Arabelle Bryant interview recording, 1993 August 02
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Transcript
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Sonya Ramsey | Testing. Testing, one, two, three. | 0:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mrs. Bryant, could you describe the neighborhood where you grew up as a young woman? | 0:04 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, I actually grew up in a small rural neighborhood about eight miles from Rocky Mount; between Rocky Mount and Tarboro. We lived on a farm. My father owned a farm. | 0:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was the name of your town where you grew up? | 0:27 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Kingsborough. | 0:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. And your father owned a farm— | 0:35 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Yes. | 0:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | —where you grew up? Was it mostly a rural area? Was it farming area? | 0:38 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Oh, it was a strictly rural area. | 0:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Now, the area where you grew up, was it a segregated area? | 0:46 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, yes, because most of the people in that area were members of our family and all the land in that area was owned by different members of the family. So it was strictly a family neighborhood. | 0:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 1:08 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Okay. There were brothers and sisters who owned the farms and of course, these were their children and then they in turn had farms; so for about a distance of six or seven miles, it was all one big family. In fact, my father was the principal of the little school there and everybody called him either cousin or uncle something. So they all— | 1:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Well as you said most of your family owned land also around other members of your family. Were they on your mother's side or your— | 1:35 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | My father's side. | 1:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you know how they came to own that land? | 1:43 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, my grandfather, who was born during slavery, and after they were freed, because he was a young man during that time, they allowed them to buy property and he bought all that area in there. And then either he or his sisters—he had four sisters who married and of course, the four sisters created a family when they married. And all the land in that area was more or less bought by the members of this family; my grandfather and his sisters and their husbands. And I don't know exactly how they came about to get it, but evidently, it was all owned by a man named Mr. Kilibur, a White fella, and they were able to buy it from him. Now I don't know what conditions that they were able to secure it under, but they were able to purchase it after slavery and after they were free and grew up in that area. | 1:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. What types of crops did your family run? | 2:46 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Tobacco or cotton. Mostly cotton and tobacco. | 2:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever have to help out on the farm when you were— | 2:54 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | No. | 2:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | No? | 2:57 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Uh-huh. | 2:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your father—did they hire people to work for him? | 3:00 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Mm-hmm. | 3:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did they hire people to sharecrop for or just they would help to— | 3:04 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Both. Mostly sharecrop was the people who lived on the farm, worked on the farm and of course, they would hire people to help sharecrop. | 3:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was the reaction of the White community to your extended family owning so much land? | 3:20 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well we were, I guess, in an exceptional situation because we didn't have to come in contact with Whites so much. I really didn't even realize that we were segregated because that's all we knew and that's all we saw growing up. And then the school where I attended was all Black and it had neighborhood—it wasn't exactly a neighborhood school, but they had a Rosenwald school and you had to walk to the schools. And so it was a life almost into itself because you didn't have many occasions to come in contact with Whites until you went to the city and at that time, transportation wasn't so good, so as a result you didn't get to go into town that much. You spent all your time in your neighborhood. So you really didn't feel the effect of segregation that much. You thought that was all life, you didn't know any better. | 3:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have to get your mother or have to go into town and shop that much and things like that? | 4:26 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well yes. I mean you didn't go that often. You would occasionally go and then you would see the signs: White, Black. I know they didn't call them Black, they call them Colored. You see the signs that said White or Colored and you were conditioned to the point that you went where it said Colored. Being a young person, you accepted it as a way of life because that's all you knew. | 4:32 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | We had our own transportation so we didn't have to ride on buses or anything, so you didn't come in contact with it there. But the only thing—the main place that you could appreciate it when you go, and you didn't really go into the—we didn't go into the restaurants and things that much, so you didn't feel it there. And in the Black neighborhoods, you had a little store or something; you usually went there. But the only time you really felt it was when you went to the department stores like Cresses and places and you see the other people sitting down eating. And of course, you knew that you weren't supposed to do that. | 5:03 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever hear of anybody that wrote the rules and tried to do things against [indistinct 00:05:48]? | 5:42 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | No, I didn't. I guess we had—at that time we were more or less in acceptance of it. That's when I was small. I didn't hear of anybody who was trying to break it. | 5:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have any brothers and sisters? | 6:05 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | There were six of us. | 6:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 6:08 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Three boys and three girls. | 6:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of chores did you have to do around the house? | 6:11 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, the usual. You helped around the house and as far as—because we had help too, but basically, you took care of your house and the yard and my mother always had gardens and we raised vegetables and things. In fact, she even would sell some into the city and take them. And of course, we had to help with the gardening. We didn't help with the big crowd, but we always had to help with the garden; we chopped and picked and take care of things of that nature. | 6:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | You say your mother would sell her vegetables in the city. What was that like? | 6:51 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, she had people; if you had an excess, you had people that you could take things to. Mostly White people who would buy from you if you have extra beans, extra things. They had people that they knew they could carry to and they would sell it to. | 6:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | What were the holidays like in your home? | 7:13 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I'm trying to remember. Well, I'm trying to think of anything. I don't think of anything unusual about the holidays. I was just trying to think. About the only holidays that I can remember that's when we were all—as we grew older, we'd come home for a family reunion. We always third Saturday and third Sunday gather in September was what we call our family day, our church's neighborhood. That was a big day in the church. That was homecoming in the church. And so we kind of tied our family in with the homecoming to the church and everybody would come home for that day and they'd have a big dinner on the grounds and they would have a barbecue and they would barbecue pigs out there and everything. That would be a big day and make big barrels of lemonade. And that was a high day in our life. Looking forward to the third Sunday in September when everybody would be coming home and friends and neighbors and all. | 7:19 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have a few relatives in the North also, or mostly— | 8:24 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well later, I remember as I grew up, we had cousins who had gone or drifted as there were very little things for them to do at home. So that's one thing is as you grew older you grew away because there wasn't anything to do there and every able-bodied person—at that time, we didn't have a high school in our county for Blacks, so if you wanted to go to high school, you had to go to the city. | 8:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | And the city was— | 9:07 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Nearest city was Rocky Mount. In order to go to high school, you had to go—we didn't have buses or anything, so you'd have to go maybe stay with somebody in the city to go to high school. And that was the beginning of your getting away from the farm and go—and then naturally after you finished high school, [indistinct 00:09:34] else for you to do, if you didn't go to college, you go to the city. In our area, most people went to New York, New York. Drifted to New York and Washington D.C. | 9:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask, although you weren't around many Whites when you were growing up, did your parents ever tell you anything about White people are segregation when you were growing up? | 9:45 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well the only—I don't remember except that I know one thing. One part of segregation that really kind of stuck in my mind was, as I told you, we didn't have any—our schools were—we didn't have neighborhood schools, but they have Rosenwald schools and they would be anywhere from maybe five or six miles apart, depending on where you lived. It was your problem to get to those schools. And usually you walked, which means that many kids had to walk maybe four or five miles to get to the school. | 9:58 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | But the White kids had buses and they would pass you on the street, pass you on the highway rather and holler at you and tease you, and the kids would pick at each other, throw things out the window, and that made you really conscious of the segregation because you were out there walking in the sun. Because I didn't walk because my mother—very rarely did I walk