Mary White (primary interviewee), Clay White, and Ronald White interview recording, 1993 July 25
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Kara Miles | In this house? | 0:00 |
Ronald White | No. | 0:02 |
Kara Miles | Is this where— Where did you all grow up? | 0:02 |
Ronald White | Here in New Bern area. | 0:06 |
Kara Miles | What area? | 0:08 |
Ronald White | What area? | 0:09 |
Kara Miles | Mm-hmm. | 0:09 |
Ronald White | From the eighth grade here on. Prior to that, from birth to five years, across the street, behind the church. | 0:11 |
Clay White | Called Cedar Street. Tell her the name of the street. | 0:22 |
Ronald White | Cedar Street. And on North Grand Street from about seven-years-old until when I was 13, which is Down Street. But in the same area. | 0:25 |
Kara Miles | Okay. Do you know why your parents moved several times while you were growing up? | 0:41 |
Ronald White | No. I don't know why they moved. Clay, how about you? | 0:46 |
Clay White | Yeah, they moved because they really wanted more space and they couldn't afford a house initially. They wanted to buy a house. It was always my mother's dream to have house. I think my father's, too. So, when we were living Cedar Street before we moved to North Bern Street, we moved to North Bern Street because the house was supposed to be a little larger. They were both two rental dwellings. And then, during the time they is at Cedar Street, it was a unique situation where a lady name Mrs. Howard lived next to us. She reared her family. In fact, her children helped to take care of us when our parents were off at meetings or school or what have you. She bought this whole lot, this lot we are now presently sitting on and a lot next door to this lot. | 0:52 |
Ronald White | I don't remember that. | 1:52 |
Clay White | Like what? | 1:52 |
Ronald White | I don't remember none of that. | 1:52 |
Clay White | Well, it's all right. Learn a little history. She bought the lot next door. So, she and my father were very good friends, and then she sold him this lot. She kept a lot over there. So, we still today, I'm 50-years-old. Daddy would have been 70— He would have been— I'm trying to get the age difference. Mother's is 1910. Mother would have been around 83 this coming year. Is that right? Born in 1910. | 1:53 |
Ronald White | Yeah. Yes. | 2:33 |
Clay White | 83 in October. Daddy was like 10 years older than mother. Nine years older, technically, so he would have been in his nineties. That's what I'm trying to get to. But the point is, that relationship maintained itself from the time he came here, which was really in the thirties. He came here in the thirties. | 2:35 |
Kara Miles | To New Bern? | 2:55 |
Clay White | To New Bern. | 2:55 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 2:56 |
Clay White | And late thirties. But this transaction happened in the forties. The whole point, I'm not sure. I'm just trying to show you the relationship between the two families. | 2:59 |
Kara Miles | Yeah, that's great. | 3:10 |
Clay White | And she still lives there and there, and she's still living. | 3:11 |
Kara Miles | Oh. | 3:12 |
Clay White | Right. But she is with other children right now, on vacation. | 3:14 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 3:16 |
Clay White | But going back to your initial question, so they bought this house but they didn't have enough money to build at that time on this. Then we moved to North Bern Street. During that time, they were able then to save the money to build this home, and then subsequently we moved here. But then they always had wanted the desire, it was always not on the status thing. It was the kind of thing in our community where if you own your own house, your car, those kind of status symbols, that was a mark of moving forward and preparing for the future. Then, of course, wanted to leave something for your children. That was a whole mega meaningful experience of leaving something for your children. In fact, I think we sort of adopted that kind of concept even to today. | 3:19 |
Kara Miles | How many of you children is it? | 4:07 |
Clay White | Two boys and three girls? | 4:12 |
Kara Miles | Where was your father from? He said he came to New Bern in the thirties. | 4:17 |
Clay White | I'll keep it at him because I thought that he was going to pick up on it. But he's from Lewisburg, North Carolina. My mother was born in that same area in Franklin County, in a little place called Kittrell, North Carolina. That's a whole history with my mother and my father, but that's where they came from, as a relationship within North Carolina. Of course, they moved. When they got married and they moved here after he graduated from Johnson C. Smith, et cetera. But the reality is, that his growing up days were in the Lewisburg area. | 4:25 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 5:11 |
Clay White | We can go into that detail if you're interested in that family history. We know a lot of it. | 5:11 |
Kara Miles | Yes, I am interested in family history. So, what do you know about it? | 5:17 |
Clay White | Well, I'll let my brother talk about it first, then my sister has a lot that she can put to it. | 5:24 |
Mary White | No, I'm not adding to it. | 5:28 |
Clay White | My sister's not going to add to it? | 5:31 |
Mary White | You'd never get to New Bern. | 5:31 |
Clay White | Well, this is true. Do you want us to come back to that piece? Because that's a whole big piece there. I mean, how did you want this formatted? | 5:33 |
Kara Miles | Well, we're interested not really in the history of New Bern but in the history of people. And so, I am interested. It's very rare that Black families know their history very far back, and so I'm very interested in that. | 5:40 |
Clay White | All right. Let me just say, then I'll go back. He graduated from Johnson C. Smith University, and from that, he always wanted to be a minister in the theological seminary. Then, he went to this church in Hyde Park first to pastor, and that was like his neophyte church, if you will. Moving from there, I think he only stayed in Hyde Park for some reason. I'm not quite accurate on this. Mary, I will still— Mary should know this. But I think that it may be something like four or five years, and then he moved into Wilson. He stayed in Wilson only about two years to a church there, that still stands today, by the way. Both of those churches still stand. And then, he came here. He was called here to this church. So, that's sort of how he got here. | 5:56 |
Clay White | The reason why I mentioned it from that roundabout way was because we had no real family here in New Bern proper. We had no relatives, no cousins, nieces, nephews, et cetera. We wouldn't have niece nephews, but no cousins, aunts, grandparents, et cetera. | 7:01 |
Ronald White | Cousin Pearl was here. | 7:19 |
Mary White | Was not Daddy's side. | 7:20 |
Clay White | Well, Cousin Pearl was not really here. She came to work here as a teacher and worked with my mother over in James Center. My mother was a school teacher. | 7:23 |
Ronald White | No, she was already here when Mama came. | 7:31 |
Clay White | Okay, then she was already here but she was on my mother's side. We knew her, but— Then in that case, I stand corrected. She was the only relative. But when I think about relatives, it was not a situation where we could go and visit her and just be over at her house and just stay there, because she was rooming with a family in James City. Because she still considered her home in Lewisburg in the Kittrell area, where we did have— | 7:34 |
Ronald White | Rocky Ford. Kittrell area, Rocky Ford. | 8:03 |
Clay White | Right, okay. Rocky Ford, Kittrell, right there. You know, you cross one little stream and you're on the other side of it. But the reality is, so I never really considered her. I knew she was a relative, but I think about relatives, when I made that statement, I'm thinking about where you had that relationship going backwards and forward. In fact, she used to come here and stay occasionally. That's really how we interacted. She did come here, but we really didn't interact with her that much. | 8:05 |
Clay White | But I was trying to give that backdrop as to one of the rationales and reasons why we developed such a strong tie with our parents' people. My mother's people and my father's people in Lewisburg and in Kittrell. So, we would leave New Bern to go back. It was from that experience that we can then move to. But I just want to show you that tie-in. | 8:29 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 8:55 |
Ronald White | Let me just say that— | 8:59 |
Clay White | Please. | 8:59 |
Ronald White | Kittrell was a mailing address. Kittrell is a small town in Franklin County. But my mother was from a farming area in Rocky Ford, which was about six miles to the east of Kittrell. But the mailing address was Kittrell. | 9:02 |
Kara Miles | Okay. Okay. So, you all said you— | 9:35 |
Clay White | Now- | 9:36 |
Kara Miles | Go ahead. No. | 9:36 |
Clay White | Okay, that's true. You want to talk about various people first? | 9:37 |
Ronald White | You want to know about his family? | 9:45 |
Kara Miles | Mm-hmm. | 9:48 |
Ronald White | Okay. | 9:48 |
Clay White | Start back from the slavery time. | 9:50 |
Ronald White | I don't know all that. | 9:51 |
Clay White | Okay. How much you know, brother? | 9:51 |
Ronald White | What I know, his father owned a restaurant, or a cafe. | 9:58 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 10:05 |
Clay White | Which was very unusual during that period of time. | 10:05 |
Kara Miles | Yes. | 10:05 |
Ronald White | That was in the courthouse square of Lewisburg. The people who were in the courthouse would come have lunch. So, comparatively, my father was a city boy. At Lewisburg, you can imagine. | 10:09 |
Kara Miles | I've been there. | 10:29 |
Ronald White | Okay. Oh, you've been to Lewisburg? | 10:29 |
Kara Miles | Yes. | 10:31 |
Ronald White | Okay, then you know. I don't know a lot about my grandfather. I only know that, like I said, he had the restaurant. Our family has to do with the Yarborough family. I think that was— | 10:32 |
Clay White | That's going back to Rosa, right? That's why I wanted to tie it in to— That's why, that's why. | 11:02 |
Ronald White | My grandmother was a Yarborough. | 11:03 |
Clay White | Named Rosa. | 11:10 |
Ronald White | Her name was Rosa. All right. I never got to meet either of them [indistinct 00:11:20]. They were all dead before I was born. It was two girls and four boys, right? Four boys? | 11:17 |
Clay White | Three boys. | 11:36 |
Ronald White | Four boys. | 11:38 |
Clay White | Four. | 11:38 |
Ronald White | Okay. My grandfather felt it was important for his girls to be educated, so his girls went to Barber-Scotia. Right? I know Aunt Maddy went to Barber-Scotia, and now Aunt [indistinct 00:12:01] also attended Barber-Scotia? | 11:42 |
Clay White | Yeah, I mean they both did. I think she went all the way along with it. | 12:04 |
Mary White | She did. | 12:06 |
Ronald White | Uncle George— | 12:09 |
Mary White | No, she went to some— She went to [indistinct 00:12:12]. | 12:10 |
Ronald White | And Uncle Pat and Uncle Eunice did not attend college. | 12:14 |
Mary White | She went to some kind of academy. | 12:17 |
Ronald White | Auburn Academy first. The Auburn Academy is like a private high school. From their, she went on to Barber-Scotia. They all went to Auburn Academy in Franklinton for high school. In those days, there was no public school. If you didn't go to a private church-run academy, that was it. So, in Lewisburg, St. Paul Presbyterian Church had a preschool, elementary school that Black kids went to. | 12:20 |
Clay White | Let me just— | 12:54 |
Ronald White | And from there, they went to Auburn Academy in Franklinton. | 12:54 |
Clay White | Let me put a pin there because he can tell you a lot about that era, but let me just tie in the slavery aspect. | 12:57 |
Kara Miles | Yes, please. | 13:04 |
Clay White | That comes from the aspect of there was a Yarborough family, White folks, who had slaves of course. And then he became involved in the same process, with one of the slave ladies and had a child. Therefore, that's how the name came down. But like a lot— Well, I don't know. I think it was kind of prevalent in North Carolina. You really started a deep history. Many of the slave owners, if they had a child by a Black woman but then they liked the black woman, then they provided for that child and those child children's descendants. That's really what happened there, and there's a tie even today. Of course, my sister, Mary, will just go off again. But there's a tie today between all the Yarboroughs who were White and Yarboroughs who were— | 13:06 |
Mary White | Ain't no tie. | 14:04 |
Ronald White | They what? | 14:04 |
Mary White | There's no tie. | 14:04 |
Ronald White | There's a tie today. | 14:04 |
Mary White | No ain't no tie. | 14:04 |
Ronald White | From that same line. All right? | 14:04 |
Mary White | No. | 14:04 |
Clay White | But Rosa was a Yarborough coming from that line of Yarboroughs, and became a free slave. Because of the slave owner. That's how that whole tie. Even to the day, when you go to Lewisburg, they have some lawyers and still high power people in the city. But recognize— | 14:14 |
Mary White | They don't even spell their name the same. | 14:32 |
Clay White | They recognize— My sister's being very comical, but they still recognize- | 14:37 |
Ronald White | She doesn't like us. | 14:45 |
Clay White | They still recognize us as relatives today. | 14:51 |
Mary White | What? | 14:52 |
Clay White | Many of the younger ones, because they can appreciate that same history. You follow what I'm saying? | 14:53 |
Mary White | Do they? | 14:57 |
Clay White | But yeah. When my father died, [indistinct 00:14:59]— | 14:58 |
Ronald White | If you're famous, yes. | 14:58 |
Mary White | Well, as [indistinct 00:15:00] said and suggest. | 15:00 |
Clay White | Not really. When my father died, we went to Lewisburg because they had some property there and what have you. And we were kind of dealing with that issue. One of the Yarboroughs, White, was a lawyer, came up to us and said— This was in '70. Daddy died in '75. Right? | 15:03 |
Ronald White | Yeah. | 15:20 |
Clay White | Mary was standing there and he said, "So sorry about cousin Charlie." Well, my sister just liked to die. "Ain't no cousin here. Hell no. You don't even know." She just went crazy. We had to pull her out. | 15:21 |
Mary White | [indistinct 00:15:37]. No. That's exaggeration. | 15:39 |
Clay White | But that's an example. | 15:39 |
Mary White | Exaggeration. | 15:39 |
Clay White | That's an example of what he felt, and that's what he said. Literally. So, there is still a tie and some of the land on the Bigfoot's— Bigfoot? What's that? | 15:39 |
Ronald White | Bicket. | 15:52 |
Clay White | Bicket Boulevard in Lewisburg. | 15:54 |
Ronald White | Boulevard, right. | 15:56 |
Clay White | Was originally was part of the farmland, was originally owned— | 15:56 |
Ronald White | By the Yarboroughs. | 15:58 |
Clay White | By the Yarboroughs, White clan that we have a piece of that. But I'm just trying to show you, that's a tie that came down, and that was through Rosa's line. All right. Pick it up. | 16:01 |
Ronald White | I've never had anybody to tell me very much about the Whites, because I don't know. I just know that he married Rosa Yarborough. Does anybody ever said anything to you as a Yarborough? | 16:12 |
Clay White | [indistinct 00:16:30] and I know I just— | 16:28 |
Mary White | The only story that they tell is that she wouldn't leave home, and that she lived with her parents. And just to show you how strong parent family ties are, because her parents were living in the same house. They'd tell the story that if he wanted Rosa Yarborough, he'd have to live in Rosa Yarborough's house. So, he did that. Because they're really from royal. Did you mention that? | 16:33 |
Clay White | No. No. I said that's where Dad was born in Lewisburg, but the family, I didn't get to that part yet. But you were— Go ahead. | 16:52 |
Mary White | No, that's basically it. That normally, the wife goes with the husband to the husband's home. But this is the instance where the husband would have came to the wife's house. So, all of the family, the Whites, were really raised in the Yarborough home. And at the time, I thought it was really the White decendancy. I didn't realize we were on the Yarborough, the length of the descendancy was on the Yarborough side. So, that was the only lady [indistinct 00:17:34] that I remember. | 16:57 |
Clay White | But wrong- | 17:36 |
Ronald White | It's right in the same area, Mary, as far as the same county. Remember? | 17:37 |
Mary White | Yeah [indistinct 00:17:43]. | 17:41 |
Clay White | Yeah, but it just being accurate with the history, she said. | 17:43 |
Ronald White | Yeah. | 17:45 |
Clay White | I wanted her to know. | 17:46 |
Ronald White | I don't know a lot about it. There was not a lot of discussion beyond that. Like I never know how my grandfather had got a restaurant. The restaurant. There ought to be a story that because you don't get too many. That don't happen too often. How he got this little cafe, I have no idea. | 17:48 |
Clay White | But I do want to just say for sake of history here, Royal was only about as wrong as right, maybe 10, 15 miles from Lewisburg. A small country, little farming area. But again, it was kind of away from the city. Lewisburg was considered a little city. I think, too, that was an interesting point you brought up about how he got a restaurant. Somehow I was told— See, Daddy's father was named Scofield, and I don't think so— The way I understand it, Mary, correct me if I'm wrong. Didn't you hear that he didn't have the— That the restaurant, he sort of inherited the restaurant or something like that? I don't know. He didn't get it himself. He didn't scratch for it himself, did he? | 18:04 |
Mary White | I really don't have any idea. | 18:51 |
Clay White | I really— | 18:51 |
Mary White | Because [indistinct 00:18:56]. | 18:51 |
Clay White | I was going to say, well, when we get through this, we can give you some names of people who can really lay it on top. | 18:56 |
Ronald White | If you go to Lewisburg. | 19:00 |
Mary White | They've already been to Lewisburg. | 19:00 |
Kara Miles | Yeah. | 19:05 |
Mary White | Or why. | 19:05 |
Clay White | Did you talk to cousin Gerald or Gladys? | 19:06 |
Kara Miles | No, we— | 19:13 |
Mary White | I didn't know they were going to Lewisburg. | 19:13 |
Kara Miles | No, we weren't really in— We were in Infield, was our general area. And then there were just a couple of people who we just happened to meet in Infield, who were from Lewisburg. So, I did a couple of interviews in Lewisburg but not really extensive. | 19:13 |
Mary White | And that's also part of my family, probably. | 19:29 |
Kara Miles | Infield? | 19:32 |
Mary White | Did you go to the Bricks Academy? | 19:34 |
Kara Miles | Yes. | 19:36 |
Mary White | Okay. | 19:36 |
Clay White | There's some there. | 19:36 |
Mary White | Vivian Winn is a cousin of mine. Did you go to Winn? | 19:38 |
Kara Miles | Yes. That's where we stayed while we were there. Yeah. | 19:40 |
Mary White | That's what I figured. | 19:44 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 19:44 |
Clay White | She's the one, too. | 19:44 |
Mary White | So, that's probably why you got to Lewisburg because of her, is that right? | 19:44 |
Kara Miles | Yes. | 19:47 |
Mary White | So, that's part of my family, too. | 19:48 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 19:48 |
