Christine Kelsey interview recording, 1993 July 28
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Christine Vann Kelsey | Yes, I was born in Beaufort, North Carolina. Some people pronounce it as Beaufort, but most of us there say Beaufort. | 0:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And were your parents from that area? | 0:13 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Yes, my father was in Beaufort. Most all his people were right there. I think they migrated from someplace else, but I don't know where. Somewhere that was near Beaufort and it was several of them, my father's people. They were Vanns. Vanns. | 0:19 |
Rhonda Mawhood | That's V-A-N-N? | 0:37 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | That's right. | 0:42 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And your mother's people? | 0:45 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | My mother's people. Now my mother came here from New Jersey. I think she was from my New York. I think she was born in New York. And her father, this is my grandfather, brought her down here quite young to Beaufort. | 0:47 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you know why your grandfather decided to move down here? | 1:03 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | No, I didn't say my grandfather moved down here. So my grandfather brought his children down here to my great-grandmother and they grew up in Beaufort. You know when people in New York—of course, he wasn't born in New York, I'm sure. He went to New York and you know you can't raise children so very well then and take care of yourself too. Because it was quite expensive I imagine. So he brought his children down to in Beaufort, to my great-grandmothers and they were raised there. And of course my mother married my father, Audrey Vann. My mother was named Martha. | 1:06 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What was her— | 1:44 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Martha Bailey. That was a maiden name. | 1:45 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And was her mother living when your mother moved down here? | 1:47 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | I think both of them were living in New York, but as I said, they just brought the children south and they went back up there and worked. And I remember seeing him one time, I was a small child and both of came down to see us and that's the—and then when he was ill and died and brought his body to Beaufort and buried in Beaufort. | 1:54 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And what was your father's name? | 2:21 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Isaac. Isaac Vann. Isaac Howard. | 2:26 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What kind of work did your parents do? | 2:34 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Well my father was a sectionist on the railroad, put in cross ties. You think people make cross ties for the railroad track. And he was a fisherman too. He did both. And then he had gardens all over Beaufort. He loved gardening and of course he raised all our food. Because my mother died when they were very young. It was seven of us and the oldest one was 12 and the youngest one was one year old when my mother died. And I was about four maybe four or five. And the rest of around between 12 and one. | 2:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How did your father manage to take care of all of those children? | 3:18 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Well, like I said, he had little gardens all over Beaufort and he worked as a sectionist and I mean he didn't have anything to do as a sectionist sometimes he'd fish, go out, boats are great for fishing, going outside on a big boat with a group of men. And you don't know much about that really. | 3:21 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Well I read about fishing and so forth, but I haven't seen much of it done. | 3:39 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Right. Well, he used to work on a fishing boat as well as being a sectionist. | 3:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And was the oldest child a girl or a boy? | 3:49 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Boy. My oldest was my brother and then next to him was my oldest sister. And the rest of us were under him. You want the names of all of them? | 3:51 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Sure. | 4:03 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | William. William's, the oldest one. And Juanita the oldest girl. And next to her is Hattie, my sister in New Jersey and me, Pristine. And then I had a brother Jack Edward. And I had a sister in between there that died. And then my youngest sister, Anna Elizabeth. | 4:04 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And did your father have sisters or women in the family? | 4:35 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Yes, when first my mother's first died, he took us to the old homestead, to his father's homestead. It was an old big rambling house, three stories, really a great big attic, too. And he took the whole six of us at that time. Because one had died, as I said, down to the homestead. And we stayed there for two or three years. And then we took us down by ourselves except my youngest sister, she was too young to go. So my aunt kept her. She only had sons anyway, so I guess she wanted a girl. So she kept her and raised her until she finished high school. And after she finished high school, she went up north. Same as I did. I went up north after I finished high school and worked my way through college, went to Salem Teacher's College. And of course with my father's help. | 4:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How did you decide to become a teacher, Mrs. Kelsey? | 5:35 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Well, when I finished high school in Beaufort, went right into all Black school of course. And that was in Beaufort. And I just don't know, I