because—I could ride, but I [indistinct 00:11:01] they would pick at them, throw things out the window and all, and I think about it now, when they started busing for everybody and how the Whites kicked against it. | 10:33 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | But they were busing all the time and didn't complain about busing until the Blacks wanted to ride the buses. And then that's when they started complaining because at that time I guess kids would've been glad to have a chance to ride the bus because they had to walk to school. | 11:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | What type of values did your parents instill in you? | 11:31 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, fortunately, not only for me but most people I came in contact with, you were told that if you wanted to be somebody, you had to get an education and go to school and do something for yourself. You grew up with the idea that, that was the thing; you had to try to do the best you could so that you could to be something. And that's so disappointing to me with children nowadays; they don't seem to realize the importance of, as they put it, being somebody. | 11:38 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | And so they don't see the necessity to trying to learn all you can while you are young so that you can be independent when you grow up. I know in our neighborhood there were children who worked on the farms and weren't able to attend school regularly. So as a result they probably wouldn't make a grade that year. | 12:09 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | They would go during the season when there wasn't anything to be housed and maybe it might take them two or three years to make a grade. But they stuck it out because we had grown people going to school because they took them just that long to complete the grades. But they were determined to get through so they could finish. They had people—the schools in the neighborhood went to 7th grade at that time and during the off-season, they would come to school, just go to school to be learning. They weren't particularly in that grade or anything, but they just go to be able to learn how to read and write and people who would come in here, the farmers and workers and whatnot. | 12:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask you a bit, do you have any remembrances of your grandparents? | 13:12 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, not my grandfather; died when I was a week old. My grandmother lived until I was quite young. And on my father's side, because that's the area we lived in, my father's neighborhood and my mother was from Tarboro and her father lived. I was much older when he died. And we kind of thought he was important because he was in the House of Legislation and because we were kind of proud of that for my mother's side. But my grandmother, his wife had died. I didn't know his wife and I didn't know my grandmother's husband on my father's side. | 13:17 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | So I had a grandmother on one side, grandfather on the other. Grandmother lived with us, so naturally, I got to know her. And she used to tell us about things that—she was born during slavery and of course, she was quite young when they were freed; she was just a child. But she would tell us all about the different things that happened about Master Kellybrew and how he used to always—because to her, he seemed to have been kind to her because they were nothing but children. And she was telling us about the night riders and things of that nature. | 14:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | And the night riders were— | 14:46 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | People who see—there were certain things that you were not supposed to do as slaves and they would go ride around to see whatever it was that you were not supposed to do; that you weren't doing it. And she would tell us how they would come back and say, "Here come a night rider," and they would all scatter and go into their homes or huts or whatever they had to live in. She would tell us about those things when we were small. As I said, she was small herself. I think she said she was about seven or eight when they were freed. So all her memories were from a child's standpoint, but she would entertain us, tell about the adventures that she had when they were slaves and all. | 14:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did she talk about after she was freed and what her family did after that? | 15:37 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Yeah, no, as I think back, I can't remember. I can't remember her telling anything about what happened after because there was a void in there as far as—now, she told us about when she was freed. And then the next thing I remember was she was grown and married. So somewhere in between was a blank. Because I remember when I was small, my grandfather had a cotton gin and they used bales of cotton out there and kids would go out there and play on it. We'd play on the bales of cotton and grandmother would chase us out of the cotton yard. But I don't remember what actually went on in that. I never actually thought about it until you mentioned about that period of time from the time that she grew up and what happened after they were freed. I'm sure she must have told us, but I don't remember. | 15:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Now was it her side or on the other side that your grandfather was in the House of— | 16:57 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | That was my mother's side. | 17:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Your mother's side. | 17:03 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | He didn't live with us. He lived in an area about eight miles away near Tarboro. But we grew up in a neighborhood where my father's people were because my mother married my father and of course, they moved, lived there in that area. | 17:05 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | She used to laugh about the fact that grandfather had two children, at least in fact he had six, but my grandmother out there had two children. But they were anxious for them to get training. And at that time they didn't have any schools such as—we had grade schools and all, but they went to a little junior college. In Plymouth, they had this little finishing school at Plymouth, North Carolina. And from, I think it was about—from what I can recall, it was about two years, kind of a junior college. | 17:29 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | And then they went to Shaw when they finished there. And my father got whatever they trained there at Shaw and he was the principal at one of the schools in our area. But his brother stayed on and they had a medical school there and he went on and stayed and got his doc—he became a medical doctor and he served in our area until he died. But I'm saying all that to say it was important for them to get an education. | 18:07 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | They saw the grandmother even though they didn't have grandmother and grandfather. And not only my grandfather and grandma, but most of the people in that area were trying to be sure that their children got some kind of training or wanted them to get training and to be able to do something for themselves. | 18:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to move on to your schools. You said you went to an elementary school, it was a Rosenwald school? What did it look like? How big was the school? | 19:00 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | It was a small school. In fact originally, the first school wasn't a Rosenwald school, but it was just a kind of what they called a one-teacher school. One of those one-room schools; they had two teachers, but it was a one-room school. Such a big—I call it glorified [indistinct 00:19:34]. | 19:18 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | And then they built this Rosenwald school. They were coming up in the world and I think they had about three or four teachers. And they went from grades one through six. And you had two or three teachers. In fact, I think there were four teachers because my mother was principal and they had three other teachers and maybe one teacher would teach two or three grades, and maybe the first teacher maybe taught 1st and 2nd, maybe next maybe taught 3rd and 4th or 3rd, both 5th or whatever like that, which meant that you stayed in one room maybe two or three years unless you were moved up. | 19:35 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | And at that time they used to do a lot of skipping. They would test you and if you did pretty well, you could go on to the next grade. And a lot of time you were able to get out earlier because you were skipped along as they saw that you progressed rather than for you to stay in that. I guess maybe space might have been one reason they kept moving you out. | 20:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | How long was the term? The school year. | 20:41 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | The school year. I really don't know exactly. But you started in the fall and you didn't go as long as people go now; you would probably end in maybe about May or something. I don't know exactly how long they were. | 20:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | And you said there were children from sharecropping families that couldn't go as long as the other children. How did the teachers work with them? | 21:01 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well they would just come in while they were there. And when the time for them to move, they just move on. And that's why so many of them had to stay in that same grade for two or three years because they didn't stay long enough to really make that much progress. Many of the children in the same grade were—some were much older than others. Usually, you think of somebody, "Well we were in class," they think the same age, but it didn't necessarily mean they were the same age because they would stay until the teacher felt that they were able to go on to the next grade. | 21:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you have any remembrances of any special teachers in the early years? | 21:45 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Yes, I do. I had several teachers. I mean, I didn't have that many, but I remember the names of some of the teachers who taught. Interesting about this little school where even though it was [indistinct 00:22:08] had a big central heat; it had big stoves and then they would have to make fires in these stoves to heat the school. And in the back, you had a big privy and you had several openings that you use for outhouse. And I think about it, when we were children, we thought that was a nice place and you go out and played school and everything in the privy until the teachers came out and had a bell that—that would ring. And if you didn't hear the bell sometimes you'd still be out in that privy playing. | 21:49 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | And they had to come and get you out in time to go back to school, go back to class, and all like that. And you brought your lunch. You didn't have a—in one room they taught cooking and sewing in one room, which means there was a cook stove in there. And sometimes she would fix something like soup or things. And in addition, you brought your lunch from home; you had your little lunch bucket that you brought your own lunch. | 22:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | The teachers would fix soup. Was that for the children who weren't able to bring their lunch? | 23:21 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Oh no. It would be more or less like a treat. Sometimes they would make a big pot of soup and give to the children, all the children in addition to what they actually brought from home. Because you had a clothes closet, a big closet where you would put your coats and hats and your lunchbox. In your lunchtime, you would go in there and get your lunchbox out and they would all sit around and eat. And sometimes the teacher maybe would make a couple cakes or something and then they would share it with the children. There weren't that many. I don't remember in terms of numbers, but it must have been I guess about maybe 100-some children in those schools. | 23:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | And what grade did it go to? | 24:12 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | 7th. | 24:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | 7th. | 24:14 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Uh-huh. And at the end of the 7th year they would have all the kids from all the schools in all the county would go to Tarboro, which was the county seat for our area. And they would have an exam and if you passed the exam then of course you could graduate. If you didn't pass the exam, you couldn't graduate, you had to go back, maybe stay a little while. | 24:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did the White students have to take the exam too? Or was it just— | 24:41 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Just the Black. Well, I guess the White ones had, but I don't know what they did because see these were all Black. And that time you had a Black supervisor and of course, she would arrange this testing thing once a year that everybody would go and you'd take the test. If you passed— | 24:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was it a fair test or— | 24:58 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I think it was fair. I mean, I guess I don't remember. I assume it was fair, but it was supposed to be a kind of test to see if you were able to go to the next step. And if you passed it, of course, then you could go on what they call high school. And if you didn't pass it, of course, you had to go back to the grade school until—and it was only done once a year. And if you didn't pass it this year, maybe next year. And that happened a lot of times. | 25:03 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | People that say who just going to school and then after they've been there somewhat and they go and take the test and of course, if they could pass it, they would be—and even some after they passed the test, for something to do during the off-season, they would still come to school and be with the other children and the teacher—they accepted them enough. | 25:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. So did you go on to high school in Rocky Mount? | 25:50 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Mm-hmm. By the time I finished my sister who had—my older sister who had finished before me, was living in Rocky Mount and in fact, was teaching at the high school and I went and lived with her to go to school. Now before I graduated they did finally get a villa, what they call a county high school. And they had a bus. But I'd already started going to Rocky Mount and I stayed on with my sister who graduated. But before I did graduate, they did eventually get a bus for the Black children. It must've been my junior or senior year, they finally got a county high school. | 25:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | And what decade was this? | 26:34 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Hmm? | 26:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | What decade was this? | 26:38 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | This was in the '40s. | 26:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 26:39 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I'm sorry. '30s. | 26:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Thirties. | 26:43 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | '30s. Because it was the '30s when I finished in high school in '39. So it was in the '30s. | 26:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | I just wanted to—I just thought of this question. Going back a little early, did Depression affect your family in any way? | 26:48 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I'm sure it did, but that was in the '30s, so meant that I was quite young and I was not aware of the Depression as such. | 26:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And what was—you stayed with your sister when you went to— | 27:06 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | High school. | 27:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | High school. | 27:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you feel any extra pressure to behave since your—was your sister also a teacher in the high school? | 27:11 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Uh-huh. | 27:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | Something like that to mind your Ps and Qs [indistinct 00:27:22]? | 27:18 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, yes it did put a little extra pressure on you because one thing, by being her sister, I knew most of the teachers and they knew me. So you just couldn't do anything and get away with it; everybody knew you. Couldn't embarrass your sister. | 27:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you think you might have received any special treatment because she was your sister? | 27:45 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I don't think so. I think sometimes it made it harder because they wanted be sure that they didn't give you special treatment. They didn't want to be accused of giving you special treatment. So I think sometimes you might have been a little bit tough on you than probably would be on some of the rest of them to be sure that they were no special—and then when I finished high school, I went to Durham, the college, and that was, at that time, called North Carolina College for Negroes. | 27:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to go back and ask you two more questions about high school. What activities did you participate in high school aside from your academics? | 28:21 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | We had things like debating, science clubs, [indistinct 00:28:38], which was, I guess, a big—I'm trying to think of some other things. You know you had your usual things like the band and the glee club. In fact, we didn't have a band at that time. We had just the glee club. They didn't have a band I don't think when I was in high school. | 28:30 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | And of course, you had your sports you played. Football and stuff was not as big as it was now. You more or less just played if you didn't have a gym and you played more or less among yourselves and maybe a neighbor school might come sometime and just play. But it didn't have a regular setup like you do now where you have games scheduled. Most of the games were just—you had outgrow for physical education and you played among yourselves and then maybe nearby school like Wilson or somewhere might, at special times, come over and play, but they didn't have a regular schedule like now where you play four or five different schools already; schedule like that. | 29:03 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was the social life like during high school and dating? | 29:54 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, at that time, people more or less went from house to house. They had some little clubs and things, but many of them you couldn't go to anyway. At least you weren't supposed to go. So people would go from house to house to have house parties. | 29:59 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | [Indistinct 00:30:20] get the phone, please sweetheart. | 30:18 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | That was a big thing in our day. House parties. And you play the—you come here, there was always somebody in the group who could play a piano and somebody would play the piano and everybody would get around and sing and carol I'd go to my house or you'd go to your house and then on different occasions everything went on in the home. That was the big thing. You went from house to house and your friends maybe today would be at your house maybe tomorrow we'd be down at your house on the weekends. Because during the school—during the week you couldn't do much socializing anyway. And the next big thing that you had socially was going to the movies. The movies was— | 30:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay will do. Okay. You were talking about the— | 31:04 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Oh, I was talking about my social life. I was in the house and the drug store, everybody would go convene at it. People wanted to go out and meet somebody. You'd meet them at the drugstore. That was kind of a soda shop; like you'd go and get [indistinct 00:31:23]. | 31:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was it a Black-owned drugstore? | 31:21 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | It was a Black-owned drugstore and that was the community center so to speak. I reached the drugstore. Two o'clock, went to the drugstore; that was the highlight of—that's the medium place for the young folk to hangout. That was the hangout place was to hang out at the drugstore. And of course, they had little places in the neighborhoods. See then you had a lot of little Black places, little cafés and things in the Black neighborhood that you could go to and maybe get sandwich or something. Because they had places, what they called at that time, juke joints; it's a little club, little places. | 31:24 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | But you were very careful which one of those you went to. I mean, well just like a lot of places people were not supposed to. They sell beer and that type of thing, so your parents in particular want you to hang out to those places. Well, young people, you'd go. You might go, but you weren't supposed to. | 32:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask during—do you ever remember any of the teachers or classmates discriminating or showing special preference towards people based on their skin shade and things like that? | 32:30 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | No, I think they've been accused of it though. I believe that some who felt like they did. I think there were those many—I guess there has always been a little rivalry between people who felt like some people get special attention because they were prettier than some of them according to their standards or because they were the teachers' children or things like that. There were those who were not who felt often would be accused people of doing things of that nature. Now, whether it was true or not, I don't know, but they always felt—like the homecoming queen or something always felt like, "Oh, you can't be homecoming queen because you're too dark," or something like that. | 32:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | But how were the homecoming queens selected? | 33:28 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, the children would vote on them. They would vote on them. And I'm trying