Ruth Lewis (primary interviewee) and Astor Lewis interview recording, 1993 August 02
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Sonya Ramsey | Testing 1, 2, 3. Today is Monday, August 2nd, 1993 and I'm interviewing Mr. and Mrs. Lewis. And I wanted to start by asking Mrs. Lewis, could you describe the neighborhood where you grew up? | 0:01 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Well, my neighborhood, mostly Blacks that lived on that road, and they were just ordinary people. Nothing special other than—what? And the neighborhood mostly family oriented. The whole neighborhood, yeah. | 0:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was this in New Bern? | 0:39 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | No, this is in the country. | 0:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay what was the name of the area? | 0:42 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Drymonion road, a place called Jasper. | 0:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Jasper. | 0:46 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | On Drymonion Road. | 0:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Was it mostly a farming community? | 0:47 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes, yes. Mostly farming and my daddy farmed. And he also worked—what did he do all, no you don't put that on there. | 0:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, that's good to know. Okay. Okay. | 1:06 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And he also helped on the road when they building an old 70 highway. | 1:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 1:16 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | He worked there, but he was interested in the kids going to school. And we went to a small church. They called it Jump and Run, but they St. Mark now. When I was growing up it was Jump and Run. | 1:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why did they call it Jump and Run? | 1:34 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No, that was the name of it then. | 1:34 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Jump and Run. | 1:34 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Just the people in the community called it Jump and Run. | 1:34 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. | 1:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, why did they call it Jump and Run? | 1:47 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And that I don't know. It must has to be—but right now I can't think of what it is. | 1:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. You said that you lived in mostly Blacks, lived in the neighborhood. Were there any White families who lived there? | 1:51 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | On one end. That must have been about two miles from me. 'Cause the road I lived on about three miles long. But everybody on that road up to near Tuscarora were Black and they were all families and they looked out for one another. | 1:58 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Your family, your relatives. | 2:20 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, my relatives. And the girl that I ask you to see, we grew up in one another yard. In fact, her father was my great uncle. And the family plot was originally the Butler's, this side of the family [indistinct 00:02:52]. And her mother and father and my mother and father, very close, we live right next door. And they could scold us, not only them but other families on that same road did the same thing and going—we walked to church. And what else? | 2:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did you and your friends in the neighborhood do for fun when your chores were done? | 3:17 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | We play hopscotch, hide and go seek, and different games like that. We play some cards. What else did we do? We go visit one another. Other parts of the family lives in other part of the country. Sometime we walked about 9 to 10 miles too and thought nothing of it, but we had to be home by sundown. And my daddy was a rigid disciplinary and may have helped me out hard. I can't think of everything. | 3:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | It's okay, you're thinking of a lot of things. Who made the financial decisions in your family when you were growing up? | 4:06 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Mama and Daddy combined. They talked about and they did that together, all financial decisions. You better ask me the question. I think I can answer better than I can think of them. | 4:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay, that's fine. Who punished you in your family? | 4:29 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Mama and Daddy. Mama and Daddy. | 4:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | All right. I want to ask you one question. Did you play with any White children when you were growing up? | 4:39 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes, I did. I can't—but that was—I must have been around 3, 4, 5 that when we played together. There was one White family that Mama a lot of time would wash her clothes and she had a daughter about my age. And then when I would go out there with Mama, we played together. But other than that, I don't know of any I really played with. | 4:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your parents ever tell you anything or teach you anything about segregation when you were a little girl? | 5:17 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I'm trying to think. I'm not thinking if I learned it on my own and if some obstacle could come up, but I can't remember too many things that when I was growing up that—well there was in conflict between White and Black. I know my mother called Sassy because she already spoke out and course—let's see, even the children were call her by her first name and of course their parents, we had called by the last name. | 5:30 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And I think my brother probably came in more contact with the prejudice than any other girls I think, 'cause I remember him talking about Daddy was, I don't know whether he plowing or what, but he's at this guy's house and he called the guy by his first name. And I think he was reprimanded for that. But he said all the other children called Daddy by his first name. So I don't recall any, not offhand, where there was—I guess it was an accepted thing because that's all I knew other than when we worked together, we worked together but not really playing and having fun like children do. | 6:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I ask if someone watching the [indistinct 00:07:23], okay. All right. Mr. Lewis, could you describe the neighborhood where you grew up? | 7:21 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, I grew up in a, well, a small town in Pamlico County. And although my father did a little farming, we didn't live on the farm, we lived in town. And the neighborhood that I grew up in all Black on the end of the street that we lived, on the end it was quiet. At the school, that my father was a principal of the school there. And he also, I think the year that I was born, it was an insurance company, was the mutual insurance company and he worked with that company and also in the school system also. | 8:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 8:34 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And I was 8 years old when we moved to New Bern. | 8:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 9:05 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And then he just worked in with the insurance company. | 9:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 9:05 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And I grew up here from town. | 9:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you know why your family decided to move to New Bern? | 9:11 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, the insurance company had tried to get him to move for years and finally. And you see during those times the teacher paid for Black people, there was a difference in the pay. And so I imagine he got make more money from living in the insurance business than he would [indistinct 00:09:45]. | 9:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your mother work outside in the home? | 9:46 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No. | 9:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | She worked in the home, okay. How many brothers and sisters did you have? | 9:48 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I had three brothers and one sister. | 9:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. What were some of the chores you had to do around the house growing up? | 9:59 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, all of the chores. I mean, my younger brother, see my mother had two older than me, and two younger than me. And the two older ones, I guess the age differential was such that they were considered the large boys and I was considered the small one. And so when I could remember, the day, we get out, work on the farm, or what have you. And so it ended up, but when my brother and I had gotten large enough, my younger brother and I, large enough to work around the house, we did it. My sister was the baby in the family. | 10:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 11:11 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And she didn't do anything. We mopped the floor, we washed the dishes, we swept, and we cleaned the yard and kept the grass cut and all that. And the sister didn't do anything. | 11:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did you and your brothers and sisters and friends do for fun in your neighborhood when you growing up? | 11:36 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, mostly played ball. Baseball, basketball, football, and sand rock. And we had a lot—I mean we kept busy. | 11:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have any baseball heroes then, or sports figures that you knew about then? | 11:59 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well during that time, the first major league player that I can remember was Babe Ruth. And then there was a one named Claude Allen who's home was in North Carolina, but I don't remember the major league team he played on. | 12:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you know of in the Negro League, did you ever see any of those games? | 12:36 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I was grown before I saw any in the Negro League because they were—when I say the Negro League, now they were teams, most community, most towns had teams you would call them probably semi-pro. | 12:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 13:09 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Black. And now [indistinct 00:13:11] at that time, had a team [indistinct 00:13:12] any surrounding area and we would go to those games. And I remember some of the local players here, [indistinct 00:13:29] catcher—who were some of the pitchers? Right now I can think of the players, but I don't remember their position. I do remember the catcher. Then when I more interested in our neighborhood team than I was in those games because the teams I would take part. | 13:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | What position did you play? | 14:11 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, I pitcher and I was a catcher. | 14:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 14:17 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And I wasn't catcher until I a foul chip got me in the eye. | 14:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Ooh, goodness. | 14:25 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And I wasn't using a mask at the time. And so then I gave uh, catching up and became a pitcher. | 14:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Who were some of the important people in your neighborhood, or people in your neighborhood that you thought were important, or that you looked up to when you were growing up? | 14:39 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | In my neighborhood. | 14:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Or in your community? | 14:44 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Oh, in the community? Well, we had a few doctors and lawyers and business men, they at that time—and I couldn't understand why it was, we had five doctors here, Black doctors. And now, in New Bern, I think we had one. | 14:55 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | That's right. | 15:23 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And at times we haven't had any. And Black doctors would come here in recent years and then they'd say they weren't making any money and they'd leave and I found that the trend has been Black doctor go to the city, the larger cities where they could make more money. And then until the last doctor came here, we had one doctor. And was that his brother? Dr. Williams. Who was that? Was that his brother with him? | 15:24 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | No, that, oh no, they were friends. They were not brothers. | 16:13 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And so when he left from here, there were three of them. Wasn't it three of them? | 16:18 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, there was, let's see, Williams— | 16:21 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Williams, Williams, and Greg. But the reason they left from here, and they went to Jacksonville, was because the hospital required them to increase their malpractice insurance to the amount, but they didn't think they needed it. So they went to Jacksonville, but they didn't have to have that much malpractice insurance. | 16:28 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And there was another doctor here, even when he retired, I can't think of his name. The whole—I can't get up. It's on that— | 16:48 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | On that plaque. | 16:57 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, on that plaque. What was— | 16:59 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | What was his name? Greg? | 17:00 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I don't think it was Greg. | 17:02 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Oh really? | 17:03 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, well that's okay. That's okay. I was just asking about when y'all were growing up. | 17:07 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Oh yeah. [indistinct 00:17:13]. And well we had one of the lawyers that were here was the son of the, his name was Lawyer Harold, he was the son of one of the Black congressmen from North Carolina, or Harold Black Congressman. | 17:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask—Mrs. Lewis had relatives, they grew up around her. Did you have an extended family that grew up around you and your family? | 17:39 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, when we were in Pamlico County, I had an aunt that lived a couple doors from us, and then the aunt that lived out on the farm. But in New Bern, I had cousins but we didn't live—I had one cousin that lived next door to us, but other than that, the other cousin was scattering about. | 17:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Let me ask, did your parents ever tell you anything about White people or segregation when you were growing up? | 18:23 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I don't recall, but I do know of experiences now. My mother was little touchy and that term in which trying to at least 'cause of not calling Blacks "Mr." and "Mrs." and if they ever address her as "aunt", she would— | 18:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Get mad. | 19:03 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. She'd ask them, say, "I didn't know I was related to you. Which one is my family, like my sister or my brother?" She was that type of person. But that thing of saying "yes ma'am" and "no ma'am" to the White, she taught us to say no and yes. And quite a few people used to kind of get angry at me about that, but I never, I just say yes and no to [indistinct 00:19:45]. And it grew up because of that. And if a person came to our house and asked for William, that was my father's name, we didn't know William. And at times before we was been figured out they didn't have to say Mr. | 19:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your family ever get in any trouble for that, or no? | 20:16 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No. | 20:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did the other people think about y'all when you did that? | 20:19 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | What, the other Blacks? As far as I know, I guess it didn't matters would be that way as far as I know. | 20:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay, I wanted to ask you about, 'cause I forgot to ask about, what values did your parents instill in you when you were growing up? | 20:38 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Honesty and fairness, that's one thing my daddy preach, and always make your visit short. He always told us that, make short visits because that way you have lasting friends. That won't be those things you said, I said, she said, and that's if you grew up. | 20:44 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And the closest people that we visited, and could be in their yard every day, was this cousin, her mother's my aunt by marriage. But she had a lot of influence on my life because she is the lady that—because Mama had a lot of children and since little kids are the youngest one, which is about a year or two younger than I am. So we grew up together, right, and a lot of mama kids were small, so she would take us to church. She put on different activities and she was just one of remarkable person. I think she had had a lot of influence on my life other than my mother and father. And she's the closest. She was the closest. And she's dead now. | 21:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 21:48 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And she is this girl's mother. Was this girl's mother, the one I'm telling you about. | 21:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Mr. Lewis, what values did your parents instill, you were talking about some of them, but what were some of the other ones? | 21:53 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, the biggest thing I remember was they did not like a lie. | 22:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | What would they do if they caught someone in a lie or one of their children in a lie? | 22:10 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | You accept the consequence. | 22:17 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | You got a whipping. But I tell you there was—and my younger brother used to get so angry with me because if we did anything and they asked us, I'm ready to admit it too. And I found out that I didn't— | 22:24 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Soda? Excuse me, you like a soda? | 22:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh no thanks, I'm fine. | 22:45 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And I found out, especially with my father, that was one way of not getting a whipping. And because he was one person, see he could hurt when he whipped you. And I didn't like to get whippings from him. But my mother, I didn't mind, because she couldn't hurt. She couldn't hurt. And so for that reason she did most of the punishing of my brother and me. And I don't ever think she ever, ever whipped my sister. So if we got her whipping every day, it didn't matter. | 22:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did she know she wasn't getting hurting you when she? | 23:28 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well I tell you she did—one day I told her, I said, I told her, I said, "Mama, you just really better stop whipping me." I said, "you can't hurt me." And then she stopped. | 23:32 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | But I think that's true in most families because when Mama whipped us, it wasn't as if Daddy, when he whipped you, he did whip often, Daddy didn't. But when he whipped, you remember it. With Mama it's quite different. | 23:41 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Because I can remember every whipping my father gave me. I don't think it was over five during the time that I was growing up. I can't even count. I can't, can't count. But I figured that probably somewhere along the line I was small, he probably whipped me and I forgot about it. But my mother, most of the time, every day. | 23:56 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Another thing in my neighborhood, the people as I said, were like family because if something happened to one, the whole area were concerned. And for instance, if I need to go someplace and Daddy wasn't there, I remember one person just wanted to know if you just let that person know, or say, well I'll stop and take her. I'll do this now. And that's the