Willie Hickman interview recording, 1993 August 04

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Rhonda Mawhood	—the way that you did.	0:01
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Well, I have something. This may help explain some of the—you know how it is when you get my age, you forget a lot.	0:03
Waitress	Is your chicken okay?	0:10
Rhonda Mawhood	I haven't tried it yet, but it looks just fine.	0:13
Waitress	Okay.	0:14
Rhonda Mawhood	Thank you.	0:14
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	You forget. I had a time in my office this morning trying to find my social security check.	0:17
Rhonda Mawhood	You did?	0:23
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I put it down somewhere and I haven't found it yet. But it's in there. Sometime ago, they wrote us. Yeah. Yeah, exactly what you wrote.	0:23
Rhonda Mawhood	Really?	0:44
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I know that that's a write-up.	0:44
Rhonda Mawhood	So, you were born in Craven County, Reverend Hickman?	0:58
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	In Craven County. Yeah.	0:59
Rhonda Mawhood	In New Bern?	1:02
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Right down near Cherry Point. They call Havelock now, but it was known as Hickman Hill then. But the Hickmans owned it, and they own that portion now.	1:04
Rhonda Mawhood	And that's your name. So, your family is from that area?	1:18
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	My grandfather and his brother owned that Hickman Hill, and they divided their land.	1:24
Rhonda Mawhood	Very nice.	1:34
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	See? They paid 25 cent an acre for the land. They didn't have the money to buy the land, so they worked. That's how they got it.	1:36
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Now, to get back to your question. All right. You got the recorder on?	1:55
Rhonda Mawhood	Yes, sir.	2:06
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Okay. When I was about 13-years-old, I was working on a farm. Of course, what I did on that farm in the spring of the year was to stand on guard to mine the crows out of the field, and keep the crows from picking at the corn when they planted the corn and it started growing. That was a job for a 13-year-old boy. I grew up in a way in that community with White and Black.	2:06
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Mr. Tillman had a son and daughter. One daughter named Ruth, and the son was named Morris. Whenever rainy days come, we would go play in the pack house. We would go under the house that they lived. It was way up off the ground by three feet. We would go under the house. So, one rainy day, we were under the house playing, making what we call dirt houses. We would put our foot on the ground and pull the dirt up around the foot, our foot, and take our foot out. That would be the house for the frog. So, that's what we were thinking.	3:04
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	And that's what we were doing then when the mother, Mrs. Tillman, called Ruth and Morris. She asked them to come from underneath house with me. When they left, I was concerned about what was being said, so I listened. Ruth asked her mother, she said, "Mother, why can't we play with Billy?" They called me Billy instead of Willie. She said, "Billy is our friend." She said, "But you can't play with him no more. This ends y'all playing with him." And they wanted to know why. They say, "Because he is a nigger."	4:02
Waitress	Is everything okay here?	5:14
Rhonda Mawhood	Yeah.	5:14
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	She said, "When niggers at the same age, you have to leave them alone because you all are growing up." And that hurt. It hurt their heart and hurt mine. I tried to set the house on fire.	5:14
Rhonda Mawhood	Their house?	5:32
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah. Tried to set the fire that very day. Them matches went out, and the fire wouldn't go up. I said, what am I doing this for? Who am I? I go home and tell my mother. She said, "Well, you'll understand, son. That's the way it is here."	5:32
Rhonda Mawhood	How old were you, sir?	6:05
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	13. I said, "You mean that I will be denied all of my days because that I'm a Colored man?" You used the word Colored then. Or Negro, how you call them. You called a Black person, you called him Black, you'd have a fight with him the next day. She said, "That's the way it is and that's the way it's going to always be." I said, "It's not going to be always like that." I consider myself a human being that God made in his image, like he made anybody else. I don't think my color should have anything to do with what I do in life.	6:06
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	So, I was intensified, at least my spirit was intensified, to try to stand up the best I could and to deny them the opportunity of forcing me to be inferior to anybody. That was my desire. And as I grew up, I stood up.	7:09
Rhonda Mawhood	Did you talk with your father about this issue, sir?	7:58
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I talked with my mother. My father and my mother were not together. They were not allies at all. In fact, I didn't know anything about my father, when I was about 19-years-old. But that was the way of life in rural areas for a Black family.	8:00
Rhonda Mawhood	Was your father living in the area or was he working away?	8:35
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	He was living in Goldsboro. He was not with my mother. In fact, my mother was an unmarried woman. But I knew I had a father and she told me about him. I didn't know anything about him until I went to college. I was going to college at Shaw University and I used to stop in Goldsboro to see him. I knew him before then, but I was not acquainted.	8:38
Rhonda Mawhood	You knew of him?	9:11
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah. But I loved him to death after I knew of him. He died in a rest home, though, and I built the rest home that he died in, in New Bern. He was 88 when he died.	9:20
Rhonda Mawhood	Which rest home is that, sir?	9:44
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Mission Rest.	9:47
Rhonda Mawhood	Thank you.	9:48
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Over in Duffer Field.	9:48
Rhonda Mawhood	How was that when you met him the first time? What was that like?	9:52
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Well, it wasn't that it was the first time, because he was from the area that I was born but he just went away. They worked in the log woods and they would go away and stay for months working. So, that's how. I knew him but I never did get acquainted with him until then. When he got real old, I had him put in that rest home down there, where I could be real close to him.	9:57
Rhonda Mawhood	Did you have brothers and sisters?	10:26
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Oh yes. I'm the oldest. I have four sisters, and one brother living. The oldest brother that was next to me died in his sleep. Two brothers died. Thank the Lord I've survived.	10:28
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	But get back to the racial situation. I've always had an inclination to bring people together. Not only race, but my own people in my community I was in. I love the church and love the Sunday school, and I love to see people allied together, working for the same objective. I just wondered, what could I do to bring them more together than what they were and what I saw? Because where I was raised at Hickman Hill, now they fought down there all the time, especially weekends.	11:04
Rhonda Mawhood	Black people together?	12:01
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	They drank whiskey and they made whiskey, too. They made it and drank it and got drunk, and it was crazy with that stuff.	12:05
Rhonda Mawhood	What did they fight over?	12:12