Ronald White | She's from the Whites, from the Royal area. | 19:52 |
Mary White | The other side. Yeah. | 19:52 |
Clay White | And we going to give you a lot of pieces, but if you wanted to get a clearer, complete, accurate piece on both sides, my mother and my father, we have people that can tell you that. If you just want to have one compilation complete, because they do it the right way. | 19:55 |
Clay White | Go ahead. Why don't you go ahead on. | 20:11 |
Ronald White | No, I guess I just want to ask. Are you looking to do a family thing or are you looking just for background information on the period? | 20:16 |
Kara Miles | More background information on the period. | 20:27 |
Ronald White | Because this is getting to be a real, a family thing the way we're discussing it, instead of a background of a period. | 20:31 |
Kara Miles | Well, like I said, it's so unusual to have that family history. So, I am interested in all this that you know these links to slavery and all of that. | 20:41 |
Ronald White | But there is a reason, and the reason is we were fortunate as a family. For example, we just went through some of the things that occurred on my father's side. But having that kind of history. And to a degree, having that degree of independence in owning anything gave you the ability to do things. Murphy family is where, out of seven children, there are three of them who went to college. That's extremely rare for a period in the Depression. We're talking about during the Depression, my grandfather sent two of his daughters and one son off to college. That's extremely rare. | 20:55 |
Kara Miles | Yes. | 21:53 |
Mary White | The son was my father. | 21:53 |
Ronald White | Huh? | 21:53 |
Mary White | You didn't ever identify who the son was. | 21:55 |
Ronald White | It was my father, the son. | 21:57 |
Clay White | And his name? | 22:01 |
Ronald White | Charles Henry Clay White. | 22:02 |
Clay White | Okay. | 22:04 |
Ronald White | Now, on my mother's side— | 22:06 |
Mary White | Before you get to my mother's side, I just want to go back to the Royal community and on the White part of the family, because it goes back in the history. Not necessarily slavery, but reconstruction time. That's the part of the family that's related to George H. White, but he was the last reconstruction Congressman. But no place in history that you can find really identifies him as coming from that community. There's a reason for that, which is not even told in the history books, and that he had gotten into some kind of altercation with somebody White within the community. And he had to leave home, otherwise he probably would have been murdered. He had to never identify with that area again. So, whenever you read anything about George H. White, in fact, most of the things that I have, they said several different little places in and around there. But they never identified him as being really from Royal. But that was the area he came from. | 22:08 |
Kara Miles | Well, now we have that on record. | 23:09 |
Clay White | Did you tell her about that he had a house here? | 23:13 |
Mary White | No, because you all hadn't gotten back up to that part. | 23:15 |
Clay White | Oh, okay. | 23:17 |
Mary White | But if you want to, I guess about him being the last reconstruction congressman, and that he lived in New Bern at one time. Which is one of the reasons why my father really wanted to come to New Bern. It was just something about his accomplishments and his pride in it, and the fact that he helped to start this church over here that my father pastored for 30 years. That he wanted to, I won't say follow in his footsteps, but he was inspired by that. One of the last things that my father did in his life was to see that a marker was brought here to identify George H. White living here. That's the one that you see on Broad Street. He had to really justify it not being in some other place in North Carolina as opposed to being here in New Bern. But whatever he was able to say, he was able to convince them and they did put it here. | 23:19 |
Mary White | There is a house that's here, that's the old George White house, which is a part of the historic district. Which I hadn't really planned to say anything, but— | 24:22 |
Kara Miles | No, this is great. | 24:35 |
Clay White | Yeah, and before you go, well, I'm sure Mary will show it to you. The reason why that's named, and the reason why Mary was trying to clean that little piece up about George White, was because really the ironic thing about how life is, he had worked on that for a number of years, get the state to put that marker there. That was a real personal kind of search. He had gone to Howard to do research and things of that nature. In fact, he had his first heart attack there. That's my father. Subsequently, he died a few months later. Ironic, he died on the 7th of November in 1975. I think, Mary, it was in a week after his death. Certainly, no more than 10 days. We got the official notification for the State that they had approved the marker. It was something like the irony of life that he was not able to see that. But it did come, and of course you would see it erected. I just wanted to add that piece, caveat out to it. | 24:41 |
Clay White | But going back to what Ronald was saying earlier, before you go to the mother's side, let's do some more on Daddy's side about his brothers and sisters. What the did, et cetera, as you're talking about that. | 25:57 |
Ronald White | Go ahead. | 26:09 |
Clay White | I thought it was a shared experience. My sister— | 26:09 |
Ronald White | [indistinct 00:26:23]. | 26:09 |
Clay White | And what Ronald was saying about three of them went to school and they became teachers. During those years, all you could do become a teacher or a preacher. So, my father always believed he had a calling for ministry, but always prepared himself to teach as well. My aunts became teachers. I always felt that they embodied what I call that teaching thing, if you will, that has penetrated our family, I think, ever since. I had an uncle who worked in the hotels. | 26:24 |
Ronald White | What was that? | 27:07 |
Clay White | As a chef at a hotel. | 27:08 |
Ronald White | Became a chef. | 27:09 |
Clay White | Was it a hotel? | 27:11 |
Ronald White | Yep. | 27:11 |
Clay White | And we always just admired him. He seemed to be the rich one. My aunts— | 27:14 |
Ronald White | Gave us the best presents. That made him rich. | 27:19 |
Clay White | Yeah. He would come home once a year, always in January. | 27:23 |
Ronald White | In his big beard. | 27:28 |
Clay White | Yeah, he had a big car, money and he would just bring us gifts like Santa Claus, and we just adored him. | 27:29 |
Ronald White | He was awfully nice. | 27:38 |
Clay White | He would laugh and he would talk junk to all of us. When he would come, everybody would stand tall. Up until that time, my aunts and my daddy in his household. Of course, when he went home, he didn't stand strong. It was my aunt, particularly one aunt made it, that Mary kind of resembles. | 27:39 |
Mary White | That's a lie. That's a lie. | 27:59 |
Clay White | Really was a power broker and matriarch of this family. Until my uncle from Boston would come. Then she would step back and hush. It was that kind of mystique about him. Even when he died— He retired, he came home. Died shortly after he retired, but he was not really that sickly when he retired. Because most time he retired from the north and come back. But he went north to make his fortune, if you will, and then came south. I'm trying to remember. Didn't he buy a room in the house in [indistinct 00:28:36]? | 27:59 |
Ronald White | I have no idea. I'm not sure about that piece. | 28:31 |
Clay White | All right, but any rate— No, I'm wrong. He didn't do that. Oh, it is true. He did built that back room or improved that back room back there on the first floor of the family house. | 28:42 |
Ronald White | I didn't know that. | 28:50 |
Clay White | Anyway, the family house still stands today. We used it and it's usable now. It's just that right now, nobody's living in it now, so therefore— I know we had some termite problem with it at the moment, but it's still a livable, functioning place. Same furniture. Not the same furniture. I mean, the newer furniture. Well, they— | 28:51 |
Mary White | Mm-mm. Same furniture. | 29:13 |
Clay White | No, when I say the same, it wasn't the same original of the house. | 29:13 |
Ronald White | Not the original, but the furniture. | 29:15 |
Clay White | I mean, the furniture, what they had growing up. | 29:16 |
Ronald White | For 60 years or more. | 29:18 |
Clay White | It's still there today and usable. They made some modern improvements, but I think it's that significant to know that that house still stands. When my father was born, and he was born there. | 29:20 |
Clay White | The other piece is we had another uncle, who was in Boston and— | 29:37 |
Ronald White | Mm-mm. Springfield. | 29:46 |
Clay White | Huh? | 29:48 |
Ronald White | You talking about Pat? | 29:49 |
Clay White | Yeah. | 29:50 |
Ronald White | That's Springfield. | 29:51 |
Clay White | Well, Massachusetts. I said Boston, Massachusetts. I can't say all the reasons why he left, because we never really knew him. Correct me if I'm wrong. I really don't ever remember ever meeting him. If I did, it must have been— | 29:52 |
Ronald White | No one ever talked about him as though he were— | 30:07 |
Clay White | Well, I'll get to that part why they didn't. But I'm just saying, I don't know why he left home at first. That's all. I don't know. | 30:11 |
Ronald White | Nobody ever talked about him. So, a lot growing up, we just never heard about him. Nothing we could say. | 30:16 |
Clay White | But something happened in his marital life or some pressures up in Pennsylvania. I mean, in Massachusetts. I don't know exactly what it was. I never got it out of him. Mary probably knows a lot more than I do on this. But I do know that once I discovered his existence, we were in fact here. Maybe I knew of his existence before. I'm sure we knew of a name, but to actually know some more information about it, him. He had a son. He had some children. One of his sons, or two of them. | 30:21 |
Ronald White | Are Marine Corps. | 31:02 |
Clay White | Are Marines. | 31:02 |
Mary White | There's three of them. | 31:02 |
Clay White | Three Marines? All three? I remember two. | 31:05 |
Mary White | You remember three. | 31:08 |
Clay White | I remember three. | 31:09 |
Mary White | Bobby, Randolph, William McKinley. | 31:11 |
Clay White | Was William McKinley in the Marine Corps? | 31:12 |
Mary White | They were all in the service. | 31:12 |
Clay White | Okay, but any rate— | 31:12 |
Ronald White | But William McKinley [indistinct 00:31:20]. | 31:13 |
Clay White | Significant thing about that was, how that tie got into being was, they were all stationed in a place called Cherry Point, which is right here in this area, 18 miles from New Bern. Subsequently, they knew of us and knew Daddy, naturally. And then, of course, ties began to be formatted of that particular line of the family, if you will. Subsequently, come to find out that Uncle Pat was in an insane institution. I don't know to the day why or what prompted him there. I know that he used to write Daddy. I didn't know initially until later on in life. He used to write Daddy, or Daddy used to get letters from the institution. And subsequently, found that one of his letters came from the warden of the head or what have you, and he died there in the institution. And we never knew that. It was a long time having his death that we knew about it. | 31:20 |
Clay White | We, as children, grew up in this household I think in a very positive way, but things that would cause us emotional disparateness or a little difficulty, my father, I think deliberately, and my mother, kind of kept those things from us as much as possible. I think feeling like I, even with my daughter, because she tells me today that I gave her this long speech recently about not giving her a chance to grow up and blah blah blah. But my thinking is that, I guess, and I take it from my parents, that you got all your life to get all this other kind of stuff. So, I kind of think that's really what they were trying to do. | 32:30 |
Clay White | But there was some other reasons that I don't know about. Ron's right, we never talked about him. To the day, that's a [indistinct 00:33:18] my full understanding. But at least we recognize it. We accept it now, and we talk about it. Without really on a constant base, but we recognize it. | 33:12 |
Clay White | We have another uncle. Oh, the thing I mentioned that part was that, that played heavily on my father's heart that he had died, in a since, alone. When he wrote and called trying to retrieve his remains and to bring him home, he was not able to do that. He just couldn't quite get it. This was in Michigan. How he got to Michigan from Massachusetts— | 33:28 |
Ronald White | Ohio. | 34:00 |
Clay White | Huh? | 34:01 |
Ronald White | Ohio. | 34:01 |
Clay White | No, it was in Michigan. | 34:01 |
Ronald White | It was in Ohio. | 34:05 |
Clay White | Well, even Ohio. I think it was Michigan. Ron says Ohio. But either one those places. But it was a long ways away from Massachusetts. To this day, I can't quite understand that. Even his children, they don't tend to— Unable to articulate it well with me. I've tried to ask them questions, and I don't know whether they don't want to answer, but for whatever reason, we don't know. | 34:06 |
Clay White | What's the other uncle's name? Uncle— | 34:29 |
Mary White | George. | 34:30 |
Ronald White | George? | 34:30 |
Clay White | Uncle George. | 34:30 |
Ronald White | George. George Scolfield. | 34:33 |
Clay White | Yeah. | 34:33 |
Ronald White | He was the oldest. | 34:33 |
Clay White | Right. | 34:33 |
Ronald White | He was a junior. | 34:33 |
Clay White | Right. Uncle George, I really don't remember. I know I've met him once or twice, but I'm so small, young, I don't remember him at all. | 34:34 |
Ronald White | He was older. | 34:50 |
Clay White | I know that he was married, and his children, unlike Uncle Pat's children, his children and our children, well, my brothers and all of us grew up together. And we're close and we know everybody. We just live together just like brothers and sisters, all of our lives. But not knowing him— | 34:53 |
Mary White | Can I interrupt a minute? | 35:15 |
Clay White | Yes, please. | 35:16 |
Mary White | You were given, and I'm just saying this in general, I'm not sure what you're getting out of the study. But what Clay's giving you is a genealogy, and I think that, to me, your study, your purpose, is broader than genealogy. | 35:18 |
Kara Miles | Oh, yes. I have many more questions after this. | 35:35 |
Mary White | That's why I didn't want Clay to get so involved in the genealogy when you got other content that you really trying to reach for. I just thought I should throw that out. | 35:38 |
Clay White | Okay, I'm fine then. Okay. Well, in that case, we just keep it cursory. So, we had those and the whole part I was just trying to show you is that everybody worked in the different walks of life. Those that wasn't in schools, still went to that kind of, what I call, quasi-professional kind of deal. They all owned properties, land. And constantly made us, wasn't an issue of choice, made us work together, visit, help on the farm. I certainly consider myself a city person myself here in New Bern. To go to the farms and Lewisburg, at that time, no electric lights in the streets. No paved streets, just dirt. [indistinct 00:36:43] in the night, swinging and swaying, and seeing the, what was that? The night fly? | 35:49 |
Ronald White | The little— | 36:49 |
Clay White | June bugs and the light. | 36:50 |
Mary White | Firefly. | 36:52 |
Clay White | Lightning bugs and all that kind of stuff. They called that fun. It wasn't that fun for me. But any rate, we did learn closest family ties, sharing, dealing with people you don't want to deal with. My aunt was very, very strong, very determined, very disciplinarian type person. So, I never wanted to deal with her, but you were forced to learn to deal with people. So, I think all that— Of course, later in life, you recognized why and so forth. You appreciated it in the end. But I think that it made us. All those kinds of skills. There was really a lot of skills you were learning during that process. I think that's the kind of thing that Black community has fostered. | 36:52 |
Clay White | We never thought about the kind of skills that you learned from that experience, but it is skills that you learn today. Your regular jobs and different people that you don't want to deal with, dealing with people, you don't smile, you don't want to smile. Doing those things just to get along just for community, if you will. And in hopes that you'll have a little time, a little peace for yourself. So, I guess in the spirit of what Mary was talking about, I will just stop that. | 37:44 |
Ronald White | We'll let Mary tell you a little bit about Mama's side and we'll go from there. | 38:09 |
Mary White | I bet you know more than me. | 38:10 |
Ronald White | Because Mary can be more briefly than Clay can tell. | 38:10 |
Mary White | I would appreciate it if you would continue, Ronald, because I will be here all week and you will be gone. | 38:10 |
Ronald White | It don't make any difference, Mary. | 38:10 |
Mary White | Would you please say something? I would like to go to Mother's stuff. Ronald? | 38:22 |
Clay White | My mother's side- | 38:22 |
Mary White | Clay, let Ronald speak. | 38:22 |
Clay White | Well, Ronald said he don't understand that, so I said it again. | 38:22 |
Ronald White | Come on. Come on [indistinct 00:38:41]. | 38:22 |
Clay White | Now, we're wasting time hearing it. | 38:41 |
Mary White | I'm not. I'm not. Hang on, maybe I— | 38:42 |
Ronald White | Go ahead, Clay. She's doing work right now. | 38:46 |
Ronald White | Fine. My mother had a unique family. The uniqueness is rooted in its inception. My great-grandfather was a blacksmith. | 38:47 |
Clay White | Stop. | 39:20 |
Ronald White | What? | 39:23 |
Clay White | One thing I think we needed. | 39:24 |
Ronald White | What? | 39:26 |
Clay White | Go back on Daddy just for a second. | 39:26 |
Ronald White | What's that? | 39:26 |
Clay White | Just for information. My two aunts were never married. So, everybody here is talking about a line from there. They had no line. My uncle, who lived, Uncle Unis, who lived in Massachusetts, did not get married and had no family. Pat, when I told you he lived in an institution. | 39:29 |
Speaker 1 | Hello, hello. [indistinct 00:39:51]? | 39:50 |
Ronald White | How you doing? | 39:50 |
Clay White | Got married and there is a line. Hey, how you doing? | 39:53 |
Speaker 1 | Fine, fine, fine. | 39:54 |
Clay White | Good to see you. There's a line. Uncle George has a line, and my daddy has a line. This one just, to get that clear part of this. So, you know that, well, if we ever came back to that three lines and that second line. Go ahead. | 39:55 |
Ronald White | As I was saying, the uniqueness is in how it begins, and it began in slavery in Franklin County. In that my great, great— Was it? Great, great— Yeah, great-great-grandfather was able to buy his freedom and he was able to be successful as a blacksmith, and he purchased land in Rocky Ford. He owned just about all of Rocky Ford. | 40:22 |