just wanted to be a teacher I guess because I had teachers all my life. So maybe I just wanted to be one of those. Yes. | 5:38 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What kinds of things do you remember about your teachers in elementary and high school? | 5:55 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Well, all I can remember mostly were women teachers. We had a few men teachers, but they were real nice. They were understandable, part of teacher and didn't have any problems that they have today. People were pretty good and if you did have problems, the principal would have a nice little strap in the office where he would punish you. | 6:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What was the name of your school that you went to? The elementary school and the high school. | 6:24 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | The Beaufort High School. Black high school. That was burned down. Oh, I guess it's been quite a few years ago. It was first integrated and then I don't know how it burned down, but it burned down. And that was years after. | 6:28 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When you were growing up, what kind of things did you do for fun? | 6:55 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | We jumped rope, play games, things like that. Just things that you made up yourself. Didn't have any cards or anything like that. Well, church for one thing, my daddy was a first deacon and he was the superintendent of Sunday school. When the preacher wasn't there, he'd preach. So we had a nice, lovely father. He never married again. He raised all of his children. | 7:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So your father never married again? | 7:34 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Never married again. And oh, I won't say he didn't have friends. I imagine he had friends, but he was just a wonderful father. And that's unusual for a man. Usually when his wife dies, they look for another woman. But he just felt that with six children they might be mistreated. And he did not mistreat us. He knew how to punish us. He knew how to, he wouldn't hit you anywhere. He would hit you on your leg. On your arms. And he told my aunt when we were living there, said, "He don't hit my children on the head and all anywhere." He says, "That's why I cause him so many cancers." And things like he was very considered father. | 7:35 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did he talk to you about the fact that he wasn't going to be looking for another wife when you were growing up? | 8:16 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Oh, we used to tease him. The one up north, I was telling you Hattie, she would always tell him, say, "Oh Daddy, if you got married then we would if you mistreat us, that we would be mean to her and things like that." But that was just joking. He was sitting laugh at us. He would never comment one way or the other. He'd just sit there and laugh at us. He just enjoyed his family and as I say, he was an understanding father. He did everything he could for his children. And it was hard because things that he couldn't buy us all a pair of shoes at one time. Maybe two weeks later you might get your pair of shoes or sometime later. And of course you were wearing the bottom out them shoes in the meantime. You don't know anything about that. So that's the way I grew up. | 8:25 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You were saying that your father had gardens? | 9:17 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Yes. | 9:19 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And is there anything else? | 9:20 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Yes, he had about six gardens all over Beaufort. | 9:20 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did the children in your family work in the garden? | 9:23 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Oh, yes. He got it up before school time and made us water the garden. He didn't make us, but he asked us to water the plants and he had lots of sweet potato vines. And sometimes when you first put them on the ground, they need to be watered and if they plant these small collards they needed to be water, sand the soil and both the water would seep through the sand so quick. So we'd have to get up early in the morning and late in the afternoon after we came from school, we would've to do the same thing. And of course if you didn't do it, he'd give you a little punishment sometimes he says, "I'm going to get you. So you didn't want those plants." | 9:26 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | But he was a person, sometimes when he did kind of give you a punishment, he said, this is for not watering those plants too. Maybe two or three weeks later think something like that. | 10:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Who did the cooking in your family? | 10:14 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Well, as I said, the first two or three years my auntie did it, Aunt Mattie. She was the head of that household at the time and her husband. And she had three sons and a porch with our six that came there. And it was a great big house. And then I had another aunt that came to, her husband died and she had four sons. So that was a crowded house. So my father did move out. As I said, about two or three years later, we got us big enough so we could go to school and he'd take care of us. | 10:17 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | And he did a splendid job too. And he said, "Stay home, don't run the street when you get out of school." And that's where we stayed and got our lessons and did what we could. And they taught us how to cook beans, things like that. Simple things, fry our fish, things like that. | 10:52 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Who did your hair when you were growing up? | 11:09 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Well, as I said, my auntie would comb it. She would comb it and braid it. And