way they were with—the whole community was that way. | 24:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 24:52 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I guess I don't know, they depended upon one another, but they helped one another with the children and everything. | 24:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted ask both of you back, do you have any remembrances of your grandparents? | 25:02 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I— | 25:07 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I remember my father's mother. | 25:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 25:10 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | But she died when I was four years old. | 25:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 25:15 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | My mother's mother died when I was two years old. Now I never knew her father because he died and she was a child. And my father's father separated from his mother during, I guess his younger years, his childhood. And I never saw his father, although I was about probably 12 or 13 when he died, my grandfather on the father's side. And I think after he left, my father only saw him once, and that was when he got sick and my father left. Then he was living in Pennsylvania at the time and he left to see him then. Now when he died, he died in South Carolina. But my father didn't know that he had left Pennsylvania until he died. And then his wife left another time, my father left. But when my father got the— | 25:19 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Letter. | 26:24 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah, he had been there. So he didn't get to the funeral. And so the only one that I can remember is my grandmother on my father's side. | 26:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | What do you—you were small though. You said you can remember, what do you remember about it? | 26:55 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I tell you, I can remember one day. See my mother didn't call her mama, she called her Miss James. And her name was Sarah James. She called her Miss James and so I can remember one day, she was at our home and I called her Miss James and my mama scolded me, said "you say Grandma." What I mean I can remember that I can—oh, now one of the other things that I can remember was that she was the last—there used to be a church that denomination was called the Disciple Church. | 27:03 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 27:51 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And I think she was the last living person of that church. And so although we went to church, to regular church service in the evening, she would have, and especially all her grandchildren and all the other children there, she would have a Bible study on Sunday evening. And I do remember that. And she gave every one of us a Bible. I remember that. And it was one of those things that I considered myself bad during that time, little boy, bad little boy. And she was good. And I used to wish I could be good like she. And I don't know why I got that impression of her that she was good, but she was good, that she wasn't bad like the rest of us, my brothers and my cousins and all the others. | 27:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your own parents ever talk about that church? How is that church, the disciple church, different than the regular, the Baptist church and the Methodist, or was it just an offshoot of Baptist? | 29:12 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No, well you have that denomination it's still—still in existence. | 29:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 29:33 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. And that's what they're called the— | 29:33 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, they have one here. | 29:33 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah, there's one here. | 29:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 29:39 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well what I think— | 29:40 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | St. Paul Disciple Church. | 29:43 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Disciples of Christ or just Disciple? | 29:44 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I think this one just named St. Paul Disciple Church. | 29:46 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. | 29:49 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | The name was of that one. | 29:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 29:49 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And that's all I know about it. | 29:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay, I'll ask you Mrs. Lewis, do you have any remembrances of your grandparents? | 30:07 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes, I remember my grandfather on my daddy's side because he died since we've been married. | 30:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, so recently. | 30:18 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And my grandfather on my mother's side, I think he died—I must have been about five years old because where we were living at the time, he was priming tobacco, he was a minister, but he was priming tobacco and he must have had a heat stroke or something because he died and they brought him to our house and laid him on the porch. And my cousin, I was there pulling his toes. But I remember the house that they lived in and we used to go visit them. But he was a what, Grandpapa we called him. | 30:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was he like? What type of personality did he have? | 31:01 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | As far as I can remember and listen to other people's thinking, or talking, that they thought a lot of him. I don't know about Whites because I wasn't—didn't know anything about Whites during that time. But my grandfather on my daddy's side, he was a sports, so they called him. But he was good, great church worker. And he liked singing and he did all that. But he died. What year was that? Can you recall? | 31:04 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | How old was I? '50 or '51. It was in the early '50s. | 31:39 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. | 31:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did he ever tell you anything about his life that you can think of, when he was a child or young, when he was younger? | 31:39 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | No, the only conversation I heard about any of his life because he didn't live far from us. So I saw him regular. But I guess he was just like any other Granddaddy, he comes he plays with us and all that. He used to teased me 'cause he used to ask me to spell-stance—what? Constantinople? | 31:53 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Constantinople. | 32:16 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, and he would stand there and he'd spell it and then he asked me to spell it, say stuff like that. But my grandmother on my mother's side, she died. I must have been around eight or nine. But I remember her and going to the house and everything and remember when she died. But my great-grandfather on my daddy's side, I didn't know him, but they talked about him being a great hunter and that he used to hunt quite a bit for the other folks. | 32:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was that a way that Black men can make money then, hunting for people then? | 33:09 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I don't know whether he was making money or not, but I understood that he was a great hunter and a lot of people got him to do the hunting. | 33:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said you remembered your grandmother. What do you remember? What did you remember about her? | 33:22 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I guess mostly what I remember just being there and I suppose that she was doing the cooking, eating, and all that. That's mostly what—I remember the type of individual, how she looked. And I remember looking at her after she had died. And during that time they used to put pennies on your eyes. | 33:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why did they do that? | 33:56 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I guess to close them, yeah. | 33:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I think I'm going to go ahead and move on and ask you both, could you describe your elementary school where you went to school? | 34:05 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes, when I first start, remember school, I just was going just to be going. I don't know whether somebody relieving Mama of some of her problems, but I must have been around five, four or five. And I remember walking, I guess about two or three miles for that. Then the next thing I remember, my father had a cousin that taught elementary school and I went to live with her. But I still wasn't school age. But I would go to back and forth to school with her. And we still walked. | 34:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | When you went to school early, were you sitting in the classes and things like that or? | 34:51 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I was just in there. | 34:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 34:57 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I don't think, I wasn't learning anything. I was just. | 34:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | That was before you [indistinct 00:35:05]. | 35:03 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | What about when you did become—? | 35:05 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Well, that's when I started. How old was I then? Let's see. When I started school, I'm trying to think because I didn't go to Jump and Run. I think it was Francis Lawson who had took a carload of children from the Jasper area. That's where we lived. Up to near Coal City Park. | 35:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | What county is that in? | 35:35 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Craven. All over Craven County. Even where I went to school all of it Craven County. And I went to her until I was in the 6th grade. And after 6th grade she asked me—they were giving those what type of exam they usually give? All the kids in the community or in the county would take that test? | 35:37 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Was it called a comprehensive? Or what was it? | 36:08 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | No, I don't think it was because that's when they would graduate from elementary school, 7th grade, and go to high school. But I never go to 7th grade. I took that test and everything. I must have done all right in it because I went from there to the 8th grade and started high school. | 36:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | You could skip grades? | 36:29 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. Yeah. But I wished I had not because I think I missed a lot by doing that. | 36:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | How old were you when you went to high school? | 36:37 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I was 16 when I finished high school. So I must've been around 12 huh? | 36:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. Mr. Lewis, what do you remember about your elementary school? | 36:45 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | You know I started school at the school my father was the principal of. | 36:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 36:59 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And I, after the first semester—to we at that—what you call kindergarten now, they call it primary. And I, after the half the year, the teacher promoted me to the 1st grade although my father didn't want me to go [indistinct 00:37:24], and the next year I to the 2nd grade and we—I completed 2nd grade. When we moved to New Bern, my father had the principal put me back in the 2nd grade because he wouldn't let me [indistinct 00:37:44]. | 37:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | And why did he do that again? | 37:40 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, I mean he requested that I stay in the 2nd grade, and I remember that the principal came in the class around and he, the teacher had me read it and the principal that, that's when I found out what my father had done. The principal told the teacher, said, "well, he can read" and say, but his father wanted him to stay in 2nd grade. So he did. | 37:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why did your father not want you to go on to the 3rd grade? | 38:16 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I guess he thought that somewhere along the line when I skipped grade that I had missed something. And so that was his wishes. | 38:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you feel any extra pressure to behave because you're probably the principal's son? | 38:35 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I don't know. Now because I never, I didn't think of it. | 38:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did people watch out, watch you more and things like that and tell on you anymore? | 38:51 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I don't think so. I don't believe so. I don't know. I don't think so. Well, if it was, I didn't notice it. I didn't, probably, I was naive and didn't notice it. | 38:56 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Well the lady who taught me, when I finished elementary school, at least during my years at elementary years, she had a nephew that went to her and she also had a daughter and she used to lay folks. They used lay glossy on them when they misbehaved. | 39:12 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I guess that was— | 39:37 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And I think that probably was the reason because she didn't want other kids to think she was playing favoritism. But I felt sorry a lot of times, especially the nephew 'cause she used to get him. He was a bad little boy and she used to lay it on him. But other than that, I didn't see any other favoritism. It might have been there, but I don't think it was with her. She taught 6th, she taught 7th grade. Yeah, so— | 39:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | Seven grades? | 40:19 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | It was one school. | 40:19 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | One school and one teacher school. One teacher school. | 40:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did she give all those different grades the attention that—How did she, I wonder how she works with all those different grades. | 40:27 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I don't know. But she did it because I remember when we have—I think she had all the English classes at once, she was teaching English. That's what they got. Everybody got the English and the same thing with math or whatever, but different grades. So I don't know how she did it, but it was done. And she's the one who encouraged me to go take that test, yeah. When I was in 6th grade. | 40:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. And Mr. Lewis, had you finished with your elementary school or do you want to add anymore? | 40:56 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | When I moved, we moved to New Bern and I finished my elementary here, but I don't remember any highlights. | 41:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And did y'all—did you have to take that same kind of test that Mrs. Lewis took to go on to high school or was it different in the city? | 41:15 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, I tell you, I remember when I was in the 7th grade, it was either the 6th grade or 7th grade, I don't remember now, one of those grades, there was a comprehensive test that was given. Although now in New Bern, in the city, it didn't matter. It didn't determine what grade you would go to. But the results of your test were given. And I do remember that test in the ninth grade summer I forget what month, but 9th grade, but I still went to the 8th grade, 7th grade or whatever grade it was that I was supposed to go to. I didn't go to the ninth grade. I guess that was a little different than city school and the county school. | 41:34 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Well the 7th graders also went to take the same test that I took, but they were supposed to have been 7th graders. The 7th graders did go, but it was just two 6th graders that went from that school. | 42:34 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah, I understand that. But what I'm saying is that here it didn't matter. I know I was saying that, that on that test, I know I placed 9th grade somewhere. I mean straight from [indistinct 00:43:05] 9th grade. But it did—you know what I mean, I didn't go to that. | 42:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. So after that, did you both go to the same high school? Or you went to different? | 43:09 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | No. | 43:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | What high school did you go to? | 43:16 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I went to what they call Newbold Training School. And now it is a elementary school? What is that school now? | 43:16 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | It's an elementary school. | 43:25 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Elementary school now | 43:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | Is it Board, B-O-A-R-D? | 43:26 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Uh-huh. N-E-W-B-O-L-D. | 43:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 43:30 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Newbold. | 43:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And that was in Craven county? | 43:32 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes. And I believe that was the last 11th grade class. Or was it? 'Cause when Bell went, I think she had his—either, no, maybe it was not the last 11th grade. But they were in the process of sort of phasing out the 11th grade, going on to add the 12th arm. | 43:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | And what year was this? What time period? | 43:58 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | '36. | 43:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 44:05 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And I finished in '40. | 44:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And I have a lot of questions to ask about high school. So let me first get to high school that you went to and then I'll go back and forth. | 44:12 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I'm at West Street. | 44:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | West Street, okay. | 44:16 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | High school. | 44:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And what was the year that you went to high school? | 44:23 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Let me do that math. That must've been from '33 to '37. | 44:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. And let me ask you one question before we start to high school. How did the Depression affect your family [indistinct 00:44:41]? | 44:34 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, we didn't have the things that we had before the Depression. 