Delores Woods (primary interviewee) and Thelma Nash interview recording, 1995 July 19
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| Delores Twillie Woods | My name is Delores, D-E-L-O-R-E-S. Oh, I don't need to spell it do I? | 0:01 |
| Stacey Scales | Well. | 0:05 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Twillie, T-W-I-L-L-I-E, Woods, W-O-O-D-S. | 0:09 |
| Stacey Scales | Okay. And your name? | 0:10 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | My name is Thelma Woods Nash. | 0:10 |
| Stacey Scales | Okay. And if each of you could tell me your earliest memories growing up? | 0:15 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Well, I grew up like I told you, down in Rondo, Arkansas. And down there it was mostly big farms, you know, owned by White. And of course, the Colored people lived on these farms. And at that time they did what they called sharecropping, where you and your family would have all this land and you would work it, you know, raise cotton. And at the end of the year the boss man would have what he called settlement, and he would—Maybe you'd clear $25 or $30. And you would do that in November. | 0:20 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Then he would turn around and he would let you have $50 or $60 so you could have some money for Christmas. Me and my father worked on the railroad. His name was Isaiah Riggs. We rented a house there in Rondo, from, there were two Colored people there that owned some land and we rented from them, a house where we lived. But now, I would go and chop cotton and pick cotton on these farms. | 0:58 |
| Stacey Scales | How much were you paid to do this? | 1:25 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | 35¢ and 50¢ a day. Some paid 35¢ and some paid 50¢. And the same thing, you know, in cotton picking time some of them paid 35¢ for picking and some paid 50¢. And they had two months of summer school in the summer, and maybe you would get three in the fall. Because all those big farmers had gathered in the crop. | 1:29 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | By the Black pickers. | 1:50 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Uh-huh. Yeah, the White people were going to school. They started on time then. But the Black students, that's the way they were scheduled, convenient for the big farmers. Because those big farmers had 300 to 345 acres of land. And all these people that lived on it, if they said for the school not to start it wasn't going to start. If you weren't through— | 1:53 |
| Stacey Scales | So the farmers got to tell you when to go to school— | 2:14 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Right. | 2:16 |
| Stacey Scales | —the White farmers. | 2:17 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm, that's right. They were the bosses of the little town. That's right. So that's just the way that it was. | 2:19 |
| Stacey Scales | Could you ever completely finish your settlement? | 2:26 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | What do you mean? | 2:30 |
| Stacey Scales | Or, settling up? | 2:31 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Well, he called it a settlement but what would really happen, when you'd go there he already had everything figured out. And he would give you what he wanted you to have. You see? So that's just the way it was. So like I told you, you might clear $25 or $30, and then he might turn around and let you have $30, or $40, or $50 for Christmas. | 2:33 |
| Stacey Scales | Right. | 2:57 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's just the way they operated, so it always kept you down. You didn't have anything to get up off of, you know, because if you had 6 or 7 children and you cleared $30 then what did you have? See what I mean? | 2:58 |
| Stacey Scales | It's true. | 3:11 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | And you start right back taking up grosses for your family because you had to. You see? And so to make it the next year he came out the same way. And there were people that just farmed down there for years and years until they were too old to farm and they didn't have anything. Because you just couldn't have nothing out of that, you know. So that's just the way it was. | 3:12 |
| Stacey Scales | What were your experiences? | 3:35 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | My experience was a little different from hers, because of the fact that my father was buying his own farm. And my great grandmother, which raised my mother because her mother died at an early age, owned their own farm. And basically in the community where I was it was all Black on that property. And I never worked for White people until I was probably about 16-years-old. But the experience that I had with my father buying his farm was—See like she was saying, the reason they could never get out of debt, because if you weren't a mathematician yourself and kept up with your bills and knew exactly how much money you borrowed from, how much you paid them, how much you owed, how much the interest was. | 3:37 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 4:16 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Okay, that's what my daddy did with his farm and they started making him pay compound interest and everything. | 4:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Right. | 4:22 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh. | 4:22 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And when they would take money to make the crop out there, then they would charge him so much and you always never ended up with no money left. So what my father and mother finally decided to do, because they were shrewd thinkers— | 4:23 |