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Any ordinary thing. Women, girls, jobs, like they do now, but they just didn't have what they have now. If they would have had back there what they have now, it would have been just as bad.	12:17
Rhonda Mawhood	Really?	12:37
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	But the job opportunity that Blacks have now, have opened up the way for them to accomplish some of the aims and objectives in life in both ways. Some use it in a negative manner and some use it positively. But you see, some people are born to do things and some people have to be taught to do it. But there are some genius born portrait, born to be a port. And there are some have to go to get special education for it. See?	12:37
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	So, you have to get it one way or the other, and sometimes God's provides it for you one way or the other. I believe that. Because when I left home, I could hardly read, and I worked on a farm in Vasper. I was about 18, maybe 17. I was so smart that this White man said, "Boy, you need to be in school."	14:04
Rhonda Mawhood	Who was this man?	14:35
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	He was a White man that I worked for on his farm, for $20 a month. I've never had anybody tell me that I was smart and I had great potentials before. See? So, this old White man inspired me, although he was a bigot. See? But he did that. Then, I began to study some books and newspapers. I read newspapers. Finally, I didn't educate myself as I had anticipated, but I'm not ashamed of myself, the way I came out.	14:35
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	When I went to college, I was married and had a family, had children. But I wanted some education.	15:21
Rhonda Mawhood	This man you worked for, you say that he was a bigot?	15:32
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah. Well, he just believed that a Black man should take the lesser steps. He believed that a Black man should wait and be last in everything. He believed that. Now, if you wait and you were last, then you would get what else was coming to you. Because I ate on the back porch. I didn't eat in the kitchen. They fed me on the back porch. That's where I ate it. I didn't like it, but that was the way of life.	15:42
Rhonda Mawhood	What was the school that you went to when you went to school as a child?	16:27
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Well, yeah, I walked two miles. I walked from Hickman Hill to—	16:34
Waitress	Excuse me. Sweet?	16:40
Rhonda Mawhood	It's sweet.	16:43
Waitress	Sweet tea?	16:45
Rhonda Mawhood	Mm-hmm. Thank you very much.	16:45
Waitress	You're welcome.	16:45
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Walked from Hickman Hill to Quarry Town to school.	16:46
Rhonda Mawhood	How far was that, sir?	16:50
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	That was two-and-a-half miles. 40 children that all went there. One teacher had 40 children. When I got to school, when I got to school mornings, me and my first cousin, we were the larger boys there. The first thing I did put my books down, I didn't have about three, two or three books, and get the ax and go out there in the woods and cut wood that'll fire that old big heater to warm that school. One room, one big room, 40 children standing around that big heater. When they all got warmed up, then I'd get my books and we'd go to study.	16:52
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I made the hinges that go on the door for that school. The hinges broke and the county wouldn't furnish us nothing. So, I took a leather shoe and cut it up, and got some tacks and drove those tacks in that wall that went in the door where that door would swing open. Then you had to pick it up. Every time you'd close it, you had to pick it up. That's how you had to do it. I'll never forget that.	17:53
Rhonda Mawhood	Goodness.	18:29
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	The county would give us one load of wood a week with a mule. This man used to bring the wood to the school, and he kind of paid for it. But those cold days, it wouldn't last about a couple days. Then you got stuck getting some wood. White children come along on a school bus, and holler at us and call us niggers while we walked. But I broke that up, my brother and I. At least I did. I decided to put an end to that.	18:30
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	So, we got some of those ginger ale bottles, long [indistinct 00:19:22]. They were thick as that, those ginger ale bottles. You couldn't hardly break one, and it didn't cost but five cent. So, we got about four of them. When that bus came by there that evening, we were walking and they started hollering "nigger," we started throwing bottles. Some of the children got cut and broke one of the lights out of the old school bus. So, we took the woods. We went round. The name of this farm was called the Madison Place. We went through the Madison Place to get home, and knowing when we got home that our mother was going beat us to death because she didn't play by that.	19:14
Rhonda Mawhood	So, the bus driver would have told her what happened?	20:12
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Well—	20:15
Rhonda Mawhood	Or someone else?	20:16
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	The kids all saw it that was on the road. But when we got home, it was a different situation. My mother called me, said, "Come here." Said, "Where your brother?" I said, "Down here." "Come in this house." She done heard it. The kids had told the news when they got home, when had happened. She was glad of it. That's why the ladies be so. I was getting toughened up because I knew you were going to put it on me that day, but she didn't.	20:17
Rhonda Mawhood	Did she warn you about that kind of thing though?	20:58
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Mm-mm.	21:01
Rhonda Mawhood	No?	21:01
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	See, because they knew what went on every day. She said, "Don't go out. Don't go out this house." She said they call them Patty Robes, but she meant the Ku Klux Klan. They called them Patty Robes there before.	21:03
Rhonda Mawhood	Patty Robes?	21:23
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Patty Robes. "They'll be by here tonight." Said, "They may be by here tonight, riding, and you set this up." Soon enough, they did come by.	21:23
Rhonda Mawhood	That night?	21:35
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Come by that night. But no one on that hill told who threw on that bus. Now, Black people do a lot of talking. I don't let them know nothing on me because it started back then. Slavery, they had to tell everything they knew. But there was one time they didn't do it.	21:36
Rhonda Mawhood	How old were you at that time, sir?	22:00
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I guess I was about maybe about 14. Something like that. About 14.	22:02
Rhonda Mawhood	Do you remember many incidents with the Klan when you were growing up?	22:11
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Well, when I was growing up, the Klan killed a lot of people and we were actually afraid, and we didn't see them. See, we just heard about it. See? I didn't experience the Ku Klux Klan until I was a grown man and was working with Andrew Young and Jose William and Golden Frank. We were all down in McIntosh, Georgia. That's when I really could see. I knew about them and heard about them. I never witnessed it. Now, we were threatened by them.	22:17
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	When I really knew about Klan, it was during the sixties. It was during the sixties. I'm going to show you where I was working. I know I brought that up. I had it with me.	23:18
Rhonda Mawhood	May I ask you, Reverend, when you were born, to get an idea of the period we're talking about?	23:40
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Uh-huh. Oh, I was born in Hickman Hill on the plantation that was owned by the Hickmans. There it is.	23:46
Rhonda Mawhood	When was that, sir?	24:04
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	1919 is when I was born.	24:06
