to 12th grade and it stopped. So that year we had a banquet, and of course then we went back to our junior and senior proms. So we looked very forward to that. The little gowns and the Grand March and everything. | 28:38 |
Kara Miles | They said you were popular with the boys? | 29:58 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Yes, they sure did say I was very popular. I got a boyfriend in eighth grade and that boy went with me until I have a second year college. He sure did. And I looked around and saw he didn't look like the college boys. So that's what my sisters say. And of course some of those friends would say, Vilma always had an ass. Oh shoot. Erase that when it comes to it, please. | 30:00 |
Velma Becton Fleming | But I wasn't naive. I wasn't conceited about those things. It didn't bother me. I mean some people flaunt what people tell them, but it didn't bother me. It never went to my head. And so I continued to dance and talk to the fellows. And today still those guys are still around. What have you done? What have you been taking? I didn't look at you that well in high school, but I declare. Would've got in the way. I say, I didn't look at you either. | 30:26 |
Kara Miles | So what kind of things would you do for fun as a teenager? Where would you all go or what would you do? | 31:00 |
Velma Becton Fleming | We had a teenage club, and we used to meet up. Don't know what night it was we used to meet. One night a week. I don't know when it was, but we all would meet at the center, Craven County Center. And there were kids from all around. And we would have dances. And I'll never forget the guy's name one of the presidents were named GA Moore. And we just looked so forward to that. But there were not, in my book, a lot of recreational places to go. If you notice me, I'm looking up, because I'm thinking. Really, I had a nervous breakdown since that time, so a lot of that, whatever it was, it probably got drowned out in there. But we did have drugstores, and my sister always said I enjoyed going to the sweet shop. I would go and we would've sodas, I'd have soda at the sweet shop, and she wanted to go somewhere and dance. She said, You always want to go to that sweet shop. And of course I would play cards. And it was the boys, it was the fellows mostly that we would play cards with. | 31:06 |
Velma Becton Fleming | I belonged to a science club in eighth grade, Ms. Roach. And we went on a hike around Pembroke. That was fun. We used to have hikes. And we did have teenage dances around in the area. And of course everything I think was over by 11 o'clock. And as I continue to get older, I think by the time I reached the 12th grade, I guess, can't recall it too much because I never was a runner. I think I started going to the club, I think I did. Can't recall. Strike that. But we played a lot of children games, until boy girl and girl meets boy, hide and seek and all that kind of stuff. | 32:15 |
Velma Becton Fleming | But basically I thoroughly enjoyed playing cards. I really did. It was concentration, and it was fun. It really was. I enjoyed it. And football games and basketball games, I guess they had any. But see, we didn't have a lot of facilities either because when the two high schools were built, they built JT Barber, which is back behind me. And they built New Bern High School—University, if you get what I'm saying. And JT Barber was used as an elementary school/junior high for a while because there wasn't enough room. It was eight grades, see, they shifted on to junior—They just hadn't completed it. And I'm sure the state allotted money for both schools. | 33:12 |
Velma Becton Fleming | But there were a lot of things that were not complete when they got in there. And I think whether they would give you money for it, we used to have drives and things to try to get the rows. And somebody said bleacher, I don't know. See, I didn't teach in the high school. When I was here everything was together over there. By the time I came back, they had fixed that, done that one over there. So that university, that high school never looked like that university over there. Grover C. Fields, which really came to be. | 34:08 |
Kara Miles | Where did you go to college? | 34:47 |
Velma Becton Fleming | I went to Fayetteville State Teacher's College. I finished high school. But I was grown then. When you finish asking me, you think you're grown. So my senior year I began to wear, when I could afford it or find some, I would wear some silk stockings and be the highest in the class on little heels. And I was so baffled when I got in college and I had to come back down to socks and loafers. I sure did. | 34:50 |
Velma Becton Fleming | But you know what, to me those were the good days because we had matrons. We didn't have our mothers there. But one thing for sure, unless you were one of those kind that enjoyed slipping out, which I didn't, I was like [indistinct 00:35:39], but I enjoyed this matron. We all had to be in the dorm at a certain time. But the thing that really, really baffled me was to have the teachers call us Miss. She called us Miss, and I guess we thought we were grown. | 35:20 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And of course there were some words, I don't know where I picked them up. I might have picked them up from one of my teachers, I don't know. Anyway, my English teacher was from Pittsburgh and she had me read a sentence and I said, I don't know—What was it called? Either. Either, either. That's what I said either. And she had