Ronald White | He also had what my mother referred to as his men. But reality was that he had also bought slaves. What evolved was a base of economically independent Black people in this small area of Franklin County, North Carolina. When he died, the farm was divided in half between two brothers. Right? | 41:19 |
Clay White | Right. | 42:09 |
Ronald White | From that, emerged— That was the initial dividing of what, for all intent and purposes, was a small plantation. At this point, it's after the Civil War now. | 42:13 |
Ronald White | My grandfather owned the division of the land that became the Blackmal's land, and the family name was Blackmal. Clay, maybe you can tell. The other half of land became Hawkins land. Now, explain how that came about, Clay. | 42:39 |
Clay White | Well, you kind of missed a piece there. | 43:14 |
Ronald White | Okay, it had to be something. I know that somebody got married. Okay? It went from the two sons that were there to their children, and then it got divided again. | 43:18 |
Clay White | Well, what happened, how the Hawkins really got involved, was the fact that— Thank you. My great-grandfather went to Hawkins. Hawkins was a academician then. He was a learning person, a preacher. | 43:32 |
Ronald White | He was a preacher, a lawyer, a school teacher. | 44:04 |
Clay White | Yeah. And my great, great— | 44:06 |
Ronald White | But he was married to one of the family members. That's how he initially— | 44:09 |
Clay White | Yeah, well, I'm just trying to do it fast. The whole issue in a nutshell, what happened was he went to him, let him hold some land temporarily in order to make sure his children were going to school and that type thing. The preacher, in the end, swung some land. That's what it amounts to. And which Aunt Ads even tells me, that's my mama's sister, who's about 86 now. Tells me today that she doesn't want me to say it out loud to everybody, but the Hawkins people really got that land on a large track free for swindling through him. It was not really done away. He had just earned it through inheritance. Now, that was a small track. | 44:15 |
Ronald White | Well, again, when you go down, you don't really know all of the circumstances involved. But what I was trying to describe was the overview, not necessarily the specifics. But the overview was that it is unusual that, number one, a free Black could buy land in Franklin County. A mass land, and develop a large plantation. | 45:03 |
Clay White | Yeah, and it's very unusual. We should stick a pin in that. He was favored by the White people there because of his trade. Remember now, there were very few blacksmiths, particularly in that region. So, therefore, he was really a— | 45:45 |
Ronald White | He was a prize. | 46:02 |
Clay White | Yeah, he was prized Black man. That's right. And so, White folks catered to him and that's how he helped to get that land. I remind you an old story of the, what we find in the today's time, when men, or not in time, not now, but I can tell you— How old are you, by the way? | 46:02 |
Kara Miles | 22. | 46:20 |
Clay White | 21? 22? | 46:21 |
Kara Miles | Yeah. | 46:22 |
Clay White | I can tell you when I used to go through Richmond on the bus. | 46:23 |
Kara Miles | Yes, please tell me. | 46:26 |
Clay White | Used to be a shoeshine there. Remember the story, Ronald, the shoeshine man? | 46:37 |
Kara Miles | Oh, that was that tape cutting off. Okay. | 46:37 |
Clay White | Oh. | 46:37 |
Kara Miles | What time is it? Okay. | 46:37 |
Clay White | Remember the old story about how the shoeshine man was shining shoes [indistinct 00:46:50]? And then, at the end of the day, he'd go and put his stuff all over his— | 46:46 |
Clay White | Skill. So it was a skill that White folks appreciated. Even today, for those few Blacks who are accepted by the White society, it's based on really skill. We talk about some other kinds of guilt feelings and all that kind of stuff, but if you are unskilled in something, generally you're not going to have that kind of admission to the system. I wanted to get that piece clear [indistinct 00:00:27]. | 0:01 |
Ronald White | What evolved was that he imparted to his sons the importance of controlling to some degree their own destiny. My grandfather had a fairly large farm remaining, which was a share, which was about a fourth of what originally it was. But his fourth was still a very large part. You couldn't get money from banks. Franklin County historically has always been a rather extremely racist place. Always has been. | 0:32 |
Ronald White | So again, the uniqueness of these two families in the midst of this bespeaks of something unique about them. For example, here in Craven County, Black people always had enclaves, always. There were always Black people here who were able to amass something and do something. In Durham or various areas, there were always some Black people who were able to carve out certain things in an environment that was not as restrictive as some areas. But in Franklin County, it was always a racist, restrictive environment. So it's unique, it's unusual that this could have evolved. | 1:30 |
Clay White | Yeah. | 2:19 |
Ronald White | But again, you'll find that there were always unique individuals. Again, my grandfather also had the idea that he wanted his daughters to be educated, which I'm learning was a prevalent idea of the time. I didn't understand that. But if it could be done, they wanted to do it. He was fortunate in that my grandmother had a relative by the name of Dr. Shaw, who started Kittrell College in Oxford, North Carolina. Which initially was a boarding high school. No, not that, not Kittrell College. I mean, what was the name of it, Clay? In Oxford. | 2:20 |
Clay White | It's Kittrell College. | 3:23 |
Ronald White | Huh? What was that school that Mama and them went to? Wasn't that Kittrell College? | 3:23 |
Clay White | With Dr. Shaw. | 3:39 |
Ronald White | No, before that. | 3:39 |
Mary White | No, Mary Potter. | 3:39 |
Ronald White | Mary Potter. | 3:39 |
Clay White | Mary Potter. I'm sorry. That's it. Mary Potter. | 3:39 |
Ronald White | In Oxford. It was Mary Potter, right. Anyway, so he sent all of his daughters off to Mary Potter. His oldest daughter, which was my Aunt Lavella, it wasn't really about school. It was about boys. | 3:52 |
Clay White | Say men, wasn't boys. | 4:18 |
Ronald White | Boys, yeah. She didn't do well. | 4:18 |
Clay White | And what else? | 4:21 |
Ronald White | Huh? | 4:22 |
Clay White | I think it also needs to tie about boys, but also she had — | 4:24 |
Ronald White | What? She had epilepsy. So she would have seizures and it became a problem. So she came back home. She didn't stay. But my Aunt Gladys and my mother — | 4:34 |
Mary White | You might want to, excuse me, go ahead. Mention that — Did you tell them that —? | 4:43 |
Ronald White | See, Mary knows more [indistinct 00:04:51]. | 4:50 |
Mary White | No, I don't. But she could — That Dr. Shaw was, the head of Mary Potter, was a family member. | 4:52 |
Ronald White | Yeah, I told her that. | 4:59 |
Mary White | Was her uncle? He also founded Mary Potter. | 4:59 |
Ronald White | Yeah, I mentioned that. | 5:05 |
Mary White | Okay [indistinct 00:05:05]. I'm sorry that I'm going to have to go, but I just want to throw these, both of these things in. I don't know if they mentioned the fact that on both sides of the family, we had some grandparents who gave up land to build a church. You both mentioned that? | 5:07 |
Ronald White | No, we didn't mention that, but that's true. | 5:24 |
Clay White | Ain't got to that. | 5:26 |
Mary White | But you will mention it. | 5:26 |
Clay White | I hadn't thought about it, Mary, but it's true. | 5:27 |
Mary White | Well, I thought that was significant because a lot of, you know, land, you don't have that much land. Then to be able to feel that their religion is important enough that you want to give part of it to the church. So that was [indistinct 00:05:42]. | 5:29 |
Ronald White | It was more significant for the Whites in Lewisburg because it was much less land than it was out at Rocky Ford. Rocky Ford, they had a little bit of land to give to church. Wasn't a big deal because it was their church. So it wasn't a big deal. But in Lewisburg, it was, because there wasn't that much land. They had some land out there, but they didn't have much. | 5:42 |
Mary White | Okay, that's all. I just wanted to make sure that wasn't forgotten. I wanted you to mention that story about Gabriel. You all tell the story about Gabriel? | 6:10 |
Ronald White | No, Mary. | 6:19 |
Mary White | But you will. | 6:20 |
Ronald White | No, Mary. I don't know it. | 6:21 |
Clay White | Tell it right quick. | 6:21 |
Mary White | See, I don't know where you all are. I'm just jumping into the middle. | 6:21 |
Ronald White | It doesn't matter, Mary. She's just getting facts. | 6:29 |
Mary White | Well, [indistinct 00:06:34]. | 6:34 |
Ronald White | She not writing a book. If she does, I hope she does, I want somebody. Go ahead. | 6:34 |
Mary White | Well, the fact that I was reminded of it when I just went to my uncle's funeral recently, that the pastor of that church said that he learned about it through reading one of John Hope Franklin's works. I didn't even know it was even mentioned in this about the slave named Gabriel, who tricked his slave master into buying his own freedom. That what he did was, he was a blacksmith and that he would be able to get, in fact, I don't even know the story accurately, because the man told it so beautifully. I knew some of it, though. But he was able to save a certain amount of money and he needed an exact amount. And I don't know for sure, but the people would tip him for doing work. I do know that at this particular time, that his slave master he liked him quite well, so he asked him — Gosh, I don't even know the story that well. | 6:39 |
Mary White | Let's see. Whatever he asked him for, he said that he would probably like to I think pay him for something, but he wasn't able to at that time. That he would want to know a way to thank him. So he said that he wanted his, would like to get his freedom. I hope I'm telling this about right. Whatever it is, is that he said, well, he would be glad to gave him his freedom if he thought he could afford it, but he couldn't afford to lose him as a part of his property. So he says, "If I could pay you for, would you let me free?" He just knew that he wouldn't have this kind of money. It might've been like, I don't know, several hundred dollars. Anyway, whatever it was, he said, "Well, if I could pay this money, would you free me?" | 7:39 |
Mary White | He just knew he didn't have it. So he said yes, he would. He said that same night he went back and brought him that money. That's how he bought himself his own freedom. But not only that, he bought his wife's freedom. He bought several other people in the family, and he also brought other men, which I think, I don't know how he got that property, but he got a lot of property, too. I think the others worked with him on that property, not as if they were his slaves, but he might have said that just to show that he controlled them. But it wasn't really control as much as protection, because the time that Clay mentioned that we went down, after my father died, to check things in the courthouse, we were able to see a record that they had down there where it's mentioned in the records there at the courthouse. | 8:40 |
Mary White | But he called them his men, not his slaves. There are some records that there are some Blacks who had their own slaves, which is to me a horrendous thought. But the idea that he made it in the record say "his men" is that they were working for him and this was his way of protecting them and offering them freedom as well. I thought that that was, I didn't even learn that until my adult life. So I thought it was a tremendous story. Here's a story that's recounted in a famous historian's book, and during my lifetime, I didn't know it as a part of my family. That's just throw it out there. | 9:37 |
Clay White | No, we didn't talk about that. You didn't call Gabriel's name, that's why you did a good job. | 10:16 |
Mary White | Oh, shh. | 10:22 |
Kara Miles | All right. | 10:22 |
Speaker 1 | I'll bring Mary back safe and sound. | 10:22 |
Clay White | All right, now. Enjoy. Have a wonderful day. | 10:22 |
Mary White | [indistinct 00:10:30]. | 10:22 |
Speaker 1 | Our friend Donna is getting baptized. | 10:22 |
Clay White | Who? | 10:34 |
Speaker 1 | This girl named Donna, we used to work with. | 10:35 |
Clay White | Oh, getting baptized. | 10:38 |
Speaker 1 | Mm-hmm. | 10:40 |
Ronald White | Make enough money to pay bill, buy a house and a car, and we'll be happy forever. I think that's one of the reasons that most of us are still poor and scratching now, is because of that philosophy. If you look at biblical scripture, it says that what you say out your mouth, you know it will manifest itself. And I certainly am an example of this manifestation, because I am poor as hell and I want to be wealthy. I'm trying to say now, "I want to be a millionaire." That's what I tell my daughter. Say a millionaire. I tell my son, that's all I want to hear him say. "I want to be, I want to be rich." Recognize that that's not going to bring you happiness, but let me be unhappy rich than unhappy poor. You see what I'm saying? There is a difference. | 10:42 |
Clay White | I'm rich in the spirit. | 11:33 |
Ronald White | I want to be rich in the spirit, but I want some money with the spirit. You know what I'm saying? I want to be able to tithe, not have to cry. You know what I'm saying? Imagine, bring your tithe up here. I said, "Fine. Gloriously here," as opposed to [indistinct 00:11:48], oh, God, would I make my phone bill? See, that's not spiritual tithing. | 11:35 |
Kara Miles | I know. | 11:54 |
Ronald White | But any rate, so I thought if I got rebaptized again and touched, maybe I would be able to start anew, with a new firm of becoming a millionaire. See what I'm saying? Because I want the money. I'm telling you. That's what I want. But history is something, you know, you sit back and think about it. Interesting. So how's your family? | 12:00 |
Kara Miles | Good, good. | 12:23 |
Ronald White | Great, great. I never even, hear too much talk about, thought about recently. Nobody really talks about these things. I just remember outhouses, no running water, slop jobs, these kind of things that children look at you today, think you're just crazy. | 12:24 |
Kara Miles | Take for granted. | 12:39 |
Ronald White | You didn't have no watch, but you didn't need a watch because you had to be home by — | 12:44 |
Clay White | The sun. That was it. | 12:47 |
Ronald White | That was it. | 12:47 |
Clay White | That sun went down, you better be on that porch. | 12:47 |
Ronald White | The sun come up, you better get up. | 12:48 |
Clay White | I mean, I'm in high school, my mama would meet me on that step. I knew, when I hit that corner, I said, "Lord, if Mama's not out there on those steps, I might make it in time." You know what I mean? But she'd be sometimes staring around that door. That sun go down — | 12:53 |
Ronald White | That's because you didn't hang, I used to hang out in the gym across the street over there. I'd be playing basketball, going for a lay-up, and something grabbed my ear, pulled me right out of the gym. Right on back around the corner. | 13:04 |
Speaker 1 | You don't have this now, do you? | 13:21 |
Kara Miles | Mm-hmm. | 13:21 |
Speaker 1 | Do you mind doing this? | 13:27 |
Ronald White | Interesting day in the White house. | 13:29 |
Clay White | But anyway, you was talking about — | 13:30 |
Ronald White | I don't know what I was talking about. | 13:31 |
Kara Miles | You were talking about being dragged by the ear. | 13:31 |
Clay White | You were talking about in the tape — | 13:31 |
Ronald White | Many times right over there. | 13:34 |
Clay White | Mary Potter. | 13:54 |
Ronald White | Huh? | 13:55 |
Clay White | Mary Potter. | 13:55 |
Ronald White | At Mary Potter. | 13:56 |
Clay White | About the girls going to school. | 13:59 |
Ronald White | Oh, okay. Well, the boys worked on the farm. | 14:02 |
Clay White | This was on my mother's side [indistinct 00:14:07]. | 14:03 |
Ronald White | My Uncle Joe got away, and he was able to go to Cleveland and he worked and he went some other places. But he came back. | 14:11 |
Clay White | Wrong thing. | 14:25 |
Ronald White | My uncle John didn't ever get away. So they just worked on the farm. | 14:26 |
Clay White | How many children? | 14:33 |
Ronald White | How many children were there? They had six children. Well, six who survived. There were many more that were born, that died. I mean, in those days, if half your children that were born lived, you did well. | 14:35 |
Clay White | Who were the six? I don't remember six. Five, I know. | 14:49 |
Ronald White | It was four girls. | 14:55 |
Clay White | That's right, you're right. It was six. You're right. Mary Jane [indistinct 00:15:00]. | 14:56 |
Ronald White | Mary Jane, and Aunt Lavella, Aunt Gladys, Mama, Uncle Joe, Uncle John. But again, out of that family came two school teachers. Very unusual. | 15:00 |
Kara Miles | It is. | 15:19 |
Ronald White | Very unusual. But I've heard it said repeatedly that my grandfather did not want his girls in any White man's kitchen. | 15:25 |
Clay White | Exactly. | 15:33 |
Ronald White | Which says to me that those kinds of concepts had to evolve from parents. It says something unique about who Gabriel must have been and what he instilled in his children who were able to instill that into their children. Because most of the people growing up at that time were working anywhere to get a job because it was so hard. Just so hard to survive with no money. There was very little of anything. But there was not a threat to existence. I guess that's really important. | 15:36 |
Ronald White | When I say a threat to existence, it means that they knew that they were going to eat and they were going to sleep because they grew everything they needed to eat and it was all there. They didn't have any television or radio, not at that point. So their exposure was limited. What they wanted, they needed, was basically an enclosed world and they could function in that enclosed world. Because in Rocky Ford for a long time, there were very few White people, unless you went to town or you carried the crops in or something. You just were amongst your own. Well, that was a unique environment. | 16:29 |
Ronald White | So my mother and my father both came from unique environments, and they produce weird children. But you see that has reason. That's all. Yeah, there's a reason [indistinct 00:17:53]. | 17:32 |
Clay White | But the other thing that I want to touch on in here is, trying not to get into too detail, it is interesting I think in that same concept that Ron cited, that Gabriel started in the sense of saying they didn't want the girls to work in anybody's kitchen and also for the vast amount of energy that he and others spent on the ideal of education. I think it's that same ideal that has transcended all the family lines, is really what I'm trying to get to. I think of that, my mother's brothers and sisters, that's probably all in one line, two lines of the six lines. I think it was stress. But let me just get more specific. | 17:55 |
Clay White | In one line, Uncle Joe's line, you have basically his children did not go to, my Uncle Joe's children did not go to college. But then they saw to it that their children went to college. Whereas with my mother's line, all of us went. Which is kind of unusual. And even during those years of the fifties and all, where all five of us went to college. To this day, I'm struggling with one and I just don't understand how he could do that. Remember at one time there was three of us at one time. So that was kind of an unusual story even on bringing us — | 19:02 |