| Stacey Scales | Where were they? | 4:39 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Right here in St. Francis County, Caldwell, Arkansas, about 5 miles from Forrest City. They decided that we—And we raised their own corn and own vegetables and their own cows. And we killed our own meat and we had our own vegetables in the freezer. At that time they made what they called lard, and they had that. So they decided, they said, "Well we got enough corn in the barn," that they had raised to take care of the hogs and things. They canned enough vegetables, dried enough peas and things for us to have food. And said, "We're not going to take a bit of money this year. We're just not going to take no money to make the crop on." | 4:39 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | So everything that we make from the crop would be clear. So my mother said that we needed to buy baking powder, salt, and flour, stuff like that. She would go out and chop by the day, a day and get that 35¢ which you're talking about, or 50¢ a day. And that's how we lived, and everybody kept saying my daddy was going to lose his farm. But they didn't know what they were doing. | 5:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | So then my daddy said that when he went to pay the man for the farm, the man wanted to charge him compound interest. He said, "No," he said, "You're compounding the interest, I'm not going to do it." And he said that man sat up there and cried, because he said he'd never pay for that farm. Which he wouldn't have paid for it, if he hadn't been a mathematician. | 5:30 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 5:46 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But see right now, when I go to that field, I can figure everything they picked, how much money they owe me before I get there. And so then, my daddy said he was one of the people that told them to carry a shotgun, in order for the Black people to be able to vote when they go down to vote. Because they didn't want them to vote. | 5:46 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-mm. | 6:02 |
| Stacey Scales | He carried a shotgun? | 6:02 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | He carried his shotgun. | 6:04 |
| Stacey Scales | Okay. | 6:05 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | So that they wouldn't bother him, and he did that. And then we lived there and some White people moved in the neighborhood there, and they didn't have a pop. So they came down to get some pop at the Y. So I was there and this little White girl came down and whooped my little baby brother. And when my mama came home I told my mama. | 6:05 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 6:24 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And when that White child came back my mama said, asked why did she do that for. He just did it because he was the Devil, because he thought he could get by with it. | 6:25 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Right. | 6:31 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | My mama grabbed that little White child and— | 6:33 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | And tore him up. | 6:35 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —tore his behind all up. And she said that she knew that his daddy was going to come down there. Boy, when the daddy came down she was ready for that daddy. | 6:36 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 6:43 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But my great grandmother, what I'm fixing to tell you about, she whooped two White men at the mercantile store that I'm talking about, because they were going to ravish her. | 6:44 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 6:50 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | She took a chair and she whooped them two White men, she knew how to do it. | 6:52 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 6:56 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And then my daddy and his brother, they went to the store. They had an old car and a White man came up there and was going to jump on my Uncle Floyd. Boy, be he knew it my daddy grabbed him out of there. Because they didn't take no mess. I mean they did this, they would do this stuff to you. And what I was telling you about, I had never worked for a White people because we always chopped for the Black people. That was Mr. Martable, Mr. Roy Lee Lucas, and Mrs. Owen, Mr. Ford were some of the people that had money, had property. | 6:57 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 7:25 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And my daddy had lots of children, but we all worked, everybody worked. And so we did this. But then after we began to get older, a White gal wanted us to come chop cotton for her. And then times were getting a little better then, this was in the late 40s or early 50s. And children had what they called transistor radios, these little radios that you played and you could carry it. | 7:26 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, yes. | 7:49 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And we went to the field to chop cotton for this man, and he told us, said, "If y'all will chop cotton today I'll let you listen to the radio tomorrow." (Thelma laughs) We didn't say nothing because we weren't sassy like the children are today. | 7:49 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 8:01 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But we went on and finished chopping that day, and we went home and we said, "Daddy, we don't go back there no more." My daddy never asked us why, because he knew that we went to the field and we were going to work, he never had no business with our bills. | 8:01 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 8:12 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And I had a run-in with a White guy. | 8:12 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 8:15 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | We picked cotton and he was going with this Black lady. | 8:15 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 8:17 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I guess he thought nobody would know it. | 8:17 |