me to drop down further to read another sentence. And in that sentence was, "Ask," and I said, "Ask." Then it was another one. She continued to go on. So she came back and told me, she said, "Ms. Becton," she said, "When you use words like that, you have to continue to use through the pattern, straight through." I forgot what she called it, but she say, "If you're going to say, 'Calf went down the path to take a bath,' or would you say, 'The cough went down the path to take a bath?' So you're going to say, either, you say neither. And you say, 'Ask.'" So I think I came on back to normal and started saying just a few things. | 36:01 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And she also taught us the difference at the time between alumni, alumnae, alumnus. And today that word still bothers me because we have many people who are masters and they say alumni, she told us the difference between alum and alumn. But I mean, that is the one thing that does pierce in my ears, that word pierce in my ears. It really does. | 37:14 |
Kara Miles | Did you join any organizations while at college? | 37:47 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Not really. Not really. I was a member of the YWCA and I became president of the YWCA. That was really when I found my leadership abilities. I was kind of inferior, and you don't want to really express yourself for fear you may say the wrong thing. You don't know when you will be criticized. And when I got to Fayetteville State, I did not have any homies. I didn't have anyone to lean on and no one to talk with me. So I had to learn to be myself, I had to grow up. And I became a magnificent leader in the Y serving as president. And I ended up being the queen, the Y Queen. And I think I received an English award and I did sing one semester in the choir, glee club, whatever they called it. But no, I was not very active. We had the 30 for May, what was it? Maydays, and I would take part in that. | 37:49 |
Velma Becton Fleming | But we really didn't have a lot of activities anyway to join. I guess it might have been my junior year, and as I said, I was a fair student, and they began to bring the Greek organizations in. They were not on campus because if they had been, I'm sure they would've been an incentive for us to have done better to get in. But what happened, they went and they picked the kids who had those averages and they got them in. And I did not have very much exposure to Greek because I was going out and they were coming in. So no, I didn't. But I did become affiliated after retirement with the Zeta Phi Betas, so I am a Zeta. Purely because—No, that's my business. But I am a Zeta. I'm married to a family of Zetas. And my daughter, I have a daughter who is a Zeta. She's a national undergraduate member at large, I think it went. And her cousin is the Grand Basileus, so she's on cloud nine. | 39:10 |
Kara Miles | Why did you choose to go to Fayetteville State? | 40:34 |
Velma Becton Fleming | That's a good question. I used to go to church and Sunday school and I would be chosen to be delegate. So we would go to Rocket Point or some of these little small places, I don't even remember how I got there. But anyway, you'll meet girls, you'll meet different people, and I met a girl by the name of Ernestine Parker. And we became great friends. Both of us at the time were juniors or seniors or something. And we began to speak about our future life. So she said, I'm going to school to become a teacher. I said, Well, I am too. | 40:38 |
Velma Becton Fleming | I told you I wanted to become a teacher, but I think I really wanted to be a home economic teacher because I was interested in decorating and cooking a little bit, I guess. So that's what I thought. I thought I didn't have a wider knowledge of colleges to really know that all colleges didn't offer everything that you wanted. But I chose to go to Fayetteville State because she had a brother who was teaching there on the staff and that's where she was going. So I was going to meet her there. So that's why I went to Fayetteville State. | 41:21 |
Kara Miles | I want to ask you one more thing before we get into your church history and stuff. | 41:58 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Oh, uh-huh. | 42:04 |
Kara Miles | I want to go back to being in the NAACP and being a teacher. You said that even at the time when you began teaching, you still weren't supposed to be a member of the NAACP and be a teacher. | 42:05 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Right, right. Uh-huh. | 42:19 |
Kara Miles | Were you a member? | 42:20 |
Velma Becton Fleming | No, I never was a member. I never was a member of NAACP. I guess we all had our little isms about things. It may not have been the right people, maybe I was sort of learning. We didn't have the exposure that the kids have now. And you went with the flow, and accepted what was. And if something came along and you liked it, you grew with it, whatever have you. But no, I was never a member of the NAACP. But I do remember one of our superintendents, one of our teachers, in fact my very primer teacher was the secretary to the NAACP. And I think he had to give it up. | 42:21 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And I believe, I don't know for sure, I don't think the salaries were equalized either at the time. I really don't. I think the Whites were making more than the Blacks. So the NAACP, or somebody, helped to equalize those. And even one of the very first jobs I went on, when I finished college, I taught in Maxton. The school recommended, and I went to Maxton. I think that was one place I got known. I really got known on the college campus. I really got known on the college campus. I mean everybody knew me there [indistinct 00:43:41]. It felt pretty good to be known. | 43:02 |