she had Juanita, I think Juanita, she was about nine or 10, maybe she could braid her hair. I don't know. She had long hair, but she would braid my hair and she would braid Hattie's hair and Anna's hair. And believe me, she could braid so tight. We'd say, "Oh." So all this was pulled up so tight. But she was a good woman though because she had her four boys to take care of and had three, the fourth boy died and he was very young. She had no girls as I said before. So that's who did our hair. And after we got down by ourselves, my older sister did it and we couldn't do it. But mostly we learned how to twist it together too. All had long enough hair so you could braid it. So that made it nice. | 11:11 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And what about your clothes? Where did your clothes come from? | 12:18 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Well, Aunt Mattie made our clothes. She made some of them while we were there. And then when we went down by ourself, my oldest sister just caught on sewing like that. She sewed for all of us and she went to school and then she got in home economics class. She had, in fact, the teacher would get in the jam sometimes. She said, "Juanita, come and see what this is here." And she would help out sometime with the teacher and if she got in the hole and she couldn't get out. So she was a very good seamstress and she grew up in Beaufort. She did most of the work right there for most of the children and most of the people. She could take a magazine, a person would bring a magazine there, cut the picture out, says, "Juanita, I want a dress just like this." | 12:23 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | She would get some newspapers, she would draft her own pattern and she would cut it out and she'd put that just like that girl wanted it. She was very good, very good. She died about, I think it's still been over 12 years ago. Yes. But as I said, she had her head on her shoulder. She raised two state children. She didn't have any children of her own. She and her husband raised two state children until they got grown. We used to send her things. I had three sisters up north, including myself, and we would send things that people gave us and things that we had and she would make them over for those children. Look just like new and everybody would comment on the children the way they dress, but they knew that she could cut over and make them look so nice. So that's the way I came up. | 13:14 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Where did you start teaching when you started? | 14:08 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Oh, out here in the country, have you ever heard of Merrimon? Merrimon, you know where North River is? | 14:11 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Yes, ma'am. | 14:15 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | But Merrimon is right on that road. But you spoil should go still farther it's way out there. That's the first job I got. Superintendent Allen in Beaufort. He set me out there always when we finish college, always sing out, start and the country school. So I was out there two years in Merrimon and then they brought me to North River. Where North River is. They call it Beaufort now, but it's North River. I taught there one year and then they brought me to Beaufort where I was bred and born to that high school, the Black high school. And it was elementary and high school and I taught the fifth grade for one year. | 14:20 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | But in the meantime I had gotten married, and my husband was in World War II and he was over in France. So I taught there for one year and a quarter and then he sent me a telegram that he was home from the war and to come right on. So I resigned and went north to, went to Cranford, New Jersey. That's where my step grandmother was when I came out high school. I went up there to her, she sent for me and as I said, I worked up there in the summer. Came to Winston-Salem teacher's college in the wintertime in the fall. | 15:04 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Could I ask you when you were born, Mrs. Kelsey? | 15:44 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Huh? | 15:45 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Could I ask you when you were born? | 15:45 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | In 1919. | 15:45 |
Rhonda Mawhood | 1919. | 15:45 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | May 25. | 15:46 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When you were teaching in Merrimon in the summer and eventually in Beaufort, not the summer, excuse me. When you were teaching, did you also work in the summer? Did you have another job in the summer? | 15:48 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Well, we belonged to a church there and we had a pastor, Dr. Allen. He was a very educated, smart man and he helped to organize a playground there for people in the summertime, get into little teams. And I was one of them that helped to run that and two or three others that in the summertime we didn't have anything to do. We would work around there. And he was really a wonderful preacher because he thought about everybody in the church and wanted them to work. And I guess you have to do that for them to kind of maintain the church and help. Yeah, so that's mostly what I did in summertime for a few years anyway. And then I started teaching in Elizabeth, New Jersey that seven miles from Cranford. | 16:04 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Where? | 17:01 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Elizabeth, New Jersey. | 17:01 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I know where that is. Yeah. I've met other people who have lived there. | 17:02 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Yeah. | 17:06 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When you first got to the school in Merrimon, in the country out there, what was it like? | 17:09 