to think, I'm not sure who voted. I know later years I know the team would vote. But I think during that time the kids voted, the whole school would vote to pick out the homecoming queen. There were people who'd be running; you'd have several students running for homecoming queen. And then I think before the—I believe the whole school. I think the whole student body voted. I'm hoping I'm not getting confused because I know after I grew up from later years working, many times football team selected their queen. But I think back then that the student body voted on the queen. | 33:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | What's your high school—Rocky Mount, was it the only high school for Blacks? | 34:18 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Mm-hmm. | 34:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 34:20 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | At that time, most of the towns only had one Black school. | 34:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever hear of anyone who tried to pass for White and things like that? | 34:32 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | No, I didn't. I've heard of that, but I mean, I didn't know of anyone. But I've heard of people say that different ones were accused of passing for White and in some cases, they said that they were not necessarily accused of it. I mean, they weren't passing, but they assumed they were. | 34:39 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | And so for that reason they didn't bother to correct them because this was later years before—since I've been living in New Bern and grown and all, I have a friend who's very fair and she's often being mistaken for White, but she's pretty upfront about it. She'll let you know before it goes to a certain point. And then I guess some things that she didn't bother to correct people because I know we had a barbecue place. She had Moore's barbecue and she said she'd always go in there and get barbecue and they would always serve her. So one day she went and she sent her son in who is brown and he was told that he couldn't be served. And he said he didn't know; his mother always came in. | 35:07 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | And of course, when they found out that because he was fair, but not as fair as his mother, but he was brown enough for them to assume that he was Black and they wouldn't wait on him. But she was always waited on because they just assumed she was White. | 36:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask you—let's see, I think I asked all about—is there anything else you'd like to share about your high school years? | 36:18 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I'm trying to think. I don't remember too much about it as far as the segregation part is concerned to say that prior to the '60s or prior to that time, as I said, it was kind of more or less an accepted thing and we kind of fell into a slot and kind of went along with it. The theaters were all—you had a Black theater and White theaters, and you went to the Black theaters and stores, unless it was eating then everybody went to the same. But if there was anything to be—like eating, you couldn't sit down. You could stand up if you went into a Woolworth or place like that. You could purchase stuff, but you had to take it out. You couldn't sit down like the Whites and eat. You would buy your little stuff and go outside and eat it. | 36:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 37:42 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | And many people wouldn't buy it because they didn't want to. I think you began to get a little rustling of people who didn't want to follow the status quo. And so rather than not to, if they couldn't eat in, they would eat at all. They wouldn't follow to buy. I guess itching was beginning to generate—new generation was beginning to feel that if it's not good enough for me to sit down, I don't want it. | 37:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | I going to ask before we talk about your college years. I wanted to ask you some questions about your family and your church you attended. What was your church that you attended? | 38:08 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | My father's church; where we attended was a Missionary Baptist Church. And we had church service once a month; third Sunday in each month. But there were other churches in the area who had church the first Sunday, second, and third, fourth Sunday church, so you'd probably see the same people mostly. First Sunday you go to this church, second you go to that church, but your membership was only at one of those churches. But you'll see some of the same people wherever you go because they would follow whatever church was in that particular Sunday. | 38:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Were you baptized in the— | 38:50 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | In the river. | 38:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Could you talk to about what was that experience was like? | 38:54 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, it was an interesting experience because our pastor was a little man; was a short dog. And we went down into the water to be baptized and of course, they would go through the whole ceremony and he would dip you. And there were always some deacons on either side of here, but he was so short sometimes and I was tall. | 38:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | How old were you when you— | 39:22 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I was eight years old. | 39:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 39:25 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | To think that you were going to be drowned and then there were people who would get happy out in the water [indistinct 00:39:35] and then they had these deacons out there. People put on white, you had on a white dress and put on the whole white towel and they would baptize you, and dip you down in the water. And there were people, women in particular, who'd be happy out there in the water and they had to hold them down there to get them out of the water. And that was the Missionary Baptist Church. After I grew up, I married a Presbyterian and then of course, I went to the Presbyterian church and eventually transferred. That was later years after I got grown, transferred my membership to a Presbyterian church. | 39:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. When you were growing up, what was a typical Sunday like when you went to church for your family? | 40:14 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, we had Sunday school at 10 o'clock and then after Sunday school we'd have written morning service. And in many cases, it went on, you stayed church a good while and sometimes you'd even have dinner after service. So that Sunday you were devoted to church. You probably wouldn't get home until maybe about two o'clock. You'd go early, but 10 o'clock Sunday school and then you'd stay over and then you would eat and meet. And so you probably didn't get home till maybe two or three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon. It was a full day devoted to church. | 40:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I forgot to ask you, you said your father was a principal. Was he a principal of the school that you attended or— | 41:11 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | No, it was a school—he was not principal. My mother was the principal school where I attended. | 41:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, your mother was—both of your parents are principals? | 41:24 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Mm-hmm. | 41:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh. Okay. | 41:28 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | But my father's school was away from home. He'd have to drive to wherever he was working. | 41:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | That sounds different. Both your parents were principals. Did they ever talk about their management styles? | 41:37 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I'd imagine they did. | 41:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you ever remember any kind of things they said or anything like that or— | 41:48 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | No, not right off. | 41:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did they have the same kind of philosophies about teaching and things like that? | 41:56 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I think so in a way. I really don't remember too much about it. | 42:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Was your father—did he have the farm at the same time that he was a principal? | 42:11 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Oh yeah. We always had the farm, but he didn't actually work on the farm, but we had the farm. His work was with the school system because in the summertime he was all worked with the gardens. We always had a big garden. We would work; all of us would work on the— | 42:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | How big was your family's farm? How many acres? | 42:38 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | It was small; about a 100 acres. | 42:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. Okay. I guess I think I've asked you all the questions. I guess we can move on to your college years. You went to North Carolina College for Negroes? | 42:44 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Mm-hmm. | 42:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why did you select that college? | 42:54 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Oh, see, one thing, I wanted to be a librarian and at that time that was just becoming into vogue. The Library Science was just—and that was the only school for Blacks that offered Library Science as a minor because they didn't have it as a major. I was good in math in high school and my best grades were in math. So I'm saying all that to say I had an odd combination. When I went to school, you had to major in something because they were, at that time, offering a minor in Library Science. | 42:56 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | So I majored in Mathematics and minored in Library Science, which was kind of an odd combination because usually it was English or Social Studies or something like that as a major, but I didn't want either one of those. What I really wanted to do was—my sister was a Home Economics teacher and I wanted to major in Home Economics and minor Library Science, but you couldn't do that. So I had to choose. I chose Mathematics. So my major was really in mathematics. And later they did eventually break up to a full library science program. So I had to go back summers and get my degree in Library Science. | 43:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was this in the early 1940s? | 44:14 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Mm-hmm. Because I graduated in 1943. Which you meant that I finished high school in '39, college in '43, so that was early 1940s. | 44:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. How did World War II affect your going to college and friends and things? Did you know anyone that had to go fight? | 44:26 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Yes. In fact, when I was in college it was mostly girls because all the boys mostly had gone to—we had a few fellas. We had some fellows in college, but the girls were the majority