Ronald White | That is right. There were three of us in college at the same time. | 19:33 |
Clay White | Yeah. Bringing that on down the line to today. | 19:40 |
Kara Miles | Now how did he, did you all have scholarships and things? I mean how was he able to put — | 19:42 |
Clay White | That's unusual. We didn't have scholarships and that's — | 19:48 |
Ronald White | I did, my freshman year, I had a scholarship. | 19:53 |
Kara Miles | From the school? | 19:57 |
Clay White | My brother had a scholarship but you still had to have money from him to survive out in the, on campus. | 19:57 |
Ronald White | No, he didn't give me no money. He didn't give me no money. Mama did. He didn't give me any money. That was the idea. | 20:10 |
Clay White | Well, whoever gave it, it came from this part here. | 20:13 |
Ronald White | Okay. | 20:13 |
Clay White | Came from somewhere else. But the reality is — | 20:13 |
Ronald White | I didn't go to Johnson C. Smith. | 20:19 |
Clay White | I did not go to, I did not have a scholarship when I went. I think you had a little church scholarship, maybe like a hundred dollars, something like that. My sister Mary — | 20:24 |
Ronald White | You had some loans, too. You had a loan, [indistinct 00:20:35] loan? | 20:32 |
Clay White | I took a loan out during my history at Smith for $450. But I did it on my own, not to pay any — It was easy money that I could get to spend. So my dad didn't know about it. | 20:38 |
Ronald White | I know you paid for that loan. That's why I — | 20:53 |
Clay White | Yeah, [indistinct 00:21:00]. I didn't want to bring it that close to here. But the significant thing was that we did not, [indistinct 00:21:05] no scholarships, and I wish we were, but my sister did get that $100, I think it was $125 a year. It was a church. | 20:59 |
Ronald White | It costs less. | 21:14 |
Clay White | It costs less. But still when you think about, it's more than sending a child to school. | 21:14 |
Ronald White | [indistinct 00:21:18]. | 21:17 |
Clay White | Yeah, not only for the school, but also your living expenses, et cetera, when you considering the whole bit. But any rate, the point I'm trying to make is that I think that whole concept flourished. Then I have another line of — | 21:19 |
Ronald White | You'll find on both my mother's side and on my father's side, the immediate family felt kind of the same. Because even the Hawkins, they tried to send all of their girls off to college, too. All of them got to go at least to, what is that? To Oxford, to Mary Potter. At least they got to go in the high school. Some of the girls there went off, became teachers. So that from my family on my mother's side, there were a lot of school teachers and preachers. On my father's side got a lot of school teachers and preachers, which said to me that these little groups must have reinforced each other throughout that period because it was consistent. | 21:34 |
Ronald White | Now when you say that, that means that out of the average family or cousins, there were always one or two going to college, being a school teacher. Other of them worked on the farm. That's it. Somewhere in the family, maybe five or six, there'd be a preacher. That's pretty much how it was throughout. | 22:40 |
Clay White | And we were self-sufficient, I think. And Ron, correct me, on the farm, we were really much self-sufficient even though, and by the way, all my grandfather's land, he at his death divided up amongst all of his children. We own that tract now to my knowledge, except for the last piece that was swindled out by the Hawkins. | 23:01 |
Ronald White | Uh-uh. | 23:27 |
Clay White | What? | 23:28 |
Ronald White | There are other pieces, too. | 23:28 |
Clay White | They sold some pieces off. I'm not talking about that. | 23:33 |
Ronald White | I'm not talking about Uncle John and Aunt Lavella and all those. All the land from my grandfather — | 23:37 |
Clay White | That's what I said. | 23:43 |
Ronald White | Is still under ownership. | 23:44 |
Clay White | Yes. | 23:46 |
Ronald White | But you got to understand that before our grandfather, it had divided already into four pieces. Initially it was divided into two. Then of those two, well, one of those two was divided into four. The other one, I don't know how many it was divided into, a whole lot more. | 23:48 |
Clay White | Yeah. | 24:05 |
Ronald White | That's what I'm saying. | 24:05 |
Clay White | We're together. All I was about to say was that tract that he had, my grandfather had, it's still intact now. There was a small piece of that, what I'm trying to say, of the recent newest tract of that small of that still, one of the descendants of the Hawkins still swindled a piece out of that. That's what they have now, where he has his church across the street. You know when you come [indistinct 00:24:31]? | 24:06 |
Ronald White | No, he always had that. He always had that. | 24:32 |
Clay White | Yeah, from us. | 24:33 |
Ronald White | No, but see that was — | 24:33 |
Clay White | I'd like to tell you that, that's ours. | 24:33 |
Ronald White | No, no, that was before that happened. That wasn't in, that was before our [indistinct 00:24:47]. It wasn't part of our grandfather's land. It happened before that. | 24:37 |
Clay White | Okay. But any rate, I know that's how the Hawkins clan, which is right next door to our land, that's Hawkins land. But that was originally our land as well. The concept, what I was really trying to get across and a larger issue is, that bespeaks to what you're talking about, what you will find is that White folks always wanted to buy us out and to take it from us. We'd take [indistinct 00:25:21] to go north. We would forget to pay the taxes, et cetera. That's how a lot of White folks got large tracts from us. Because we just didn't have the land knowledge base at that time or understanding, then we couldn't afford to keep the taxes when we were away from home. | 24:56 |
Clay White | But we also had some Black folks who understood that whole game as well that took from us. And that's really what I'm really getting to that. Another example of how the people oftentimes mimic the oppressor and will do like things as the oppressor. That's really what I really want to make that point. | 25:35 |
Ronald White | Well, I understand. I just want to say that I don't know how much or what degree was done incorrectly, but they were all kin. Okay? I mean all the Hawkins are all cousins. | 25:57 |
Clay White | That's true. | 26:22 |
Ronald White | I mean, it's not like it's some group way over here. All this is interfamily going on. Some land, some people went [indistinct 00:26:31]. The other part, all in the same family. | 26:22 |
Clay White | Through [indistinct 00:26:35] and all that. But I'm talking about a larger tract, they're not going to leave that piece alone. | 26:34 |
Ronald White | It was equal in size. All four parts were equal. | 26:40 |
Clay White | Well, as you can see, there's dispute between my brother and myself on this issue. I'll just leave that until we can get more of the facts. But I think the facts will bear out that a large portion of the tract that they own now really came from us, not out of birthright. That's all I'm trying to say. But whatever the degree or the amount, I won't stay here and argue that at the moment. | 26:45 |
Clay White | I will say that the basic tract that I know about since I was born 50 years ago, we still have intact, and none of us, and I think we have to owe it to Uncle John, the baby, believe it or not, has been the one that has, that my mother, her sister Gladys and everybody else sort of put in his hands, if you will, except for Uncle Joe. Because Uncle Joe lived there too, kept his own tract. But he sort of masterminded if you will, not masterminded, but caretaker of all of our tracts there. Paid taxes and so forth. My mother and Aunt Gladys who lived away from there, supported their needs and what have you. They did all kinds of funny little things together. They would sell timber. | 27:10 |
Ronald White | They'd raise hogs together. | 28:00 |
Clay White | Yeah. They've always had a sense of community. Even my mother was not there. My mother never lived there since she left with my father, believe it or not. Until my father, they used to go back and visit two times a year. But until my father died, she didn't ever go back to just stay months on end, or a couple, two weeks at a time until that time. But there was always a sense of community because he, Uncle John, would not do anything without consulting them, and they just had a real good relationship. They were super, super close. I think that we have always witnessed that super closeness between them. It was kind of a thing. If you were married, that's what you had to accept. Ain't no question about it. | 28:07 |
Clay White | I mean, that was just a non-negotiable thing. Some relationships, the wife didn't want you to be around these people too much or vice versa, whatever the situation might be. But in those relationships, those husbands or wives, that's just it. You had to be, he was key person at that particular time. So we used to go over there [indistinct 00:29:11]. The whole point of it, he kept the tract together even to today. That's the point I just wanted to bring to. We've seen it grow. We used to raise hogs together, the timber they did together. We have our own graveyard, some of our property is in that. Some of the church property, another church, we gave them the church property. That's what Mary was speaking to. That becomes historic only in sense that it was the only Presbyterian church in that area at that given time and that the national church recognized. | 28:52 |
Ronald White | Started by some White missionaries after the Civil War. | 29:44 |
Clay White | Right. And our great-great-grandfather bought that church, wanted us to have our own church right there. And we did. And then history will tell you that my mother, shows you how things happen, by her being married to a Presbyterian minister, used to go to all these conferences, the ministerial meetings, et cetera. And discovered somehow, because while we owned it, we turned it over to the Presbyterian church. So Uncle John wasn't really paying taxes on that piece. It turned out that that piece was going to be up for sale. The church was going to sell it, our church, I mean our piece of property, everything. Mother heard about that at one of these meetings, just by chance. Then went on and she made a couple calls. Did she buy it? [indistinct 00:30:52] she and Aunt Gladys bought it. | 29:52 |
Ronald White | She and Aunt Gladys bought it. | 30:52 |
Clay White | She and Aunt Gladys bought the church property. | 30:52 |
Ronald White | Initially. | 30:52 |
Clay White | Back from the Presbyterian church. I think it was historic [indistinct 00:31:00]. | 30:54 |
Ronald White | Synod. | 31:03 |
Clay White | Well, synod, which is the branch of the national church. But the point being that they bought it. The piece I'm trying to get across is that they bought it back, put it back in the family, which I thought was really a great historical move. That was done really in the last 25 years, something like that. So I'm saying it's practically recent before she got really down [indistinct 00:31:25]. So I was really grateful for that knowledge. Of course then our graveyard is on that site, very historic place. To show you how God works, my cousin, whose father just passed recently, had come to another funeral, I'm not sure who it was, but they cleaned that cemetery off. Then he decided to bury his father there about a month ago. We are supposed to, now the younger ones of us, are supposed to go in to make sure it's cleared off and what have you. But there's a tremendous amount of history there. The stones are cracking, some are lost in the woods. But idea is that, I mean, your whole history is just laying there. | 31:03 |
Clay White | Something which I would love to have somebody to write — Maybe we can commission you, to go in the woods and write a book on it. But the idea is there's a lot of history right there on our property, which I feel real good about in that regard. But we've seen the whole area just change and our family changing. So many of the old people are dying out now and certainly taking this oral history right away with them. That's why I spoke to the issue that at some later time, we do have some relatives who really, just memories just keep. My Aunt Gladys, my mother's sister, which is just — It's funny how some people can lose their memory like my mother. Other people, even older, their memory is so keen just like it was yesterday. It's just amazing about life. And that's what we find ourselves in at this time. | 32:18 |
Kara Miles | Well, I want to ask you some questions about your own lives now. We have your family's history. When you all were growing up here, you said you really didn't have any family here. Were you all seen as outsiders? Did you all feel — But you all were born here though? | 33:18 |
Clay White | We were born here. We were born here in Craven County in the hospital. But to answer your question, I don't know. I felt not having a real tie, only because I had friends who always talked about their grandparents. We never knew our grandparents. They all died before we were grown or before we grew up, I think even before we were born. And if they were living when we were born, we were just so tiny, we never knew them. I felt a sense of loss from not having that kind of connection. Not so much whether it was right here in New Bern, but we just didn't have that connection. I can never speak about the experience of grandparents. That's why it was so essential that my children knew something about their grandparents. I just think it's something great about it. | 33:36 |
Ronald White | It's different for me because I was the youngest. I had all the family I needed. I had too much family. [indistinct 00:34:40]. But you see, I was identified as Reverend White's son, and as such, you had plenty of people. I never lacked having people. I always wished I had known my grandparents, but I didn't know them. I would go away every summer and live with my uncle or my aunts. So I spent a lot of time in Lewisburg or in Rocky Ford every summer until I didn't want to go no more. By the time I was 13, I had enough. But up to that point, every summer. Also I spent some years in Lewisburg, part of first grade, part of the eighth grade, I went to school in Lewisburg. | 34:35 |
Ronald White | So I had an extended family, but I had lots of friends here and I had older brothers and sisters. It was never feeling like I was a stranger here. | 35:30 |
Clay White | Yeah, well, and I think I can identify what he was saying, but I think from a family, specifically grandparents, even there, I think that's a void for me. But I do think that, because we were what we call a PK, preacher's kid, my father was very outspoken and he was in a lot of these different meetings and things and community programs or projects. That you had to live a certain lifestyle, so you had to please people and you smile and all that. But that really wasn't what I was grinning about. But you learned to do that. So I mean it was okay, but going to the heart of your question, yeah, I think that I would've liked to have known what it would've been to had relatives right here. | 35:53 |
Clay White | But as Ron said, we did go and we did spend summers down there. Of course I never liked that because it was just country and I was determined I would never be on a farm and all this kind of thing. | 36:39 |
Ronald White | I can't imagine that he really wanted to look, as a child, he did not really want to be out there. It didn't matter. He'd be perfectly happy to stay here all the time, not ever go. So for him to sit there and say that he missed his relatives — | 36:55 |
Clay White | No, but the question was, how did you feel — | 37:05 |
Ronald White | If they would come here, okay. But he didn't want to be out there. | 37:08 |
Clay White | Yeah, right. I didn't mean that I wanted to go to the farm. Let me make it clear. I'm talking right here in New Bern. I thought the question was, how'd you feel about here in New Bern? I'd like to have gone to maybe an aunt's or cousin's house right here. Only because other kids did that. It was just natural for them to do it. I thought it was rather unusual not to have any relatives here in this area. | 37:13 |
Ronald White | I think so. I can see it that way. | 37:32 |
Clay White | I didn't consider cousin — | 37:35 |
Ronald White | Cousin Pearl? | 37:37 |
Clay White | Cousin Pearl. She was a relative. I mean, not just old. | 37:38 |
Ronald White | I used to think of Pearl and them. | 37:41 |
Clay White | She wasn't really hip because she wasn't really about new kinds of things. | 37:45 |
Ronald White | Cousin Pearl and Cousin Bing were right hip. Cousin Bing especially was real hip. | 37:46 |
Clay White | From Ron. See, Ron [indistinct 00:37:52] different perspective. She just showed me nothing. | 37:50 |
Ronald White | Oh, yeah. They bought me all kinds of stuff. Took me to all kinds of places. He's just jealous. | 37:54 |
Clay White | They didn't take me anywhere. That's probably what it was. But I remember when my father made us go to the country. | 38:07 |
Kara Miles | Every summer? | 38:10 |
Clay White | There was no question. | 38:10 |
Ronald White | I was glad to go. | 38:11 |
Clay White | You had to go. | 38:11 |
Ronald White | I was always glad to come back. I mean, it was no question. I was coming home. This was home. That was not home. But I was always glad to go. Mainly because I was glad to get away from my brothers and sisters. | 38:13 |
Kara Miles | They didn't all come with you? | 38:25 |
Ronald White | Oh, no. Sometimes they would, but not all, no. Often that'd be just me. Or we'd go to, see, Clay had a choice. He didn't go. And if he did go, he'd tried to stay in Lewisburg. He didn't want to go out in the country. | 38:30 |
Clay White | Right. But that's right. | 38:39 |
Ronald White | I would go out in the country. | 38:39 |
Clay White | Well, we used to go generally at the same time. But we went in two places. | 38:42 |
Ronald White | We did. But now as we got older, I kept going, and you didn't. | 38:47 |
Clay White | Right. And I could tell you that there were like three or four things we knew we had to do. You had to go to church, you had to go down to Lewisburg, and you had to go to, you had to speak to people. You know what I mean? There's some basic things you just had to do. You knew you were going college and you knew you had to go to school. Those things, those non-negotiable [indistinct 00:39:11]. But yeah, pretty much. We went, I used to live in Lewisburg most of the time and preferred there because later on we did have a running, a bathroom inside the house. Eventually we added that on. | 38:50 |
Ronald White | [indistinct 00:39:28] the outhouse. | 39:27 |