| Stacey Scales | A White man? | 8:17 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | A White man. And so he didn't nobody to beat her and she didn't nobody to beat her either, but I had beat her picking cotton. And when he got ready to figure up my cotton he told me he owed me this, and I said, "No, you don't owe me that, you owe me so and so and so." And I read my figures off to him just like I can, and he kept arguing and he wanted to make me say yes sir, no sir. And I would not say yes sir or no sir, I can talk to you all day and never say yes and never say no. | 8:24 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 8:43 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I could answer his questions, because there were a big bunch of children about. And we studied that stuff, because we knew that they wanted you to do it. So we were just answer the person without saying yes or no. And they said, "Well." And I said, "No, that's not right." I stated that he had to give me my money, I wasn't going to do it. And so then after that, after he thought I had got ahead, he got an old piece of cotton I grabbed in the field. | 8:44 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 9:06 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And I was raising my chin. Then after I got this old piece of cotton he thought, "This nigger's getting too uppity," so he told me, "Can't you get somebody to take care of your children?" | 9:06 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | "Take care of your children with what they're going to pay you for chopping cotton for $5 or $6 a day?" And I told him, "No." So I told, "I won't be back tomorrow." | 9:10 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 9:17 |
| Stacey Scales | And when was this? | 9:18 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | This had to be in the late 50s, in the late 50s around '57 or '58. And then I didn't go back no more. I left there and the Lord blessed me. | 9:19 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 9:32 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I left there, "Lord," I said, "why don't you—" | 9:33 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | So I went to Miss Ruthie's and I got to work in a pea shed, making more money and in the shade. | 9:34 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 9:38 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And I had a daughter like 9 or 10-years-old, but see, she was a big girl and she looked like she was older. She was making the day just like I was. And so I wouldn't let her go back over there to work for this man. And he found out that we were at Miss Ruth's. And when we got to work that morning he was there mad. He didn't say nothing to me, but he said, "Girl, why didn't you come to the field?" And I took it up, I said, "Because she wanted to be with her mother." Boy, that made him mad. | 9:39 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 10:03 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And when he left Miss Ruth was mad too. She said, "Mr. Nichols was mad. He was mad because I hired you." And she put her right along beside me, and then he came back when he started picking cotton. He said, "Well, the cotton is ready to pick and if you want to come you can ride with so and so." This was the way they were going. And I said, "Well, I don't think I'll be coming," I said, "But if I come I'll be in my own car." | 10:09 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 10:28 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I didn't go there no more. My daddy got a contract to pick somebody else's cotton, I went on down there and carried my brothers and sisters, hauled them, and got money for picking that. | 10:28 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 10:37 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That was what I did. But another thing, the bad stuff that was in Forrest City. A lot of people say they don't remember it. There were certain places in Forrest City that you were not allowed after dark. You could go there and work in the neighborhoods, but you had to be out of that area when sundown came. And Black women could not wear shorts downtown, Forrest City, right here in Forrest City. | 10:37 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 10:57 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They would be arrested, they would be arrested. | 10:58 |
| Stacey Scales | Could White women wear them? | 11:00 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah, White women could wear them, but Black women couldn't. They would be arrested, they could not wear shorts downtown. | 11:01 |
| Stacey Scales | Did they give a reason? | 11:09 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | No. Just said you can't wear them. | 11:10 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That was the law, you can't do it. You just can't do it. | 11:12 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 11:13 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And I mean, they had places that if you got served then you had to go around to the side or the back door. | 11:15 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Or the back door. They would hand you something out the back door. | 11:19 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They would hand you something out the back door. Like I was telling you about, I went to that store. I didn't know it, it was right there in Caldwell. And it was a brown store. I don't know why, but I left that store and got there, but I guess it was for me I didn't have that experience. Because I hadn't had that experience. Because you hear people talking about it. So in a way I was kind of sheltered. And like she was talking about the sharecroppers, that's the reason why the people could never get out, because they didn't think enough. They thought if the White man said it, it was the law. | 11:24 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | So it was true. | 11:49 |
| Stacey Scales | A lot of that. | 11:50 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | See, if you took a $50 purse, he was say you took a $75 or $100. | 11:53 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Yeah, that's right. | 11:55 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But if you don't get your receipts and keep up with your receipts, then he can tell you he did anything. And most people didn't because they said, "Mr. George, he's going to do right about it." | 11:57 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | "He's going to treat me right." | 12:06 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | So they didn't do it, and that's how a lot of people— | 12:06 |