Rhonda Mawhood	Thank you.	24:09
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	1919. Yeah. Here's where I was working right there. The Ford Foundation gave Martin Luther King a grant and he started the Southern Christian Leaderships in McIntosh, Georgia.	24:09
Rhonda Mawhood	Dorchester Center. Mm-hmm.	24:35
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	This is Dorchester Center but it's in McIntosh. That's where we worked there, and I drove from here there once a month.	24:37
Rhonda Mawhood	That's a long way. Very long way.	24:46
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah. That's how I began to know about the Klan. I began to have some experience. We got on a bus and went to a beach in South Carolina, and the Klans followed that bus because the White girls and boys was on the bus, too. That's why they followed that bus. They followed that bus from McIntosh, Georgia all the way across the Charleston Bridge, down to South Carolina Beach. We went swimming, we went down in that river, those polices and patrolmen were standing on the shore. I asked Andrew Young, I said, "Are all these police?" He said, "No. Some of them are Ku Klux Klan." That's when I began to get it. But we were taking a heck of a chance, though, out there in that water with them white boys and girls out there swimming, down there in South Carolina.	24:54
Rhonda Mawhood	You were saying that some people are born to do certain things and others learn. When you were a child, did you feel that there was something that you were born—did you have that feeling as a child? Do you remember that?	26:06
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I had an urging. I think that, well, I didn't never be a bad boy. I grew up and my mother didn't have all that trouble with me. But I think the incident that happened on the farm with Morris, certainly intensified my ego to fight against racism. You see? That gave me a start right there. That did it, see?	26:20
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	When people would come in our community, every person, especially ministers when they'd come to our church, somehow or another, my mother said they was singling me out from all the boys. She said that Mr. Hawkin, Roy Hawkin, had graduated from Shaw University way back there when Shaw was teaching medicine. She said that he said, "That boy there is different from all the Hickmans, so take good care of him because he's different." She told me that she taught me all she could. And I was. I did not conceive that I was all that different then, till I grew up.	26:58
Rhonda Mawhood	Did your mother teach you or try to teach you about what it meant to be a man, too?	27:54
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah, she taught me everything she thought that would develop me into manhood. But she didn't get into racism and she didn't want me to get in it. When I was grown and was going to these marches and things, she was scared to death. She was scared I was going to get shot.	28:01
Rhonda Mawhood	I'm sure she was. What kinds of things did she teach you about what it meant to be a man? To be a good man?	28:20
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Well, she didn't want me, first, to drink and smoke, because she said to be a good man, you got to be a happy a man. She said a sick man can't work and a sick man can't serve this country. Sick man can't climb a mountain. She used to talk all that. So, I was 18-years-old out and I smoked a cigarette. I could work and buy my own cigarette then, when I started smoking.	28:32
Rhonda Mawhood	What made you want to try it? Smoking?	29:21
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Well, the farm that I worked on, the White boys and girls, they smoked. I was encouraged to smoke because they did. I bought some Chesterfield cigarettes and started smoking. I could get them at 10 cent a pack. 10 cent a pack. Best they had.	29:23
Rhonda Mawhood	Do you still smoke cigarettes, sir?	29:53
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	No, honey.	29:54
Rhonda Mawhood	No.	29:54
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I stopped smoking in 1956. I had a son, Irving. He still work with me. He's in construction. He was going to school, the same school where I went to. He was walking to that same school and a Rulane Gas truck came by one evening and ran into a bunch of children. That's when the state decided to put a school bus on that. Killed three children and broke my son, Irving, collarbone, broke his leg, broke his thigh, broke his arm. He stayed in the hospital about 18 months. But he was walking to that same school that day and that bus ran into a bunch of children. Not a bus, but the truck. Rulane Gas truck. They got away from the boy that was driving and Irving was one of them.	30:00
Rhonda Mawhood	When was that, sir? Is that in the 1950s?	31:20
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	It was in the fifties. Yeah, it was in fifties. In the early fifties. Now, what was I talking about? What did you ask?	31:23
Rhonda Mawhood	I was asking you about your mother and what she taught you about being a man and being a good man.	31:33
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	No, it was something else.	31:36
Rhonda Mawhood	Then I was asking you about cigarettes. When you stopped smoking.	31:37
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Okay. Okay. Now, I know it was something else. The reason I stopped smoking was that Irving was seven-years-old, and I was building the church at Havelock. That very day, I made up my mind to stop smoking. I said I'm not going to smoke anymore and I quit that day. Now, I had quit before but I went back. But that day, I'd made up my mind.	31:40
Rhonda Mawhood	Why was it that day that you made up your mind, sir?	32:17
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Well, it was because Irving had recuperated from the accident. He was still limping and had to go to back and forth to the doctor. I said this is a sacrifice I'm going to make. I'm just going to stop smoking cigarettes. Well, I didn't smoke too much but I quit, and I ain't wanted another cigarette since.	32:22
Rhonda Mawhood	Well, that's wonderful.	32:50
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah. I ain't wanted another one since.	32:52
Rhonda Mawhood	So, you've been working in construction a long time it seems like?	32:56
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Born in it. I was born to do construction work. I never did go to school for that, just took it right up. I was a drafting teacher at Havelock High. See, you had to be real strong to come up in a community like I can in, because Black people thought you ain't supposed to be what you are. Now, they were serious about that. I went to Havelock High to teach construction. I had never been to a high school. The first high school ever I was in, in my life, I went there to teach. Because I stopped school at Hickman Hill in the seventh grade, and I enrolled in correspondent school Scranton, Pennsylvania University. And I got my work out and sent it in. Then, the American School in Chicago. I don't know whether you've heard of them, but they still—the American School in Chicago is still a good school.	33:03
Rhonda Mawhood	That one I've heard of, yes.	34:17
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah. Well, I enrolled in that one, too. There was a White man that was the superintendent of Craven County School, Mr. Pugh. There's a building there, newer name, after him, Pugh. County building downtown. That's where they're building that new courthouse. You'll see his name down there. Pugh.	34:19
Rhonda Mawhood	It's P-U-G-H?	34:42
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	P-U-G-H.	34:44
Rhonda Mawhood	Okay.	34:44