because most of the fellows had gone into the service and boys were kind of at a premium. Girls had to fight old boys because what few were there had to service the whole campus. And so the girls considered themselves lucky to have been able to corner one of the young men on the campus since they were so few in number. In fact, our school at that time was quite small. I guess we had about 400 or 500 students. | 44:34 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Everybody knew everybody. The president knew everybody. You walked across the campus, "How are you Ms. Jones? How you Ms. Smith and how you feel?" Because everybody was miss and everybody knew him and he knew everybody else. And they were very strict as far as rules and regulations were concerned. | 45:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | In what ways? | 45:32 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | In that, you didn't—you couldn't socialize with the fellows; only at a prescribed time. They have one hour in the afternoon, what they call social hour. You could go out on campus and sit out and talk, but you didn't just talk with the fellows all during the day. It's one hour a day that you had that you go out there and you couldn't leave your dorm. You couldn't go into the city and you had—if you left—freshman, you had to go in threes and you had to sign out and you were prescribed a certain length of time; a half an hour to go to the store. | 45:33 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Or if you wanted to go to town shopping, you had two hours. Or if you wanted to go to the movie, you had, I think, it was three hours because it gives you a chance to go and get back. Because what some people would do is sign out to go to the movies and then they'd go shopping. But as freshman, three people had to sign out together. Sophomore was three. Juniors, two. | 46:09 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | You were never supposed to stop on the campus and talk to the boys, supposed to keep moving. | 0:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | What would happen if you broke one, if someone broke one? | 0:06 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | You'd get demerits. And if you'd get so many demerits, you would lose grade points on your—taken off your record. And then if you get too many grade points, you were sent home. You couldn't— | 0:12 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | One thing that's interesting, which was kind of—you couldn't go to the Black movies. And you could go to the White movies, but you had to sit up in [indistinct 00:00:42], and in Durham that was about 15 [indistinct 00:00:46] floors. You had to go up the steps to get up there to go to the— | 0:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I'm sorry. I was going to ask you, what type of activities did you participate in college? | 0:45 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, I was a member of the science club. What else? I believe that was it. | 0:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were athletics popular at your school? | 1:23 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, basketball and football. In fact, we had what we called the Dream Team. We had a good and strong basketball team. But the only thing about it, they were limited numbers because we didn't have a lot of male members. And they only had small teams because they were limited by the fact that you didn't have too many to choose from. But they would import fellows in to bring them to play. Because I know in our basketball team—in fact, the whole team was from somewhere else. They would bring them [indistinct 00:01:59], bring them in just to play basketball. | 1:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask, did you ever get to meet any soldiers? | 2:04 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Not really. We were not exposed to—but I think, as I said, when we were at Central, everything was so organized. You didn't get a chance to hardly do anything. I think about now how the kids have so many privileges. Because you had to be in your dormitory. After a certain time, after five o'clock, even six o'clock really, after supper you'd go out for an hour, and then you would go into your dorm and you weren't supposed to come out. And I guess that's one reason girls during that time learned to do a lot of things for themselves, like we learned to play cards, because that was your entertainment. And you'd have dances in the basement among yourselves. You learned to dance with each other. We were always confined to the dormitory. | 2:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have a roommate when you were in college? | 3:02 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Yes. | 3:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Where was your roommate from? | 3:04 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, my original, first roommate was from here. We were good friends, and we went to school purposely to be together, but she died after my freshman year. And then of course, I had different roommates from various places after then. But the whole idea we were going to be together. She only lived one year. | 3:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did her death affect you when you were going to school? | 3:24 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | It really upset me, because naturally you didn't expect it. And we had been friends right on through high school. We were just inseparable. But I guess in a way we shouldn't have been roommates because we had been too close before, and you don't branch out as much. In some places they wouldn't let homies room together, so that they were sure that they wouldn't just stick together. But we branched out though. And my next roommate was from Charlotte, I think, after then. And then we'd change. It wasn't always the same person. We would change each year, get a new roommate. | 3:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have a boyfriend when you were in college? | 4:19 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Mm-hmm. | 4:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you meet him? | 4:22 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | He was on campus, one of the few fellas we had on campus. I worked with him my freshman year. And my sophomore year, I think we broke up. And then I didn't have a boyfriend. | 4:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Hmm, okay. Is there anything else you'd like to add about—oh, I guess I wanted to ask, what did your college years contribute to your development? How did that—? | 4:39 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, I think they were formulating years, because when I went to college, I was quite young, and I didn't hardly know what I wanted to do. It kind of sobered me up and made me get more serious about life and things. As I think I mentioned earlier that when I was in elementary school, you could move along. And when I went to take my first 7th grade test, I think I was only 11 years old. And then I went to—my mother was going to send me to a boarding school at Bricks, but I had trouble with my legs, and I wasn't able to stay. I wanted to stay a little while. And then I lost that year, so that when I actually finished high school, I was just 16 years old. | 4:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh okay. I wanted to ask you—we stayed at the Bricks School, when we were in that area. | 6:04 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Oh sure. | 6:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask, you told us you didn't stay very long there, could you talk to me about your experience there? | 6:13 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, as I said, I was quite young at the time. And I don't remember too much about it, except that it was a boarding school-type thing and we had a dining hall and all where you would eat. And I remember, I didn't like the food. And I used to cry because I didn't want to stay, because I didn't particularly like the food. And that's about the main thing that I remember about the place, is I didn't stay very long because I had these ulcers on my legs, and my father brought me home because he didn't think it was all right. | 6:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask you about healthcare when you were growing up. Did most people go to the doctors and did they have a good healthcare there? | 6:52 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well people, a lot of them went to the doctors, and there were so many people who used a lot of home remedies. I think people were into using a lot of home remedies for little things, like you didn't go to the doctor for a cold or something like that. But if you got serious, you went to the doctor. Because as I said, we were pretty fortunate, because my uncle was a doctor. | 7:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, that's true. What was your uncle's name? | 7:25 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | George Bullock. So we personally got good healthcare, but most people used a lot of herbs and things. I think about it now because—[indistinct 00:07:44]. | 7:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh okay. I guess you were talking about your uncle being in healthcare. | 7:46 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | No, we were talking about healthcare. I said people used to use a lot of herbs and things. People get stuff like mullein. If you got a headache, you would— | 7:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | Where was mullein used for? | 8:00 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I guess in the yard [indistinct 00:08:03]. It's a herb. It's a plant that's supposed to be good for things of that nature. You got a headache, you put mullein. And sassafras tea was supposed to be good for cleansing. And chickenpox and that type of thing, you got sassafras tea. | 8:02 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | There were a lot of [indistinct 00:08:23] and things that people supposedly have medicinal purposes. People would always collect. And as I said, I mentioned earlier, I had ulcers on my legs at that time, and people were always bringing us, my mother, different things to try, "Yeah, bathe her legs in this," and "Bathe them in that." They would go out and get stuff and bring [indistinct 00:08:49]. "Try this," and "Try that." So we were exposed to quite a bit of herbs and things, in addition to what the doctor was doing. | 8:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did they help? Did those remedies help, [indistinct 00:09:01]? | 8:58 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | They didn't go away. I don't know whether they helped or not, because I was stuck with—even with the doctor, nurse, and all that, I didn't get rid of them. Because even when I was able to go to the point where I was well enough to go to college, I still didn't ever quite get rid of them. They healed over eventually. | 9:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask you, did you join your sorority when you were in college? | 9:29 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | No, I didn't. Afterwards. | 9:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay, I'll ask you that later then. After you graduated from North Carolina College, what did you do after that? | 9:34 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I came to New Bern. I came to New Bern to work. And at the time, New Bern schools were in a bad condition. They were