| Stacey Scales | They would trust him. | 12:07 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah. They would trust him. | 12:07 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 12:07 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And a lot of people were left on the property. They would go down there because they wanted that—"Oh yeah, Old John has his thing." And let him have it and they'd be— | 12:07 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Taking their farms. | 12:22 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —taking their farm away from them. That happened to Miss—She wasn't a Smith yet, but those people left her a lot of property. | 12:25 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 12:29 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And so they were letting her have all this stuff. She said, "Look, if you let him have anything else you're going to pay for, because I'm not paying for it." She meant she wasn't losing the rest of her land. All this happened to Black people. | 12:29 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 12:37 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And they just—You know, trying to fight everything. | 12:37 |
| Stacey Scales | Were there any other rules, like the shorts, where you couldn't do certain things in Forrest City? Like for Blacks? | 12:42 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah. They had to have—We had a separate movie theater. And then when they did start letting them go to Harlem Theater they had to go around the back and go upstairs. | 12:52 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 13:02 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I don't know about any other rules about the clothes. | 13:04 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | But they had separate cafes, some of the cafes you couldn't go in. | 13:07 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Right. | 13:11 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, yes. | 13:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah, you couldn't go in. They had separate schools. | 13:14 |
| Stacey Scales | Did they have Black-owned businesses? | 13:17 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Some, a few. | 13:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They had a few, few people. When I was coming on, maybe a few of them had stores, you know, little grocery stores. | 13:22 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Like a cab company. | 13:28 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | A cab company. | 13:30 |
| Stacey Scales | Do you remember the name of those places? | 13:30 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Well, one of them is still in existence, Rose's Café. When I was coming on. | 13:34 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Rose's Café, mm-hmm. | 13:37 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | It was called The Blue Fern, wasn't it? | 13:37 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 13:37 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Blue Fern Café, but I called it Rose's because of the lady that started it. And then, you know, Freeman had a— | 13:41 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Café at first. | 13:47 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —café downtown. But now they continued to stay in business. They have a pretty good size business on the west end of town now, Broadway. Freeman Grocery, and they've got a grocery and a— | 13:48 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Laundry mat. | 14:00 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —laundry mat, and they do something with taxes now don't they? | 14:01 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Uh-huh. | 14:05 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And they had Thelma, and there was some other—They had the pool hall, but I didn't know who ran it because I didn't go in those places. And they had what they called the Hole in the Wall, and I didn't go there. The Brown Bomber, was that Black? | 14:06 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | It was out on 70. | 14:13 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah, it was out on 70. | 14:13 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Uh-huh. | 14:14 |
| Stacey Scales | What was The Brown Bomber? | 14:17 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Well, that was a nightclub. | 14:18 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh yeah? | 14:18 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | It was owned by Black. | 14:20 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And they had— | 14:22 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Malone, Percy Malone. | 14:22 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Oh, okay. That's who owned that? | 14:24 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right, that's right. | 14:25 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Well, I didn't really know too much about that. But at our school— | 14:26 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I didn't either. I didn't go there, but I just know he was the first one who opened it up. | 14:28 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That opened it up. | 14:31 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 14:32 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Well, the Black school did not have, we didn't have a gym or nothing, no place and no football field for the boys to play football. I always wished they had football. And I remember my sister played basketball, and that's where they went to practice, at The Brown Bomber. | 14:32 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Right. | 14:47 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I didn't go there because I didn't play basketball, and so they did that. And when we first had football at our Black school, when they got ready to play a night game, they would use the White— | 14:47 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | The White field. | 14:57 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —what do you call it? A football field. | 14:58 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Right. | 15:00 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And they used to do that. And then finally they built a football field over for the Black people to have. | 15:01 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 15:10 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And we did it like that. And all the water fountains, they may be sitting there side-by-side, one said White and one said Colored. | 15:10 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | White and the other one said Colored. | 15:13 |