Clay White | The farm, you still had, their bathrooms came much later. You see what I'm saying? And I've been very picayune about those kind of things and slop jobs and things of that nature. I just could not, didn't want a [indistinct 00:39:44]. And I don't know whether I thought I was, I don't think I ever thought I was really better than anybody. I really just didn't want to live that kind of lifestyle. That's really what it amounted to. But the food — That's Mary [indistinct 00:40:00]. The food was always good at home and people always treated us as though we were special. I would say even today when we go to Lewisburg, or Kittrell or anywhere, we are just treated — I guess I'm not quite sure why, I'll tell you the truth when I sit here and think about it now, like this. But we always are treated as though we are extremely special. I don't consider anything about us any different from any of those persons who are there, who chose to stay or who chose to come back. But we are always treated special. | 39:27 |
Clay White | I don't care if it's a funeral, don't care where it is. I mean, we went down to see to my uncle's funeral and I still think that they catered to a lot of the people. I mean, the children of the deceased person, but they catered to us as well. Which makes me feel oftentimes as though somehow we are considered special. I'm not sure what it is that brings that out. | 40:47 |
Ronald White | Because of our mother and father. | 41:20 |
Clay White | Could be, yeah. | 41:22 |
Ronald White | I mean, it weren't really us. I mean, as we got older, yeah, we developed, but initially it just had to do with Mother and Daddy. They were all proud of Mother and Daddy. They liked Mother and Daddy. | 41:25 |
Clay White | Well, that could be. That could probably well be it. | 41:39 |
Ronald White | And it passed on to us. Now as we got older, we were more talkative, I guess it was. So we just talked our way on through it. That's all it amounted to. | 41:41 |
Clay White | Maybe so, I mean even today, we went to the church today and while we have not — Normally if we're here on a Sunday, we will generally go to the church. I haven't been at that church in a long time, but I have been there far more times than my brother. But today, and we got there about maybe five or 10 minutes after the church started. I don't know what made Ron just stand there in the back for some reason. I'm not sure what it was. I think he was waiting for the hymn to stop or something, for us to walk up. Because I would've normally just kept walking up to the front where we were going to sit and just sat down. For some reason he didn't. Then it turned out that the elder of the church came, left the front, and came right to the back where we were. Then we walked down the middle of the aisle, late. Shouldn't have been late. | 42:02 |
Ronald White | [indistinct 00:42:57]. | 42:56 |
Clay White | Right across the street. Just like a little processional. Which I thought was kind of cute but so unnecessary. It was that kind of specialness I'm saying, that I don't — I'm sure it has something to do with my mother and father, but I'm just trying to figure out what is it. Because it occurs with all of us, and not just myself and him, I mean it's just with this family. I don't know why. But I must say in an egotistical fashion that I like it, I guess. But I always try to study it, try to figure out where it is. Because I mean, we don't have any great claim of fame or anything, but at any rate, just something aside. | 42:56 |
Ronald White | I have a great claim to fame. | 43:31 |
Kara Miles | What is your claim to fame? | 43:31 |
Ronald White | Huh? | 43:32 |
Kara Miles | What is your claim to fame? | 43:39 |
Ronald White | God loves me. | 43:40 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 43:40 |
Clay White | Well, from that perspective I accept that. But I'm just saying in addition to that, I don't know. I would say, well, maybe it's the way we carry ourselves. I don't know what it is. But it happens and is on a continuous basis. | 43:45 |
Kara Miles | I want to get back to when you would go to Kittrell and Lewisburg for the summers. | 44:00 |
Ronald White | Rocky Ford. | 44:08 |
Kara Miles | Rocky Ford instead of Kittrell. Okay. Rocky Ford and Lewisburg for the summers. What was different about, I mean I know you've talked about it being country. Were there differences in the way people were, the differences maybe in how White people were? What were differences between New Bern and Lewisburg and Rocky Ford? | 44:09 |
Clay White | In Rocky Ford you don't deal with White folk. Like I said, it's all us out there. | 44:36 |
Ronald White | Except the store. | 44:38 |
Clay White | Huh? Except the store. Store was White folk. But they were depending on us, though. They was, how you doing? Yeah, yeah, how's — | 44:47 |
Ronald White | They knew who we were. They don't know your name. But you're John's children or some cousin or something. | 44:53 |
Clay White | It's never an issue or question. In Lewisburg, we were Miss Maide White's kid. Again, Franklin County, a racist, racist environment, but we were good Black folk. Excuse me. That's how they qualified it. We were good niggers. That's the reality of its time. Okay? And we didn't have problems. There were not contentions. | 45:01 |
Kara Miles | Okay. What was — | 45:45 |
Clay White | The White people who lived around, because in Lewisburg where we lived on North Elm Street, there were White people all around, which is unusual. Because like here in New Bern, there was never any White people around us here. We lived on the Black side of town. That's it. And we didn't see White folks except when you go to town. But in Lewisburg, they were across the street. They come and buy some eggs from our maid, or some chicken or something. Then we walking down the street, "Hi, Miss Maide." They call her Miss Maide. We all call her Miss Maide. Miss Maide was rough. She was the matriarch. | 45:47 |
Kara Miles | Now did they call, did White people call her Miss Maide because she demanded that? Or did they call all, did they give that respect to other Black women? | 46:34 |
Clay White | Oh, no. | 46:43 |
Kara Miles | She was just special. Okay. | 46:43 |
Ronald White | Exactly. I think too that — | 46:47 |
Clay White | Had nothing to do with the goodness of their hearts. Something happened. | 46:48 |
Clay White | I don't know, Ron like, "Clay, I can't tell you what it is, but all White people, I don't mean one or two—" | 0:04 |
Ronald White | She can walk in the grocery store. | 0:05 |
Clay White | All White people, "Ms. May." | 0:06 |
Ronald White | "Ms. May. How are you doing, Ms. May." | 0:09 |
Clay White | "Yeah, that's Ms. May's children." Didn't know your name at all. Never knew [indistinct 00:00:15]. | 0:10 |
Ronald White | I was identified as Ms. May's child. Ms. May— | 0:15 |
Clay White | And she had what we call instant credit. Now a lot of Black people had this, but she was a teacher getting paid once a month, so they knew that. So she'd go to the store, get what she wants, sign her name, and that was it. | 0:20 |
Ronald White | Or send us. | 0:31 |
Clay White | Or send us, "You're Ms. May's child, whatever Ms. May's child want, you just sign the bill and that's it." That was very unusual. | 0:32 |
Ronald White | Different than [indistinct 00:00:42]. | 0:41 |
Clay White | Both Black and White did that to her. And I don't know what it was. Now, she was a school teacher. I don't know what it was. But the other piece that you didn't mention, we used to play with White children. | 0:42 |
Ronald White | Yeah. | 0:57 |
Kara Miles | There? | 0:57 |
Clay White | In Lewisburg. | 0:59 |
Ronald White | Only In Lewisburg. | 1:00 |
Clay White | We used to play with White children up until we got older. | 1:01 |
Ronald White | The most racist place in the world. | 1:02 |
Clay White | Yeah, but it was not a problem playing with White children. | 1:02 |
Kara Miles | Up until you got older. How old was— | 1:08 |
Clay White | That was the whole key to White people, see? | 1:10 |
Kara Miles | Yeah. | 1:11 |
Clay White | You played up until about what, 10 years old maybe? | 1:11 |
Ronald White | 12. | 1:15 |
Clay White | 10, 12. And then that stopped. You actually stopped. That was actually [indistinct 00:01:23]. | 1:17 |
Ronald White | They just disappeared. | 1:23 |
Clay White | That's right. It was was like no more speaking really. It was something that happened and that's been traditional. | 1:24 |
Ronald White | But their parents would still come around, "Hey, Ms. May." But the children— | 1:32 |
Clay White | If somebody died, White folks would come and bring you stuff. And vice versa, if their people died, you'd go and bring them [indistinct 00:01:47] things and they would accept it. But— | 1:40 |
Ronald White | You were neighbors— | 1:49 |
Clay White | That's right. | 1:52 |
Ronald White | — in all sense of the word. | 1:52 |
Clay White | That's right. | 1:52 |
Kara Miles | But what did you think of that though when you turned 12 and the White kids weren't around to play with anymore? Did you know why that was then— | 1:53 |
Ronald White | Well— | 2:01 |
Kara Miles | — and what did you think of that? | 2:03 |
Ronald White | — at 12 was when I didn't spend as much time in nurse breeding, so it was not ever significant. You have to understand that at 12 years old, for me it's 1959, okay. So I don't know nothing about what Black was. I don't know nothing about that. Nobody said nothing about it. I didn't know nothing about it. What is, that's all it is. That's all I know, what is. I have no understandings beyond that. At 12, it's more fun to play with my cousins out at the farm because they're boys around my same age. | 2:05 |
Ronald White | There were no children because my maid and my Aunt May didn't get married. My cousin Gerald got married but didn't have any children and didn't stay married very long, and these were the mainstays of the household. Now, I would go see all the cousins that were in Lewisburg, probably more than any of my brothers and sisters. I went to visit everybody, that's what I did. I'd be following my father around earlier, and as I got older I still did it. So everybody knew me, I knew everybody. But it was just more fun, and I wasn't into girls yet, so it didn't matter, you'd go play with the boys. And it's more fun to ride the mules and go down the pasture and stay on the farm. So it was more fun. | 2:52 |
Ronald White | Then at 13 I stopped. I stopped going, I began to work here in the summers. I started cutting grass, that's my first [indistinct 00:03:46] was a grass cutter, group of 13 used to make money, that's good. And I never went back, but [indistinct 00:03:53]. | 3:36 |
Clay White | Going back to your other piece that you raised about how you feel now, a little different than Ron, I was concerned. But it was a thing in my household, in Lewisburg I'm speaking to now, that I knew from living here that there was a difference between White and Black. And that's one thing my parents always made it clear to us that there were a difference, and we were always taught you had to be twice as good as White people to be not so much accepted by White people, but just be accepted across the board. | 3:54 |
Clay White | All right. But when I was in Lewisburg you didn't tend to get that kind of pressure as we got it here. And one of the reason was because everybody in Lewisburg knew their place. It was like a unwritten rule— | 4:24 |
Ronald White | Everybody knew— | 4:38 |
Clay White | — you know your place, you accepted your place, and it was not even an issue. And therefore you just fell in line, if you will. Do you follow me? Now, with Aunt May being so strong and having a different composition amongst the White folks there, and I to this day cannot tell you why. | 4:38 |
Ronald White | I have no idea. | 5:03 |
Clay White | But she had a different kind of role which made us have a different kind of role. He's right because [indistinct 00:05:06] has that role now. It made us have a different role. Not better than anybody, but we were just like a notch above. Do you understand what I'm saying? Now, whether that's right or not, that's what really happened. So when White folks kind of backed off, I asked the questions because unlike Ron, Ron just kind of rolled along and I simply asked the questions. And they were getting very angry with me because I could not accept the fact or didn't accept the fact to their satisfaction of just saying, "Well, this is just the way it is." | 5:03 |
Clay White | They knew that between 10, 12 this is going to change. They had gone through that experience before with older relatives that they helped to rear, and we talking about [indistinct 00:05:51] because she helped to rear about two or three lines of us. But it was okay while it happened, but they knew it, but they never prepared you for it. My mother would always prepare us for segregation and White versus Black, but down there, they never did. We never talked about it, it was just like it was— | 5:38 |
Ronald White | The only time we knew and it was clear was when we went to the movies. | 6:17 |
Clay White | To the movies, right. | 6:22 |
Ronald White | When we went to the movies— | 6:22 |
Clay White | And that was one of the reasons they never really wanted us to go to the movies. | 6:26 |
Ronald White | Yes, they really didn't. | 6:28 |
Clay White | They really didn't. | 6:29 |
Ronald White | But they let us because we wanted to go. | 6:29 |
Clay White | Yeah, we just begged them and carried on— | 6:31 |
Ronald White | We had to sit in the balcony, and our little neighbors go sit downstairs. | 6:32 |
Clay White | Excuse me. | 6:38 |
Ronald White | And that was the real thing. Because see here in New Bern we didn't hardly ever go to the movies anyway. The few times we did, same way here, sit in the balcony. That's how it was. But you didn't associate with the White people, so it wasn't like, "That's James down there." We're in Lewisburg, that'd be James down there. | 6:39 |
Clay White | And they would see you coming, we all on [indistinct 00:07:02]. | 7:00 |
Ronald White | Hey, we all be outside. Go there, and we have to go to the side door and go upstairs. | 7:04 |
Clay White | Yeah. And then there was a difference when they see you they kind of wave a little bit, but that was it. They were controlled. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? They couldn't go and do like they normally have done with you because they were outside that confine then. And you knew immediately something ain't right here. But my aunts just never dealt with it. It seemed as though they lived in a life that they knew it existed. | 7:07 |
Clay White | But you've got to understand that my aunts, again it's a derivative from going to private school, having to eat at a restaurant, all that kind of thing, everybody looked up to them, they were like bulwarks of the community. And so I think they kind of transcended that. Not being ignorant of it, they just felt the best way to deal with it is just kind of transcend it, I do believe. But that was Ku Klux Klan country very clearly, as it were clear that we had a lot of different cultures there. No questions about it. | 7:34 |
Clay White | But not to drag it on, but that's really what I think happened. Here on the converse, totally different. I remember one story— Go ahead. | 8:08 |
Ronald White | Well, when I was five years old, that's when I first experienced that this is crazy. There used to be a bus company in New Bern, and the little bus would ride around place to place. No, I wasn't five, I was seven. We lived on North Branch Street. My father and I had gone downtown and he had to stay down there for something, and he put me on the bus to come back home because right there on George Street and I get off and go home. | 8:20 |
Ronald White | But I sat in the front part of the bus. I didn't know. I didn't think about it because nobody never said nothing to me about it. The bus driver stopped the bus and he grabbed me and shook me and scared me to death. And I remember very clearly that he scared me, and I didn't know what in the world I had done. But he pushed me back and told me to get in the back of the bus where I belong. Well that's fine with me, I didn't care. But it just shook me, it scared me. I really didn't want to ride the bus that much after that. | 8:58 |
Ronald White | But that was my first experience of knowing there was some real stuff out here as related to dealing with White folk, but by and large I didn't react. Now, I went to a Black church, a Black school, I had Black friends, I lived in a Black neighborhood. The only time I came in contact with White people was when I went with my father to the stores downtown, be it the grocery store, or the jewelry store, or the printing company where you have stuff printed up for church, or the chicken hatchery. Those are the little things that I remember where there were White people. | 9:48 |
Ronald White | I never played with any White children because in New Bern there was an identifiable Black community. Now I was one boy in church with me who lived in the White neighborhood down by the river who died. And when I would go to his house, he'd have some little White friends around that I may interact with. But by and large I didn't deal with White men. It wasn't until I was 14 and I left here working in Nags Head that I got a clear picture of what it was like in a world with White folks because walking down the street there White folks would drive by and throw bottles at us. It was a reminder. Okay, well this was around 1960, '61, hopefully things had started to change. | 10:48 |
Clay White | No, don't get to that piece yet. Let me just go back another little piece, I think Ron [indistinct 00:11:57] that here in New Bern, I think my mother, in fact I know my mother was a very fearful person when it came to White people. In other words, fearful in the sense, not afraid of them, per se, but afraid of the knowledge of what they could do. And the feeling that as a mother, her first protection or her first act of business is for her children and then for the protection of her children, all right. She was very firm in that because she certainly felt that— Today, I really think that my mother, even though she's been sick for a long time, I still believe in my gut that she is hanging on because of her children because I think her children came to be her center. | 11:45 |
Clay White | And in light of that, she was always afraid for us as to what White people would do. And it was always clear to me that— Because Ron was correct, she grew up in this Black community confine, and here in New Bern, she had to be amongst all these Whites that I don't think she ever felt comfortable with, and always tried to protect us, Ron will talk about the marches and stuff later that we got all involved in. But the point I'm trying to make was because she was so fearful, she made clear to us that, at least to me, the different dynamics of White versus Black, the dos and the don'ts, and the overemphasis of don't. | 12:44 |
Clay White | I can remember on the bus going to Lewisburg all the time dutifully she would grab my hand and almost snatch me to the back and I was trying to be a Rosa Parks and stay in the front because the idea was that I was going to the back, I just wasn't going to try to rush because all the fumes always in the back seats of the bus, you remember those back windows back then. But she generally would go back there, all the way back, and sit in the last two or three rows from the rear. I'll never forget it because I'd always ask her why, because she wanted to be sure that she would not be bothered by Whites, or we would not be bothered by— | 13:34 |
Clay White | So from her, my father was the kind of a man who, because he believed in God and he believed in the generosity of life, et cetera, he always looked for the good in man no matter what the color. Recognizing that was a difference. Recognizing that there were different standards, a double standard, but still trying to look at the higher road, if you will. My mother was very pointed in making certain that we understood the dos and the don'ts and that type of concept. | 14:21 |