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	So, I said, no, I've got to go to college. Where am I'm going to get into college without having a high school diploma? That's my problem. So, I went and talked with Mr. Pugh about it and he said, "Well, maybe you can take a test." So, he gave me a letter and I took it to Shaw University and I gave it to Dean Elaine. He was Dean of the school of religion. He read the letter and he asked me how far did I get. I told him and he looked at me. He said, "In the morning, I want you to speak to the minister of the class. Every Monday, they'd have a minister to preach to the other minister, and this is your time."	35:03
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I was a preacher. I was already a preacher. So, I did so well until Dr. Morgan reviewed the application and gave me a test. Then I got into liberal arts.	35:51
Rhonda Mawhood	Around when was that, sir?	36:11
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	That was in 1952. That was 1952. That's when that was. So, I went to [indistinct 00:36:26] of that year. From there on, I had to go summer session, because I had to work and I had a family. I had children and a wife to take care of. But I was determined to not be what I saw in some of my contemporaries. I was determined to get what out of life that God had made for man. I said if I live, I'm going to get it.	36:12
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Now, the reason I fought so hard for integration is because here I am, a Black man, innocent, don't drink, don't smoke. But I like women. The Lord put them here for all of us. And just because this woman is White, I can't say one word to her. I can't come up and say, "Hey, you are a beautiful lady", and I love to admire people. They would hang him back there if they said that. See?	36:59
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	But I thank God that He has given me the opportunity to have a choice of my life with people, rich and poor, Black and White. That's what I worked for. That's what I love. Now, I've got to be discriminated. I can't go in that place. But there in New Bern, I told you about that Sunday, Moore's barbecue?	37:51
Rhonda Mawhood	Yes, sir.	38:18
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Right where the Scotchman Store is. Robert Whitehead and I decided to go in there and bought some barbecue and sit down and talk like we had done. No, they said, "You can't do that. You can't do that. Go outside. Take it outside to eat." I said, "Well, we are not going to do that." We changed his mind.	38:19
Rhonda Mawhood	How did you do that, sir?	38:51
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	He wouldn't serve us in there, but we went out there and got Lawyer Fraser and got him to file a suit against him. Fraser used my son, this very same boy, Irving, who got in this accident. He used Irving. I don't know. I don't know what part of law that he played as a child, but that's how he won the case. See? So, when he won the case, the judge ordered a $5000 fine on Dan Moore. And he had to move his business out here from down in Ferris.	38:55
Rhonda Mawhood	Dan Moore?	39:37
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Moore. That was his name. Dan. Wait a minute. No, it wasn't his name.	39:38
Rhonda Mawhood	Okay.	39:39
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	It was Moore's Barbecue. John was his name. John Moore.	39:39
Rhonda Mawhood	When was that, that you brought the case against him?	39:54
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Let's see now. That was in the sixties. That was in the sixties. Yeah. It was in the sixties. It was about 1965. That's when it was.	39:57
Rhonda Mawhood	You were telling me after church on Sunday that you still don't eat there.	40:12
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I still don't go there. It's right. Let's see, that's 17, isn't it?	40:15
Rhonda Mawhood	Mm-hmm.	40:18
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	It's right up there. It ain't about a mile up there now, on the left. Because he's dead and I think his son or grandson now run it, but I still don't go there. I still don't.	40:20
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	You see, what is hurting the White man as well as the Black, he didn't tell you of all these things that he was doing that would've been more beneficial to you as a historian. See, you had to learn all this but they didn't tell you any good thing that Black people did. They didn't tell you. They didn't tell that they got 400,000, we call them biological Negroes. I don't know what they call them now, but that's what we called them back then in Roy Wilkin's days. Do you remember Roy Wilkin?	40:37
Rhonda Mawhood	Mm-hmm.	41:41
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	You read about him? Yeah.	41:41
Rhonda Mawhood	I read about him, yes. Yes, sir.	41:41
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	They got all these children by these Black women. They loved to have sex with them, but they don't feed them, they don't respect them. They hang them. They shoot them. What do you think about the Mississippi River running wild now? You don't hear them talk about that, do you? All those dead bodies, 5000 or more dead bodies been washed up in that river. The reporters don't say nothing about it. And they been throwing Blacks in the Mississippi River for the last 100 years. Just kill them, just throw them in there like that.	41:46
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	At Atlanta University, when W.E.B. Du Bois was teaching, they'd lynched a Black man every day in that school.	42:33
Rhonda Mawhood	When you were growing up around here, did you ever hear about lynchings in Craven County?	42:46
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah, they lynched. They lynched a Black man in New Bern and pushed him on a wheelbarrow over in Bridgeton. I heard that. But they really tried to keep things from the children, Black and White, in that day. They did that. But I heard all this. From 1861 to 1929, they lynched legally 3,927 Black men, and 927 were in one state, Alabama. They don't even have no record of Mississippi. They don't have no record of that. There's no telling how many they—	42:51
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	See, in Mississippi, well, it was that way here when I grew up. They could put a Black man in jail for direct eyeballing. I know you heard that. If he stabbed a White, or something like that, they could put him in jail. You could do that.	43:55
Rhonda Mawhood	Do you remember what relations between Black people in Craven County and the police were like when you were growing up?	44:20
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I remember police in this town, especially from West Street High, West Street, the police used to go around—	44:32
Waitress	Are you all okay here? Would you like some more tea?	44:47
Rhonda Mawhood	I'm fine, thank you.	44:47
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Police used to go around West Street High School, and we boys used to go out that night and watch those police. They'd meet those girls out there, those girls 16 and 18-years-old. We'd see them get in the police's car and we reported it seven time. Ain't nobody never done nothing about it. I was one of the ring leaders and they'd support me because I knew what they was up to. See?	44:52
Rhonda Mawhood	And these are, just so people can understand, these are Black girls getting into the cars?	45:19
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	They was Black, yeah. And then, I think that's what made the made police brutality so high in the Black communities, just like it was in slavery. Nat Turner. The reason he got mad and tried to turn the country upside down, he watched a White man rape his mother. I know you read about him. 1831 in South Hampton, Virginia. He organized him a little group and started that insurrection right over that.	45:23
Rhonda Mawhood	When you saw these girls getting into the police cars, you reported this?	46:12
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I report it.	46:16
Rhonda Mawhood	In person?	46:16
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I went downtown. We went downtown and told mister—the clerk of the court was named Bill Flan.	46:17
Rhonda Mawhood	Bill, I'm sorry?	46:25

Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	This court. That's how I got a chance to vote, was through Mr. Flannen. And my great uncle taught Mr. Flannen law. Litam Hickman taught him law. He was a smart man, my great uncle, my grandfather's brother. And I went to register at Croatan. That's about two and a half miles from here. And the register told me, "You have to read the Constitution of the United States and you have to recite the Preamble." I said, "Well, I know that by heart." I did. I knew it then.	0:00
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	So he wouldn't let me register inside the building and the building won't about size of, they were about 10 by 10 feet. Took me out in his car, inside of his automobile. Tell you the truth, here to heaven, and wouldn't let me register in his car. Well, at that time I felt that I was a more capable Black youth there was in Hickman Hill and Havelock.	0:48
Rhonda Mawhood	So you said he registered you in his car?	1:26
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	In his car.	1:26
Rhonda Mawhood	In his car. Okay, thank you. Just to be clear.	1:27
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	He didn't want me in there with the rest of them White folk. That's why.	1:30
Rhonda Mawhood	How old were you, sir, at that time?	1:33
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I was 20, I was about 22 because I was married. And so what he did, he said, "Now you have to recite the Constitution of North Carolina." See now he had me about, I said that then and recited the Preamble. "We the People of in United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union. Insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense." I knew that. I had to learn it back then.	1:35
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	But when I had to recite the Constitution of North Carolina, I said, "I don't know it by heart." I said, "You do it, give me the book and you do it. And if you do it, I'll do it." See, I raised right up with him. His name was Joe Hughes. He ain't never been to high school. Got by high the sixth grade and he wouldn't let me register.	2:13
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	So what I did, I went out on the highway and caught me a ride to New Bern and went to the courthouse and I saw Mr. Flannen. That's when I learned that my great uncle taught him law. He wrote that letter and sent it down then to me. When I got down there, I registered and I voted. And I was the first Black in this whole area that registered and voted in that North Hollow, Havelock, Cherry Point.	2:37
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I put 500 Black people on the book to vote for President Trump. And they wrote me all kind of threatening letters. The Klan did. And I didn't pay them no mind because I didn't hardly know what they were.	3:06
Rhonda Mawhood	How did it happen that your great-uncle taught Mr. Flannen law?	3:30
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Well he was a lawyer himself.	3:33
Rhonda Mawhood	I see.	3:35
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	My great uncle, he was a magistrate at Pine and Grove. He was a magistrate there	3:35
Rhonda Mawhood	What was his name, sir?	3:43
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Needham Hickman. And his brother was named Stephanie. Now I tell you something else here. My grandmother was a Pellan. Her name was Patient because she married a Hickman. That's why I'm a Hickman.	4:03
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	She was born in the woods. And the reason she was born in the woods because her father refused to fight in this Civil War. And in those days, there wasn't no automobile. You got in the woods, you had it made. And my mother used to tell us about it and my grandmother used to tell us about it. Because I was seven years old and my grandmother died, I remember.	4:09
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	She knew she was born in the woods and she knew that they killed her daddy. They shot him down. But he killed 13 with a musket and would've killed more but she said by them living in the woods, their powders were wet. And you had to pack that powders in that gun and it got wet. And when they went in there after him, his wife would pack the powders in one gun and hand it to him and he'd shoot that out. That's what happened. It happened just about a mile from where I was born.	4:41
Rhonda Mawhood	Now her father, who was he? He the one who refused to fight in Civil War?	5:24
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	He refused. He refused.	5:26
Rhonda Mawhood	Excuse me.	5:27
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	And he went in the woods.	5:29
Rhonda Mawhood	He was a free man? Or he was?	5:32
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah, he was free. He was a free man. And I'm trying to think of his name. Now I have a aunt living now that's 97. I sure would like you to meet her. And she lives alone in her own house. She'll be 98 in September. And I took Channel 12 up to see her. One guy from Channel 12.	5:34
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	And she remembers when, see she used to split rails, logs and things like that. Her daddy used to make her do that. And she told us about her mother being born in the woods and they ran her down with the horses to catch her. See when they killed her daddy, she ran because she was seven years old. They'd been in there about seven years. So they had to take the horses to catch her and bring her. And his wife.	6:00
Rhonda Mawhood	Who was it who killed her father?	6:36
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	The soldiers.	6:40
Rhonda Mawhood	Soldiers.	6:40
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	They forgot now what they call it. They had a—	6:40
Rhonda Mawhood	The Confederates?	6:46
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	The Confederate. But he had planned to do this killing. He was prepared for it. The only thing living in the woods under bush shelter, it rained and everything get wet sometime. But I think my mother said it was 13, my uncle said it was seven. But she said that her grandmother told, her mother told her after she got some side, that there was about 13 got killed that day.	6:47
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	You see, I realized that the Black race, it's just like any other race. It's deteriorating and if something isn't done right now, there ain't going to be many of us around. I'm telling you. Now the only hope that this civilization has to be liberated from ignorance and from hate. They jealous, they hate each other, man, Blacks, Blacks do.	7:33
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	And they were programmed into what they are in now. It just didn't happen overnight. They still living in this programmatic world. Now this may sound like a fictitious story, but our hope, the hope of the Black man lies lightly upon the shoulders of the White man. Sometimes happen. When he looks up in this White man face for 244 years as his God, that don't come out of people overnight.	8:20
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	And these psychologists knows that too. These anthropologists knows it too. A White man can call a meeting with Blacks tonight and say, "Look it here, we want to get together and cool this situation. Ain't no use in y'all doing all this to each other." There wouldn't be no more problem. I'm telling you because he will listen to this White man.	9:12
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	See, but the White man wants to do it but he has too much to lose. He wants to do it. And there are some Christians now, some White people that are Christian. I didn't used to believe there was not a one White Christian on Earth. Sure that. But I been convinced. I've been convinced by experience, by providence of God, that there are some White Christians.	9:45
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	To be a Christian, you have to be Christlike. You have to love everybody as yourself to be a Christian. You can't be discriminatory and be a Christian. But see the problem now with this Black man is that he is historically misled. When you judge him, you have to judge him historically. Because he's doing what he was taught to do and what he came up to do. And he's [indistinct 00:11:10]. And that have been altogether taught out of it what he done for himself.	10:27