| Stacey Scales | Did you all ever try with the White one? | 15:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | No. | 15:17 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | No, because we grew up in that, not doing that. And I'm sure that some of the children did, but they probably did because of the Devil. | 15:22 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 15:29 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | We probably didn't think too much about it, because basically we went to White schools. And see I lived in a rural area, so therefore when I came to town I probably wasn't really that thirsty for no water anyway. So I didn't bother about the water fountains. | 15:30 |
| Stacey Scales | Could you go to the police if something happened? | 15:43 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Nah. | 15:53 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | You could go, but they weren't going to do nothing unless he was a Black person. I mean, he wasn't considered White back then. | 15:53 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They were all White. | 15:53 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, yeah. | 15:53 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | We just got Black police in the what, late 60s? | 15:53 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | 60s, mm-hmm. | 15:55 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Probably '65, '66, somewhere along in there. And not before then. | 15:55 |
| Stacey Scales | So you couldn't go to them for help? | 16:07 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I mean, you could go— | 16:07 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You could go, but it wouldn't do nothing. | 16:07 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —but they wouldn't really do nothing, unless it— | 16:08 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They weren't going to help you none. | 16:08 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —unless it was somebody Black had done something to you. But the White people weren't going to go do—But some Black people had it good, because if they worked on Mr. So-and-so's farm. Then he come down and say—The could do, they could murder. | 16:12 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They could do anything. | 16:24 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I'm serious, I'm serious, they could murder. That was Mr.— | 16:25 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Flemings. | 16:28 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —Flemings and so-and-so. Because I know a man that did that, shoot. | 16:28 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Walker, and— | 16:28 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Them folks just got him out and put him back on that farm, nobody messed with him, because he belonged on Mr. So-and-so's farm. And they could go— | 16:28 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | [crosstalk 00:16:37]. | 16:28 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —and they were all, "Oh, that's Mr. So-and-so's nigger, let him have whatever he wants." | 16:36 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Uh-huh, that's right. | 16:36 |
| Stacey Scales | So they got people that worked on the big people's farms— | 16:37 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Right. | 16:47 |
| Stacey Scales | —special privileges? | 16:47 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yes, they got special privileges, because they weren't going to bother Mr. So-and-so. Because, well, that was where they were getting their money. So he was paying them, and so they would just basically do like they do now, they'd turn their back. And go on to somebody that they want. | 16:48 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 17:01 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And so those things were going on in those days, in those times. I can remember when I first went up to vote, they had long lines. If I got sense enough to come up and vote, I got sense enough to put my ballot in the correct place, right? | 17:04 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 17:18 |
| Stacey Scales | Right. | 17:19 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Then why is the guy going to tell me, I said, "That's okay, I'll put it in here." I always tell them. | 17:19 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They were going to put it in there for you. | 17:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah. They wanted to take it and put it in, they wanted to help you vote. | 17:24 |
| Stacey Scales | You mentioned earlier, people carried guns to vote. | 17:30 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Mm-hmm. | 17:31 |
| Stacey Scales | What happened when they did that? | 17:31 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Okay. Well see when they first let the—You know, when it first came down from the government to allow—See, Black people hasn't always been able to vote. Okay, so when the government first passed the order for them to vote some little town, like this little town, when the Black people go up there to vote they try to keep them from voting. So in order to be able to vote, they say, "Where you going boy?" So they didn't want to mess with you, because they settled to double team you if you go to one. So they would carry their gun, and they carried that shotgun so they could see that they got that ammunition on, and they— | 17:34 |