'Cause I remember when the bank fell and my father had his money in it, he was out of town on the day that it closed, when he came home, he laughed about it, philosophical about it. But I noticed that after then, we didn't have things that we used to have used to have, not like we used to have. | 44:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did it stop? Did the insurance business suffer? Anything like that? | 45:15 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No. Whatever—when I say no, it was one of those things in which I guess people were afraid not to have insurance. | 45:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 45:23 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I guess. But I take that back, I won't say maybe. No, cause evidently he wasn't making as much money so it was affected, but he wasn't as bad off as people in other jobs, but [indistinct 00:45:52] in the things that he used to see that he thought we would use like and now we didn't have that anymore. [indistinct 00:46:14] we got part of the things that we did. Now and with us, it was almost the same as though we were living on a farm as far as food was concerned because he would go, he know in the rural selling and collect insurance, people would pay him with food. | 45:31 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | —potatoes, and what have you. Call everyone, and we would have—and especially potato, you had those the year round. I can remember, I can recall that. And I hear my wife talk about the hams and things they had. We had them, too. Although, we didn't raise them. But other than that, at times, I guess he was just like other people. What I mean is, income had to—you know what I mean. | 0:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Miss Lewis, how did the Depression affect your family? | 0:55 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | You know, really, I don't know, because we've always had food. And even with clothing, we had clothes. But I do recall this lady used to get—her house was the house we would take clothes for welfare children, and things of that—and I noticed that I would get a dress now and then, from that lady. But she was a friend of the family, also, so I don't know whether it was because of that, or whether we actually needed it. I imagine we needed it, too. | 0:58 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | But, and then this lady that Momma used to work for, the White girl that was same age that I am, she was larger than I am, so a lot of her clothes that was handed down to me. But as far as—Daddy and Momma raised all our food, because the only thing we had to buy when I was growing up, was something like Palmolive soap, we bought rice, and flour. But meal, and all the other things, mostly, my daddy raised it. So we had a mule, we had a cow, and we made our own butter. He'd take the corn to the mill, have it ground, we got our own meal. And my aunt next door, she and my mother would do a lot of canning during the summer. And then in the winter, well, we always had plenty of food. And my uncle used to cook cane, to make molasses. | 1:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Sugar cane? | 2:44 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, mm-hmm. Make molasses. And we—well, we had food. In fact, I often say that I did not know how rich I was, until after I got grown, and married, because we really lived, as far as food is concerned. We didn't have any problem with that. And my mother could take a dollar and make it—stretch it to the hollers. | 2:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 3:10 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | But she would take some money, and buy shoes and things. And she would go to town, and come over to town, and she would buy me a pair of shoes—and she might have been buying some of the things off the street, I don't know. But we never wanted for anything, in that area. And I thought we were poor. I remember, but I look back on it now, I think, I was—we were rich. And we had a lot of love in the family. And it's just one of those things that I enjoyed, growing up. | 3:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I guess we can go on, and I wanted to ask you both some questions about your high school years, and I guess I'll start with you, Mrs Lewis. What activities did you participate, in high school, aside from academics? Clubs, or—group kind of things. | 3:50 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Come to think about it, I can't recall any, because I wanted to play basketball, and Daddy wouldn't let me play basketball. | 4:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why wouldn't he let you play? | 4:15 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I think—I don't know, unless it was, he just didn't think I should be out there with shorts, and all that other stuff. Because even after I was grown, and out on my own, I remember, I had a dress that—this little black dress that you—and he came over one day and told me, he said, "I think you might be cool, in that." And that was, I think it must have been August, during a summer month. But he would let me know that he did not like that. And I couldn't wear pants, either, when I was growing up. It was quite different in my time that I was growing up, and then my baby sister, because when she came along, she wore pants and everything else she wanted. Shorts, too. But I could not. | 4:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Were you in any— | 5:01 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | We were in some plays, you know, like that. We'd have a play, and I would be out participating in that. And well, they had a Glee Club. I didn't participate in that. And I can't think, that's mostly what we did. Little activities, as far as the school was concerned. | 5:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Mr Lewis, what activities did you participate in? | 5:33 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | About the only sports my mother would let me—I had a passion to do anything with a football and basketball. The only thing that she would let me play was the basketball. She was afraid I'd get hurt in football, and the Dramatic Club, and most of my class programs, sometimes putting in all this time, myself, participating in that. | 5:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was your basketball team—did they win a lot of games? | 6:21 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, I think we won our share. No, it was one of those things in which you play a team, you might win this time. Say if we played them in New Bern, we might win, we went to that school. And we'd lose [indistinct 00:06:51]. | 6:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were the guys who played basketball, and the girls that were cheerleaders, were they pretty popular, in the school, do you think? | 6:54 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | In my school, because we didn't have all the cheering done by the group, as a whole. But not special group, like cheerleaders, we didn't have that. Uh-uh. So, if your team was playing, then the whole school was involved in the cheering, and so forth, and so on. | 7:06 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | But you did have—we had cheerleaders. | 7:21 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Oh, we did not. | 7:33 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | We had cheerleaders at some—but with cheerleaders, you have to have always one, a boy, the rest would be girls. And Short Doc was the boy cheerleader. | 7:33 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Oh, yeah? | 7:37 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And there was girls, and then they actually would be cheerleaders. But the, now, the football players were more popular. | 7:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 8:01 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And that's the reason I wanted to play football. But my mother wouldn't let me. But I guess that was the reason, the football players were the more popular. The basketball, they were just, you know, no great thing. | 8:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask, during your high school years, what was dating like, then? | 8:21 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Well, I wasn't even dating. Because when I went to the prom, either my father, or someone taking us, and that's where we danced. But we did not go to the prom alone. | 8:30 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Hmm. | 8:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did they have places for young people to go, when you were growing up, like soda shops, and things like that? | 8:50 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | They might have some places, but we couldn't go. They wanted us home, but as far as like, going to clubs, that was unheard of. We didn't—because we consi— | 9:02 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | They're here, in the drugstore. | 9:15 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Oh, yeah. | 9:18 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Drugstore. At least we had— | 9:36 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | But see, I was in the country. | 9:36 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | —two drugstores, in Million. We got sodas, and ice creams, and—stuff like that. And then, the Coast Guard station was here, and the Coast Guard Cutter Pamlico. And the boys, we used to—oh, wait a minute, but that was before my high school days, so— | 9:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, well, that's— | 9:52 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I mean, I— | 9:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | Yes, okay. | 9:52 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | —because I remember when, on Sunday afternoon, we used to go down to the cutter, and there was a fella from New Bern, was going to work, was in the Coast Guard. Frank Parlor. And we used to always like to catch him on duty on the Sunday afternoon. And then he'd take us aboard, and there was ice cream, and stuff like that. | 9:52 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Then Alex Haley come along, after you were grown. | 10:27 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. Alex Haley, he came along after I had finished college. | 10:31 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Uh-huh. | 10:31 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | He was around here. | 10:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Well, I guess in the city there were more activities for young people. Were there dances and things like that? | 10:36 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. The high school classes would have—use the little, what we called 10 cent parties, that would raise money. We used to go to the Elk Club, and have jukebox, and probably the nickelodeon would be going. They would take a nickel. We had those quite often on Friday nights. Some class would have a jukebox. | 10:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | What were some of the popular songs of the time? That you liked to dance to, and listen to? | 11:22 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | During that time, Ella Fitzgerald, I had Stairway to the Stars, Bing Crosby was Pennies from Heaven. And then, there were different— | 11:35 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | That Junction, what were they— | 12:02 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Junction— | 12:02 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | —Junction, yeah. And After Hours. | 12:02 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I forgot. What was the name of the band leader, that played Tuxedo Junction? | 12:02 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I can't recall. | 12:04 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | —Hawkin. Wasn't it Erkin Hawkin? | 12:04 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I don't know. | 12:04 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | During those times, see, you people didn't have the music, like we had, during that time. That we had the bands, Duke Ellington, [indistinct 00:12:05], Cab Calloway. That was the area of the big bands. And— | 12:04 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Bull Moose. | 12:04 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. Louis Armstrong. Bull was— | 12:04 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Later. | 12:04 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | —later. | 12:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask, what would happen to girls in both your high schools, if they got pregnant, what would happen to them? | 12:04 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | They were expelled from school. | 12:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. What would happen to the boy that got them— | 12:53 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Nothing. That's right, nothing. | 12:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | —in your high school, too? Mm-hmm. | 12:58 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | That's right, the girl would be expelled, the boy come right on. | 13:04 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Nothing, didn't do nothing. [indistinct 00:13:12] girl. | 13:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. So, one last question. What role did your high school have in your development, do you think? | 13:16 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | What role did my high school have in my development? | 13:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. You know, what impact did it make on your life? | 13:28 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I guess, it had to make some, because I don't think I been what I am today, if it had not been for my high school. My mother was the—I guess, the dynamic force behind my going to high school. | 13:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | Yeah. | 13:58 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And well, she taught some years, but after I came along, I don't think, she doesn't teach anymore. And she would find certain role models that she thought we should be like. She said, "I think you should be like—" this girl, or that girl. But I think, looking back over the years—I think that if I had gone to some other high school, it seemed that New Bern, the city, had more to offer than the county school. And I think the kids in New Bern were exposed to more than the county school. I don't know why. But I did okay, in school. I guess, I don't know. But I'm sure it has influenced my life, in some way. Some positive way. | 14:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 15:21 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | —I can't think of it, right now. | 15:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mr Lewis, to do you have anything to—is that too broad a question, do you think? | 15:28 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. I think it is, because I tell you, when I was in high school, when I went to school, went to college, the reputation of West Street School was such that anyone that went to West Street had a very good background in English and the Foreign Languages. And in the Math department, because I guess, that was the—I guess, I started liking math. I majored in Math, and most of his students from New Bern that took math, did well. Very few students dropped. And when you went to, the school I went to at Central, if you said you were from New Bern, from West Street School, they expected something out of you. And so, it made you think they were picking on you, a lot, because they expected more. A lot of you. | 15:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I guess, can we talk about, in college. I wanted to ask you, Miss Lewis, what did you do after graduation? Did you go on? | 17:02 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | After I graduated from high school, I worked in the hospital here for a while. | 17:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, what was the name of the hospital? | 17:15 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Good Shepherd Hospit— | 17:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Good Shepherd. | 17:17 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | —at the time, mm-hmm. I was an aide, a nurse's aide. And I worked there for a few years, and just before I left there, I worked for a family, they were a White family, it was a job that my mother had, and the lady knew that I had some experience with hospital work, and she's supposed to have been sick, herself. But I think what she really wanted was someone there to help take care of her youngest child. And well, I was with them until I went on to—decided to go back to school. Then I went on to nursing school. | 17:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Then I'm going to jump ahead, just trying to keep y'all in the same time. I guess we'll go on, I'll ask you a few questions about, sort of similar to the ones I asked you about your high school, but about your experiences at Central. I wanted to ask you, what activities did you participate, at Central, outside from your academics? | 18:08 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Very few. Because I didn't play football, I didn't play—the only thing that I participated in was sports, because they had intramural. | 18:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 18:48 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Not competitive. Because I guess, I wouldn't have been able to make the team. Because during that time, they was, in those days, were recruiting, and they would gather the best that they could get to come there. And so, but the—I'm trying to think of some of the activities— | 18:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | Any clubs, or — | 19:12 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, the Pledge Club, fraternity, and — | 19:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. What fraternity? | 19:21 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | It would be Kappa Alpha Psi. | 19:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Why did you select that fraternity, out of all the other ones? | 19:31 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Because at that time, most of the boys from New Bern went to that place. | 19:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 19:41 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Kappa. And it was in later years that they started going to Omega, and the Alpha, but during my first few years at Central, all of them went Kappa. | 19:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And why did you—I just want to go back, and I will go back and ask you another question about being Kappa. But, why did you decide to go, select Central, above all other universities? | 20:02 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, my father halfway selected that, because he wanted me to take a business course. | 20:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did he want you to go into insurance business, like he had been? Oh, okay. | 20:20 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. But for some reason, I didn't think that I needed it, and it was—I thought the business courses were boring, and I preferred the math. But after you go a full year, then you find out [indistinct 00:20:52] all those smaller [indistinct 00:20:54]. | 20:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask you about, what year, were you a sophomore when you joined the Kappas? | 20:58 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I didn't ever get out of the Pledge Club. | 21:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 21:09 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | For some reason, and you know, it was—the time that I was going into the fraternity was the year my father broke his leg, and I came home. And I didn't go in, some guys, they tried to get me in to, you know, go Omega. And I said no, I said, "I'm supposed to go to Kappa," but I didn't ever. It never— | 21:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | You never just finished, never finished it? | 21:43 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No, I never did take the time to go into the fraternity. | 21:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you get in trouble for that? Did they get mad at you for doing that, in school? | 21:53 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Who was that? | 21:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | The Kappas— | 21:57 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No. | 21:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | —brothers. | 21:58 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No. Because I was supposed to go there, and they had waived the initiation fee, but— | 21:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | [indistinct 00:22:11]. | 22:10 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I didn't go. | 22:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Were you in any other organizations on campus? Any social clubs, anything like that? | 22:14 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | But you see, there, they didn't have social clubs, like they— | 22:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 22:31 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | —on campus, like they do now. But, no, there was some kind of activity that we had, but right now, my God, it's been so long, I can't—I don't remember. But I know, there used to be groups where they used to have little socials, and I don't know what it was. | 22:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Well, I just wanted to ask you, did you get to go out into Durham that much? | 22:48 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah, we were all over Durham. | 22:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did you think about Durham, compared to New Bern? | 22:59 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I guess, I didn't take time to stop to compare it with New Bern, because I enjoyed the facilities there, and the people that I met, and at the time, during those days, it was easy to know people there. I had some very close friends there, at that time. | 23:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was the daily life there in Durham like? | 23:42 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, I tell you, see, there were a lot of girls, there. So, the fellas had—at least, I remember having a girl on campus, see because during that time it wasn't like it is now, the girls had to—well, I mean, at sundown, the girls went in the dormitories. So, you have a girl on the campus, and