Kara Miles | Yeah. | 43:44 |
Velma Becton Fleming | But anyway, I had finished college and this principal had come to me, it was in the president's office. I was home. And of course the advisor to the YWCA was going in. I had written her a letter and thanked her for the many things that she had done toward helping me to be successful in my career. And told I do look forward to going to work one day. And so she went into the president's office and he was talking about, this principal was here and was looking for a teacher. So she said, I just received a letter. And so she recommended me and I did get this job. | 43:45 |
Velma Becton Fleming | New Bern may be a small town, but I've never lived in a country. If this is country, then I live in the country. But I was working in the country, and I wasn't used to no lights, and the bus station being closed, and you're having to go in now, segregation. The teachers had to take active parts in whatever they had at school. If you had to go and take up tickets and you had to go to all the ballgames, you had to go to the PTA meetings. And then if you weren't there at a certain time, the principal would take a piece of red crayon and he would red your space in where you're supposed to sign in, treat you like children. And you go for your check and he'd tear off your check and he give you the check, and you didn't get the stub. So you didn't know how much really you made except for what you took home. But you dare not question it. | 44:30 |
Velma Becton Fleming | It was rough during those days. There were a lot of things you thought you could think, but you couldn't talk. You couldn't talk them. And as you began to move around, everybody had their little cliques, they piled around together. I was a very outspoken person. And I don't think that I was liked that well for it, because I believed in calling a spade a spade. I didn't send any to polishing. So eventually I think they accepted me for who I was, but it was kind of rough. It was rough at first. | 45:28 |
Velma Becton Fleming | But I get wrapped up in your children and give them the best that you have and just move on. Because that's what you were there for, to teach the kids, you were not necessarily there for a popularity contest. But I did find out that I got along a whole lot better, although I had my isms about it. But I did much better with integration in the White schools with the White teachers than I did in the Black schools with the Black teachers because we didn't have a lot of things, clothes especially. And well, that's the first thing you're going to buy when you start getting money, you're going to buy you some clothes. And that's what I did. And of course I just— | 46:03 |
Velma Becton Fleming | —fear it—oh, how am I going to know how foolish I sound? | 0:01 |
Kara Miles | You don't sound foolish, you sound fine. | 0:08 |
Velma Becton Fleming | No, turn it back on here. | 0:09 |
Velma Becton Fleming | [INTERRUPTION] | 0:09 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Anyway, and I seem to have been accepted more for my talents and for my skills. And it wasn't a matter of being or pretending, but it was the matter of using good wit, good diction. And of course, the principal was very, he was surprised because he expected all Black people to be loud and boisterous. And we were not that way because we were on all kind of scrutiny, when we got there, they would turn the intercoms on, they gave you the worst kids, and they didn't, but the thing that fascinated me most were the things that we had. We had background paper for our bulletin boards and we never had that. We had to pin a nine x 12 construction sheet of paper all over the board and then cut borders, borders— | 0:09 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And when we got there and saw all of that stuff, you know what? I was really fascinated and we made some beautiful bulletin boards, and then you could even buy stuff from vendors Burkhart to put on your boards and make—They had the seasons and they had the subject matter that you want, we could buy it. But in the Black school, you had to make everything that you had, so we had very attractive rooms and very attractive bulletin boards. And the principal seemed to have been highly impressed, and that was one time I felt good about myself. I really, that felt very good because I was getting some appreciation shown to me for what I was doing. Mm-hmm, yep, mm-hmm. | 1:09 |
Kara Miles | Okay. So do you want to move into the church history now? | 1:49 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Whoo. I'd guess I'd run out of words, have I not, haven't I run out yet? Where do I begin? | 1:53 |
Kara Miles | Hmm? | 2:03 |
Velma Becton Fleming | I said, where do I begin? | 2:04 |