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | That was just a little tiny country school. It's like a little house. It's a big one story, a room. I think they had to tow it out in the back, of course in these country schools. And it was just one great, it wasn't a big one, it's just because you in the country, they don't have but so many children anyway. And I had several grades all together. Don't ask me how I taught them. I did the best I could with them and it went along very nice and they liked me and we got along very well together. And as I say, I only stayed out there in Merrimon two years and I stayed in North River one year. | 17:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Were you the only teacher in that school? | 17:57 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Oh yes. I was the only teacher, had been teachers up there before me. | 17:58 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And where did you live? | 18:02 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | I lived right at one of the ladies' houses. | 18:04 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How was that? | 18:09 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Well, she had a room for me and they would cook for me sometimes and they cook for me most of the time because I come home to Beaufort on the weekend on a mail truck. They had a mail truck and I would come on the mail truck to Beaufort. See it's been so long ago. | 18:10 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How did it happen that you would get a ride on the mail truck? Was that? | 18:29 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Well, the man came around delivering the mail. And he said that he would take you if he wanted to go to Beaufort. That was our source of getting to Beaufort because I had no car at the time and they didn't pay much on, don't ask me how much the pay, I've forgotten gotten how much they paid, but they didn't pay but so much when you first start down here in North Carolina, they are much better paid now and years later, they were better paying and when they were integrated, they paid more. | 18:33 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Where did you meet your husband? | 19:07 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Well, I went to my grandmother's, we belonged to the same church. His name Roney, not Ronald, but Roney. Roney Kelsey. | 19:07 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How do you spell Roney? | 19:17 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | R-O-N-E-Y. Roney Kelsey. And we got married in 1940. First year I started teaching. | 19:19 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And then he went away to war after, I guess pretty soon after you got married he went? | 19:32 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Oh yeah, he went back to New Jersey. We came to Washington DC got married. He had an uncle there and in fact he's not living there now. He lived, he moved back to his native home to New Jersey, but we got married, his wife came and stood up with us when he got married at the preacher's house. His wife stood up with us too, so it wasn't a big thing, but it was a nice thing because he was a nice husband, nice man. And then we moved down here 20 years later. 20 years ago. | 19:38 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay, so about 1970? | 20:15 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | 1971. | 20:16 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. | 20:16 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | We moved here and built this house down here in, right here in [indistinct 00:20:25] in Fishertown. And I've been here ever since. | 20:19 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What made you decide to come back here? | 20:30 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Well, Beaufort is my home and most everybody originally, I mean sometimes come back home and I was glad to get back here and yet I enjoyed it up north. People were very good and I had a good job and my husband worked hard and so did I. He worked out of Hamlet, too and got, he went to a— What's the name of that college down in Georgia? | 20:32 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | In fact, he got a scholarship. He was a good football player and he got a scholarship down there, but he didn't finish. He went down a year and a quarter. I think a year and a half. And he said his parents couldn't afford it. I said, well, I tried to tell him, I said, "If you really want to go back, you could have gone back." I said, "Because I went back and I worked myself too." I told him he could have gotten a job too. And I had a job on campus too, and so if you want to do something, you can do it. | 20:56 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What kind of job did you have on campus? | 21:30 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Well, I worked in kitchen and I worked on the halls, sweeping the halls, just anything that they wanted me to do. | 21:32 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Was that part of a scholarship or did you have a scholarship? | 21:40 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | No, I didn't have a scholarship, I was a salutatorian but I wasn't all that smart, but I did have a job and then with my father's help. | 21:42 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I was wondering, when you growing up in Beaufort, what were your relations with White people like? | 21:59 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Well, they were pretty good. They always treated us nice. We'd had a no trouble with all White people in Beaufort. They were very nice to us and we had a man on the front street. You've been in Beaufort? | 22:07 |