all run down and whatnot, not only the Black, but the Whites too. I remember I came to New Bern. As I told you, in September it was always a family day for us. So I came to New Bern the 1st of September and had a old, rickety bridge. I had to come across a wooden bridge that came across [indistinct 00:10:15] bridge and all downtown, because that was during the wartime. Everybody's wasn't thinking [indistinct 00:10:22] New Bern, but grandfolks, grandparents and grandchildren because all [indistinct 00:10:26], and they were just beginning to start Cherry Point. And Cherry— | 9:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | That's a military base? | 10:28 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Yes. Cherry Point was young then or just about. And I guess if they hadn't got Cherry Point, there wouldn't have been anything left but grandparents and grandchildren. And everything was run down, the schools, the homes, everything. When I came across that bridge and I saw it was run down, [indistinct 00:10:53]. I went back that third Sunday. They said, "How do you like New Bern?" I said, "If I can just make it this year [indistinct 00:10:59]. That place is bad." | 10:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you get the job in New Bern? | 11:05 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, what happened was, we were in New York in summer school and my brother-in-law, and the fellow who was principal here, he was assistant principal, and he was taking over as principal that particular year. So he was trying to get his staff together. He ran across my brother, who was also a principal in Rocky Mount. And he told my brother he was looking for a band teacher, and he told about my husband was a band man. So he encouraged us to come to New Bern, because I came on my husband's coattail. He didn't want me, he was looking for a band person. | 11:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, you were married by then. | 11:50 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Uh-huh, he was looking for a band person. It was a package deal, so in order to get my husband, they had to get me too. That's how I got to come to New Bern. As they said, "I drank the water and I haven't left yet." That was 1943, and so I've been here ever since. | 11:55 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | But the things have been improved, because the newspapers and all were showing how bad the White schools were, old, run down toilets and things [indistinct 00:12:17]. And so you know if the Whites were like that, imagine what the Black schools were like. | 12:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | I want to just go back and ask, how did you meet your husband? | 12:20 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | We were [indistinct 00:12:31]. Through a friend. | 12:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Was he from New Bern also? | 12:37 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | No, his home was from Norfolk, but he was in Rocky Mount visiting a friend. That's how we got to know each other. And then I responded and then we got married. | 12:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. What was your wedding on? | 12:51 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well that particular wedding was one of the overnight things. | 12:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Okay. | 12:57 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Just decided we wanted to get married and went downtown, "I got married." | 13:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | In New York, South Carolina or—? | 13:31 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I think it was. | 13:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | [indistinct 00:13:33] a lot of people come to York. | 13:33 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I think it was. [indistinct 00:13:33]. I've forgotten now which place it was. But he didn't live very long. And [indistinct 00:13:33] New Bern. My husband's a New Bern fellow. [indistinct 00:13:33] I met him. He was in the service. He'd just come out of service. | 13:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Your first husband or your husband [indistinct 00:13:37]. | 13:35 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | This is the present one. He had just come out of service. He came back home, and a mutual friend introduced us. And that's how we got together. | 13:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. So you moved here with your first husband? | 13:47 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | That's right. | 13:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. Okay. What school did you start teaching at? | 13:50 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | West Street. | 13:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | West Street. | 13:55 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | That was the school. In fact, that was the only school. The only public school was West Street. | 13:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | And what grades? | 14:04 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | And it went from 1 to 11. Yeah, 11 then, because then you eventually went to college. | 14:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | And what subject did you teach? | 14:13 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I came as a librarian and math teacher. So really the first year I was here, I actually taught all math because the girl who was a librarian, she left after my first year. And then I went into the library. So my first year, I taught all math. And then the next year after she left, I did two. I did some math and library work. And then eventually worked up—it was a good a little while before we got to the point I got to be full-time librarian. | 14:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And how long did you stay there at that school? | 14:48 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, yes. See, as I said, that was the school. That was the school. And then in 19—must have been about in the early 1950's anyway, they built a new school. They built a new high school for Blacks and [indistinct 00:15:13]. And of course we were transferred from the old school. They used the old school then for an elementary school. And we moved over to the high school, which [indistinct 00:15:22]. And by that time, the schools had grown, but it was still Black and White. | 14:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | How long were you living here before your first husband passed away? | 15:34 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Couple of years. [indistinct 00:15:40] died in 1946. [indistinct 00:15:50]. | 15:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have any children by that time? | 15:50 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | No. | 15:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | And then you met your present husband in—Was that [indistinct 00:16:00] recently, later on, or? | 15:55 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Yeah, [indistinct 00:16:03]. We got married in 1949. So that was [indistinct 00:16:05] three years span [indistinct 00:16:05]. | 16:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was he a teacher also? | 16:04 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | No, as I said, he had just come back from his service [indistinct 00:16:05] got on as a mail carrier. And at that time there were no Black mail carriers. And so he and a friend of his were the first two Blacks to get on as mail carriers. | 16:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was that experience like? Did he talk about that? | 16:28 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Mm-hmm. He was saying that, naturally, at first he said that some of the Whites kind of resented, but their postmaster, he gives him a lot of credit because he was determined to make it work. And he said when they have those social functions and all, at first he would invite them, the two Blacks, to sit his table to be sure that they didn't get any from the other ones. But eventually he said they got along, learned to appreciate each other, and actually got to the point where they really didn't have any problems. He said, at first, he could feel a little tension when he first went there. | 16:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you know how your husband came to get that job? That seems like a hard job to get, being the first— | 17:08 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, yes, in a way he—I don't remember exactly how he came to get it but—because his friend got it first. They were the two. He got it first, and then he encouraged him to come on down and try. And he took the test, and of course he made it well. And they eventually went on and hired him because—see, all you had to do really was supposed to take the test and if he made a certain, then they were in a position to hire you if they wanted to. | 17:15 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | But in so many cases, [indistinct 00:17:52] many people that actually tried because you just assume that you're not going to be hired, so you don't even worry about trying to take the test. So I think that it happened in so many cases where there are no Blacks. People say, "Well, no one has applied." Well, they don't apply because they haven't seen anybody there, and they assume that there's no point in applying. And I know that this happened in several cases with people. That was the excuse they gave, "We didn't hire him because no one had tried to get in." So I don't if anyone had tried before he did or not. | 17:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was there any reaction from the Black community after your husband and his friend were hired? | 18:28 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, they were real appreciative. They thought he had done something, because as I said, there weren't too many jobs. In fact, he was really a college graduate, and probably could have gone into something else, but he was a Business major. And at that time there weren't that many openings for Blacks and Business majors. He had finished Howard University, but at that time, most of the jobs that were available were teaching and nursing or something like that. And there weren't too many areas for Blacks to go into with these off degrees. I'll put it that way. Had he stayed in D.C, he probably could have gotten something, but his mother was here, and he wanted to be here with her. And so he was anxious to stay in New Bern, so he was trying to look for something here. And pay was pretty good compared to other things around, so he decided to go into that. | 18:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask, what did most of the Blacks do, occupations did they have, in New Bern? | 19:44 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | That's what I said, most of them were either teachers, doctors, nurses. There were several Black businesses, too, at that time. When I came, there were a lot of Black businesses at that time. Because we had a Black hospital. | 19:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, what was the name of the hospital? | 20:10 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Good Shepherd Hospital. We had a Black hospital. We had a Black drugstore and several, I call, storefront type businesses. We had shoe repair, even had a Black cleaning—and several grocery stores. Thinking of it, theater was Black, but it was owned by Whites. And I'm trying to