| Stacey Scales | Did they ever have to use it? | 18:03 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | My father never said that he had to use it. I don't know if no one had to use it. Only somebody that I know that actually had to do something with somebody was with my great grandmother. That was my great grandmother, that was a long time ago. She had to whoop these two White men. They caught up with her up here, so they said something she didn't like, so she did that. And they tell me it was my grandmother, but I don't know a lot on my father's side. That was on my mother's side, my great grandmother, my mother's mother, died when she was young. So her grandmother raised her, and she was still living when I came along. My great grandmother died when I was 12-years-old, so she was an old woman when she died. | 18:05 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And my grandmother, which was, you know, on my father's side was part Indian and part this, and there were French men. My parents, my father's side of the family are French men, in my mother on my daddy's side. | 18:41 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 18:56 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And she had a confrontation my sister was telling me about. She had a problem with a White person too. But see, in those days, the reason why I keep saying it over and over, most of the time if a Black person whooped a White or did something to them, they lynched them. | 19:00 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 19:13 |
| Stacey Scales | So they had lynchings here? | 19:14 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah. They had lynchings here. | 19:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Up at the courthouse. They said there was one at [indistinct 00:19:22]. | 19:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They had lynchings here, and out at Madison, and going on McCrory. We saw one of those things still up in there, where they lynched people. They never took it down. | 19:22 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Where was that? Up in McCrory. | 19:32 |
| Stacey Scales | That's still hanging there now? | 19:33 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Well, it was a few years ago but I don't know now. | 19:34 |
| Stacey Scales | And what is it, was it the noose or the— | 19:37 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Well, it's the thing, you know, that they— | 19:40 |
| Stacey Scales | They hang the rope from? | 19:43 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Hang the ropes, hang them up in there. | 19:43 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | So they put it around your neck and you'd be on the ground. And then they pull you on up. | 19:45 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, man. | 19:53 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah. And then there was a man, I didn't know but they were telling me about him, I guess about two years ago that they hung out from Hughes, which is 25 miles from here. But they didn't kill him, but they said it made his eyes bulge out. | 19:54 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Eyes big, uh-huh, come out his head. | 20:06 |
| Stacey Scales | So his eyes were bulging? | 20:12 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah. | 20:13 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Yeah. They let him hang a real long time. | 20:14 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Realized— | 20:15 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | It was disgusting when your eyes are coming out. | 20:16 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | He didn't die. | 20:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Something went wrong and it didn't work. | 20:20 |
| Stacey Scales | Is he still living now? | 20:20 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Well, he was— | 20:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | A few years ago, but I don't really know him. But I was told about him, mm-hmm. So that—I mean, a lot of things I know that I don't know about that went on. Because I wish some of our older people were here— | 20:24 |
| Stacey Scales | Did—sorry. | 20:34 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I was just saying, I wish some of the older people, older than I am, were here because they know more things than I do, because like I say, I was kind of sheltered by living in a Black community and they're all land owners. | 20:36 |
| Stacey Scales | Would the older people tell stories of things that happened during their times? | 20:47 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Yeah. | 20:51 |
| Stacey Scales | Do you remember any of those? | 20:52 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Well, my grandmother was raised Louisiana. And her mother was cooking for this big plantation. And there it was just as bad as Arkansas or worse. When you were working in their houses you had to go in the back door, you couldn't go in the front door. You're good enough to go in there and cook and raise their children, but you had to go around to the back door to come in. And her mother cooked there until she was grown. | 20:55 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Then she told her about a man that was hung. This man had a wife and his wife begged him not to hand this Black man. But he said, "The man is not—He hasn't done anything, he's innocent." She was pregnant with his child. And went on and hanged him anyway. You know how they all kind of hung together, because [indistinct 00:21:45]. And when her baby was born, if this little girl got excited her eyes would bulge out just like this man's did. | 21:25 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Oh gosh, when they hung him. | 21:52 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | And she would talk about how many people were put in jail because they would stare at this little girl. So they didn't want you staring at her. But anytime she got excited, my grandmother said her eyes would bulge just like— | 21:56 |