you have a girl in the city. | 23:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | [indistinct 00:24:16]. | 24:15 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | But see, when the girl had to go into the dormitory, on the campus, then you would see your city girl. | 24:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. Oh. Okay. Okay. You got pretty busy there, I guess. I was going to ask you, Mrs Lewis, about—oh, let me go on and finish this. Is there anything else you'd like to add about your college years? Any teachers that you remember, anything? | 24:28 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well—one of my favorite teachers was Dr. Robinson, who taught math and physics. I guess, the reason I enjoyed him so well, was he was brilliant in those fields, but he murdered the Kings English. We used to laugh about that. He stood out, as one of my instructors, because he'd spell a word, and if he used it three or four times in a paragraph, he spelled it differently. | 24:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, I wanted to ask you, too, about, it was really strict for the women, the women students, was it strict for the male students, too? Did they have more freedom to go places? | 25:47 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | You had more freedom, although, now I know, the dormitory, the male dormitory closed at 12, but it did not most of the time, because we wedged the door open. And we had a [indistinct 00:26:12], just like the girls do it. But the rules weren't as rigid for the boys, as it was for the girls. | 26:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. And Miss Lewis, I wanted to ask, you said you worked for this lady, who you took care of her child, but she was sick? | 26:22 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. | 26:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Before you went to nursing school? | 26:33 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes. | 26:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did she treat you, how were you treated by the family? | 26:33 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Fine. | 26:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Fine? | 26:36 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. She had me, I was working for her at night, you know, staying at night with her. She had a light cook during the day, and she had a lady to clean up her house. She had three or four persons. Then she had another lady, to babysit during the day. And this lady that babysat during the day, she was an elderly lady. And a lot of days, when she didn't feel like coming, so she would ask me if I would stay over, which I did, because at that time, the money was good, compared to what the others were getting. | 26:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Is this in the county, or in the city? | 27:19 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | This is in the county, mm-hmm. Because at the hospital, I think I was making, at that time, it was around $20, or $22 a month. And when I started working for her, I think I made $23 straight, and plus she paid my way to and from home. | 27:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh? | 27:42 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. So, and what happened, when I was 16, I think high school is 16. And I was supposed to have been going to Federal Stage that fall, but I'm supposed to leave on Sunday, my daddy comes home on Wednesday from work, and tells me I couldn't go, because he felt I was just too young to leave home. So, when that began, I started working at the hospital and whatnot, until I was on my own, and that's when I decided to go back to school. So— | 27:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | And you went to nursing school? | 28:16 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. | 28:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why did you want to be a nurse? | 28:21 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Well, because I guess I was exposed to it. My first love was, as I thought, was teaching, but since I didn't go into that, so I went to the hospital and became involved in the nursing procedures, and whatnot. And I did well, as a nurse's aide, so I got some encouragement to go on, which I did. | 28:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | And what was the name of the nursing school? | 28:45 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Oh, Community Hospital School of Nursing, in Wilmington. | 28:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 28:53 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Mm-hmm. So I went to that, and we affiliated with Medical College of Virginia, the school there, for certain courses, like pediatrics and whatnot. So after I graduated, then I came back home. | 28:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Before, I wanted to ask you about, what did you think about Wilmington, from living in Craven County? | 29:12 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | What did I think about— | 29:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was your impression of Wilmington? How did you adjust to living in a bigger city? | 29:23 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Fine, I had no problem, because most time you were at work. It was one of those thing, around the clock, seemingly. You work four hours, maybe this morning, then you come back and work four hours later in the evening, and sometimes you're working 12 hours, and I don't think you had time, really, to think about much anything else, other than trying to get finished. | 29:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | How long was nursing school? | 30:00 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | It was three years, around the clock. I mean, you didn't have any — | 30:02 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | 12, 36 months. | 30:08 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. | 30:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | And you didn't work during the summers? You were in school during the summers, too? | 30:08 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, summer and winter. Yeah, yeah. And so after I finished there, I came home and started working where I started, as a nurse's aide. And I stayed there until I decided to go back to school for anesthesia. And I went down to—that was after we were married. | 30:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 30:36 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, we had four kids at the time, and I went back to—I decided to go back to school, and went to [indistinct 00:30:46] in Louisiana, for anesthesia, for a year. And the reason I went there, because it was the last one year program, and from then on it had to be 18 months to two years. So I elected to go there, for that reason. | 30:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to just go back and ask, how did y'all meet? | 31:41 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | You want tell her, how did we meet? He came— | 31:41 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | The Christmas holidays were over, and I was home, and two of my friends that were—no, one of my friends was in school. | 31:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | And what year was this? | 31:41 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | This was 19— | 31:41 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | '48. | 31:41 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | —'48. | 31:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 31:41 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Oh, yeah. The reason I was home was because my father had broken his leg. And I came home to take care of business for him. And then this friend of mine at school, his home was here, in New Bern also, and he came home. So, we went to church that Sunday, and he, and another friend of mine, who was teaching here, and we got together after church, and he said, "Come on, go home with me," and I'll eat dinner and go by his, and he eat and go in the city. And my house was the last house, because his destination was the hospital. He was going to see a friend over there, who was a nurse at home, in the hospital. And I just lived about a couple blocks from the hospital. | 31:41 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And so, then we went over to the hospital to play some pinochle. After a while, some of the little country girls came into there, into the—and so, and she came in. We won the biggest—what you call it? I'll say it, but you can think, when she came in— | 32:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said she was bringing some—what was she bringing? | 33:22 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, no. She came in, stuck her head in the door, and asked for a young man who was not there. And she knew that he wasn't there, I found out later. And so, then, the young lady that my friend had gone in to see called her in. And so, then we got ready to leave, I told her I would take her to the club the next night. | 33:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 34:05 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And so, I thought that she was like most of the other girls that I knew, that had been at the hospital. And I bought her a drink, I asked her what she wanted, she said, "You order," and I ordered her a Tom Collins. And she played with it, and then after a while she knocked it over. She said, "Uh-oh." I said, "All right, I'll get you another one." It wasn't long before she knocked that over. And so I said, "Listen—you don't have to waste my money." I said, "If you're not going to drink," I said, "then it's all right for you to drink a ginger ale or something. I'll do you a chaser." And so then, I had a bottle in my coat pocket, so I went to my coat and got that bottle out of there, and started drinking my drink and let her drink the ginger ale. | 34:14 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And so, it was one of those things, with this little girl. I was interested in more. But something happened, and this other woman called me, and asked me to come over there, and I don't know how, or remember now what it was, now. But I saw her that time, and then we'd started seeing each other, and after a while, we tied the knot. | 35:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. What was your wedding like? | 35:48 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Well, it was just—we didn't have a big wedding. He was in school at the time. | 35:56 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I was at school. I had gone back to school. | 36:09 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Mm-hmm. | 36:09 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | We didn't have— | 36:09 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | A small— | 36:09 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | We got married in Durham. | 36:09 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Mm-hmm. | 36:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 36:09 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | At the Baptist church there, but just a small— | 36:14 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | He didn't tell you that after he saw me the first night, and the next time he came over, the next night he came over, he didn't know my name? So, the lady, husband— | 36:20 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | The administrator— | 36:37 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Mm-hmm. The administrator of the hospital was leaving at the same time. And what did Mott say to you? | 36:40 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I went there, and I started to ask for her, and my mind went blank. | 36:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | You were so nervous. | 36:57 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No, it wasn't that. I don't know what it was. | 36:57 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | He's bad on me. | 36:57 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I didn't realize I didn't know her name. I mean, I didn't remember her name. And I was there, trying to think of her name, and she said, "You came to see Miss Brock?" I said, "Yeah." And so, evidently she said something to her about that, so—when she said Miss Brock, then that—I said, "That's the person." | 36:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | So you were living in the city at that time? | 37:19 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes. Uh-huh. Yeah. | 37:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask, Mr Lewis, after you graduated from college, what did you do after that? Did you— | 37:27 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, I taught until November. I taught and then I was drafted into the Army. | 37:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, I was getting to it. I was just going to ask you about how World War II affected you, but it's okay. So, could you describe that experience, being drafted? | 37:41 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, I took Basic Training, and then I went to OCS. And got commissioned, and while I was in OCS, they said that you would be in the States at least six months before you go overseas. And we got commission, we got 14 days leave, well, delay in route to my new assignment, which was in Georgia. And I was attached to an outfit, was packed up, ready to go overseas, until the outfit that I was posted to would be assigned to—you know, it was ready. And then I got my assignment to this new outfit, the 207. I got ready to leave. | 37:49 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | The Colonel for 207 went down to base headquarters and told me, there was two of us, Lewis and Taylor, to go overseas with him. And so, you know that made me angry. But—at the end of October, and we went down in the Pacific, but—the port of embarkation was Camp Stonewall, in California. | 38:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | What does that mean, point of embarkation? What does that mean? | 39:22 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Where we were leaving. | 39:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 39:25 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | —is the place where you— | 39:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 39:25 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | —consultation, you're going overseas. And then the orders came down, that the 207 was to go to Dartmouth, Massachusetts, for training for European Theater. And that Colonel went down to the Fleet headquarters, and the way he'd say, and say, "I want combat, now." I was in artillery [indistinct 00:39:58]. And, boy, you talk about someone angry with their Colonel. | 39:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | So you didn't want that. | 40:06 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | All the guys were angry with the Colonel, because he wanted combat, now. And so, they changed the orders, and the first ship—our equipment was on that ship. And another outfit took our equipment overseas, when those orders came down, but he raised [indistinct 00:40:28], and we caught the next ship. Went down in New Guinea, for training. No, I'm sorry, we went to Australia, for training. And then, after the training period was over with, down in New Guinea, where the fighting was, and—and I was over there for 34 months. 32 months, [indistinct 00:40:57]. | 40:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | And you were officer, and I guess it was scary. I can imagine, coming from New Bern, having to go to Australia and fight like that, and New Guinea, and fight like that. Did you have a good rapport with your soldiers that you were over, and things like that? | 40:58 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I think so. | 41:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 41:13 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | But I mean, in the combat area, my nickname was Junior, enlisted men and all called me Junior. It was one of those things, and we didn't wear an insignia of rank, because of snipers. For the most part— | 41:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | Because the officers were targeted more often than the— | 41:38 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. And so, the [indistinct 00:41:47] called me Junior. Which wouldn't have been tolerated Stateside. | 41:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | You were over there for almost three years, you were overseas? Did you ever get to go home and visit, or you were still over there? | 41:59 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No, I didn't come back to the States until—and after the war was over, when my outfit came back to the States, I didn't have enough points to come back to the house, there. And so— | 42:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | What's that mean, have enough points? | 42:21 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | For each year that you're in the service, you've got so many points. | 42:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 42:28 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | For certain—right now, it's sort of vague, I don't remember. I know the time of service might have been the biggest point. And I was, out of all the officers that went overseas with the 207, I was the only one that didn't have enough points to come back there. So, the 207 was down in the Philippines at the time they came back overseas, and they left me in the Philippines and had me commanding a service company. It would make for a lot different, going from a combat unit, to a service company. They did everything they could to keep me in the service, but I couldn't — | 42:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | The Armed Service was segregated at that time— | 43:33 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. | 43:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever have any dealings with any White soldiers or officers? | 43:42 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. Well, quite often. At one time—I was a communications officer, Battalion Communications Officer, and so, one day my men came, sent—I mean, the Communications Officer sent for me. And he called, and told me he was having trouble at group headquarters, if I would go to the Communications shack. And there, when I got there, he told me that the Executive Officer of the group had called, and wanted his men to repair the line between the group headquarters, and one of the other outfits, where it was a White outfit. | 43:46 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And so, he knew we wasn't supposed to do it, so he sent for me. And so, he told me what had happened, and I called the Major, and I told him that we weren't supposed to repair lines between group headquarters and another outfit. I said, the unit was supposed to keep their own line. | 44:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 44:59 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | He said, "Well, they're packed up, getting ready to go up front, and all their equipment's packed up." I said, "Well, you notified them that we'd be glad to let them have any equipment they need on the MR, and then they can return it when they're finished." So he hung up, and he called my Colonel. And the Colonel didn't ever say anything to me about it. But the Major, he got me before a group of other officers, and he said, "Junior, there's a soldier at my own heart." So then he went ahead and told them what had happened. And I thought that—you see, most of the time, in a case like that, where the parent unit would make a report on one of the junior officers, Colonel would give you hell. But this time, they were glad that I stood up for my men. They were — | 45:04 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | This is with the American Army Jim Crowism. And I remember when we were getting ready to go overseas, to Camp Stone, that was the same outfit that they wanted us to repair the line right at the fort of embarkation at the same times that we were. But their commanding officer was—he had that, what was it, race supremacy. And see, the mess hall wasn't segregated. Everybody eat in the same mess hall. But he did not want any of his officers—all of his officers were White and my outfit were all officers were Black. And he did not want his officers to associate with us. | 0:01 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And so I remember one day the fellas in my office, was in my outfit, had him moving from table to table. Because every table he'd go to, just as soon as we'd see him go to the table, one of them would go and sit. And we harassed him back then. Down in Australia, I went to Australia [indistinct 00:01:49]. And I learned when I got down to Australia that the first Black soldiers got in Australia, the boat stayed out there in the harbor for about a week, because Australians weren't going to run—let in the Black soldiers into Australia. | 1:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | They were prejudiced too? | 2:10 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Australia was [indistinct 