Kara Miles | Well, I don't know. This is Rue's Chapel, is that—? | 2:10 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Yes, this is Rue Chapel. | 2:13 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 2:14 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And of course, we were African Methodist Episcopal, and of course, my mother was the Methodist and my father was the Episcopalian. But as children, we were all Christian with my father, with the exception of the twins. The twins were Christian in the Episcopal, well, when they came of age, they joined with mama, they came over anyway. And of course, we did not know very much, a whole lot, about the church because it was so full with grown people and we thought they were going to live forever. It never would fall to us. And so we just took everything just like it's going to always be there. I attended Sunday school and I was a member of the junior choir, and of course, whatever we would have in church, we always had a little part in it, and then we had a little rainbow wedding with the little paper dress, and decided to put it on one day, and to wear around in the community. | 2:15 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And the dog ran out and it grabbed my dress and tore it. And I guess, that was a mock wedding dress. But I did appreciate being a part of Rue Chapel. We had, I forgot one thing that you did mention, what some of the things that we did, we used to have revivals at Rue Chapel. And our church was sort of, all the young people would come because we had a nice minister and it was sort of getting into religion then, and churches were filled. And that was one of the places you went because if you didn't, you didn't go out on Sunday. If you don't go to church, you do not go out, period. Movies or nothing else, so we always had to go to church. And as I began, when I came back and could come to attend regularly, I continued to sing in the choir, I got into the [indistinct 00:04:26] choir. | 3:25 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And of course, having had this, is just this little bit of, little experience of singing in the choral group at school, the choir, the glee club or whatever you had it. I just wanted our group to sound just like that. But according to the history, we always had good music anyway because they say people used to come from miles around just the hear Rue Chapel Choir sing, and they had cantatas and they would have all kinds of singing. I imagine not a lot of gospels, but just good music, good spiritual music. And the pastors, I think, at the time were more dedicated than they are. So as I continued to attend church, the membership began to decease, the people would pass and they didn't, no one would join. And we had our kid, when I did marry, I was late marrying, but when I did marry, I did have two girls and the kids, my kids, when they grew up, they did not affiliate with me because they wanted to be more with the father. They didn't want to be anywhere because they didn't. | 4:28 |
Velma Becton Fleming | So the kids just sort of started to dropping off, and that is where this comes in. And yes, we had Sunday school, but people knew what they knew. My mother being a Methodist from the south of Atlanta was much more progressive than New Bern. So she knew a lot of the rituals, and I guess the people who, they might have been the first people to, perhaps, maybe be into Rue Chapel and they too might have known them, but they didn't pass them on. And as a teacher, I began to look and say, we do not have, what—I mean we don't know, no one has told us anything, and I don't remember anybody telling me or asking me to buy a discipline. And if I had, I probably wouldn't have because I wondered what good was a discipline. But as we continued to journal down and everything, I said, "Well, what in the world can we do to build up our church?" So that's really when I began to start doing research. | 5:46 |
Velma Becton Fleming | I really did, I started researching to find how we came about, I just wanted to know. And of course, Mrs. Finner, and another thing, we had a lot of adults, see if you were a young adult as I was, like you are now, the older people just don't pay too much attention to you. You just don't have too much to say, and they think you're fickle, just like they're doing Bill Clinton now. They think you're fickle and you just don't know what you're talking about. So when they died, they carried the little stuff on with them in their brains, they hadn't done a lot of sharing. And so I just thought maybe Rue Chapel could really come back up because we are the only African-American, African Methodist Episcopal church in this city. And in fact, we're supposed to be the first in North Carolina who bought and built. | 7:04 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And I just feel like after I learned this, it was so much history that we should really let the world know what we have. Because sometimes people will follow things because we had been, I think according to the history, we had felt three times. And of course, the church got smaller and the people were dying, and they were going off, and the children were graduating. And I just wondered, what could we do to build chapel back up? So I started asking, "Is this enough questions about Rue Chapel?" because they didn't—What is it? Release any or try to, what's the word I want to say? I can't think. But in anyway, they didn't give you, and then if you ask them, he put them on the spot. But this that I got for history, Mrs. Finner had that in her Bible at home. | 8:05 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And I don't remember, I only was gone for four years, but I would come back and go to church. I guess I didn't attend church meetings because I wasn't here, but then I don't think it would've made any difference if I had been here, because I was young and they probably would not have accepted anything anyway. But anyway, I