Rhonda Mawhood | No, I haven't. I've driven through there on the way to the Outer Banks. | 22:22 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Oh, well you hadn't been on Front Street. It used to be a meat store down there, a grocery store and this man, Mr. Jones, CD Jones, we would get all our meat down there, go down and get a big soup bone, make soup. A soup bone for 25 cents and we had all the vegetables in the world to put in it. So that's one of the things that we used to, and we got along fine. My father was a Christian man and he got along with everybody and he had no enemies there. Not that I know of. Not nobody anybody else know of. They always gave him a good name. | 22:27 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What about people's relations with the police? Were there problems there? | 23:05 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | It's always been problems, I guess everywhere mostly. No, but I do remember as a youngster, one fella, Black fella killed, the girls that he was going with her father, he killed her father. And I don't know how it came about, but he went on the road for it. | 23:11 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | But as mistreat—and I did hear something when I was a young girl that a man said he got, somebody killed him. He was an old man too, Mr. [Indistinct], and he got killed. They say that he got killed to the railroad. The tracks ran over him, the train, but nobody believed it because somebody killed him and put him on the railroad track. That's what they said. Now it could be wrong, but otherwise I've never heard of anything. They've always treated that, I guess all of them call you out your names sometimes if they get mad with you or something like that, it's like we would say call them out their name. We call them cracker or something like that. But everything to me seemed to have gotten along fine. And I used to work when I was in the high school, we used to nurse a little child after school and on Saturdays and wouldn't get much, anything, I there about $4 a week, three or four, and we got along fine. Yeah. | 23:32 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Thank you. | 24:37 |
Rhonda Mawhood | If I just asked you what memories stands out in your mind that I might not have asked you about yet from your life, probably before about the 1960s? Are there things you— | 24:45 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Well, I have two children. In fact, I had a son that that died almost three years ago and he was 43 and my younger son is over in Germany now, and his family, he's got a wife and two little children. Little boy, the 28 of this month will be nine years old. Nine or 10. I can't keep up with him. I got seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild. | 24:59 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Is your son in the military? Is that why he's in Germany? | 25:29 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | He's in the Army, yes. And he's a sergeant right now. He could have gone in for better had he taken ROCT in college and I got so angry with it, instead of him taking that, he went in the fraternity. He had a little job too, and he took his money, went in fraternity. I told him fraternity didn't mean a thing to him. He enjoyed it while he was in it, but now he doesn't even think about it. But see, if he had taken ROCT, he could have gone in there as a lieutenant. He taught five years. He went to ECU for four years and finished in pretty good standard and he taught at Princeton, North Carolina where Princeton, North Carolina is? | 25:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Yes, I do. | 26:16 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Yeah. He taught that five years and his wife was kind of—what do you call it? Not associate teacher, but teacher's aid and next door to him there was a elementary school. She worked there and he worked around at the high school, but he said he didn't pay enough and he said the Army paid more and he's been in there ever since. He's been in there going to be 10 years now. And he's trying to debate with himself whether he wants to come out or stay in until he gets about 50 and then get a pension and then go to work later on somewhere else or think about, he said he might go back. Those people that he taught for in Princeton wants him to come back. He went there and visit while he was here on leave. And they said, "Kelsey, when you coming back?" He said, "I don't know whether I'm going to get out first." | 26:16 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | He seems to like it like that, but I'm afraid that he's going to be a big upheaval somewhere and might improve where he is and everything. And that's my only son. Yeah, so I think that's about the biggest thing. And he's a preacher too. | 27:12 |
Rhonda Mawhood | A preacher too? | 27:31 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | He's a preacher too, is he's taken that since he's been in service and he hasn't been ordained yet, but he has had his trial sermon at Marshall Chapel and Winston, I mean in Jacksonville. And he's doing very well, doing very well. He preaches in his spare time and he says he's working hard on the base where he is from Germany. I think that's about the biggest thing, unless you got some more questions. | 27:31 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I was wondering which fraternity he joined. | 28:03 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | It's only the one there. I don't know. I really dance somewhere home, but I don't know. | 28:07 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you join a sorority when you were in college? | 28:13 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | No, I couldn't afford to and I never did. When I got out, I didn't. I should have because they had one right in Newark and that was the right near me, but I didn't see the necessity of it. It's a lot of money and going and involvement. | 28:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Are you a member of any other organizations there? | 28:33 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Well, I'm a retired teacher of the Retired Teachers of Craven County. Not Craven County. Of Carver County, and I'm a member of a agriculture homemaker's extension, and