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I think he's done a heck of a good job to be almost an animal. See, but as of now, in this 21st century, 75% of the Black people will listen to a White person. 75% of them respect them. And it's not just because they're White, but it is just that it is because that they have the influence over them. And it's because that they have power over them, power structure. They own the power structure. Plus the indoctrination. But the only thing about the White man, they don't want to get his hand messed up. He said now.	11:16
Rhonda Mawhood	Do you think, is this true of younger African Americans too? People around my age, that they respect White people in this way? Or do you think that's changed over time?	12:18
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Well I'm going to tell you, the young Americans, young African-Americans, they try to rationalize on their dignity. See, but it's not dignity, it's just a matter of a person need to get out of this valley of this shadow of death. He need to get out. See, and that's the only way to get out. The White man got to get him out, got to help get him out. He'll get out.	12:27
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	They ain't going to listen to me. Some of them will. Some will listen to me. But you see I'm Black. See, that's the difference. And we've had some real powerful, educated, trained Black men. Like Dubois, Benjamin Banneker. And who was that, that organized the—after the NAACP was organized, they organized what they called the Niagara Movement.	13:04
Rhonda Mawhood	The Niagara Movement? Yes. Well there, oh gosh, there was Dubois and there was Booker T. Washington also. But that's not who you're thinking of.	13:52
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah, well the Niagara Movement, Dubois was in that organization, but they disapproved the Niagara movement. After a while it got down so low until they didn't even go to meetings. See this is how they did. I think dubois was a head of that. See? But now the NAACP was organized also by White people. Oswald, Garrison.	14:04
Rhonda Mawhood	By Black and White together.	14:38
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah. Well now the first man brought the subject up was a White man. And the reason he brought it up was because of the incident that happened in Illinois. Black boy that got killed where they lynched about swimming out there. And they said, "We got to organize. We got to organize an organization. So we could stop the Klans from killing so many Black."	14:40
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	That's why it happened. Exactly what happened. I think that if, see the children can't get close enough to their parents. The children fear their parents and they know their parents are bigots too, a lot of them. So they can't get close enough to them and say, "Hey, now we need to change what we doing."	15:08
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Now you know you're Christian, you going to teach Christianity. See what I'm saying? But they're Blacks now going to White churches yet. I don't understand them. I don't understand why they want to go when they've been driven away. I've seen them driven away here like dogs. That's right.	15:37
Rhonda Mawhood	What about White people who go to Black churches?	16:03
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Fine. Black people ain't never had nothing that they discriminated White people in. Never. See? Everything that a Black man has died, he has not drawn any line against a White man. He knows that. I tell you the thing is getting sick. To me, it looks bad. And the younger Blacks—	16:05
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh, excuse me.	16:36
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	They're not being educated because they think that money and automobile are greater than anything that you put in your heart. They think that. And I don't know why that they more restriction put on people being intelligent, being highly educated. But they do White people, but they don't care. They don't care about these Blacks not being educated.	16:38
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Now they'll encourage them to go to be an athlete, take up that. For doctors and the other scientific discoveries and development, like space, aeronautics, and all this, there's a jealous streak running through White people about Blacks.	17:20
Rhonda Mawhood	Sure.	17:44
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	You take it that back now. See? And the Bible said, "Jealousy were crueler than the grave." See? Now what I can't understand is this. Why would that White man stand up there and look at me so hard and get so mad with me? Because he sees me standing close to a White woman.	17:51
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Now it does not disgrace her if I'm clean and a decent human being. But see he doesn't care about that. The only thing he cares about is the color. And he's taught that. Now education is going to have to do this job to get him out of that. See? Because ordinarily he won't come out of it.	18:15
Rhonda Mawhood	I need to ask you, Reverend Hickman, about how you got into being a preacher. How did you decide or feel that you should?	18:57
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Well, I've always wanted to be a preacher. And I just didn't know how to be one. And I didn't believe that these guys that were preaching, I didn't believe that they were real preachers because I saw so much they were doing wrong.	19:08
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I saw my pastor, he used to go see my aunt. And they used to go up there and cut that old step. And me and her son would climb those steps and they had boards like this. They didn't have no ceiling in those houses, they had boards, and we could look through those knot holes and see what was going on. I think that we should have been restricted from that. But you know how boys are.	19:28
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	And that hurt me. That bothered me too when I saw what I saw. Then we went in as a briefcase, in his briefcase, he had some whiskey and it had some corn, White lightning whiskey in it, in a little bottle he kept in there. And we drank some of it. They caught up with us. So I said, "I just wonder if I were a preacher, could I do better than that?" If I was going God.	20:03
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	But I love preachers. I loved them, always did. And when the dark day in the community, I would be the one preacher to talk to them. That's why I knew I wanted to be a preacher. I had my brothers and sister who all stand around and I'd preach it to them. So later on in life I was really inspired. I said, "Well this is what it is." Then I didn't condemn any more ministers.	20:37
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	The problem with people, the problem with lay people, here's what they do. They said, "Well he is a preacher and he's got no business drinking liquor." But he hadn't. But the Bible said, "Do not show arms before men that you might be seen and mistreated them." Arms means sin. Nobody should sin in public for that for sure, because you constrain somebody up.	21:15
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	But as a minister, I have done some wrongs since I've been preaching. I've done the same kind of wrong that I've accused the other ministers done when I wasn't. I just didn't know I was coming to that. And I was tempted to do wrong, and we all are. So we had to be strong. But I love it because you had to give yourself for your people and that's why I make it so impressive. And I love people and that's why I'm a poor man today.	21:50
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	It's a girl that, she was a anchor woman for Channel 12 WCTI. But she wasn't that beautiful to me. But I admired her work and she came by one day. She said she had a White girl with her. She said, "Reverend Hickman, sir, my husband has left me."	22:43
Rhonda Mawhood	The White woman? Or the woman—	23:20
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	She's Black.	23:21
Rhonda Mawhood	The Black woman was there, okay.	23:22
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Black Woman. She got it fooled. Said, "My husband left me. Left me in a lot of debt and I'm going to lose my job if I don't get some money to pay on his debt." I said, "How much do you need?" And she said, "I need $100 and I can pay you back." And she said, "This White lady here is my supervisor, Angela Dixon."	23:33