think my sister said that they remember Mr. T.R. Fisher, he was the chorus of the choir and he was a distinguished old man. And when they built this last church, he wrote a paper. And of course, he told about the beginning of the church and everything within this paper. And so I was asking Mrs. Finner about, "Could anybody tell me anything about the church?" So that's when she gave me that paper, reluctantly, at the time, she was sick, started getting sick. And I began to read. | 9:22 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And the more I read, the more interested I became. And each time I would read, I would get a different understanding. And then at night I would sort of wake up, I'd say, "I'm going to check these things out that are on this paper." And that's what I did. I started going around town, checking the streets that they said that were on markers, talking to historians, calling the White churches, calling people out of town. I just went around and just talk, talk, talk, to see, to make sure, to verify the things that were said in that paper. And I kept asking the church, I said, well, I have these pages here that about the history of the church. I said, "Anybody want to add to it, anybody want to tell me anything?" | 10:15 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Okay. So I learned that we were established in 1865 and I said, "Well, we could have, being a member of the Zetas, and I'm sure all other organizations are the same, that annual triennial, whatever it is, they have fundraisers. You always end up with a book like this and Debutantes and Jabberwockies and Archonettes and everything." So this is the first thing that came to mind, that we could put on a banquet, we could put on a celebration. And so when I subtracted it from that year, it made it 125 years. And so I was saying, you have some people who know some things and kind of— | 11:03 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Anyway, they were saying, I said, "This is our first anniversary celebration, but it is our 125th year in God's service." And that sort of drew a little gossip because we had not been celebrating for 125 years. This was our very first celebration that I'd known of. Because if they had, they should have had something around for me to go by, I shouldn't have had to go and find my own format. But anyway, we got it together and talked around and found and got it verified. And then when I went down to the courthouse, I was so fascinated. I didn't know what the world—I found the very first deed that we had when we built this church, the very first deed in 1872. | 11:45 |
Kara Miles | Wow. | 12:43 |
Velma Becton Fleming | I was really carried away over that, and I thought others would too. | 12:47 |
Kara Miles | Wow, it's great. | 12:56 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Isn't that some pretty writing? | 12:57 |
Kara Miles | Mm-hmm. | 12:58 |
Velma Becton Fleming | It really is, and you really had to look close to try to understand. So after I had done all of this writing and trying to decide and everything, I decided that I would go to the newspaper where you know have to prove everything that you, especially when it comes to history, you really do have to prove it. So I guess this must have stayed. I wanted it to come out during Black History Month, but it culminated Black History Month. And I was real proud, and it was sort of the talk of the town. And I thought that it was time, it was the chance to grow. We could have, I thought grow, because people would come to see we had a nice celebration, we had about 200 people there. Mm-hmm. | 13:00 |
Kara Miles | Well, tell me some of this history, some of this, you were able to trace that back to 1865. Tell me what's some of the stuff you found out? | 13:58 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Okay, I found that before the Civil War, that Blacks and Whites worship together. Of course, we say some of them as maids, maybe taken care of babies, and of course, others, we might have been in the balcony as we were because we were slaves. But we worshiped together in the same church. And the church that we were attending was the St. Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, which they're both a powerful [indistinct 00:14:55]. The Episcopal was by themselves and the Methodists are by themselves, but they were two friends that, and of course, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, they were friends, and Absalom, the Episcopal, and they really wanted Richard to come over to Episcopal. But he didn't want to because we had come out of St. George in Philadelphia. So he wanted to make us, we were Methodist Episcopal, the two of them, one being one. | 14:06 |
Velma Becton Fleming | So they took those names, but they put the A, African in front of it to identify, to make them, instead of just being Methodist Episcopal, which it could have been White. They put the African for their descendants. And of course, I learned that after we worshiped for a while, we began to get emotional, you know how we are. (laughs) "Yes Lord, we [indistinct 00:15:55]," that's all we got to do, because then we sing our songs, back then we were so depressed. So they decided that if we would help them to build another church, that they would give us that church. And so that's what happened. We helped them to build another church, that church was downtown. What they say, Hancock and Church Alley, that's when, names like that were here before, New Bern got really civil, and they took out some of these names like Greg Allen, et cetera. But in anyway, so they went on up there on New Street, they built their church on New Street, and they began to worship on New Street, and we worship down there. | 15:23 |