think. We had lot of little areas where you [indistinct 00:20:50]. We haven't had a chance to see all the time, but it's an area called Five Points, where [indistinct 00:20:55] is. And that particular area, that was kind of like the Black business area. There were a whole lot of different types of Black—Black-owned businesses in that area at that time. | 20:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask you, what did the people do who weren't able to go to college? Did they have factories in other places for people to work here? | 21:17 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | No, they had a lumber company, because that's supposed to hire [indistinct 00:21:30] lumber company. And they really didn't have—everybody, mostly, by the time I got here, was trying to get to Cherry Point. Cherry Point was the main source of employment for this area. Everybody who's anybody who was trying to get on at Cherry Point. They had all grades of work from janitorial right on up. And to get a chance to work at Cherry Point was really a [indistinct 00:22:01], because that meant you had steady work and you got government benefits and whatnot. And Cherry Point made New Bern from all the way up, from the officer's level on down. And if you were in New Bern, that's what you were supposed to do, work at Cherry Point. So that was the main employment. | 21:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Did you always live in this neighborhood that you live in now? Or did—? | 22:27 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Mm-hmm. In fact, the house next door was my husband's mother's house. And we've always lived out here. But that was the last house in town. My husband's mother's house was the last house in town. | 22:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | What do you mean by the last house? | 22:43 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | That was in the town. That was it. And all of this, anything from that house over there, from this way back, has been built since we've been out here. In fact, this was a farm, a big farm. And then they had a prison camp. Where the hospital is, that was a prison camp out there, and they had a prison farm. | 22:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were they mostly—was it White prisoners or Black prisoners? | 23:05 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Mostly Black prisoners. Mm-hmm. And all this was a farm area, agriculture area. So we were able to see all this grow. | 23:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was race relationships between Blacks and Whites in New Bern? | 23:19 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, I think they were pretty good because I didn't ever hear of—as race relations go, compared to other places, I never heard of any real antagonism between the two races. I never heard of any incidents that went on, racial incidents. And in fact, even when we integrated our schools, we didn't ever have any outward problems [indistinct 00:23:59]. And they did it in such a way that it was either this—they started integrating by—all the grades went to one school. They had K through 4 in the neighborhood, at various places. And then they had one school for 5th grade, one school for 6th and 7th grade, one school for 8th and 9th. | 23:26 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | And that way, everybody was thrown together, and it went so smoothly. Everybody anticipated having a big to-do, but it went so smoothly. It really was never a real problem, racial problem. And so I think really New Bern race relations were about as good as, I guess, [indistinct 00:24:50] you know have your prejudices. But I don't know of any real—because during the '60s, naturally, when they were demonstrating, all of those sit-ins and whatnot, there were little problems. But I don't ever know of any big problems, shooting or holes [indistinct 00:25:13] anything of that nature. | 24:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | When you were, I guess, starting your teaching career, what kind of organizations were you involved in, in the NAACP, anything like that? | 25:16 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | To tell you the truth, I was not active in the NAACP. We had a old Black forum that we used to have, but that was about as far as my political—later years, we developed a good, strong organization [indistinct 00:25:44]. That was [indistinct 00:25:46] since integration. | 25:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said it was a Black forum. What kind of activities did they do? | 25:49 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | About every two or three months, they'd have a forum down at the high school, and people would come in and talk about different issues and all, bringing speakers. Some of our Black leaders would come and have a speak. That about as close as I remember to anything being of that nature. | 25:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And when did you start having children? | 26:16 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | In 1949. | 26:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Okay. Did you have your daughter in the hospital or [indistinct 00:26:28]? | 26:23 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | In the hospital, at the Black hospital. I have two children, both of them were born at the Black hospital. And we had several Black doctors here then. We had a lot of Black doctors. In fact, they had [indistinct 00:26:42] six. But afterwards—now we don't have any. We had medical doctors, dentists, several dentists, and now we don't have anything. Because we do have one doctor now, just recently. He moved here, and he's a specialist in gastro-something. But we've always had two or three medical doctors. But now New Bern has no medical doctors and things at all. | 26:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask, how did you manage childcare while you were working and things like that? | 27:14 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, I did the old-fashioned way. His mother lived with us. And she was the babysitter. People used to have extended families, and extended family took care of the children while you were working. But you don't have those extended families anymore. | 27:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. What type of social organizations or clubs and activities were you involved in during the fifties? | 27:45 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, we had what we called North Carolina Association of Negro Women's Club. And the local chapter was the [indistinct 00:28:02] Club, and it had broken down into the Book Club, the Arts and Craft, and the Home and Garden Club. So I belonged to the Book Club, and later I joined both the Book Club and Arts and Craft. And that was a division of the North Carolina Negro Women's Club. And then of course I was on a sorority, and the church activities, and then I belonged to a social club. | 27:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask you, could you talk some more about your sorority, and when did you join and why you selected that sorority? | 28:36 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, I joined a sorority in 1956. I had always wanted to be a part of it. When I was in college, my sister was a member of it, and so I was [indistinct 00:29:02]. She said, "Well, why don't you just wait—" I was in college during the time, as you said, when things were during the Depression era, and so she was saying, "Why don't you wait till you've graduated, and then you spend all that money?" which I did. Then when I came out, there wasn't one in this area. And so we didn't get one in this area until the '50s. And so I was [indistinct 00:29:32] charter member when we got one in this area. It was strictly different from college. It was strictly a service organization. We did a lot of service. It wasn't a social organization that you had that you had when you were at college. And we would sponsor—we started out sponsoring the Debutante Ball, and we would do that every year at first, and raise money for scholarships and whatnot. | 28:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | How were girls selected for the Debutante Ball? | 30:04 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, we set up a criteria, which they were supposed to have been students who were excelling in school and of good character and that type of thing. And those are the ones that we sponsored with the idea, assuming that they would go to college and that the money we raised would help them with scholarships. And after we got our chapter here, then the Deltas got a chapter later and the Zetas, and so instead of having our function once a year, we started having it every three years, so that everybody would have a year. And it had worked out real well. | 30:08 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | And they would all basically have the same idea, same goal. And so each one would have a annual fundraising event, because ours was Debutante Ball, and the Deltas with the Jabberwock, and the Zetas with the [indistinct 00:31:07]. And I said, [indistinct 00:31:12] what's the difference? [indistinct 00:31:13] they're all the same. We wouldn't agree to that. We wouldn't admit that. But I'm saying they're all working for the same cause, they're all trying to work for final womanhood, trying to encourage the girls to be ladies. | 30:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted ask, you said you were a member of a social—what was the name of your social club? | 31:28 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | The Owlets. | 31:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was it just for women only or—? | 31:35 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Yes. | 31:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. How did you become a member of that club? | 31:37 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Usually someone would recommend, you have to be—someone in the group would bring you in, bring in a new member. You got to know somebody who knew somebody. | 31:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was it a large group or was it small? | 31:52 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | No, it was small group. | 31:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And what kind of social activities would you have? | 31:55 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | When we'd meet, we would play cards, that type of thing. And then we'd have socials, dances, public dances where you'd would invite your guests and all that type of thing. We would have a formal, a styled out formal, and then it gradually got to be informal. But it was something that you kind of looked forward to once [indistinct 00:32:20]. | 32:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Did you get to travel much and things like that? | 32:23 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, not really. I didn't get to travel too [indistinct 00:32:33]. We would go maybe once a year somewhere like Atlantic City or New York or Miami, somewhere within the state. I didn't ever do any overseas traveling at that time. | 32:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | During the summers—what did you do during the summer? | 32:51 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, what did I do during the summer? Supposed to try and get ready for the fall. We didn't do anything special. As I said, we usually would take at least one trip during the summer. During my vacation, he would always had a plan to get off sometime. During my vacation, we would go somewhere. But other than that, we'd do all the things around the house that you didn't get a chance to do during the school year, which I haven't done since I retired. I'd always do them in the summer, so I'd be ready to go back to school. But after I found out I was going to be home all the time, it went undone. I didn't get to do that. | 32:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever take any extra courses, coursework [indistinct 00:33:34]? | 33:31 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, I did at first because I was trying to upgrade my certificate. Because as I said, when I first came, I had just a minor in Library Science. And I went back to school and got my Masters in Library Science. And then once or twice, I'd go to ECU for workshops, so things of that nature during the summer. | 33:35 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Oh, I really thought my grandson was sticking his nose out. I saw you looked back. | 34:03 |