00:02:15]. | 2:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | That's different than in Europe when they were not, nicer, do you think? | 2:15 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, after a while, they changed. But see what happened, the most of your Black troops during that time were quartermasters or some other type of service outfit. And see they didn't have—most of your Whites were combat unit, and they needed those Black soldiers there. The American Army was to function, they had to have Black soldiers there. And so they held the boat up out there. But United States told him, said, well if the Black soldiers couldn't land in Australia, then all the soldiers would have to leave. And see, the Japanese were getting ready, almost had Australia at that time. And so they let them in. But then, the way that they were before they let them in reversed. Australian people became very [indistinct 00:03:26] and hospitable. | 2:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why do you think their attitudes changed? | 3:30 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I guess after they learned the people. You see, you can tell something about person and tell the person [indistinct 00:03:46] they believe. | 3:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | I know some of the men that fought in Europe said that some of the White soldiers told the Europeans that the Black soldiers had tails, and they do the same thing in the Pacific? | 3:54 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I never heard of it down in the Pacific, and so I don't know exactly. See, well see now, the Australians would have known differently anyway, because of the Aboriginals there. But the Aboriginals, as far the Australians were concerned, were not human. And they kept them in the bushland. And during that time, the Aboriginals were all there. Their rights were taken from them, they had no rights. And so I guess they were classifying all Black soldiers at the same as their Aboriginals. That could have been it. So in Australia, if you went any place that wasn't near the American headquarters, you were treated—I mean, you couldn't tell anything. There was no prejudice [indistinct 00:05:12]. But around the American center, you would be like be in Georgia, Mississippi. | 3:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Because the Americans were—the people from the United States were here at the American Center. | 5:18 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah, well say like in Brisbane, Australia, that was MacArthur's headquarters. When we left, we went by boat from New Guinea and landed in Brisbane, Australia. But my leave area was in Sydney, Australia. So in the package that we had, they gave us membership card to all the officers' clubs. So the first [indistinct 00:06:01] was on Saturday evening. We landed in Sydney. So that night, a group of about five of us [indistinct 00:06:11] Officer's clubs, because we had membership cards. And we went there, get in the elevator going up, and corporal running the elevator, he said, "I'm sorry sir, but the Colored officers' club, the [indistinct 00:06:28] club [indistinct 00:06:28]. We told him, said we have membership with [indistinct 00:06:31], but Major So-and-So told me that the Colored officers would go to the [indistinct 00:06:39] club. | 5:23 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And we wouldn't get off the elevator. And place, the lobby filled up [indistinct 00:06:52] go wherever. Finally, a Colonel came up. He wanted to know what was holding up this car. So they corporal [indistinct 00:07:00] say, "These Colored officers say they have memberships to the officers' club. They were Major So-and-So told me that Colored officers [indistinct 00:07:03]. But the Colonel say, "You say they have membership card?" "Yes, sir." He says, "Dammit, take this damn card." | 6:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | [indistinct 00:07:28]. | 7:21 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Okay. And so we went. So then, got on there, and then it was embarrassing to the other officers and their guests. So when we got up to the club, our money wasn't any good with everybody. You know what I mean? | 7:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | They all bought you drinks? | 7:51 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yes. They wouldn't let us spend a penny there. But that integrated MacArthur's officers' club. From then on, Black officers went there. But before then, no Black officers went to that club. | 7:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I this someone asked you, Mrs. Lewis, what was it like on the home front during the war, for Blacks? In your community, I mean. | 8:10 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Well, at that time, during those years, I was working over here. I think really, everything remained about the same, I think, until that what, 1954? Was that decision? | 8:24 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah, 1954. | 8:43 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, I think everything about— | 8:45 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Brown vs. School of Education. | 8:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were there shortages of food or anything during that time, or gas and things like that? | 8:49 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes, there were shortage, because I know stockings that we wore was real light, mostly that Whites would wear. And what we did, we bought those stockings, but we had to put oil on them, but not oil. We said grease at that time, to give them the color that we want. And I was working— | 8:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | At the hospital or for the [indistinct 00:09:24]? | 9:21 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, I was working in the hospital, because I didn't work for the lady anymore. It was after I left her, and she had written me while I was in school, but she wrote Ruth Brock and I thought she should have put Miss Ruth Brock. And I didn't write anymore. So I think that's when things began to—I began to realize what really was happening. I guess I knew before, but I never confronted, I guess, that type of thing. But after that ruling was first passed, I had a son who had asthma, and I took him down to the doctor's office where during those days too, you didn't sit in the room with the White. You had a little bench somewhere that they put you on, you sit there. But this was little room that we had to go in that we went. | 9:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | This was a White physician? | 10:30 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. White. He was a pediatrician here. And after I left there, left the office, I had to walk about a block to catch the bus back uptown. And where I got on the bus, he and I sat as you get on the bus, that first seat. And the next block, two White ladies got on and he asked us to move. I told him I wasn't going to move. And so he sat there for a while, and told—so finally he told those White ladies, to come sit on other side, behind him, said "Since she won't move." And he maybe said, "The laws and these people." So he was talking about us. | 10:34 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | But I told this story before when I went down to New Orleans. I got on the bus, I think I sat about the fourth seat from the front, and I had no problems at all until I got down in Montgomery, Alabama. It was 3:00 in the morning and they had a new driver to get on. So Blacks and Whites, they say Colored during those days, were getting on the bus, and I still retained my original seat. So some White soldier sat on the seat with me. He got inside. And after, some of them were standing and the guy came up and said, "Move to the back." And he didn't call my name and I just ignored him. But finally, he touched me on his shoulder. I looked up at him, and he said, "You move to the back." And I asked him "why should I move to the back?" He said, "Because in the state of Alabama, Coloreds sit in the back and Whites sit in the front." | 11:20 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And I said, there's also a law that governs interstate passengers too. He said, "Therefore you choose not to move?" I said, "That is correct." And so I didn't move. And those Blacks back there in the bus. "Oh, she didn't move. Oh, she come on." That type of stuff. But when we left Alabama, Montgomery, we went on down to Mississippi if I had to change buses again, and I got in the same area, and no one said a word. I rode there all the way to New Orleans. | 12:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | What year was this? | 13:04 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | This is 1960. Yeah, I had been out— | 13:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | [indistinct 00:13:05] You had to do that in 1960. | 13:05 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, yeah. | 13:10 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Up until 1964 when the Civil Rights bill was passed. | 13:12 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | 1960. | 13:16 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Trying to have Jim Crow. | 13:16 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And at the Colored hospital, that they called, was Flint Goodrich of Dillard University. That's where I went. And then they had the other hospital, Charity Hospital. They had several hospitals and medical centers there in New Orleans. In fact in Louisiana, period, there's a lot of medical facilities there. And this was Charity Hospital I had to go to also to get most of my theory from the White, but all my practical work was done at the Black institution. But the man who wrote the books also taught at Charity. And when we go into the theater to study, in fact when you go to Charity, they had certain elevators for Black to ride and White to ride. | 13:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | In 1960? | 14:26 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | In 1960. And so Dr. A passed the word around, made it known that anywhere his White student went, his Colored students would go also. Now, he was from New York, but he had moved down to Alabama and had this job. And all the books that I studied from, he wrote the books. So he was well known. And so we didn't have any problems there, other than getting to and from Charity back over to Flint Goodrich. But I had a classmate also, and she was about that big— | 14:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Very small? | 15:06 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. And any time you wanted a seat, if you couldn't get a seat on the bus, all she had to do was just get herself in and she was able to squeeze in, and then the people would get up. She said, "Come on, get your seat." And that's what she did. But I had no problems other than little incidents like that since I been out and after I started working, you could see they tried not to show their prejudice, but you can always see something, that fine print, as I call it. It was there and you knew it was there. And when I first came back, I worked at what we called the White hospital at that time. But they used to put Blacks down in the basement there. | 15:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | Is this the 1960s or something [indistinct 00:16:07]? | 16:02 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | This is 1960— | 16:05 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | One. | 16:05 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | One. Yeah. I finished in '61. But they hired me at that hospital. | 16:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you one of the first Black women to work there? | 16:22 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | As far as I know. In anesthesia, as far as I know, I was the only one. I don't think they had really planned to hire me, because they quoted me a figure, and they didn't have the space. But one guy who was leaving, was going to Raleigh, and so he came by and talked to me to go to Raleigh with him. He was a White guy. And they found out that I was going to Raleigh, so that's when they gave me that job at that hospital. So I worked there until they build the county hospital. which is the present hospital now. We moved over there and they had people, they were putting people in the rooms and the hall, but they didn't ever put White and Black in the same room until one night, a friend of mine called me that she had gone, they had some space in the room, and they put this Black woman in the hall when there was a room vacant with a White in it. | 16:25 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | So the next day, we went to the administrator on that and he's sent this note around that no patient is supposed to be put in the hall if there were room available, because of who they were. And then when the doctors wanted to know who was running the hospital, the administrator Ruth Lewis. And little things like that. And they had a way of scheduling and they, in the schedule book, they'll let you know whether you are White or Black. And they used to put C by the person's name. | 17:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | By the patient's name? | 18:23 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. They let you know that that person was Colored. And I stopped that. | 18:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you stop that? What did you do to get that stopped? | 18:31 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I just told them that it didn't make any difference with me whether the patient was White, Black, or polka dot, that a patient was a patient. And the girl called me once and told me on the telephone they had this little Colored boy. I told her, "Don't tell me what the color he was, just give me his name and what needed to be done." And I talked to the supervisor of the operating room. So they finally stopped that. | 18:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you think your Black patients and the White patients got the same degree of care? | 19:02 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I believe so. There might have been a few, maybe that—but I found the doctors, when it comes to the patient, they saw the person as a patient. At one time, we didn't have any Black doctors in New Bern whatsoever. And one of the guys told me that, "Well, Ms. Lewis, if you know of anybody coming here and don't have a doctor, nobody see them, say just tell them call me." And he was a surgeon. He did some—well he was a chess man, but he took interest in the condition that was here that Blacks had. And he helped out in that, because his father before him was White. And he was very nice too. | 19:11 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | You mean his father before he was a doctor? | 20:15 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. Was a doctor. Yeah. Excuse me. | 20:17 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | [indistinct 00:20:21]. | 20:17 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, his father before [indistinct 00:20:23] was a doctor, and we worked together and I saw a lot of things that he did for Blacks and also his son, same way. And there was one doctor that he was prejudiced and I felt that he was, but what changed my mind towards him was one night, one day rather, he came in, walked in the hospital, a woman in his hand like this, and she was so sick and my whole attitude changed about him at that time. | 20:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | A Black woman? | 21:05 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Black woman he had in his arm, mm-hmm. And then, believe it or not, how ironic it is, he turned out to be my doctor, until he retired. Yeah. And he was very nice. | 21:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to go back and ask you, you said you went to your further nursing training after you had four children? | 21:19 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. | 21:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you manage your childcare and going away to nursing school like that? | 21:25 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Well, my sister was living here, living in New Bern at the time. And she came and stayed in the house with my family, take care while I was gone. And that's how. Because we always helped one another. When she was in school, she started college before I started the nursing school, the year before I started nursing school, because I had been working, and I hadn't gone back to school. I went under what they call the Cadet Plan, because that was the government, and they paid you a stipend during that time to go to school. So I started out with $10 a month. This is in nursing, now, not in anesthesia. And I'll always send her a part of my money. | 21:30 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And then after she finished, then I have another sister that finished, and we always chip in and help one another, right through my brother. He was the youngest of the group and he finished. And then this other sister, in fact she's my niece really, by birth, but we raised her and then we sent her to school. And all of us pulled our resources and helped one another. So we taught that too, from home. | 22:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | I guess after you were first married, where did y'all—did y'all live in New Bern, the city? | 23:01 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Mm-hmm. | 23:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | And what neighborhood did y'all live in? | 23:04 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | We lived in the project. | 23:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 23:08 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | But it was different from what it is now. Out here [indistinct 00:23:14]. Lived in [indistinct 00:23:14] Terrace. | 23:09 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | At least, we lived there for a while until they caught up with us. Put us out. And then we lived in the area, Jones Street, on the corner of Jones and New South Front Street. Which is now Walt Delmore Drive. That New South Front Street became Walt Delmore Drive. And then we moved down to—did you meet Carolyn Bland? | 23:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 23:49 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Okay. Carolyn Bland's father got a house plan of mine and built him a house, and then I moved in his house, then he moved out of his house into the new house. | 23:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | You designed that house? | 24:02 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | No. | 24:02 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No. About him, I said plan. I had a book, a plan. And I picked out a house myself, and I let him see my book, and he decided he wanted that house before [indistinct 00:24:22]. But we were close. | 24:05 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And too, at the time that that happened, we were getting ready to build, but this same boy of mine was sickly, and we had to go to Duke and all the other places with him, which took all of our money. | 24:25 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | For the building, to keep him alive. | 24:46 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | To keep him alive. | 24:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Had you started teaching then? Again teaching after the war, or did you— | 24:51 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Oh, just after the war. I didn't go back to teaching. I started off in law school. | 24:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Okay. | 25:01 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | But before finished law school was when my father broke the thing. Then she and I got married and I started working. I worked real estate. | 25:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Different careers. Okay. | 25:22 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. Real estate and insurance. And then, let's see, I worked there until the insurance company that we were licensed with transferred Florida and then pulled out of North Carolina in [indistinct 00:25:45] and sold the agency. Then I went to Fayetteville State University, started working there. [indistinct 00:25:59]. | 25:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. | 26:01 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Stayed there until I retired. | 26:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask you about being a realtor, because we don't talk to too many realtors during that time. New Bern, did it have segregated neighborhoods and— | 26:05 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Oh yeah. | 26:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was it like being a realtor? Did you work with a Black realty firm company? | 26:16 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. And let's see, which meant that all our tenants were Black. All the property that we—no, I take that back. Most of the property that we managed, that rental property we managed, was owned by Whites. One of those