of course I'm a Sunday school teacher. | 28:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. How long have you been a Sunday school teacher? | 28:53 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Oh, two or three years. In fact, I've done it off and all my life. I did it in New Jersey at the church that I belonged to. And as I said, I took my children. I didn't send them. My husband and I were good members of standing in church. | 28:58 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Are you a member of the NAACP by any chance? | 29:21 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Yes, I am. Yes. And my dues are paid up. Yeah, I don't know why I didn't think to say that. | 29:21 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Well, I think just about everybody I've talked to is and they just don't, they've been a member for so long, they just don't think to mention it. How long have you been a member of the NAACP? | 29:25 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Oh, many years off and on. Haven't been since I've been out here 20 years I guess. I've been a member. I've helped out for a long time, but I know I've been a standing member for the last 10 or 12 years. | 29:34 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When was the first time that you voted, Mrs. Kelsey, if you remember? | 29:51 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | Lord, that's been years ago. Years ago. I don't know what time, but it was years ago. | 29:57 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Was it in North Carolina? | 30:02 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | In New Jersey. | 30:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | New Jersey? | 30:02 |
Christine Vann Kelsey | New Jersey. | 30:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | [INTERRUPTION 00:30:02] | 30:02 |
Beryl O'Dell | Oh, I got scholarship to go, because of the families knowing each other. I remember very well. There was a strike once and I didn't want to strike very much. What were they striking for? Maybe better food, something, you know how colleges did. And so we were sitting on the grass and I had to be sitting right at the sidewalk, of course. And the president came walking down the walk, shot a walk and looked down into my face and I felt like climbing up under a bush because I was there because he had given me the scholarship and there I was striking with everybody else. It was a distinctly different atmosphere. | 30:10 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you go out? | 31:03 |
Beryl O'Dell | Well, this is very personal and I'm sure you weren't, well, I don't think you'll publish it, but I was told that I was one of five virgins on the campus, five on the whole campus. So it's very different life. Well, although apparently, although I developed a mature life, most of, I think I was too well formed by that time to engage in some of the activities, experiences of friends of mine did. I'll never forget when Passie Bradley, who was from Oklahoma, she was a very close friend of mine and she was going with one of the professor's sons and we knew the Passie was going to stay out all night long, spend the night with him, and we were just on tenter hooks until she got back in the morning. And when she came in, we were very relieved, but someone had let the dean know about it, so she was dismissed. Sent home. | 31:11 |
Beryl O'Dell | There were lots of activities there. I was a part of the traveling, a group of singers that raised funds for the school and I was, oh, I forgot to say that at North Carolina College along with the dance and the sports, but I was also in drama and my very first trip to Wilmington was to Thalian Hall where we were presented in a play there. | 32:23 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What made you finally choose music as a major? | 33:07 |
Beryl O'Dell | I was always interested in music even before I went to North Carolina College. And the only reason why I didn't pursue it other than as applied music, I took a piano there. That was my performing instrument, but that's one of the big reasons why I transferred to [inaudible 00:33:34] where I could major in music because that was something I had always wanted to do and that was my eventual goal. | 33:11 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So the professors who tried to move you into other disciplines, you weren't interested? | 33:41 |
Beryl O'Dell | Oh, I was very interested, but that wasn't my primary focus. Yeah, actually I got enough French to have a double major before I graduated. | 33:49 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Well, I'd like to ask you about your father. What did your father tell about family? | 34:03 |
Beryl O'Dell | My father. Do you know anything about Jamaica— When I say anything about it, I shouldn't ask that way. Do you know anything about the structure, the social structure and so forth in Jamaica? | 34:16 |
Rhonda Mawhood | One, the life who moved here from, [inaudible 00:34:47] and I know a little bit about the reform, recent politics. | 34:30 |
Beryl O'Dell | My father came from a background of gentility. We learned so much through a cousin who came to visit us. And this was interesting because my father's name as we knew it was Salesman Weller. Salesman William Weller. That's all we knew. And then this cousin, Violet who lived in New Jersey, we learned about where she lived and all that. And of course my folks invited her to come see us. That was really exciting for us because we hadn't had the opportunity to talk with anyone other than my father's brother who had come to visit us. But Uncle Willie perhaps spent a week with us and then went back to Jamaica, and so we still were not able to get the objective view of my father's life. He had talked to us about his life, but not from anyone else. And the very first thing she said was, "Well, let me tell you about Cousin Sammy." | 34:57 |