Ronald White | See now, this is where we are very, very different, and that has to do with that. I didn't travel very often with my mother, a few occasions, very seldom. But my mother never talked to me about any of this kind of thing. And I never even until the civil rights movement of the mid and later '60s, and after she'd already said stuff to Clay, she never said stuff to me. So we never talked about all that kind of stuff. | 14:48 |
Ronald White | And my father's attitude was very different. My father walked down the street and he might speak to a tree because he was speaking to everybody, "How are you doing? How's it going? How are you there? Good to see you." And that's the same as I did. | 15:18 |
Clay White | He did that biblical on this. | 15:33 |
Ronald White | So when I'm going on the bus, I'm just, "Hey," I would tell you White, Black, blue, brown, "How are you doing? What's happening today? Where's it going?" And that's how I dealt. It was never impressed upon me about White and Black things. But my one experience on the bus at seven made it unnecessary for it to be because it was already there. So I didn't have any interest in White folk, I really didn't. So I ain't going to be around them. As a child growing up, I can't say I had fear, although I had uncertainties, stuff you don't know about, you're really uncertain about, and you hear such bad things about. | 15:34 |
Ronald White | I look at myself now and I realize, I'm sure that I must have felt inferior because we grew up in a socialization kind of a process that brings that about. But in my understanding there was no understanding of inferiority, there was an understanding that this must be some crazy people. These White folk must really be crazy. And that was how it came out. I knew everybody that my father knew so I could go downtown and I didn't have to be with him. Most of the store managers and stuff did know me, I didn't have problems. I didn't have any reason to want to change what was there. I just wanted to be on about my life because I didn't know you could change stuff. It wasn't until much later. Now the '60s bring about a whole new story, it is night and day. It is not the same story. It is a new story. | 16:28 |
Clay White | But I wish just quickly to say that in terms of my mother, I think for all of us, certainly the girls and myself, I know the rudiment of my disdainfulness of White people, really, I think started with her in that— because she sort of tried to prepare me for it, which I'm appreciative to today. But I can remember some of her bitterness. Now Ron used a term that I used a lot to up in DC, talk about inferiority. And I know when I got to that level inferiority, which I'll talk about in high school. But I didn't know that up until that time. | 17:54 |
Clay White | I never really felt in my earlier years inferior to White people. I couldn't understand it, I just couldn't understand why it was suddenly such a great difference. And I'll get to that in minute in terms of my father's aspect, but my mother, I don't think she saw or felt inferior, and maybe she did, but I never got that impression from her. But she was angry at, one, what they had done and what they could do to her people, or to her and her family. | 18:28 |
Ronald White | But we never, Clay, really understood it until mama developed Alzheimer's. Because when mama developed Alzheimer's, all of that learned behavior left, all of that nicety left. Mama could now, in her Alzheimer condition, cuss out White folk just because they're White folk. And she would because she didn't care about them at all. And I knew before this that all the stuff I felt she had been feeling too, she just wouldn't say it. But it was never made so clear as it was when she developed Alzheimer's. And then I knew how much all her life she had repressed inside of her all of her life, held in, held back, pushed in, and she hated so much. So much anger inside of her, and that became clear then. | 18:58 |
Clay White | Yeah, Ron hitting it right on the head. See that's why I was telling you earlier, I didn't see it as being inferior. I never thought she felt that way, but I knew that she was holding it all in her and trying to prepare us. And one of the things that I'll never forget, and Ron will tell you all the funny little stories about these marches, but I cannot forget [indistinct 00:20:25]. Okay. But anyway, but Mother took me downtown and made me buy some shoes, and I never got nothing for her. And she could not stand the fact, if anybody called my father Charles, that's because they were White. | 20:03 |
Clay White | Now most people did call him Reverend White, I must say, but there were some Whites who wouldn't. That she would be the one, not my father, but she'd be the one to stand there and say, "His name is Reverend White." She's get real loud, it's be like it would just come out all of a sudden, but now she was little older now. And so that one kind of [indistinct 00:21:01] no Whites just couldn't handle that little piece. And then when anybody asked her her name, she would tell you, "Mrs. White," or, "Mrs. E. S. B. White," that's what she wanted to be called. And Ron and Jay, we went to school for years, we didn't know her name— | 20:40 |
Ronald White | I was about 12, 13 before I knew mama name. ESB. "What's your mama name?" | 21:16 |
Ronald White | "ESB." | 21:17 |
Ronald White | "What ESB stand for?" | 21:17 |
Ronald White | "My mama." | 21:23 |
Clay White | But going back to her father and her grandfather made sure that you're not going to be disrespected, and your name was very important. That was your key, that was your monogram. When you didn't have nothing else, you didn't have no money, you had your name. And so she was deaf on that, but people still want to call her first name was Elizabeth. And people would try to call her Elizabeth, and she would just be so infuriated, but depending on the circumstances would determine whether she would do something about it. | 21:26 |
Ronald White | She may ignore you— | 21:55 |
Clay White | Or not. Do you understand what I'm saying? | 21:56 |
Ronald White | Cuss you then flush you out. | 21:58 |
Clay White | It all depends on some kids or some other kinds of concerns that she had. And I'll never forget one day somebody called her Elizabeth, and I'll never forget these shoes were like $13, that was a lot of money that day and time. And call her, she just like, and I think to this day that she might not have done it if it hadn't been her by herself, but her girls was there, I was there, I don't know where you were. | 22:01 |
Ronald White | I ain't never around. | 22:26 |
Clay White | But the three of us were with her. And I think because we were there, she was not going to let them disrespect her in front of us. Oh, she carried on. Oh, she laid that lady up in there. In fact so bad because she's already frightened me about racism anyway, that I just knew we were going to jail. But my mother just got off. But that lady turned back around finally, and the manager came and chastised this White lady and called her by her name Mrs. White. Ooh, I was so scared, my heart jumped, and I know my fears today come from my mother, and not from my father today. | 22:28 |
Clay White | Excuse me. And the other thing about my father, because he was such a good man, this man lived about what he talked about, that's one thing I always remind him in his life. Now, I think he beat me too much. But— | 23:12 |
Ronald White | I think he beat you too much because— | 23:28 |
Clay White | — spiritually, he lived by his life's work. But one thing I could never understand is that we always passed by First Presbyterian Church downtown. And I always would ask him, he could never give nothing good reason why we couldn't go to that church. That was a bigger church, it looked prettier than our church, and why couldn't we visit? Or why was it that we all believe in the same God, why we had to be different, and we went through this whole scenario? | 23:31 |
Ronald White | Did you all ever get to go [indistinct 00:23:58]? | 23:56 |
Clay White | I don't think I've ever been. No, I know I haven't. | 24:00 |
Ronald White | But in the '60s [indistinct 00:24:04]. | 24:03 |
Clay White | Okay. But he could never satisfy me with the answer. And that was the only time— I never understand my father to lie, never known him to lie, he just purposely just didn't tell, didn't want to deal with it, but didn't want to— but try to rationalize it and all, what I call a light fashion, it didn't make too much sense in the end. | 24:04 |
Ronald White | Nobody said that this is racism. We never heard the word. | 24:26 |
Clay White | Yeah, we didn't use that term. | 24:30 |
Ronald White | And so there was no way to just define what was going on. | 24:33 |
Clay White | Yeah. But we knew it was a difference. I'm going to cut back to the chase. But our parents had a lot to do with our molding of our heads in terms of acceptability, and I'm not going to get to the piece right now, but in terms of inferiority because I'm talking about, it's an inculcation, and I know that I always had— I dread, I'll never forget it. I dread it that's why I look at you when you tell me you went to [indistinct 00:25:00] and you tell me you're at Duke now. And I went to Johnson because I knew I had to go somewhere Black because I knew White folks was just so superior to us. | 24:36 |
Clay White | And that's when I got to that attitude in high school. It took out about the last couple of years of high school because they built us a $100,000 high school back over here, when the JC Borough was built, they built the White folks a million-dollar school. But we said $100,000 versus a million. I didn't know about that kind of money, but I knew it was a big difference and a big difference mean automatically it was a big learning difference, and your preparation is going to be totally different. | 25:09 |
Clay White | So without even getting into the fact, you automatically have digested this automatically, all right? And that's what happened to many of us. And so therefore I'll never forget when I went to University of North Carolina at Smith, oh I dread. Ron didn't take because he was at University of North Carolina. And I said oh I was scared to go there because I just knew I couldn't compete, I wasn't prepared. | 25:34 |
Clay White | And finally I went to one of those White schools, dreadfully, and then I saw them crackers didn't know as much as I knew, I just couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. And all that baggage just seemed to have just dissipated. And I'm just dumbfound for all these years and I had carried this. Do you understand what I'm saying? And I think it was at that time I began to free myself to say, "Hey." I'm not sure I'm totally free now, but at least feel a lot better that I know that I don't have to carry that baggage. But it's a hell of a psychological thing to deal with. | 25:52 |
Clay White | Now Ron never— I don't think he ever really went through all that as I did. But I was just in trauma, and I was in college. Trauma. It was one those summer workshop deals, I used to go to school all year round because I didn't want to work, and we ended up at the University of Indiana. | 26:31 |
Ronald White | I never came back. I went to some [indistinct 00:26:45]. | 26:44 |
Clay White | I went to the University of Indiana and I thought this Whites they don't know nothing. I mean, they were okay but not brilliant. I was always going to be a little smarty over here, but nothing to my trepidation, nothing to my feelings and so forth and so on. But the whole point is my mother really taught me that separation, and my sisters too because my other brother and sisters, they came up in a different era behind us so they didn't get the exact thing that we got. | 26:44 |
Clay White | And you'll find it in the Black family I think too that the oldest two, I was like the middle child but the oldest people were reared one way and then the middle child's reared a second way, and your lesser [indistinct 00:27:30] are reared a third way. And that's really what happens. And I think what parents did was, in terms of my parents, they gave more of themselves to my brothers and other sister, in a sense of— | 27:15 |
Ronald White | [indistinct 00:27:43]. The older children get the most time. | 27:43 |
Clay White | No, no, I don't mean time so much, but I mean information, I mean being able to learn— | 27:45 |
Ronald White | They didn't give us anymore. We just had had more to see because we could sit back and it be all this stuff going on around. | 27:50 |
Clay White | Yeah, maybe that's what it was. | 27:59 |
Ronald White | Just watching you, how you got in trouble, I knew what not to do. | 28:01 |
Clay White | Yeah, maybe that's what it was. | 28:05 |
Ronald White | It's very clear | 28:08 |
Clay White | Racism in New Bern was very definite, it was very strong. You had defined roles to play. And when we finally came up against that, Ron will get into it, we really turned— this whole city has never since been the same. But it came about when we said one day we were not going to continue to play those roles. And in the same way I guess we still played them differently. | 28:10 |
Kara Miles | What do you think? What was the deciding factor that made you say, "Okay, now is that day"? | 28:42 |
Ronald White | We had nothing to do with it. | 28:48 |
Kara Miles | Oh. | 28:48 |
Ronald White | It was fate. It was a movement that just sucked us up. We were at the right place at the right time. I could have gone on being who I was but however you turn out being that way. That's all I can say. But a movement came. The key ingredient of the movement for Black people as well as White people was television. That's the key thing. Finally you knew. You never got to see the lives of White people because you weren't really interacting in their lives. Somebody on your block would have a TV, you go watch Ed Sullivan and maybe Lucy or Jack Benny. There's no real stories, right? But as more people got televisions, you started seeing Father Knows Best and some of those other programs in the '50s. | 28:50 |
Ronald White | But anyway, believe it or not, it was the advent of television that helped you to know that, "There's something totally different out here that we don't know nothing about, we ain't got no exposure, we ain't even around, we ain't even in, we're not even with it. What is this?" Then you heard that some Black people, some Colored people, because that's what you heard, some Colored people down here in Alabama, it ain't us, them down there, are protesting about where they sit on the bus. That hit on me immediately. I understand that. That's right. "Somebody by the name of Martin Luther King is leading some marches.Well, I sure hope he does well," I said. | 30:10 |
Ronald White | Then you hear on TV, back on the radio and you're going to read the Sun Journal, of course [indistinct 00:31:25] we've got one little page that's a corner of a page called the Negro News in the Sun Journal. At this point I came, so in New Bern, we've got the Sun Journal because my father puts a little church news and then the Negro news section stuff. But they don't write nothing, it's going to be about nothing, it's going to teach me nothing, so we didn't pay any attention. | 31:17 |
Ronald White | Boom, TV. We learn that some people in Greensboro, North Carolina were having a sit-in. "A what?" | 31:50 |
Ronald White | "It's a sit-in at a lunch counter." | 32:01 |
Ronald White | "They're sitting in in a lunch counter? Well, that means more than riding the bus any day." | 32:06 |
Ronald White | "And it's right here in Greensboro in North Carolina, we've got some stuff happening." | 32:11 |
Ronald White | Well, within a matter of days, days, I don't mean one week, in a matter of days, my older brother and some of his classmates are in some meeting at this church over here talking to somebody about something, "Oh my goodness, something is happening in New Bern." And that's how I came across— because you don't know what's really going on, what's happening or why. Well, it's activity, there's something going on. That's all we know. People was just singing. And, "Hey, what are they singing about?" | 32:19 |
Ronald White | "I don't know, but they're just singing in there." And it was spirit-filled, so you're just glad to be around. Because I'm younger and they know what's going on. I don't know what's going on. "Hey, they know what's going on. It must be cool." But I'm still watching TV, and there are demonstrations happening all over the country and it's right there on TV. "Did you see that? Those are some Black people over there. They got hit in the head by the police. Did you see that?" Well that made me angry. Didn't hit me. But I saw some Black people get hit— excuse me— some Colored people. We just wanted to be called at that point, Negroes, "Please call me a Negro. Black? Black what?" We ain't at that stage yet. | 32:46 |
Ronald White | But it's interesting when you think back about it. In the beginning I just heard about that they had a march at the Crest and a sit-in at the counter on Middle Street at the Crescent store in New Bern. "Lord have mercy. Something is happening now. I'm going to be in the next meeting, I'm going to be there." And my brother— I said, "Yeah, I was there." | 33:41 |
Ronald White | I said, "Bro, did you go down there?" He said, "Yeah." | 34:15 |
Ronald White | "I'm tell Mum and Daddy." I said, "All right." And that's how I got— It was still not a real understanding of what was going on, and it was no animosity, not really, it's just something happening. But then the next time there was another march and they brought in the dogs and the water cannons and they were beating up on people I knew right here in New Bern. Well, that hurt my feelings. They didn't beat me up, I wasn't there. But I knew these people who were getting beat up and bitten by dogs, and have water cannons all over them. | 34:17 |
Ronald White | Well for the first time I'm angry. But again, when I watch it on television, I begin to hear words like racist. "Oh, that's what it is. Racist." And I began to put these things together. My parents never defined to me what was going on. And when I finally got to a couple of meetings on the side myself, because I was a little bit younger, and I began to hear that God was on our side. Well, that was good. But I was scared. I was scared because people were getting hurt. | 35:19 |
Ronald White | And my brother wanted to be out there in it. He had been in there one time and my mother and dad had gone off on him and made him come back in. They just went crazy around this— this house went crazy because they found out that Clay had been out there. But they made clay promise up and down he was not going to be out there anymore. They made me promise. And it hurt our feelings. It hurt us because we had always been a part of everything that was going on in New Bern. If people were doing it in New Bern, we were doing it. And here was something going on that was important called fighting racism for civil rights, and our mother and father don't want us there. And our daddy is a preacher, and this is being led by preachers, and God is on our side. Well I didn't understand. "That happened. I don't like it. I don't understand." I'll let Clay talk to you. | 36:22 |