Velma Becton Fleming | But at the outbreak of the Civil War, many of us were mulattoes, because we had, well, White daddies and Black mamas. And so those of us who had White daddies, and when a born they kind of loved their children, and even though it was kind of under the cover, it would give you the opportunity to be a freeborn. So that's what our pastor was, he was a freeborn, Reverend Rue. And so at the outbreak of the Civil War, rather than him having to go in and do press work to help to become a slave or something for the war, his mother sent him north to not have to do these things because he was a freeborn. But he was one of those pastors down there in the St. Andrews Africa Methodist Episcopal Church. | 16:39 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And so when he went north, he discovered, I don't know whether it was Baltimore, might have been Philadelphia, somewhere that way because it's where we first started in the area. So he found that they had bishops, and they had, that he had something that he can do, what is it? Mixed with, I mean, somebody he could relate to. So he wrote to his brother-in-law and asked him if he would save the St. Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church for him. When he came back, he was going to organize this church because it had, the church was called St. Andrews Methodist Episcopal Chapel, I guess. And so anyway, while he was still waiting around, there were, people do not get along. And so Richard Allen became a little bossy, and as he would've been, because it was his idea to sort of walk out, and this is Richard right here, sort of walk out the church. | 17:31 |
Velma Becton Fleming | So it was his idea, and he had done so much, so he, I guess, unbeknown to himself. He had really gotten bossier than he thought he should have. So these men were disgusted with him, so they would not follow him. So they walked out from him to form their own church. And what is it? It's the Mothers Zion in New York City. But it was a long time before they put a Zion to it. So you see, they really took the name from us, African Methodist Episcopal, and they put the Zion, I think the Zion came into theirs by 1816. And of course, that church was organized 1787, Mother Bethel in Philadelphia. But anyway, after they decided to organize that Zion church, then they decided to get real busy and see if they couldn't, it was sort of ending in the Civil War and everything. So they decided to get real busy and see if they could go out and see if they could gather them up some members and get their, whatever they call it, to get a church started or missionaries or whatever it was they wanted. | 18:42 |
Velma Becton Fleming | So when it came to New Bern, this church was here, the reverend hood who ended up being a bishop hood, found this church, he was sent out to be a missionary. So he discovered this church, and these people were in disarray because they didn't know what to think or what to do because the pastor was gone, they weren't having churches and the war was going on, and they were just disillusioned. So when this man came in and he just sort of took charge of it, and so this is what he gives him, he feels like he raised, because of that. But in anyway, the brother told him that the church, St. Andrews, was taken. So instead when he came back, they went down to the Baptist Church. Of course, in between, at times, it's a lot of stuff in between. The Baptist Church was a White church, but they had outgrown it. | 19:52 |
Velma Becton Fleming | So in those, yes, people sort of looked around and saw something vacant and I wonder if I can go in here, all everything just about was downtown, near the water because it's where everything flow in. And so he decided that, they decided, the group of men, trustees decided that different men would go in and they would organize this church in 1865. And so they went in and they began to have services. But being a proud people as we were, they knew that they, it didn't belong to them. So therefore, they wanted a place of their own. So they began to save their money so they can get out, and get out of that church, be thrown out, you know what? And so they saved their money in order to meet their expense, and George B. Willis bought the land, and later he sold it to them for a dollar. | 20:50 |
Velma Becton Fleming | So they built their church, they built their church around there on Cypress Street, and of course, they say that was the first Black church, because see, of course that was built in the state of North Carolina by Black people. Because the Zionites were still in St. Andrews Chapel downtown. See, that wasn't their church, I mean, they just [indistinct 00:22:10] land. But anyway, we built in 1872, that's when they got the land and they built, and they said it wasn't a beautiful edifice but you certainly knew that God was there because you could just feel the warmth, I guess, they were just so happy that they had something of their own, and to know where they were going because they were with the conference. We are the second Episcopal district in an office first. So you see, we're sort of closed up. And so it served as a school for a while. | 21:46 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And so in 1922, along come this great