Sonya Ramsey | I think he was. | 34:09 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I figured he was probably [indistinct 00:34:13]. I just figured he was somewhere around, trying to see what's going on. They are just here visited me. They are from California, and they just came in Saturday. And they're going to be with me for the month of August, he and his mother. | 34:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | [indistinct 00:34:31]. Is there anything else you'd like to add about the '50s? | 34:31 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, I can't think of anything right off. '50s, '50s, '50s. | 34:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Had the school started improving then, during that decade, or was it later? | 34:42 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, they had started improving the schools right away, because as I said, when I came out, the first year or two after I got here, the man who had been principal of the school had been since, they say, year one, so to speak. And he retired the year before I came, because this fellow who came—the new principal came in with me. At least, we came in with the new principal. And the same thing was true downtown, they got a new superintendent. Well, the thrust then was trying to improve the schools, and so from the time I got here, the new superintendent, the new principals and all, that was the beginning of trying to— | 34:47 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | As I said, and also, what helped too, Cherry Point was coming into its own, and more money was coming into the systems. Before, they didn't have any money base. By having Cherry Point, they gave a new money base, and they were able to get more funds to do things with. So naturally they started trying to improve schools, and they built a new White high school first, naturally. And then they built a Black high school, and of course the Black high school was not nearly as fabulous as the so-called White high school. But it was a big improvement over what they had. And then came the '60s, and they were using, as I said, the old Black high school that we had, they were using it for elementary school. And it was burned in the '60s. | 35:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Burned by Whites? Burned by Blacks in the riots? | 36:25 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I don't know, but I think it was burned by the Blacks. Because they thought that if the school was in bad condition, then that was their way of getting— | 36:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | This was the late 1960's or early? Okay. | 36:46 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Yes. That was their way of getting rid of it. They [indistinct 00:36:49] burn up history. But anyway, they burned—at least it burned [indistinct 00:36:53]. There's a song [indistinct 00:36:56] wrote of the unrest, people who wanted [indistinct 00:36:59], which they did. They built a new building after that. | 36:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Yes. Did your students ever question you about segregation and things like that? | 37:04 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Well, when I went to—you mean the folks during segregation? | 37:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 37:15 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I'm trying to think. I don't remember. I was thinking about after segregation. I know when the Whites came over, and I know when in the library they had these pictures of the graduating classes of the Blacks classes, and they were still up in the school building. When the Whites came over, a little boy came and said, "Where are all the White folks? I don't see them." He couldn't understand. He didn't understand why they only had Black pictures on the walls from when they were—and I guess he just said, "[indistinct 00:37:56] where were y'all's White students?" He didn't realize that there were no White students, take time to explain to him. And it's surprising how so many kids don't remember. They didn't realize that it hadn't been that way all the time, that it hadn't always been integrated. | 37:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | So you taught in the integrated schools. How was your relationships? What was that adjustment like from teaching [indistinct 00:38:26]? | 38:17 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | It was real nice. At first, I had no problems whatsoever. And when the first White kids came over, they were just as nice as they could be. I think in terms of the library— | 38:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | This was the late 1960s or—? | 38:39 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | No, it was really—1970 was really the first year of full integration. 1970. Now in 1964, after the 1964 decision was made, they put some Black teachers into the—they integrated faculties, I put it that way. There were no students for the most part, just the faculty, some of the Black teachers went to some of the so-called White schools. And then in 1968, several Black students went to New Bern High School. I think there were about six of them who went, and it wasn't an easy time for them. They had problems. And in fact, that was the same year that my son went to high school. But he went to [indistinct 00:39:43], which was the all Black school. But some of the ones who went to the White school were friends of his, and they were [indistinct 00:39:52] about things that they were telling about the experiences that they were having. So I got kind of firsthand some of the problems that they were running into. They resented the fact that they were over there. | 38:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | If they had asked you to send your son to the White high school, would you have sent him? | 40:04 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Yes, if he had wanted to go, but he didn't want to go. Because as I said, he had a chance to go when some of his friends went. | 40:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | You left it up to him. | 40:14 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | Mm-hmm. And he preferred to stay at [indistinct 00:40:17]. But several of his friends went that was in his class in high school. One thing that was interesting about—we had been accused of this in a way, of spoon-feeding our children, because those kids went over to the so-called White High School, they taught the book, and we taught the kids. And they went right through that book. And if you didn't get it, shame on you. But I find that among the Black students, teachers, they are concerned about the children learning and they kind of go over and over, which means that you don't cover as much during the course of the year. Now I know, especially in that math book, they had finished that math book. Before the year was out, they had gone through it. And [indistinct 00:41:17], they didn't finish the book because they were still trying to learn as they went, and they didn't cover as much area. | 40:15 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | But I found that's one thing, a difference between our situation that we had and what they had. We would always go back and repeat and try to emphasize and make sure the kids got it, and whereas—and that's one thing I reckon why some of our kids were lost when they went to the White school, because they'd go right on through. And if you don't keep up, shame on you. No one's concerned about if you get left behind. And as a result, so many of our children got left behind. And they would lose interest, dropout, and all that type of thing because they couldn't keep up. | 41:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | When you were teaching in an integrated school, were you still teaching math or were you just mainly a librarian? | 42:03 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | No, by that time I was a full-time librarian over there. And the schools were integrated even before then. | 42:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was your relationship with the White teachers and the other administrators? | 42:17 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | We got along beautifully. I don't know of any problems that we had. Because some of my best friends were [indistinct 00:42:31]. My best friends were White teachers. I didn't know of any problem that we had as far as the teachers were concerned. And the children seemed to have adjusted to having White teachers, too, because they preferred the White teachers in many cases because they were letting them get away with murder, and they still do. And they would prefer being in the White teacher's room, because they didn't have to mind, they didn't have to do things. We were still concerned about the children learning and whatnot, and making them do the work. And they were still concerned about teaching the book, and if you didn't learn, shame on you. So they'd rather be where they didn't have to learn anything. | 42:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever have any problems ordering books you wanted to order and things like that? | 43:12 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | No. Uh-huh, I didn't. But before, we had limited budgets. Earlier, we didn't get as much money allotted to the school as the other schools did. That was one thing. You could buy what you wanted. They didn't put any restraints as to what you ordered, but you were just given a certain amount and you could use it at your discretion. And so often what you were given was limited, and you could only do so much with it. That was the main problem. And I know years ago at the school, what they would do, they would buy new books for the White schools and then they would take the old books and send them over to the—not necessarily library books, but classroom textbooks. They would always send them, whatever they didn't use, over to the Black schools. And invariably there were books that had been used previously. And then when new books came out, they would send them to White schools, and they would take the other books and send them over to [indistinct 00:44:32]. | 43:19 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I think I've asked all my questions. Is there anything else [indistinct 00:44:40]? | 44:37 |
Arabelle Bulluck Bryant | I don't think so. I can't think of anything. I believe you've covered everything. | 44:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay, well— | 44:44 |
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