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I said, "Okay, go and bring me some document proving to me that you are a supervisor for Channel 12 and that you're going to pay me this money back. You going to take this money each pay period out of beneath that there." So they came back with it. They had Channel 12 stationary, they had everything. I wrote a check later.	23:59
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I had dinner with Terry Heat, the very same Terry Heat, who's a director out there now. He told me that the woman ain't never worked for Channel 12. Well when they down there lost their job because it was dope what she was in. What was it? I didn't know that. That's what it was. Cocaine, something.	24:34
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	So I've lost a lot of money like that. Trying to help. And somehow now that the Lord would some way for me to get it back. I didn't get that back. I got something back in its place. So then I said it must have been something good I was doing. People will use you. And I let people know, people use me and I know. I said, "Now you don't think that I know you're using me? But I'm just going to see how far you go with it."	25:06
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Because I enjoy seeing people happy. I enjoy doing something for them, but I don't enjoy a person thinking he's smart enough, think I'm crazy enough. You see what I'm saying?	25:45
Rhonda Mawhood	Yes.	26:02
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I go to a hard, especially at my age, they take advantage of you. But I'm a little stubborn sometimes, you understand.	26:15
Rhonda Mawhood	There's one more thing I'd like to ask you about, Reverend Hickman, are you still married?	26:23
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah.	26:25
Rhonda Mawhood	So can I ask you how you met your wife?	26:25
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah.	26:31
Rhonda Mawhood	How did you meet your wife?	26:31
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I met my wife when I met my wife. I was working in Bansber, right up here. The same community where I was just telling you that this man told me how smart I was. Because I used to make cabinets and make chairs, tables, anything. Any kind of piece of furniture, I could make it when I was a boy.	26:34
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	And so they had a outdoor movie, a great big old tent. And then they had those benches step by step in rotation. So it was packed that night. And there was a guy, I think it was Tom Mitt, who was a cowboy. I believe his name was Tom Mitt.	26:57
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	But anyway, I had a seat up high, about maybe about six or eight seats from the floor. And I saw her standing there. And I got a boy to hold my seat until I stepped out. And I said, "Don't let nobody have this seat yet." So he held the seat and I went down and told her, I said, "I have a seat for you, lady. And if you go up there, I'll escort you to this seat and then I stand here in your place." And that's what I did. That's how I met her.	27:30
Rhonda Mawhood	How old were you when you met your wife?	28:12
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I was about 19. About 19. Yeah, about 19. She's very beautiful.	28:20
Rhonda Mawhood	And she appreciated you giving her seat?	28:23
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah, did. That went a long way there. Got a date with her. I got a date with her that very night after the movie turned out. It was a lot of people that was just like that coming out the movie. So she said, "I want to thank you for my seat." I say, "Well I want to thank you for accepting that seat from me." And then we went on from that.	28:25
Rhonda Mawhood	How long did you court before you got married?	28:54
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	About a couple year. About a year. About a year. Something like that. Yeah. So we had a pretty good life. We had a pretty good life. It hasn't been married. Marriage is an imperfect institution and I think people go into marriage thinking it's going to be perfect when it's not. And 95% of them really got disappointed.	28:57
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Because I got disappointed. She got disappointed. I wasn't what she thought I was. She wasn't what I thought she was. But we hung in there. I guess the Lord intended for us to have to be together.	29:27
Rhonda Mawhood	And how many children do you have together?	29:50
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	We have four boys. Alton, Irving, Willie, Tony. Now Tony's dead. He's the baby. He got killed in college. He was the one that was a genius and had a premonition of his death. He even told how long he would live and he died. I ain't never seen nothing beat. And he was super smart.	29:54
Rhonda Mawhood	He told you of his premonition?	30:28
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Told me, told his mother. He wrote a poem about, After I have lived this life. Matters not what you, mourns of human sympathy will fade like morning dew." He wrote that poem and he left it in his room. My wife didn't know he had written it until after his death and she found it.	30:30
Rhonda Mawhood	May I ask you how he died?	31:00
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Automobile accident, car hit him. Yeah. That's how he died.	31:00
Rhonda Mawhood	I'm sorry.	31:07
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Now he was smart. He was born like that. And he told me that he wouldn't live to get 21. He said, "I won't live get 21." And he said, "I'll probably get 18, Daddy." He said, "But I won't make it to 21." He got killed at 18, at 19. He was 19.	31:12
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	That's life for us. I just didn't know how I could overcome that because he was my heart. And maybe it was wrong of me thinking that because I had other sons too besides him. But he was a smart young man. And when he was about six, he was seven years old, he could lay in the floor on his stomach. We didn't have no electric light like we got there. No. It had lamp light. He lay down there and read through that Old Testament and he wouldn't stop.	31:20
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	And my mother said, "Something wrong with that boy." She was a smart old lady, my mother was. She said, "Something wrong with that boy." I said, "Why?" "He ain't got no business reading like that," she said. I said, "Mama, he's a genius." And I began to tell her about Washington Ivory, Benjamin West, who was a first America painter and how smart that and what he did. He suggested the picture of his baby sister. I said, "Youth don't have the thing in the world to do with being a genius." But she saw it different. And he got killed and it hurt me. I didn't know where to go and what to do.	32:10
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	And I had a White girl that ran away from her parents when she was 13 years old, Carrie Jolly, cleaning my office. I raised her. She gave me more hope and did more for me than anybody.	33:09
Rhonda Mawhood	She lived with you and your wife and the rest of the family?	33:34
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	No, she never lived with me. She lived down the road. Her mother hated my guts because she liked me so well. But when Tony got killed, she felt like it was something that she could do to appease me. To help me to get over these frustrations and worry.	33:38
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	So she used to come out to my office and go down to my house. My wife still loves her. She's turned to be up dope addict. She used to drive my car around here until a White lady called me one night and told me, said, "Hey, if you want your car, you better stop that girl from driving. She's into this cocaine." She was. But she, never will forget it. Although she got into it. I don't know how she going now because she's in Boston now.	34:03
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	But she gave me a lot of hope and a lot of help. And I can't forget that. I really can't. And I don't have words in my vocabulary to express my gratitude to you for taking up your time.	34:51
Rhonda Mawhood	Well I'm the one who thanks you, Reverend Hickman, for taking your time to participate in our project.	35:17
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	My time, my time,	35:22
Rhonda Mawhood	I really appreciate it.	35:22
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	My time, my time don't value like yours.	35:24