big fire, and they had many, many members, because a lot of that is mentioned, and they had this great big fire and our church burned down. It really did, it burned down. And I guess about that time, St. Andrews had built their church, St. Peters and everything burned. Well, they have the ruins of St. Peter's all, every oftentimes when they show the slides of the fire, they always show the ruins and they call St. Peters. And we were never mentioned, I guess we were just burned all the way down. And so I just felt like it should be told, I think people should have known what had happened. So then when they say that, the fire was terrible, it just took down so much until people, where they set up tents. And see the Gros Cemetery, people were living in tents and all around, they had to get a lot of, I guess, help from the service and whatever have you, and just so much smoke and so much burning. | 22:44 |
Velma Becton Fleming | But they said snowed, and I guess that's what helped to put out some of the fire, I guess, I don't know. But in anyway, I got real, real interested and I was just talking about Rue Chapel. I was just talking myself away and just preparing for this celebration that we were going to have, we even got an amateur video made of it. We got an amateur video, and so I do believe, and people were interested, they were very interested when they read about it and came out to see it, because they became knowledgeable or something that they didn't know about. And so that's what we did, we had our first celebration in 1990, and I— | 23:59 |
Kara Miles | And this fire in 1922 that destroyed the church, did they rebuild it on the same site or where did they rebuild it? | 24:51 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Okay, they rebuilt it over on Ellen Street, that was a, because see, where the fire fire was, a lot of Blacks lived downtown, they had stuff down in downtown area. And by you not being from New Bern, we have, in the vicinity where a lot of Black people lived, and we had a parsonage in there, I found this deed, this one have you over there. We put, instead of them letting the Blacks move back, I don't know if they paid them anything or just probably took it, they might have gave me 50. Anyway, they put up something that everybody could use like a cemetery and a ballpark so we could not rebuild. So we had to go over on the other side, go more inland. So they built over on Elm Street, and they only got the basement built because, see, I guess the first structure must have been wood. | 25:02 |
Velma Becton Fleming | So it burned real rapidly and everything burned but the bell and the cornerstone, they did save that. But do you know why it bothered me? All of these years, and one lady found a picture of the church, I wanted a picture of that first church. And I really thought that she would be happy to know that I was working in there, that we would, she never did. That picture became very important to her, and I've never really seen that church. So sometimes—"Scratch that, scrap that [indistinct 00:26:34]." They were going to make this one brick, so they built the basement first. So a brick, so that they could eventually get the edifice on the top. But before they could get, and they must have topped it somehow just to have church in there while, because I think they had churches and tents and everything. But anyway, before they could get church topped, the projects came through. | 25:58 |
Velma Becton Fleming | So the projects came, the house and everything came through, and they said they wanted, not all of that land was ours, but they wanted that church out of there. If it had been fully finished, they wouldn't have minded it. But they were going to put up these brick project homes and they wanted the church nice, they wanted to tear down. So I think they bought about 1300 feet up from our, of land or something. And so they had to come together and tear down, take down the church. So at that time, it was the Reverend Reddick there. I was a little girl, I mean, and I don't remember, I don't really know what was going on, but it was just so fascinating to me until, as I would read, I'd just get so excited. Anyway, they said he took down church brick by brick, and they moved it over further, closer to where it is now. | 27:03 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And then they got to the place, they really wanted us to move out completely. They wanted us to move out completely, so I think they pleaded and begged and begged and pleaded until they decided they would let them stay there. But they pushed us just as close up to everything as they could. So we lost a lot, you understand? We lost our recognition and we went down, we fell down. And I guess after having moved about, this being the third time, because it was completed, second corner of stone. It was rebuilt in 1941 and Cornerstone was laid in 1941. And the gentleman were not like the old gentleman that were of yesterday year, but they were interested and they put it up well, but it never has been a full completion, to my satisfaction, of the basement. And I felt that if the forefathers could do this, then we could search and we finish that basement, but we haven't to this day. | 27:55 |