Clay White | Well no more than to say that after that because the city had just kept going, we just defied them, and I think that's probably been the only open defiance that we had in our parents. We always did some things wrong, but I mean open defiance because we just could not continue to stay back and not do— And of course unlike my brother, I was never watched down the street and all like he was, but in my class here in New Bern, we were getting to march around the Crest stores, and it did generate—. I think, significant historically would be that when you look at Jesse Jackson and all [indistinct 00:38:28] when they did that march, then I think that this city high school was the, I think, third school in the state to join just that fast like Ron was talking about, which was just very unusual. | 37:41 |
Clay White | But that came about because we already had in place a system of people getting people together on issues prior to the sit-ins anyway. So we always were doing some kind of a protest, not to that extent of picketing and what have you, but meetings trying to get different things done in the city for our people, et cetera, voting, et cetera, we were trying to do all those kind of things. So you already had that umbrella intact. So when it came from this group, it was just a matter of fact of putting that same umbrella together again. | 38:41 |
Clay White | And then with the students involved, and then we just carried a different wave. But again, I think what Ron was bringing up to let you know that what people don't like to talk about in the history, because a lot of our people, inclusive our parents, really didn't want us involved out of fear. They knew it was right, they knew that we had to stand up, but they were just afraid for us, and that's what it was about too. I can remember leaving that door and my mother is just breaking down because she, of course, again, talking the TV situation, knowing that people gotten killed and hung and the whole works, I think she was so afraid that that would happen to her children. Remember I kept saying that I think her life centered around us as children. | 39:13 |
Clay White | And so that great feel, they felt that negotiations, that same kind of feeling that a lot of Black people had, negotiations, we could talk it through, et cetera, would be the best way, as opposed to confrontational. And for young people, the confrontational methods, certainly was the one that won out. But then the other piece of that is to say from that experience, Ronald touched on it, fear because of my mother, she has just really generated a lot of fear in me, and I can tell you that, I guess as I've done a lot of things in my life, I've always had that fear every time I would walk. But it was something I just felt I had to do. | 39:52 |
Clay White | Though, unlike a lot of people, a lot of people would tell you, "Oh yeah, I wasn't scared. I was not that stuck in the head." With me, I was scared to death, literally petrified but because of the dignity that I was seeking for myself first, I wasn't thinking about my own children, but thinking about Black people as a whole, I was able to overcome, not overcome it, but I was able to function in spite of the fear, that's what I wanted to say. I can't say the fear left me, but it was a wonderful experience because then when I went to Johnson's, the experience, as you know, it intensified into other kinds of things. Even in Charlotte, we went and— so I was able right there to fit right in the leadership there, and of course I didn't have my parents here so I was able to do it anyway. | 40:42 |
Clay White | And Ron defied my parents as well because it was like his class of people came right after me and they took the next stages and the next steps in terms of here in New Bern. But New Bern, historically, in terms of that march era, should go down in history as one of the real focal pushes within the state. And a lot of the areas around New Bern became over sensitized because what happened in New Bern, because it got real ugly. But it helped to break down the barriers all around in this area, so it really was very significant, there's no question about it, historically. But for my sister, Mary- | 41:36 |
Ronald White | She was gone. | 42:24 |
Clay White | She wasn't here, but because of what, she knew what we had done and she wasn't here. So when she was in Charlotte at Smith again, and I was there with her, when the marches came there, while she didn't take the leadership as I did, but she was there with me and that was her first time involved, and of course from that point, I think for she, myself and my brother have always moved in our lifespan in that arena ever since. And I think a lot of his work has been [indistinct 00:43:09]. Yeah, go ahead. | 42:26 |
Ronald White | It wasn't until 1963 on the March in Washington, there were a couple of busloads that were coming from here in New Bern, going up to March, and I was supposed to go, a lot of my friends were going. And my mother and father and I got into a real big thing, and they wouldn't allow me to go. And that day we sat around the house all day and we watched it on television because it was on TV live all day long. | 43:11 |
Ronald White | Well, we watched it all day, and that night my father apologized to me. He ain't never apologized to me about nothing in his whole life. Nothing in his whole life that he ever apologized to me about, but that night he apologized to me for his attitude and his concerns, and promised that he would never stand in the way of change again in his life. He said he may not know what to do but it was obvious that he was out of line, but that he knew he was wrong to have stopped us, and that because of him I was not able to be a part of history. Now he didn't know at the time that Clay and my sister, Mary, and my sister, Charlene, were all there. He didn't know. He thought none of them were there. | 44:00 |
Clay White | He never knew at the time. | 45:28 |
Ronald White | But I was the only one that didn't get to go. | 45:31 |
Clay White | But I've learned so much from those experiences. And it is true, and I think what I carry now in my heart is an old story that a friend of mine, I won't take the credit, tells us all the time, she's one of the people I work for, Dr. Jackson, and she says, and anything that people say they can't do, she always reminds us of Rosa Parks. It only took one person to light the fire for the world to change. And that's the kind of sense that you have to carry with you. And you've got to understand, and again, historically, moving back again with my father, he was a very strong proponent of urban renewal here in this city. But urban renewal as you know historically turned out to be Black removal, all right. | 45:33 |
Clay White | So there were conflicts in his life because he could see the advantage. This street there right here where we now sit on, used to be with this house on, it used to be a gravel and stuff, and it's because of his work and some others, but mainly his because most Black people would not come out for it. And as I can remember when this street was paved, we didn't have sidewalks. And I can remember when he got the sidewalks, and I mean when he got the— | 46:27 |
Clay White | — ties him to the ambiguity of people. That's what we're trying to say [indistinct 00:00:05]. When you think you're doing good, you end up maybe hurting others that you didn't intend to hurt. | 0:01 |
Clay White | He had a vision. He could see things way down the line that most people, sometimes we couldn't see it. But it's unusual. I can't think of too much if not anything really, Ross, if I sit here and think about it, that he had vision on that has not really come to the pass that it made sense, the things generally that he talked about or pronounced or looked down the road toward. | 0:11 |
Clay White | When you look at urban renewal in a proper sense, that the way it's being done treated now a lot more, because we are a lot more intelligent and it can control our own directions to some extent. I think that it has brought some good. | 0:31 |
Ronald White | The one thing throw this in there was always different about my father comparatively. My father was a big one on Negro history. So there were always books here on Negro history, and he was the first person who I remember saying that Negro history week ought to be a year round for us. | 0:46 |
Ronald White | That as a small child, he used to say that to him, and he used to give us little quizzes, and if we got the answers right, he'd give us a nickel and told us that it was important to know famous Negroes, because that's what he called them, because Black hadn't become a term yet, and African American was unheard of. Everybody was calling each other Colored, and that was supposed to be bad. | 1:19 |
Clay White | And that was interesting point you raised, and that's true. And not only that, every friend that we have today, I don't care who they are, if anybody was close to us as we were growing up would tell you they mentioned it even now, how if they came over here to visit, they had worries. They didn't want to come because they sometimes, because they had to always stand up here and answer some of these questions and my mother- | 1:55 |
Ronald White | Any of our friends, he'd give them quizzes. | 2:17 |
Clay White | And my mother used to make him, she said, "Charles, let those children go," because he was staring right here in this living room. I can see him just like it was yesterday. And you had to go, I mean, in North Bern Street too, but you had to answer them questions. | 2:18 |
Clay White | He loved Frederick Douglass and he could just expound on all these Black Americans, well, man, as you say Negro, and famous, because he felt that, one, we should know our history and that should encourage us and propel us to do great things ourselves. That's really the way we bothered you in nutshell. | 2:35 |
Clay White | When I look at that, that was a very inspiring kind of situation, and I think that all of that has helped to lead all of us, with my sister before she came here to take care of my mother, and even only in embryonic stage here at New Bern and not as much as she would have want. But she's always been involved in advancement of people and a lot of people. | 2:52 |
Clay White | In her way, she wasn't a Rosa Park but helped young children do all of those kinds of things. My brother functioned so gratefully in the community programs in the state of North Carolina, and before moving on up to DC. | 3:18 |
Clay White | And while I'll be a school teacher but I just worked in a lot of other little groups in terms of projects trying to make a difference. But again, all leading from that basics that we got here, and it is true and you sit back and all this becomes a part of you, part of the psyche. | 3:36 |
Clay White | But let tell you the New Bern, because of that one march has just made so many changes, and even because today it's nothing like it was a few years ago. We talking about this, it was 30 years ago, and today you have a whole different type of White person here now, because they had moved there from New York or other places. | 3:56 |
Clay White | They're not the original native New Bernians. It's a whole different kind of culture here today, and it has changed and I have noticed it since then. | 4:22 |
Kara Miles | Tell me about the old New Bernians, the kind of White people from New Bern who were here when you were growing up here. How would you say they're different from the ones who are here now? | 4:34 |
Clay White | I wouldn't say that. Well, I think that one thing is that newer people here have no sense of real community, number one, and it's because they're new to community. I mean it's hard for you to have it. There's no legacy, no ties. I can tell you, it used to used to be all man, when the daddy died, the son would take over the business and so it was always continuation there. | 4:47 |
Clay White | I know Reverend White, Daddy used to bring [indistinct 00:05:14] for it, so it was always a continuity. I think now you have another man may have an oil company that has no sense of tie whatsoever. It could care less and that's less sensitivity. I mean that's how I see it, though I'm not here that much now, natural like I used to be. | 5:10 |
Clay White | I think that as we have gone and we had some house work done this house, we have seen people, some of the older people still remembering times past. "I know something about your parents, I know that there is a time," remember the house or maybe something about you or symbolic of you that they can recount. | 5:39 |
Clay White | All that brings a homogeneous feeling, I think, a lot more than you will find for the more younger person or the person who roots are not really here. I think too, the older people have seen those changes, gone through them right along with Black folks. So their way of being handled by you, that way of handling you, I guess is if you get blooded by it, the way that you communicate with each other, it's going to be just different. It's going to be a better camaraderie I think between you than those persons who have not those same type of sensitivities. | 6:01 |
Kara Miles | Would you say that camaraderie existed when you were growing up? | 6:56 |
Clay White | No, I don't think so much camaraderie existed at that time. I think that over time, even though you're still different, White is White and Black is Black, but over time, there is some type of coming together I think in a sense of— I think there's a common ground of events that occurred. That's what I'm trying to say. | 6:59 |
Clay White | I think that if they are 50 years old and if they were here during the time that I was here during the march at Crest, they could have seen the tension as I saw the tension. Here, at the same time, once it was integrated you could see that people really could eat and drink water. They didn't want you there. But because we didn't have the money to go down there, but at least we had the right to go, and that was important to us. | 7:28 |
Clay White | When we did go, they might have thrown the water in there, but you could sit there still and eat without being put in jail or be called a nigger right to your face right then and there. I'm saying that, so there tends to be out of conflict sometimes a sense of ownership to issues and happenings over a period of time that there is some type of commonality. | 7:50 |
Clay White | It's no more than just a common sense of knowledge, doesn't mean that I fully even accept it now, but a common sense of knowledge. I'm saying that when you have come from New York living here in the new harbor across the river, you just work over here in the store, but you the manager or something, you don't bring that dynamic with you, and therefore, the way you treat me, it's going to be, in a sense of, I don't want to say disrespect, but it's not going to give you that— You're not going to treat me with the same commonality because you don't have that sense of legacy and that sense of issue for orientation together. | 8:20 |
Ronald White | I think I see it just a little differently. | 8:56 |
Clay White | Go ahead. | 8:56 |
Ronald White | And that 30 years ago, if you're a good nigger, "I'm going to like you, boy, and I'm going to be all right by it. I'm going to be paternalistically beholden to you as long as you live on." What has happened over the 30 years is that the words have changed, but the realizations are the same because we don't own nothing. | 9:01 |
Ronald White | We didn't own it there. We don't own it there. It's still America, North or South, east to west. It's the racism that is the best. And I say it in that way because it's true throughout the world that what has evolved here as a racist society has permeated to its core. There is an influx finally of older Whites, adults, from the the North mainly into the New Bern area as a retirement area. | 9:44 |
Ronald White | It's changed the economic flavor of the environment. It means that, "No, I ain't looking for no boys. I just want the job done. I don't care if you're good or bad going, going to do it right or wrong, I don't care. But I ain't going to give you nothing neither." So nothing economically has changed. | 10:39 |
Ronald White | Socially, we are seeing the end of a cultural approach to racism, but that's all, just the culture's changing. The economic base, which is the reason it exists is still there. It's still American. | 11:12 |
Clay White | As it relates to racism, I can identify with that. But I still think that there's a market difference between people who grew up in this area versus people who just come to, that's all I'm just trying to make distinction of. When you're bring it on the area where we stand there, racism. I mean I'm [indistinct 00:11:56] to understand how racism still exists, there's different formats. | 11:38 |
Clay White | I can remember the time when we used to talk about having shotgun houses, where you open the door, you see straight through it, and that was called the ghetto. Now your ghetto are your projects and the projects of ghetto because of the dynamics and rules and policies and how they step up and a whole host of reasons. But I was just thinking that when I sense when I go downtown, I see a older person who's here, you get a different kind of feeling from that person. | 12:00 |
Clay White | I mean, he didn't love you. I don't mean that kind of thing, but I'm not sure it's respect, that's why I just call it commonality that exists. But that's just a sense I feel. And the same with White, I mean, brothers and sisters, I mean people who going to the North or who came here now have families. You know what I'm saying? Those young people living here or grew up in New York for a while, then moved here. | 12:33 |
Clay White | But they're different. I mean they don't carry the same ties out or something. I really think it's speaking of, I guess I'm sitting here and talking about it, it's really White and Black. It's those who have that commonality and the one that really do not. | 12:59 |
Clay White | But in terms of racism, I concur, I think racism still exists. I think it's just formatted differently here than there, as it's formatted anywhere differently. But racism is very much alive. There's no question about that, and the poor is still getting poor and the rich is getting rich. There's no question about it. | 13:10 |
Clay White | Many of us who graduate now are not finding jobs. They're the same host of things that are going everywhere, we in trouble. There's no question about it. | 13:40 |
Kara Miles | I want to get back to some of this early civil rights stuff. Your father wasn't pleased that you all being involved in that. Were there other preachers in New Bern who were active in the movement? | 13:49 |
Ronald White | Yeah. | 14:08 |
Kara Miles | What churches were they in? Who were these preachers? What churches were they at who were active. | 14:08 |
Ronald White | In the beginning, I think the ministers who were the educated preachers did not immediately evolve and involve themselves, those with all the degrees and the theological seminaries. They had become a part of the New Bern bourgeoisie and the bourgeois was scared. | 14:24 |
Ronald White | Really, they didn't see that they were really the ones who were going to benefit from all of this. They didn't really realize that. Had they known that, maybe they would've acted in a different manner. They didn't know it. So they thought they were the ones who had something to lose. They initially held back. | 15:02 |