Beryl O'Dell | When she said Cousin Sammy, our jaws dropped. Sammy? We had never heard Sammy before. And so then she said, "Oh yes, one of my first memories is of sitting in Cousin Sammy's home and his mother would always preside that looks taurine, and the servants would come in and da da da da da." Which gave us a picture of the environment that daddy grew up in. His father was a jeweler and my father's grandfather came from Scotland. As you said, you've already said that you've learned there's a lot of admixture there and my father's mother's for bearers came from Madagascar. So that was their background, and I think this is important to tell you because my father was very British. At the time that he came to this country it was still British West Indies. And so he was British in his attitudes and his loyalties. | 36:15 |
Beryl O'Dell | Every night he would turn on short wave and we would hear "God Save the Queen". Every night that was the last thing we heard when we signed off there. So the very fact that he would listen and we would hear that every night, shows that this was what he was loyal to and remembered a great deal. My father was like a square peg and round hole in this country. | 37:39 |
Beryl O'Dell | He was a part of the AME Zion church. I often wish he could have been at a different meeting because he was very respected, but he was not one of them. He was the one who was very adamant about table manners and etiquette and so forth. My mother was a gifted, remarkable woman who had what people would call the common touch. In church, she was the one that people flocked to. They respected my father from the pulpit. Reverend Weller was in the pulpit, but Mother was the one they gravitated to and as I look back, it's amazing that she did the things she did. She conducted from Daddy's study what people now go to employment agencies for. People would call her and they would make a job and Mother would make the contacts. She was a pioneer. | 38:10 |
Beryl O'Dell | Pictures, I have thousands of pictures, but somewhere here I have a picture of Mother standing with Eleanor Roosevelt when she attended the White House conference on Youth. When she died, she was general president of WH and it was then FM. It's now OM Women's Home and Foreign Missionary Society, which is, but the organization in our conference for women, there are no women bishops there, but in the missionary society, she was the president. | 39:32 |
Beryl O'Dell | Now I was talking about my father and it's difficult to talk about one and not begin to talk about the other. He was very cultured, very scholarly, and this was, I'm sure the fact that these two remarkable people who at a certain point in time post-depression, did not have financial resources, but they gave their children what money can't buy and pride in self, integrity and an absolute feeling of worth, personal worth. | 40:28 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I know that. Did they ever want [inaudible 00:41:37]? | 41:20 |
Beryl O'Dell | Because for the entire time that I lived with my parents, I lived in New England. In fact, I met my husband on my first job after I graduated, and my first job was in Mississippi. Now you want to talk about meeting head on the bitter truths. That's where I met them. I did not meet them as a member in my father's and mother's home. I ran head on, as I told you, when I went to college in North Carolina, we were living in such a protected, rarefied atmosphere that we still didn't run into the real realities of segregation and prejudice even there. It was when I went to work in Mississippi that I got my baptism by fire. | 41:48 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How was it for you? | 42:57 |
Beryl O'Dell | No. | 43:04 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And not somewhere else? | 43:05 |
Beryl O'Dell | Oh, okay. Before I graduated from college, the financial secretary of the college, Herbert White, was recruiting, not recruiting, he was looking for people to work there at Okolona Junior College. In Mississippi. It's an Episcopal Junior College. And so he interviewed several people and I was the one that he made the decision. When I told friends that I was going to teach in Mississippi. "Mississippi?" That was just like I was being cut down to death. "Do you want to go to Mississippi? Are you sure you want to go to Mississippi?" "Why, of course I want to go to Mississippi." And so politely, I said, go to Mississippi. It was not while I was working on campus that I really realized the harsh realities of segregation because here again, I'm working for a Episcopalian junior college that's near Tupelo, Mississippi. | 43:06 |
Beryl O'Dell | People knew about the teachers working there, and so they made charge accounts available and there was very little that I was doing in Tupelo, but of course I was learning about the deep south there. It was when I went to visit my husband's grandmother that I really ran into head on the realities of segregation. | 44:42 |
Beryl O'Dell | I remember we went into the telephone exchange because there wasn't a phone in my husband's grandmother's house. They lived in Florence, Mississippi, a very small place between Jackson and Meridian. And so we went to the telephone exchange to make this call because it was called this very same Herbert White who had given me the job and the operator said, "Who's your call going to?" Of course, she wasn't very civil just because I was a Black person. "Who is your call going to?" And I said, "His name is Mr. Herbert White." And he was at such and such a place. "Who?" And I said, "Mr. Herbert White." "Is he a Colored man?" And I said, "Yes." "We don't call no Colored man mister." And she got up and walked out. Now the adjoining operator moved over to her seat and said, "I'll place your call." And so she did it. | 45:15 |
Beryl O'Dell | I remember that. That just stood out in my mind. I didn't really run into the realities of segregation until I worked here in Wilmot and we had brought the whole children here, and I remember. | 46:33 |
There is no transcript available for this part.
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