Velma Becton Fleming | So that was what I was trying to work to get, so I don't know, it takes a lot to arouse people. One thing, this is the '90s and people at the top of the '90s, things got to changing, and can't keep up with the happenings in time, you have to get up with the flow. But I do feel that there were some things that we actually needed. I did see it has worked down to me becoming a trustee, can you believe that? Who in the world would have ever thought that I would be a, there are all the ladies, all the men, going here, I am a trustee. And I like to see things done and I'm a go-getter. And I hate to procrastinate, we can procrastinate all the time and never ever get anything done. So I got busy. My husband is a good churchman, and when they don't work, he will work, and we will do things together, both of us, college graduates, so we can talk that talk and do things. | 28:56 |
Velma Becton Fleming | And so people were coming up with air conditionings in churches and, "We don't need no air conditioning." I said, "Well, I ain't coming here, sit in the heat, leave home, come and give you my money to sweat myself there," "We don't need one." So I continued to work and we continued to try to sell the idea, then they wanted parsonage built back there. The pastors had stopped living in the parsonage, and so they were going down, so they wanted to borrow money to do the parsonage. I said, "Well, I'm not signing no loan to do the parsonage and leave this church undone without air." So in 1989, we finally got our air conditioning, we finally got our air, and we got our church aired and we got our central heating, conditioning, heating system in there. And of course, before we had gotten some new pews, and it's a nice little edifice. But out there are some things that we need to update or I don't even say you use it for a museum. We might be able to, but because a lot of our relics, we lost, during the fire. Mm-hmm, yep. | 29:48 |
Kara Miles | Is there anything else? That was very, very interesting. | 31:00 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Oh, it was? | 31:03 |
Kara Miles | Yes. | 31:04 |
Velma Becton Fleming | So what I did, I wanted to— | 31:04 |
Kara Miles | Fascinating. | 31:06 |
Velma Becton Fleming | It is. So what I really wanted to do was to let more people know about Rue Chapel, I really did. I wanted more people to know, because I didn't want her to lose her recognition. If she were to do it, entitled to it, we need it. And my biggest hope one day is to see her recorded in New Bern history, in the records of New Bern history. And of course, it seems as if we are not getting anything done, everybody say, "You are saying this is the first, how do we know it's the first?" You know how people do. But anyway, during the time that we were trying to get our history and everything together, this is the lady who had it and never done anything about it. And she used to ask me, say, "Well, did you ever? I don't know, I can't remember. I think we did." I said, "Well, that's good." | 31:06 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Well, anyway, these are the people who have seen all three churches. So they were the oldest, those were the [indistinct 00:32:06], so I sort of put them in there. And of course, we had one or two, and my father and mother were staunch, I mean they loved Rue Chapel. And so we just didn't use a lot of pictures because it was a impromptu kind of unprepared thing. I really wasn't well versed and I didn't have a lot of help. So I think we did right, well, considering what we did do. But this little gentleman right here, he helped to finance the next church, Isaac Hatts, and everything. So what I did, I gave a copy of my program booklet to the library, and New Bern Cleveland County Library, and that's a letter of recognition from them. I left the letter with our daily newspaper that we had this done. | 32:00 |
Velma Becton Fleming | I left one with that, so they didn't write, but, oh, I did send one over to, we have a learning resource center in Kinston and they are collecting history. So I put one there, and this is the man that I taught with concerning some of my history. And to find I used to, he said, "One day, I really want to find this pastor's picture. He said, "One day, you just might find that picture." He said, because I was talking one day and I wanted a picture. He said, "I've been looking and looking," he's White, he said, "And do you know?" Somebody said, "I have just the thing you're looking for," and he found a picture he wanted. So anyway, I sent him a copy. So he told me that he was going to share it, he was going to put this in archives of our church conference, and it's a Methodist church, and he was going to do this in Raleigh. | 32:58 |
Velma Becton Fleming | After he had read it, he was going to share it with the others. So I'm just hoping that it will get around. And as far as the school is concerned, don't go to Arabella Brown. I don't know would go there and do the same thing we did. But for her—Oh, what was I going to say? We sent a copy to the New Bern Craven County Board of Education because they did not have anything about us, they had some minutes and they weren't thinking about those minutes. So when we got that made up, we gave them a copy. So they wrote us some thanks us very much for that. So they said they would keep it, because if we don't tell our history, you'll never— | 33:49 |
Kara Miles | You'll forget yours. Yes. | 34:29 |
Velma Becton Fleming | That's right. | 34:30 |
Kara Miles | Well, that's why it's so important that you, I have this on tape now and I thank you so much. | 34:32 |
Velma Becton Fleming | Aw, you are so welcome, mm. | 34:37 |
Kara Miles | Thank you so much for it. | 34:38 |
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