Ronald White | There were those ministers who had small churches, or those ministers who didn't have a church. | 15:20 |
Clay White | Or the ones we call jackleg. | 15:32 |
Kara Miles | What's that? | 15:35 |
Ronald White | It's somebody who hears the calling, and gets ordained by somebody else who maybe not has had any training. You had some of the younger ones who didn't have a church but who were affiliated with some churches he initially started. You had one or two who had been up North and come back down, because there was always movement back and forth from New York City to New Bern, New Bern to New York, back and forth. So you had one or two of those. | 15:36 |
Ronald White | That's how it started was just that small group, because it wasn't legitimized yet. Martin Luther King was a nobody. Martin who? King. Who was it? When the sit-in started by students in Greensboro, there was no recognition of legitimacy. There was no real development of the Southern Christian Leadership Council. | 16:14 |
Ronald White | There was the NAACP. The local NAACP initially was a nothing group, but it became, and it gradually pulled in more churches. As the movement nationally grew, then it grew locally too. Again, television, I go back to television, was our most important tool for organizing. | 16:50 |
Ronald White | There are two things that legitimize and organize the movement. One is the television, the other's police. Every head the police hit produced a convert. You had only made him sure he was right. You made his mama and his daddy and his brother and his sister know that he was right and there's something wrong here. The more people they hit in the head, the more converts they made. | 17:36 |
Ronald White | It was at that point that the ministers here, if you going to be the leader in the Black community and you're supposed to be the leader in the Black community and a movement is just rising right up, you got a choice. The choice is you don't become a leader and you move away or back down or you jump onto me. So after a couple of years, after a couple of years, some of the established ministers jumped on. | 18:09 |
Kara Miles | What choice did your father make? | 18:42 |
Ronald White | My father did not, because my father did not decide until '63 that he needed to be a part of it and that he was wrong. | 18:44 |
Kara Miles | And again, goes back to TV with the March of Washington, watching it. | 19:02 |
Ronald White | Straight to TV. But in '63, he realized that he had made a wrong decision, and he felt bad. I mean, you could see it in his face because he knew he was wrong. The movement per se had already moved on from New Bern by then. It changed in its character and its nature. | 19:05 |
Ronald White | By '63, there was a well-developed NAACP. There was a structure here in New Bern by then, so he wasn't needed and it wasn't a factor. My father was always a, what is the right word? I guess he was a transparent kind of person. So it didn't matter that he wasn't that, everybody still accepted him and he just continued. If something would happen, he'd go see if there's something he could do. | 19:37 |
Ronald White | In the latter '60s, if you needed to meet at his church, you could meet. But he never led. He never led. But he didn't want to be a stumbling block. That's what he understood. He didn't want to be a stumbling block. | 20:19 |
Clay White | I think too that while that's true, I think that he chose his battles, if you will. He didn't seek that one. But he did after that, speaking about '63 and all, he got really involved, he and my mother in elections and voting, and he got very, very caught up in that concept. Because he could see from that movement of King and all that, local elections were becoming very important. | 20:43 |
Clay White | So you got involved with that, and that's something you got to understand clearly and see the value in it. Would you agree with that? | 21:14 |
Ronald White | Yeah. But that was in the latter '60s and '70s, he— | 21:20 |
Clay White | Yeah, that's what I'm saying. | 21:23 |
Ronald White | — [indistinct 00:21:24] care in. I mean— | 21:23 |
Clay White | [indistinct 00:21:25]. | 21:23 |
Ronald White | The movement itself, it had crest. It had crest. | 21:26 |
Clay White | [indistinct 00:21:35] | 21:33 |
Ronald White | It was no longer [indistinct 00:21:37]. | 21:35 |
Clay White | I was just thinking that he was choosing it the in the sense of moving from that, because he did not take the leadership there. | 21:36 |
Ronald White | Oh no. | 21:42 |
Clay White | That I think he was then moving to something that I think he could feel more comfortable taking the leadership in, because I think he did see a greater need there on a local level for elections. And that's all I was talking [indistinct 00:21:52]. | 21:42 |
Clay White | And he then he worked feverish on that, of course with a lot of his health and others of the community now. That's how we get into eventually over the years, after he died, we began to get Black mayor that we have now [indistinct 00:22:13] other people to support politicians. | 21:51 |
Kara Miles | But could Blacks could vote in New Bern before '60s? | 22:16 |
Clay White | Oh yeah. | 22:18 |
Ronald White | He voted. I went with him to vote in the 1952 presidential election. And I mean I remember clearly it was yesterday, because I wanted him to vote for Adlai Stevenson because his name was Steve, and I had an Uncle Steve that I liked. I mean I remember it so clear. And my dad tried to tell me, "No, you going to make decisions that way, man." What was Stevenson? | 22:19 |
Ronald White | But yeah, he always voted, and he always encouraged members of his little church. But again, it was a Presbyterian church, a little bourgeois church, very few ministers. I mean members, a lot of school teachers per capita. I mean most of them in there were, and they were expected to vote. | 22:51 |
Ronald White | See, it was never a problem in the South about the role players. If you play your role, you're okay. Your ministers and your school teachers could vote anywhere, anytime, anywhere in the South. They could vote. Your doctors too, and your lawyers. Really, how many of them are there? What difference are they going to make? It's the masses. | 23:17 |
Kara Miles | So could the masses not vote here? But for the masses— | 23:43 |
Ronald White | The masses, it wasn't an issue because they were so controlled over the years that they didn't register. They didn't try. They weren't a factor. | 23:46 |
Clay White | No, but the question is, could they? | 24:00 |
Ronald White | Could they? No. | 24:03 |
Kara Miles | No. | 24:08 |
Clay White | [indistinct 00:24:08] | 24:08 |
Ronald White | I mean, was there a ruling? Did somebody say No, you can't vote, no. But had the masses come, they'd have closed the door. That's all I'm telling you. | 24:08 |
Clay White | Ron's still using projection in that way. | 24:21 |
Ronald White | There's no way to know. | 24:23 |
Clay White | I want to stick to the issue. The issue is could they vote? Yes, they could vote. Did they vote? No, they didn't do a lot of voting. That's why [indistinct 00:24:31]. | 24:24 |
Ronald White | They could vote if they were registered. But there was the grandfather clauses, they would— I mean, Black folk, by and large, couldn't register. You had to take a test. You had to read, Daddy went through it. Daddy had to do all that. | 24:31 |
Clay White | I'm not suggesting that they were not, it was not a criteria probably. I'm simply saying that the real basis is we did not vote, we did not attempt to deal with the criteria. That's what I'm saying for the record. I'm saying that, and one of the main reasons that we didn't, because we didn't see that it would be of great results in our behalf anyway, all right. | 24:50 |
Clay White | Now, I agree that the laws were passed and made it a little easier. But even then, historically, Blacks did not vote. We only began to vote once we could see that there was a need, something that we could get out of the deal. That's what I was raising the issue of that in the late '60s when he and others began to move to the issue of voting, and that in turn stimulated our people to begin to vote. That's what I'm talking. I think that's the real story. | 25:14 |
Ronald White | Well, but I'm saying, but see again, it's that the small town was sucked up into a national movement like everywhere else through television. | 25:43 |
Clay White | Well, Ron leans a lot on TV. I think TV has a part to play here, but I don't lean on it to that extent. I think that a lot of it has to do with all those voting, and can we get somebody elected who would be strong enough to stand up against White folks? | 25:52 |
Clay White | If we found people like that either had our interest at heart, that would stimulate us to get out and vote, and those are the kind of issues that we utilize in order to mobilize people. Now, during those years we were here, but I'm just saying that he worked in the state so he would know more about that directly. I think that's what you're going to find. | 26:05 |
Clay White | We've always traditionally, historically, we were picked apart by White folks. I mean, you have some people who like Mr. John, because Mr. John said he is going to take care of you. Then you had some who, like Miss Sally, because miss Sally said she going to take care of this little group. So you always had White folks who split us. | 26:25 |
Clay White | But I'm just saying that once we ever came to agree on a one person, then that would give us something to mobilize our people around, and I think that's traditionally what we did. I know that's what we did here in New Bern. But I mean, I hear what you're saying, but I don't think it's all related to just TV. I really don't, and I think that— | 26:43 |
Ronald White | All I'm saying is that the energy, the drive, the realizations that were necessary to do what you're talking about came through that vehicle, didn't exist within a vacuum. | 27:06 |
Clay White | No, not just in a vacuum, but I think that— | 27:17 |
Ronald White | No idea that, hey, I can be evolved. | 27:18 |
Clay White | Well, I'm not going to debate it. But I think that the TV has a part to play in it, but I don't think it's all in all end, and I definitely don't think that at all. I think also it should be noted too historically that Black folks, Ron calls them the bourgeois, I'm not so sure I would call them that, but maybe they were that. | 27:22 |
Clay White | But the educated, for the most part, voted Republican, and that was across the board national— | 27:39 |
Ronald White | Across the board. | 27:53 |
Clay White | — expectations. Like the majority of them vote Democrat now. But history will tell you that that did not come about until the Kennedy era, that they really began to vote in block in Democratic situations. Up until that time, we were fervently Republicans. | 27:54 |
Clay White | I think what he didn't tell you was that we, that's what Daddy voted, if I remember, correctly. | 28:11 |
Ronald White | Absolutely. | 28:15 |
Clay White | Republican, all right, so— | 28:16 |
Ronald White | Absolutely. I was trying to get him to vote for the Democrats, excuse me. | 28:21 |
Clay White | But there's nothing, I'm not ashamed of that history, because historically, and we voted the— | 28:21 |
Ronald White | It was a party of Lincoln. | 28:26 |
Clay White | Exactly right, and it was based on that concept, you see, and that was a traditional concept— | 28:28 |
Ronald White | And the Dixiecrats were empowering the South. | 28:34 |
Clay White | And that was a traditional thing that history ought to reflect that we were a party, a Republican Party, because we were party of Lincoln, and it was a handed down concept all along. That's what I'm trying to say. | 28:36 |
Clay White | A lot of times I find Black people don't want admit that on this day and time. But that was a history and he was a part of that thinking that that was the right choice to make in that time. So I mean, I just want to break that part out. [indistinct 00:29:05] | 28:48 |
Ronald White | [indistinct 00:29:06] no doubt in New Bern. | 29:05 |
Clay White | Kennedy came along, changed that, even for him, and I think that's when the great exodus began. | 29:06 |
Kara Miles | I want to ask you about, you were talking about that even before the sit-in started, that there was an umbrella, you called it. Talk about that for me. What was there before? Because we know as historians, we know a lot about the Civil Rights Movement, but we don't know what the structure was that allowed that to happen. What is this umbrella? | 29:22 |
Clay White | You had a lot of inequities going on, and again, going back to what Ron had mentioned earlier about what I call the jackleg preachers, and that's being disrespectful to them. Let's just say it was the less education, put like that, everything tended to mobilize around the church in the Black community. | 29:41 |
Clay White | As he said, your main Baptist church, or etc., tended to not press a system as much or as hard as they could. Whereas your jackleg or your less educated ministers tended to do that. They generally work somewhere else maybe. And maybe if they had a chance to preach on Sunday, then they could preach. But the point was that they had an issue with either education, urban renewal at the time was, or getting your street paved or some kind of city service. | 30:02 |
Clay White | If you went down and asked Mr. John for this and he didn't want to do it, then they would try to mobilize something in order to try to get it to work. Because again, we had these various boards or city council people, etc., and you had to go and try to appeal your case. | 30:39 |
Clay White | The umbrella was established, not for the furtherance on those, the marches, but it was in place because of other inequities that people were trying to rectify. It always started in little small groups, and these groups tended to always met in somebody's church, but on another common ground type issue. You also had what I call internal community groups, such as, and this was strictly bougie, but use this concept, a little garden club. | 30:55 |
Clay White | Well, everybody who was a member of the garden club made a full member, but was indoctrinated toward that concept, tended to try to do something in order to fix up your yard or what have you. So you had an umbrella there doing good for the [indistinct 00:31:55] community before yourselves as well. They had little contests and stuff of that nature, all right. | 31:37 |
Clay White | So you had all these little groups, you had your fraternities and all of that. That was a very competitive little group during those years, and I think even now where they would have some kind of community function. So these little umbrellas were always existed within our community, doing some type of good for the community at large. Could be a scholarship program. | 31:59 |
Clay White | But say for example, if that was an educational issue, I don't know. Let's say there was an issue one time just getting a school bus for JT Bob, that's our high school. We didn't have a school bus, where the White schools had school buses. So we had some people who took a leadership, whenever your main top people, no doctor for example, but somebody and generally it was some kind of a preacher, who would go down and though he might have been afraid, but because he was able to function in fear. | 32:23 |
Clay White | I go back to that concept again. People don't talk about that, but that's really the truth of matter. The process, whatever that was, I did not know, but assuming the process would be you get on the road to call, to speak to the board, they would go and speak. They were disrespected or nothing really happened. | 32:59 |
Clay White | Then they would come back and contact all these little groups and said, "We want to meet on this issue because our children ought to have a school bus like everybody else," using that example. So it's easy that time to bring that group together. | 33:16 |
Clay White | You had some people who worked on what we call the state level. That was something going on in the state. Say for example, something happened in somewhere maybe in Charlotte or Durham or Raleigh, and it affected Black people in a negative way. That was a little network around the state of North Carolina that if I knew here in Raleigh, then I'm going to call or get word to John here and the network with go to place to place to place. | 33:31 |
Clay White | There was always some contact. We're all talking about NAACP. That was one major conduit, but there were probably others. I can remember we had a little, at one time, not at beginning, in the very end, [indistinct 00:34:15] stages just went away. SCLC, they ever really last. You had little voting club, the voting rights group, but they would get the information and pass it on. So it was a real high network here. | 34:01 |
Clay White | Now, this man, what was his name? Faison's father-in-law, what was his name? | 34:28 |
Ronald White | You talking about Nixon? | 34:29 |
Clay White | Yeah, Mr. Nixon doing— | 34:30 |
Ronald White | Reverend Nixon. | 34:39 |
Clay White | Reverend Nixon, he would be calling Jack Lake. | 34:41 |
Ronald White | They called him Buckshot. | 34:44 |
Clay White | Buckshot is what they used to call him, but he'd be halfway crazy. Literally, I would think, frightening to you at some time, but what stand up against White people. Traditionally in our culture, we've always had those one or two people that would stand up on anything and anybody knowing that they put their lives on jeopardy. | 34:45 |
Clay White | But for some reason, the crackers wouldn't kill them. They would just shoot somebody else. You know what I mean? But wouldn't kill him or them or that type of person. Then our people would tend to say, "Oh, Buckshot is crazy." But when you sit down and listen at the issue that he was raising, he might not have been able to articulate it as well as we learned people want to hear it, but the essence of the issue, he was on target. | 35:10 |
Clay White | It's just we were afraid. I guess what it boiled down to. So he was one of the ones, for example, the state network could get information too because they knew old crazy Buckshot was here in the Craven County area. So then he would know Reverend So and So, and then they would try to move and pull people together on that umbrella. Yeah, that's all right. | 35:36 |
Kara Miles | All right. Well, I'm pretty much out of questions now. | 36:02 |
Clay White | You told me you'd be all night. We already planned to be here all night. | 36:06 |
Kara Miles | Oh, well, I could think of some more. | 36:09 |
Ronald White | I'll tell you, I had enough. | 36:10 |
Kara Miles | I sensed that you had, so I'm trying to let you off the hook. | 36:16 |
Ronald White | Dang. | 36:20 |
Kara Miles | But if you want to stay, I can— | 36:20 |
Clay White | No, you got another question, [indistinct 00:36:25]. | 36:20 |
Kara Miles | — tons more questions. | 36:20 |
Clay White | [indistinct 00:36:26] answer, but I just want you to know, that it's interesting. Obviously, I haven't done this in so long. I think everything that we talked about is basically honest. I tell you what I would like, just for my own posterity. I don't know whether we can get a copy of that tape or not, but we paid for it. If it's possible, I'll like to get a copy of it. I don't know whether that's a part of the process ruling or not but anyway. | 36:26 |
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