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh, please. I'm just happy that we had this time together. I appreciate it. Very happy for that and grateful.	35:27
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I enjoyed it so much.	35:33
Rhonda Mawhood	Thank you.	35:35
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah. And when you gave me the invitation, at least when we got together, I look forward to it. And of course I hope I've been some good to you. I hope you've gotten something out of some of my experience.	35:35
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh, certainly.	35:48
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	But I think I'm caught off guard and maybe I'm not thinking really.	35:56
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh.	36:03
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Like I used to think.	36:04
Rhonda Mawhood	What you've said has been very helpful. And it's very interesting to learn about the beginnings of people like yourself who are very active in the Civil Rights Movement to hear about your family background. And I appreciate that.	36:05
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah.	36:15
Rhonda Mawhood	I have a couple of questions I'd like to ask you, just sort of detailed ones, about names of people in your family.	36:16
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Help yourself, I ain't in no hurry at all.	36:18
Rhonda Mawhood	Thank you. Okay.	36:18
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I just don't want to take up all your time.	36:19
Rhonda Mawhood	No, certainly.	36:23
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Doing mine.	36:37
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	There was a lady who raised my father. He called her mother. Her name was Lizzie Star. And that's the only mother he ever knew because someone brought him there and gave him to her, left him to her house. He don't know his mother. He don't know any of his people. The only thing that he knew, the lady that raised him, he called her mother.	36:37
Rhonda Mawhood	She never told him who it was who brought him to her?	37:12
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	She didn't know.	37:15
Rhonda Mawhood	She didn't know.	37:15
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	She never, she didn't know.	37:16
Rhonda Mawhood	She just took in a child.	37:18
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	She just took in a child.	37:18
Rhonda Mawhood	Was she a married lady?	37:20
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	She was married then. She was married then. Yeah. So she raised him to be a grown man. All right. Then the only person in the world that he knew was blood related to him was me. Had not he got me by my mother, he wouldn't have known anybody on this Earth that's been blood related to him. So that was a fascinating thing.	37:25
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	That was, I guess that was the providence of God. That he did that. I at least knew I was his son. But as far as him having any relatives anywhere in the world, he didn't know. It could have been someone next door as far as he knew, but he didn't. I'm the only person in the world that he knew was blood related to him. And that happened sometimes.	38:00
Rhonda Mawhood	I'm sure he was glad that he had you.	38:31
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	He was proud of me. Yeah.	38:32
Rhonda Mawhood	Thank you.	38:32
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	It was just one of those things that people seen in that day didn't respect. They called it illegitimate children. But I never could understand that because I would like to know how could a child be illegitimate? The parents are the ones that's illegitimate. But the thing falls on the child. One of these days, educators going to change that around, like they do a lot of words. They going change it.	38:42
Rhonda Mawhood	I see.	39:37
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	Yeah.	39:38
Rhonda Mawhood	Uh huh.	39:38
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	1955, they had an employment situation at Camp Lejeune, one of the largest military installation that we have here in, excuse me, Cherry Point. And the men that was involved was John Andrew Green, Avon Lassiter. And there was three of them. I forgot the other. But I got that on record in my office.	39:40
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	They were doing the same kind of work that the White was doing at that time, but they were getting less money. So they came to me to file a complaint. And when I filed a complaint, the Secretary of the Navy called me from his office in Washington DC and we set up a meeting at Camp Lejeune.	40:13
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	And they sent an officer from Camp Lejeune here to take me to the meeting on the military installation. It was different from where it is now. It was real different. Somehow or another, those Black guys had signed the paper to work, to do that kind of work for that kind of money. And I didn't know it until the meeting opened and they begin to read the report. So then I had to withdraw my complaint against the government because I got revenue. But that changed things around Cherry Point. That really did. It really did.	40:45
Rhonda Mawhood	Thank you.	41:48
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	It did. But they were, I don't know, they were uneducated. They was hardworking people, but they didn't have their act together. And they got me involved and hadn't told me. I didn't know it until I got down. So I had to withdraw the complaint.	41:49
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	And as of now I'm fixing to write a report for NAACP, which will come out in about another week, Sunday Times Paper. We have Ranks Bank and Trust Company. And that we planned a boycott because they terminated the Black woman and they told her and some of the tellers that worked there.	42:14
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	They joked about her complexion and said she was too Black and she smelled like fish. No, no. They didn't say she smelled like fish. They said, but when she got around her, they say, "I smelled fish." She went through a lot with that. They have real bigots at that bank.	42:50
Rhonda Mawhood	So you're going to ask people to boycott?	43:15
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	I sent them a letter last week that we planned to boycott them. And that's the Concerned Citizen of the State of North Carolina. And the reason I'm not going to involve NAACP because they might sue NAACP and they can't sue them.	43:18
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	We do have another case with the Craven Regional Medical Center. They terminated a Black woman there, Deborah Grady, because she wouldn't socialize with White people. Now you know that's fictitious. That was not. They terminated her because she wrote up a White nurse that had left a patient unattended.	43:40
Reverend Willie Gray Hickman	You see how they do? You see how they do? So what they did, they decided to fire her and they got another reason to fire her. But she was smart. She's smart enough to take a tape recorder in there. That's what it's going do. That's what it's going to do.	44:11

Item Info

Title:

Willie Hickman interview recording, 1993 August 04

Date:

August 4, 1993

Creator:

Hickman, Willie Gray

Contributor:

Mawhood, Rhonda Lyn

Description:

Name: Willie Gray Hickman; Date of birth: 1919-08-13; Place of birth: Havelock, NC; Occupation(s): minister; construction; Residence: New Bern, NC
Informant ID: 289; Interviewed by: Rhonda Mawhood.

Occupation:

Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South interviews, photographs, and project records, circa 1864-2011, bulk 1990-1999

Series:

Related Resources:

See below

Provenance:

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired the Records of the Behind the Veil Oral History Project from the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

Identifier:

Interview number: 699
8c921d3c-b885-40f6-840e-c60297d269c4
behindtheveil
btvnc06002
ark:/87924/r4h993t5n
8188b922-7236-44c3-9544-d196d2197c90

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Willie Hickman interview recording, 1993 August 04

Transcript

Item Info

1. Willie Hickman administrative file, 1993

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Willie Hickman interview recording, 1993 August 04

Transcript

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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