things, during those days in the city of New Bern, the city of New Bern was surrounded—oh, I mean the property owned by Whites, they owned the property, which meant that Blacks couldn't— | 26:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | You couldn't move out? | 27:13 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Couldn't move out. And looked like the Blacks were crowding into this small area and be just whether—and it made it bad for Black [indistinct 00:27:42]. Because we didn't have any land to develop. Only after desegregation, could Blacks actually do anything in real estate. | 27:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did a lot of Blacks own their own homes? Or do most Blacks rent homes? | 28:02 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Quite a few Blacks own them now, but at one time, Blacks didn't have any place. As I was saying, it was shut in. You couldn't buy land to build. And so quite a few Blacks were renting. And as I said, most of the rental property in New Bern were owned by Whites. | 28:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you a realtor during the '60s? And did any Black families ever try to move into the White neighborhoods? | 28:40 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Mm-mm. That was during the '60s, but you didn't have any of that confrontation here, no. It was only one instance that I know of where that was—but this was out of, in the James City area, past James City down. I don't know what that area's called, but it's [indistinct 00:29:21] James City. Some Whites, [indistinct 00:29:23] got angry with their neighbors and they wanted to sell. They wanted to sell that property to Black. But no one took them up on it. | 28:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | You say you managed rental properties. Did you have to collect their rent and things like that? Did you ever have any problems with that? | 29:38 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, you always find some people was not able to pay their rent. And then some that might think that—then some that were able to pay their rent, but other things would take priority, and so it made you have to keep down behind them to collect the rent. But other than that, most of the people, though, pay their rent. | 29:46 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | But on [indistinct 00:30:19] Road, all those Blacks owned their own homes when I was growing up. | 30:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Did you work for the same insurance company your father worked for? | 30:18 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Uh-uh. | 30:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | No. Oh, which one, which insurance— | 30:37 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No, that is, the company we were licensed with was a bank, Aspire Insurance. Bank, Aspire Casualty Insurance Company was in there. And then they later on, a Florida group purchased it, purchased the stock, but when stock split, I stayed on with Florida group purchased the stock. They chose not to meet the requirements of North Carolina to maintain—no, I take that back. They moved there. They moved the home office to Florida, to their home, and [indistinct 00:31:31] become a foreign corporation. And then there was certain requirements that the state required of a foreign corporation than they did for domestic corporation. That's why they chose not to meet the standard to qualify. So they pulled out of town. | 30:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. What happened to the people that were insured with them? Were they— | 31:53 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Oh, well, we placed them. | 31:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | With another company? | 31:57 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | We went into the broker business. | 32:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And you had four children in all? | 32:01 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes. Yes. | 32:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | And did you have your children in the hospital? [indistinct 00:32:16]. | 32:13 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes. Yes. They're all grown. | 32:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask you, then you became a counselor at Fayetteville State? How far is Fayetteville from here? | 32:23 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | It's about two hours. | 32:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. So did you commute from here? | 32:31 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No, I would stay there. I'd leave here Monday mornings and come back Friday evenings. | 32:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you counsel any certain year of students, or just any certain areas? | 32:41 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, it didn't say I was in the public, they had a counseling center, and take care of any students that [indistinct 00:33:02]. Then I was instrumental in helping a lot of students to register that didn't have money to register. I would make arrangement with the business office and with them to get them registered and to make their payments and installments of tuition. | 32:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | I guess I wanted to go back and just get the name of the law school you went to? | 33:34 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | At Central. | 33:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | Central. Okay. Let's see. Now I'm trying to figure out what decade. Let me ask you, were you involved in any organizations like the NAACP during the 1950s? | 33:44 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I became more involved with them in— | 33:55 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | [indistinct 00:34:02]. | 33:58 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, I was. That's right. That's right. I was. Back in the '50s, yeah. The Booster Club and the NAACP and then in 19—what year was that? I was one of the co-founder of the Craven County Voters League. | 34:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Was that during the 1960s, when you— | 34:27 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No. | 34:28 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | No, it was in the '70s, wasn't it? Yeah. | 34:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay, let me go back to the '50s. You said you were a first vice principal? | 34:28 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. | 34:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of activities did the NAACP do then? | 34:39 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, now during that time when I first joined the NAACP, I guess that was in probably '51 or '52, something like that. Because the charter had gone down, we got charter renewed. It was during that time the NAACP was any—see, during that time, all the political candidates were White. Any candidate running that wanted the Black vote would join the NAACP. And we had White members in NAACP— | 34:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | During the 1950s? | 35:26 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Uh-huh. | 35:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Really? Okay. | 35:26 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Up until 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled on the school desegregation case, then the NAACP as far as they were concerned was a bad organization. So all the Whites dropped that membership. And in quite a few areas, say like Black teachers, if they joined the NAACP and even here, they stopped mailing their membership cards to the individuals and mailed it to the chapter, and then the chapter handed people their membership card, because well, here ind New Bern, they got so far as to bomb Oscar's Mortuary. | 35:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | What time period was that? That was in the— | 36:37 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | This was during the '60s. | 36:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. | 36:38 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | St. Peter's church too, must have been. | 36:38 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, they didn't bomb the church. They bombed some cars that was parked. The NAACP was having a meeting at St. Peter's Church, and they bombed some of the cars and the Oscars Mortuary at that time. So it had a lot of people that were members of NAACP, it would hide that membership. I mean, it didn't cause many people not to join, but well, NAACP itself started that practice of not mailing people their membership cards, but hand them to them. | 36:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did Blacks in New Bern ever have any problems voting and things like that in elections, or registering to vote? | 37:31 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, I imagine so, because I remember when I was growing up here that—now, you see, your had your literacy. | 37:38 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Excuse me. Can I take a phone call in there? | 37:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. [indistinct 00:37:58]. Right there. Okay. | 37:57 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | So for that reason, I guess some people that could have voted didn't vote. Very few people that voted up until—for a while. I know during the time when I was a kid, all my father and all the Blacks that I knew that were registered were Republicans. And that was a carryover from—Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. And after the Civil War, no White in the South had anything to do with the Republican party. But all Blacks, since they said Abraham Lincoln's freed the slaves, were Republicans. You know the history of when they disenfranchised Blacks. | 37:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | Yes. | 39:07 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Okay. And Republicans joined with the Southern Democrats to disenfranchise the Blacks, put in the grandfather clause so the Whites could [indistinct 00:39:22]. Well, so for a while, those Blacks that registered were Republican, and then they found out that, see, in the South, you didn't have anything but Democratic people holding office. | 39:10 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And they found out they couldn't vote in the Democratic primary. And the primary was tantamount to election. And so then they started registering Democrat, as Democrat. And especially during the Roosevelt era, because before Roosevelt, my father was a Republican, I think. He became a Democrat during the [indistinct 00:40:07]. But you had quite a few people that still stayed Republican. And then the trend, after Strom Thurman of South Carolina switched to the Republican party, he was a Senator of South Carolina. And then the Republican party started gaining strength in the South. And so Whites now, the trend is just the reverse. Nearly all Blacks are Democrats. And you have quite a few, although still majority Whites in the South are Democrats. | 39:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | Aside from the NAACP, were you in any other organizations during the 1950s? | 40:51 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, I was president of the New Bern Civic League from, I think 1953 or '54. I don't remember what year. | 40:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of activities did they— | 41:10 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | They were the same, similar to what the—you heard of the Voters' League? | 41:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | Yes. | 41:19 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | That's similar to the Voters' League. It happened, though, that the Civic League had been a strong organization and was instrumental in building what is now called the Omega Building on [indistinct 00:41:47] whether you heard of that. Okay. And it was a recreation center. And then they got so far on the building, and ran out of money. Then they went to the city, because see, the Whites had a building on George Street that had once been a U.S [indistinct 00:42:12] building and that recreation center. So they went to the White to get money to complete the building of the recreation center. | 41:20 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And the city told them that the only way they could complete it, they have to deed the property over to the city. And so the trustees deeded the money, they deeded the property over to the city and it made the people angry. And they say, "they gave away our property." And it sort of caused the Civic League to go down. And so there've been one or two, several attempts to revive it, but looked like the people didn't catch onto it. Not like they had in Virginia. | 42:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mrs. Lewis, I wanted to ask, were there any other organizations you were involved in, aside from the NAACP. Any social or church organizations during the '50s? | 43:05 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes. Let's see. You say beside the— | 43:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | Aside from the NAACP. | 43:20 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And church organizations. | 43:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh no, if you were in church organizations, you can mention those. | 43:22 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Oh, well, let me see. In the '50s, timeframe sort of [indistinct 00:43:39]. | 43:33 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Was it the time that I got you in the Scouts? | 43:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | [indistinct 00:43:41] Scouts? | 43:41 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Oh, maybe it was during the—yeah, I was den mother, chicken mother, and organized the Cub Scout. Yes, that before I went New Orleans too, wasn't it? | 43:41 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. | 43:56 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Let's see, in the church during the '50s, I think I was president of Pastor A-Club. | 43:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | What church did you go to? | 44:09 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | This is Clinton Chapel, an AME Zion Church. | 44:10 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Now, wait a minute. Now, when you were in the Cub Scout, I believe that was in the '60s. | 44:11 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Mm-mm. | 44:14 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | That was in the '60s because— | 44:14 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | No, I left because when I came back, Sonny Davis took over for me, Pastor A— | 44:18 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I'm not talking about the Pastor A, I'm talking about the Cub Scouts. The Cub Scouts was during the '60s, because brother wouldn't have been old enough to join before you [indistinct 00:44:36]. | 44:26 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | It probably was in the '60s, then. Yeah. | 44:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you two involved in any social clubs, organizations? Or card playing, pinochle clubs or things like that? | 44:40 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, I'll tell you, there were fellows that we used to play bridge at least twice a week. The former principal of the school, Daniels— | 44:50 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | She's talking about me, I guess. | 45:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Both of you. Both. | 45:25 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | He was, okay. Okay. | 45:25 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | At least, only one person that I—and he's my partner and I the only one that's living, because the others Daniels and Smith are dead. Smith was the one that owned the realty company. Daniels was [indistinct 00:45:40] school. Oh one was that social club called the Jolly Makers. | 45:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Was that men and women or just— | 45:36 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Jolliettes were women. | 45:36 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No [indistinct 00:45:56]. | 45:36 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Men was Jolly— | 45:36 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Jolly Makers, because later on, the wives got together and they organized themselves as the Jolliettes. | 45:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay, okay. What kind of social activities did they do? | 46:11 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, it was in addition to planning social appointment, strictly social activities, also the charitable ones. | 46:17 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes. | 46:31 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | We [indistinct 00:46:39] | 46:33 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | We gave scholarships too. | 46:33 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | —and we gave scholarship. | 46:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | How were the members selected for the Jolly Makers and Jolliettes? | 46:40 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, we— | 46:44 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | The people made the application and then you wrote it on [indistinct 00:00:07]. | 0:02 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And automatically the wives would become Jolliettes. | 0:10 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | [indistinct 00:00:17] | 0:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were most of them married, that were in the club, the Jolly? | 0:16 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Most of them were married. So one married his girlfriend. | 0:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Then let me see. I guess, have I asked you all the questions I should ask about the 1950s? I don't want to leave anything out of it before we move on to the 1960s. | 0:30 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | The 1950s, the biggest thing was she was going to be a mother. | 0:44 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | That's right. | 0:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | That's true. | 0:44 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | That's true. | 0:44 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And the church activities too because that was in the '50s when she was president of what they called the Pastor's Aid Society in our church. | 0:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | And what is the activities of the Pastor's Aid? Did they work on the pastor's anniversary? | 1:06 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Well, mostly it was a fundraising thing to help the pastor out when he was in need of certain things. And that's mostly—and I can't think of anything else, especially that we did. But I cannot think because I'd forgotten about the 4-H Club when I was involved with that. But that was before I ever met my husband. | 1:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | That's fine. | 1:37 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I hadn't finished—I was still in elementary school during that time. | 1:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 1:46 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, and some high school. In high school. | 1:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | The 4-H club, was there a Black section of the club, because I know there was a [indistinct 00:01:59] for Whites too. | 1:53 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. Yeah. | 1:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did you do with the 4-H club? | 2:01 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Let's see. We would meet and talk about various things such as—I call it more or less like agriculture type thing, planting and— | 2:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did they have certain contests or contests for raising animals and things like that? | 2:16 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I can't even think of the contest that we had. It seems to me when we had anything, it was all together, and the home demonstration agent would come out and she probably might make something and show us. But I don't think I was in it that long before I was out of it before I left home. But I did enjoy the Cub Scout very much until I left that. | 2:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | And that was during the 1960s? | 2:54 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | That was in the '60s. Yeah. And I was also—when was I vice president of the—not J.T. Barber. West Street School PTA. That was during the '50s, wasn't it? Yeah. It had to be before the kids went to high school. | 2:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 3:14 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | It had to be during the '50s. And our Great Parent—president of the Great Parent Club. I was a great Mother. | 3:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Yeah, the West Street School, it was elementary and high school then? | 3:29 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No, not— | 3:33 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Then it became just elementary. | 3:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | It was elementary then. They had built a new high school. | 3:38 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. J.T. Barber. | 3:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. I wanted to ask, what were some of your activities the PTA did to help the school? | 3:38 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | One thing we did, we helped to buy uniforms for the students for band. Oh my heavens, I should have written all this down back then because I can't think of what all we—what else did we do? | 3:51 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, the PTA— | 4:14 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | That's mostly— | 4:14 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | The PTA mostly would do things to help the school, and if there was any grievances, I think we had the PTA meeting. | 4:16 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Right. Whatever the school needed, we worked towards that effort to help. | 4:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I guess during the 1960s you were—you were in nursing school for one year when you went to New Orleans? | 4:48 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Just one year. Yeah. | 5:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 5:01 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Then I started working in anesthesia here. | 5:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever have any—I meant to ask you, can I talk a little bit more about your nursing? Did you ever have problems with the other White nurses and things, since you were one of the few Blacks in anesthesia? | 5:08 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Not in anesthesia. With the nursing, mostly was with Blacks, and so I didn't have any problem with White. But in anesthesia, I didn't have any problem with White per se, because at time, it seems to me that they wanted what— | 5:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | Your knowledge? | 5:46 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, my knowledge. Yeah. And they would—Whites, if you have something that they want, they're always under you and trying to learn, and this is what mostly happened. One problem I had, the doctors, I had a few problems there because a lot of the time, they had had a practice of putting people to sleep and then wait for the doctor to come from his office or wherein. And when I started with them, I refused to put the person to sleep until I saw the white of the doctor's eyes, so to speak. So had some problems with that because they got angry and said that after all, they were their patient. But if something had happened, then my job would have been in jeopardy too because I was taught not to put patients to sleep if the doctor's not there because you don't ever know what could go wrong. | 5:46 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | So what happened, one of the doctors, a White doctor that used to come over [indistinct 00:07:11]. He had gone into anesthesia also and he was working under Durham, Raleigh, somewhere. But at the same time I'm having this problem with them, he happened to come to visit and he came up and asked me how things are going. I told him, I poured my heart out to him as to the problem I was having. So he went and talked to the administrator, and one of his brothers was one of the main guys I was having problems with, so he told them that legally I was right and they should not put patients to sleep before the doctor get there because he can have an accident, he can get sick, and anything can happen. And so that broke that up. | 7:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | So you were responsible for putting people to sleep? | 8:03 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes, and waking them up. Yeah. That was my job. | 8:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever have any problems with patients and things like that, with White patients? | 8:16 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes. I think when they first saw me, I had one guy to come in and I was getting my cart that I had, my supplies and everything on ready, and he asked me what was I doing, cleaning up or something to that effect. And I told no. I told him "I'm getting ready to put you to sleep." So as he was going down, as I was injecting the medication into his arm, and he was saying, "I'm a Georgia—", and as far as he got, Georgia cracker, that's what he was saying. But as far as he got because by that time, it reached his brain and he couldn't say anything else. | 8:18 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | But most of them then, after then, and the Catholic sisters had it before the county took over, and I was working there when the county bought the hospital. And one of the sisters there, she had great respect for me and for my work, and I've heard her tell others about my work. And then after this, Dr. Patterson came on board and was talking about what I had done. People, when they'd come, they'll ask that I put them to sleep. So I became well-known as far as putting patients to sleep and so I had no more problems with that. | 9:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you get any, I guess, people in the community asking medical questions or things like that, since you were a nurse and other things? Did you have to do nursing outside of your work at the hospital? | 9:49 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Someone told me I should hang up my shingles with—Yes. They would call to ask you certain questions. And those questions that I could answer, I would answer them, and others, I would refer them to a medical person, a doctor, more or less. And even now, different people, they will call about certain things, and I do all right unless it's my family, and then I couldn't think of anything to do for them. | 9:57 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. And I'm not even in the medical field, and when it comes to the children, I tell her what to do. | 10:33 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | But as far as my anesthesia, it was very rewarding. And with certain patients, there was something, some type of vibe you can get from one patient to you, and then there were others you didn't get there. And during anesthesia, I always said a prayer before I put anybody to sleep. But I remember there was certain cases that I've had that was nick and tuck, and after it was all over and the person got well, they were telling me that they could feel the whatever that is that comes from me to them or them to me, that they could feel that. And a lot of the time, they'd come down and they'd say, when they see me, say the whole load would be lifted off their shoulders and things of that nature. So I enjoyed my work, and as I said, it was very rewarding because I've had some tough cases, but I can knock on wood and thinking everything has gone well so far. | 10:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | During the later years, were there more Black women coming into nursing and things like that? | 11:56 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | In anesthesia? | 12:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 12:01 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes. In fact, you mean Black? | 12:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 12:06 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | There were just two of us in four year New Bern nursing anesthetists. Two before me and one—no. All three were before me. | 12:09 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | You know you got—what's her name? [indistinct 00:12:31]. | 12:28 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Oh, [indistinct 00:12:33]. But she's the fifth one because there was Tiger, Phil. Tiger and Phillip were before me. | 12:32 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Tiger wasn't with anesthesia. | 12:38 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes, she was. | 12:38 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Not here. | 12:38 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes, she was. Tiger and then Phil. Tiger and then Phil. And after Phil, Inez. | 12:44 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And Tiger left from here as a director of nursing. She never come back here. Phil left and came back. | 12:51 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Tiger was the first—she wasn't here long. She went to anesthesia. | 13:07 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, then Tiger left and she didn't ever come back. | 13:14 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I know it. That's right. But this wasn't her home. | 13:15 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | That's what I'm saying because she didn't ever work here in anesthesia. Sorry I'm getting this on you. | 13:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | That's okay. Okay. Well, I wanted to ask, how did your children—did you have to work? I know sometimes nurses have to work very long shifts and things like that. You said your mother-in-law, your mother helped. | 13:28 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, mother. But my sister here—but after I came back, when I had to work those shifts, it seemed that my husband was home and then I had a niece that stayed with me. She was in school too and she was in the house, and so it made it sort of easy. And then mama, a lot of the time, would take the kids for me. But mostly nights, my husband was home with them and I had to go out at night. | 13:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Is there any other organizations that you joined in the 1960s that you weren't belonging to in the '50s? | 14:18 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | We organized the West Street J.T. Barber Booster Club. | 14:37 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Oh yeah. | 14:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Yeah. Let me write that. What's the name of that? | 14:38 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | West Street. | 14:39 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | West Street J.T. Barber Booster Club. | 14:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. And what does that organization do? | 15:11 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | To promote the athletics. | 15:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. And that was at the high school and the elementary school? | 15:12 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah, that was. We included the elementary school and the high school. | 15:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 15:13 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | To benefit the band and the football and the basketball. | 15:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I guess we can move on to late 1960s. Your children, had they finished school by that time or they were— | 15:14 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | No. My oldest one finished in 1968. | 15:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 15:20 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. During the time we were doing that, the kids in elementary school. | 15:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. So they never—did they ever have to go to integrated schools? | 15:28 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yes. All my kids went to—in fact, my oldest one, and she was one of the four Blacks that integrated the school here. | 15:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, [indistinct 00:15:43]. Okay. How was she selected to go to that school? | 15:42 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | We had to make applications for them to go and then why we wanted them to go there. So she and three other girls went that year. | 15:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | This was the elementary or the high school? | 16:01 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | High school. High school. | 16:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And why did you decide to—did your daughter want to go to the high school? | 16:06 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | She asked us— | 16:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | If she could. | 16:11 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | If it was all right for her to go. And as far as we were concerned, if that's where she wanted to go, it was fine. | 16:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you apprehensive about that or anything? Any fears about her going? | 16:24 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | No. | 16:28 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I didn't. | 16:28 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I didn't. No. | 16:28 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Some people did, and some of the kids that wanted to go, their parents wouldn't let them, and so it ended ball down to just those four. And then later on, after they desegregated the high school, we had some people that, some students that desegregated the elementary school I think the next year. And so, no, I think the same year. I'm not sure. | 16:32 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | The next year. | 17:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was this 1964? | 17:05 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Must have been '64 because I know I had some of the parents to approach me to have a pool rather than let the kids ride the bus. And I told them, I said "No." I said "If they are going into it, they need to go into it all the way." And so I said "Let them ride the bus." And so they rode the bus in there. | 17:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | With the White children? | 17:49 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah. There was one assault incident [indistinct 00:17:54]. One of the White kids made some statement. But the principal called them in. | 17:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was this in the high school? | 18:02 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | In the high school. | 18:03 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | In the high school. | 18:03 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 18:03 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And the principal called them in and said that they would not have it. If any of the White kids bothered any of the Black kids, they'd be expelled. So I had no problem. | 18:03 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | [indistinct 00:18:14] how minor or how insignificant it seemed. He wanted to know about it. And then he also talked to the parents too and he talked to us about the kids. And when the kids went, the first group, the four, they participated in all of the school activities that they could, that were exposed to them. But that first year, because my oldest daughter, Cynthia, she was involved in the Glee Club and other curricular activities that the school had. But after that year, they got another principal. They fired this one. And this other guy wasn't as— | 18:18 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | You don't mean the principal. You mean the— | 19:08 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Principal. | 19:11 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Who was the principal? | 19:16 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Honeycutt. The first one, I forgot his name. | 19:17 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Oh, I see. | 19:18 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. | 19:18 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah, Honeycutt. | 19:19 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Honeycutt, yeah. And I think the people sort of ruled him, the parents. | 19:19 |
Sonya Ramsey | The White parents? | 19:26 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. So I think some of the kids then began to have some problems. And while he was there, they had a riot really. I think that was about the third year. | 19:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | And your daughter was attending that school then? | 19:42 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, both my—in fact, I had three kids attending the school at that time. | 19:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | That high school? | 19:48 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Mm-hmm. | 19:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 19:52 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | When they had the riot, Cynthia had already finished. | 19:53 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | She had? Had she? | 19:56 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah, because it— | 19:57 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Brother. | 19:59 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Dawn was there then. | 19:59 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I thought it was her brother and Dawn. I can't remember Dawn. | 20:01 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah, Dawn was— | 20:03 |
Sonya Ramsey | That was in the later '60s, 1960s when they had the riot? | 20:03 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Yeah, and so then they replaced the— | 20:03 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | The principal. | 20:03 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | The principal with Grover Fields. | 20:03 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | He was the Black principal at the high school at the time. | 20:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask, when your daughter first went to the White high school, what was the reaction of the students and the parents then during that first—how was she treated? | 20:18 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | She seemed to get along well, as far as I can remember. | 20:34 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I don't know of any incident other than the one incident that this White boy made some— | 20:36 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Derogatory remark. | 20:42 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Remarks when they got on the bus. But other than that, them and the kids and all, I mean— | 20:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were there any protests? Did White parents do any protesting, things like that? | 20:54 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No. So much so until in the Glee Club, somebody asked the choir director to let that girl sing, talking about my daughter Cynthia, sing some songs. | 20:58 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I can't think of the name of the song now. | 21:15 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | But I mean, it seems as though that— | 21:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | That's different from other places [indistinct 00:21:23]. | 21:20 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And there, some of the White girls became very friendly. | 21:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | But in the later '60s when you got a different principal, the attitude of the school changed. | 21:28 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, changed. | 21:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Now, did your other children, when they went to school during that time when they had the riot, did they have any problems? | 21:34 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | No. No. | 21:39 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No, because I don't even remember now what started this. Something happened between two students, White and Black, and then it— | 21:42 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | [indistinct 00:21:55]. | 21:54 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And next thing you knew, it happened, and it was poor leadership on the part of the principal. | 21:54 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | The principal. Mm-hmm. | 22:06 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | That it got as bad as it did. And that was the reason the board fired him. | 22:12 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | One of the boys, one of the White boys and my older son were very good friends, and I understand when that riot came, I don't remember exactly what they said to one another, but they remained tight with one another and they seemed to got along okay until he finished. And they were still friends. | 22:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was the reaction of the Black community? I'm going back to when your daughter first integrated the school and things. Did she receive a lot of support from the Black community? | 22:46 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I think so. I have [indistinct 00:22:59]. If so, we didn't get it. | 22:55 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | We didn't get it. | 23:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your family face any threat, danger, or anything like that? | 23:03 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Uh-uh. | 23:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | Is there anything else you'd like to add about that experience, your children integrating the school? | 23:15 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | No. I don't know a thing, not right now. | 23:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Just want to make sure I ask all the questions. I don't want to leave something very important out. Okay. I guess we've gotten up to the early '70s and you said you were a co-founder of the Craven County— | 23:30 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Voter's League. Yeah. | 23:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | What led you to become a co-founder of that organization? | 23:39 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Well, we were looking for someone to run as a Alderman and went to one guy's house and he had filed, and it was—and two, the NAACP could not do certain things, but the Voter League could. And so we organized. And one of the guys, he's dead now, he became the chairperson and his wife became treasurer. And we all got together and started the ball rolling as far as getting people out to vote and getting people to run. And that first year, I think—I don't know that first year that Lee ran or not, Lee Morgan. I don't know. But all of them lost that year, and then after then, we really reorganized and it's been functioning ever since. | 23:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said some of the things the NAACP couldn't do and the Voter's League could? | 25:00 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Because the NAACP is non-partisan. | 25:03 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 25:07 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. Yeah. | 25:07 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | The Voter's League [indistinct 00:25:13] was partisan. Now we call ourselves non-partisan, but we're still partisan. | 25:13 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Partisan. Yeah. | 25:18 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Because it's strictly Democratic, although we have Republican members. But for the most part, it is partisan. Only one time that we support White—I mean, not White. A Republican. And that was the judge. A judge was running. We supported him. He was Republican, but we supported him and he won. | 25:19 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 25:48 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And [indistinct 00:25:56] Black throughout North Carolina supported him. | 25:48 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And during that time, excuse me. And during that time, we also got a Black guy as assistant superintendent of this county in school system with the— | 25:57 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | The city. | 26:15 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | The city system, yeah. I was on the Board of Education. I think that was in '73. Was it '73? | 26:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 26:24 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I served on the Board of Education, '73, '74, I believe it was. It was two years. | 26:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 26:36 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And that was an experience also. But the original superintendent was retiring and the guy that was next to him was moving up to his position, so he tried to get a Black to be the assistant to the guy who was moving up. And at that time, there was three Blacks on the board and there was supposed to be two, but there was some error that they committed that—why they added three. | 26:36 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | See, Morgan was [indistinct 00:27:20] on the Board of Alderman at that time, so the Board of Alderman recommended the person on Board of Education. So Lee Morgan recommended Ruth, and so one of the members of the board, one of the members of the Board of Alderman wanted to table it, so it's a block, two blocks. And so then Lee got up and said "Mr. Lewis is here." He said, "Stand up, Mr. Lewis." Saying, "And you know Harvard Lewis. That's Harvard Lewis's wife." And that guy didn't voice any more objections. And so, see, during that time, they didn't intend for but two Black to be on the board. And after Lee said that, they dropped their objections. Then she was appointed to the board. So they had three Blacks on it. | 27:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I want to ask, what led you to you two entering public life being on the school board and working with the Voter's League? | 28:18 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | My children, my kids. | 28:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | When they got older? | 28:33 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | No. They were in school. | 28:33 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | No, in school. | 28:33 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah. And I was visible. Yeah. | 28:33 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And she was interested in just about everything in the community. | 28:33 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Yeah, so we were always visible. They knew us. We were visible on the school campus, and that's how I became involved. | 28:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I'm going to ask you, what were some of your accomplishments you think you made when you were on the school board? | 28:50 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Well, one of the main accomplishments I feel that I was responsible for was getting the assistant, a Black assistant superintendent. And that was because, what happened, they weren't going to get a Black one, and so we had two in mind that was Fields and a guy by the name of Keys. And another guy that they finally got was Black, but it was all right with me, but I didn't even think about him at the time. But what they did, they didn't appoint either one of those, and at the night that they voted on it, I was the only Black there on that board. The other two didn't come. | 28:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why didn't they come? | 29:42 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Because they didn't want to be in the controversy. | 29:44 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I guess that's the only reason I can give. And so they voted and I was the only one that voted against it. So they went on— | 29:46 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | They put in a White— | 29:57 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | They put in a White guy who had retired and they went back. They brought him back and he stayed there until Christmas, and that's when they decided to go with another Black. | 29:58 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Other than the one you recommended. | 30:15 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | Other than the one I had recommended, which was fine with me. [indistinct 00:30:19]. But he did, the other one did become the assistant superintendent. | 30:16 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | And their excuse for not using the one that she recommended was that he was too militant. | 30:23 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | So that was one of the things. And also, we changed the name of West Street school to F.R Danyus Elementary School. | 30:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay, because he was a leader in the community? | 30:38 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | He was principal of that school. | 30:42 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | He had died, and at that time, after he died, we changed it to the F.R Danyus school. | 30:45 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And after then, after I got off the board, or even while I was on the board, we'd get complaints. They put kids out of school or have them sitting out in the hall. And I would attend, go to the school and see the principals and we'd talk about that. And I'm trying to think what else. Something I thought about—oh, but after I got off the board, there was a group that went down to see about something that was going. Some coach or somebody had touched one of the girls inappropriately and her mother came and we went down to see about that. But they wouldn't see us. And I still have that letter that I wrote the board on it. I wouldn't give it to you, but if you want to see it, you can see it. | 30:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 31:56 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | And I don't have a date on it. | 31:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. Wait, that's okay. After we finish, I'll [indistinct 00:32:02]. | 31:57 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | I have a meeting at 6:00, so if you can get through it with me, you can still talk with Harvard. | 32:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 32:15 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | So if I can get finished earlier. | 32:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Well, let me—let's see. Did you have anything? Well, I can still talk with you. I just wanted to ask, were you involved in any organizations in the '70s that you weren't, Mr. Lewis, that you weren't involved in, in the 1960s? | 32:16 |
Ruth Brock Lewis | You might not— | 32:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | I was asking you about some of the organizations in which you belonged to in the 1970s. | 32:31 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | Well, just about the same ones. | 32:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | The same ones. Okay. Okay. Well then, is there anything else that you'd like to add, I think I finished all my questions, that I haven't asked you about yet? | 32:41 |
Astor Harvard Lewis | I can't think of anything. | 32:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. | 32:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | [INTERRUPTION 00:32:50] | 32:50 |
Speaker 1 | That was one of the worst. I mean, not worst, but that was one of the more outstanding things that happened at that time between relationships between the teacher and the principals. But after we all had our little say in everything, everybody got along real good. She respected him and he tried not to point out nothing definite. Everything that was handed out to her, he saw that it came from him, the head principal, because he worked more or less with books and was a financial person and whatnot. | 32:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | And how were the Black children, how were they brought to the school? | 33:45 |
Speaker 1 | Well, they were bused in. | 33:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did they get along? | 33:51 |
Speaker 1 | A few of them could walk. Well, like I said, I worked in the elementary school and they were small and they didn't think much of it. Children relationship is always good. It's the grown people that messes it up. Now, the children at our school was just as calm. We didn't have no fuss. They respected me as well as I would want any child too. But I had parents that was real nasty, some of them. But the better part of my parents would try to get that nasty parent to be nice because they figured like this, "If you be nice to her, she'll be nice to all of these children. And I have children in here and I want her to treat my children nice." | 33:52 |
Speaker 1 | After all of this came about, I could see how they got their heads together and they were very nice and they gave you lots of gifts and everything, Christmas and birthdays and stuff like that. They were very nice to the Black teachers. But one thing, you work hard. They liked the way you treated them because it was very nice to them, plus you taught them well. But at the high schools, they had a riot every day. But then, like I said, I wasn't in it. But at 10:00, my husband said it looked like they said "Let's don't have school today" and they'd start. | 34:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | He was still at the high school then? | 35:33 |
Speaker 1 | Uh-huh. He was at [indistinct 00:35:35] and they used to—the brand new school, they almost tore it up. | 35:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was the name of that school? | 35:38 |
Speaker 1 | Hoggard. | 35:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | Hoggard. Okay. I guess that's all. Were you ever involved with—were you involved with the NAACP or any organizations like that? | 35:47 |
Speaker 1 | Well, I was a member, but I didn't take a part in the activities. I just was a paying member, more or less. | 35:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. I wanted to ask you, what do you think were some of the positives and some of the negatives of being in a segregated community during that time period? | 36:00 |
Speaker 1 | What do you mean when you say positive? | 36:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Well, we know about some of the negatives. Do you think there were any positives of growing up or living in a segregated [indistinct 00:36:24]? | 36:18 |
Speaker 1 | For success? | 36:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | For anything, for whatever you think. | 36:24 |
Speaker 1 | When you said positive, now I don't know exactly what you mean. | 36:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | Some people have talked about that the Black community was closer then, and they had more social things to do as a group. Some people said things like that. But I guess I'll phrase it a different way. Do you think we've lost anything from integration? | 36:39 |
Speaker 1 | Yes I do. | 36:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. That's better. What kind of things? | 36:56 |
Speaker 1 | Well, now, for instance, our children got lost. They didn't have anything to do. Now you take, at my school, it sounds so elementary, as the junior high school and high school teachers would say, but at my school, we had a school of, like I say, about 48 teachers or better. And we had a program every Friday where your class give a play or some type of entertainment, which gave that child the chance to get on the stage and bring him out, his personality and fear of different things. And it did something for the child, kind of like when they have Easter time and children spoke and had Easter programs and they had little speeches and whatnot. And see, the churches have gotten away from that, even the Black churches that really need it, and the children are lost. But you see, they lost that. | 36:58 |
Speaker 1 | But that anxiety to do something was still in that child and he didn't know what it was and it just came out any kind of way on the good side, the bad side, and all that. And I think that's where that turmoil came in. When they integrated, the White people would pick up their children, they were going to the Y, and they was taking them to this program and they had this activity for them, the little dance groups and the little daughter, mother and daughter clubs and this little thing and the 4-H and all that kind of thing was going on. But very few of our children got a chance to. We had a Y, but the Y was kind of over this way at that time. And unless you lived right in this area, there weren't that many mothers and fathers that could bring their children because the time that the Y was meeting, you were working. And it made quite a difference. It took a lot away from the Black man and it gave the Black man different opportunities. | 38:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | I was going to ask, what do you think people gained from integration? | 39:37 |
Speaker 1 | Well, as Jesse Jackson can say, it let them know that they could be somebody if they wanted to be it. But being in the trace of knowing how to be somebody and what somebody is was the foundation that they're lacking because everything you don't get by fighting or hitting back. You just go ahead and work your way on through. You see, if you start walking, and I think that's what Martin Luther King and Jackson and quite a few people thought, if you start walking and you walk and don't stop, you're going to walk through, see. But we didn't have that kind of gut. We looked after a lot of things. We'd tear it on the roadside, which looked real bad and we took a part of it. Or maybe some of it might have looked good and it brought in fair and it brought in a lot of serious— | 39:41 |
Speaker 1 | But it created more jealousy among people. And like I said, the White man just didn't know how the Black man clicked. And when they found out how that Black man clicked, they stopped giving Black teachers gifts and all that kind of thing because they found out that it don't take nothing to satisfy a [indistinct 00:41:24]. Just turn him loose and let him just go for hisself, and which was real bad. And then they put you more or less a common seat. They didn't think that you deserved having anything. But they are afraid of the Black man because they are very apt there. Wilmington is a very intelligent town. They are very learned. People here can learn easily. There's a lot of smart people that all over the world that has been reared up from the Wilmington, Wilmington people. | 40:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I think I've asked all of my questions. Is there anything I've left out I should ask? | 42:16 |
Speaker 1 | Well, there's so much that we—no, I guess not. | 42:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Is there anything else you'd like to add? | 42:26 |
Speaker 1 | No. I just like to say that I can see a lot of success has come out of quite a few things. Even the Wilmington Ten, and that's been—that's worldwide. I'd like to end saying that we have had very smart and intelligent children that has done great from Wilmington and we are still getting them. They're still, out of all these crisis and all the dope and the heroin and whatever you call it, and AIDS and whatnot, we still are producing good doctors and good lawyers and whatnot, and they are from Wilmington. | 42:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 43:22 |
Speaker 1 | Really? | 43:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | I'll ask you about that. When did you pledge Zeta? | 43:22 |
Speaker 1 | Oh my god, I forgot. | 43:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | During college? | 43:34 |
Speaker 1 | No, after college. I pledged Zeta about early—I'll say 17. | 43:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Why did you decide to join that organization? | 43:45 |
Speaker 1 | I was just almost pushed in into this. I loved—I wore a lot of blue and I was just aggravated about the blue girl and why not become a Zeta. And it was just from one thing to another. And the girl that inticed me to become a Zeta was very nice and a good friend of mine, and so I just gave in because I really thought one time that I would be a Delta. But she was just so nice and everything. And she told me so many things, so I decided to be a Zeta. | 43:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Was it a long initiation process? [indistinct 00:44:39]. | 44:33 |
Speaker 1 | No, not too long. I did it within six months, and that was pretty long enough. | 44:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of activities did the sorority do when you joined it? | 44:49 |
Speaker 1 | Well, we had to do a scrapbook and then we had to be submissive to your superior and there was certain things that we had to learn and we had to know all those things. And we were examined before entering and we wore a certain little signal every day. And there were certain little things that was presented to us, like different signs of different things. And of course, you always had to stay on the alert so that you could give those back when you meet them on the hall or something like that. But nothing public. Nobody would never know you're doing it. | 44:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 45:40 |
Speaker 1 | Yeah. | 45:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | After you initiated, what kind of activities did the sorority do for the community? | 45:43 |
Speaker 1 | Well, we did a blue review at that time. | 45:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | Now, what's a blue review? | 45:52 |
Speaker 1 | And now we have a—oh, a blue review. You would give a—you know what an operetta is? Something like a operetta, but it would be in your colors and each child would raise a certain amount of money and then we would sponsor a scholarship for a child to go to school or things like that with the money. | 46:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. What did the, joining sorority, what did that do, add to your life? | 46:20 |
Speaker 1 | Well, it should have done a lot, but it didn't do a lot around, like I said, around Wilmington because it's hard to maintain close friendship. | 46:28 |
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