| Stacey Scales | Her dad, man. | 22:10 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | So that was the punishment that was put on, for hanging the man. Mm-hmm, he hadn't done nothing. You see, back in those days White women always liked Black men. | 22:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Mm-hmm. | 22:23 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | And White men always liked Black women, don't fool yourself. This comes from the beginning when they first came over. | 22:24 |
| Stacey Scales | Uh-huh, slavery days. | 22:30 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Uh-huh, and they had them in barns. They would have the women in a barn, they'd have the men in a barn. And they would put them together to mate when they got ready. | 22:32 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Mm-hmm. | 22:40 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | But in the meantime, the old boss would be steady going out there and mating with the Black women. And that's why we're all different colors like we are. But if she got pregnant then he would sell her to another plantation. That's where they switched them around. | 22:41 |
| Stacey Scales | To protect themselves. | 22:56 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 22:58 |
| Stacey Scales | Did that happen, did that still happen after y'all were coming up? | 22:59 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Oh, they never stopped going with Black women. | 23:04 |
| Stacey Scales | Were they forced? | 23:05 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah, yeah. The ones that were on their place. | 23:06 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | A lot of time, uh-huh, yeah. And see, a lot of times if a White woman was stuck on you, say, and you went on and egged her. Then she would tell a lie and say you raped her or you tried to rape her, just because she wanted you. | 23:10 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Mm-hmm. | 23:23 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | And she'd put you in danger. | 23:23 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And get you killed. | 23:26 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 23:27 |
| Stacey Scales | Do y'all remember that? | 23:28 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah, that's happened right inside St. Francis County not too long ago. | 23:33 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 23:33 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | What was that, in the 60s, when they killed Joplin wasn't it? | 23:33 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right, that's right. | 23:33 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Because he was going with a White woman. | 23:33 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 23:33 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Sure did. And, they just did that all the time. | 23:39 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 23:44 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And the only way that a man would get right—Now I know this man, but he has been long dead, hanging out with a White lady. And I guess they found out because I guess he liked her and she liked him. But when they found out he had to leave town. So once he got away and got out, they didn't get the opportunity to get him. And I guess he stayed away for about 25 years or so, then he came back. | 23:45 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | My father tells about—They lived in Mississippi before they came out there. And his older brother, I guess got up and he came out here and he found out things were different. | 24:07 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 24:17 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And my grandmother, they didn't used to travel on trains, and so what she did—And I got that truck now. She had a big old truck and she put all her stuff in it and she came out here like she was going to visit her son. | 24:18 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Visit, and then go back. | 24:30 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Then when you go back the truck is empty so you go back and get some more stuff. And she moved all his stuff, so then she got on out here. | 24:31 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 24:39 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And then finally her husband, they had to slip away. They weren't just coming, they had to slip away. And my father was fixing to go down in Mississippi and work. Excuse me about my hand, that's just a habit I have. After they all got cars and things, they would go down to Mississippi and they would visit somebody. And then at 12 or 1 o'clock at night when the master is asleep, they load up their car, and they would not crank the car up. They would push the car to get all out of hearing, where the man couldn't hear it crank up, and they'd crank it up. | 24:40 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | When they came, they'd be over at our house and they'd have those people out. | 25:10 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 25:13 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That's how they got them over here. I mean, a lot of them came over like that. | 25:15 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 25:16 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And a lot of them came over pretending like they were visiting. And my grandmother tells that one time she a real young baby. You know, when women had real young babies they didn't get out in the rainy weather. But she said her husband was gone somewhere and the boss man came out there and told, "Dara, you need to go out there and," because her name was Dara. "And get the cows out of the cotton." Because they done got out. She said, "My baby's young, I'm not going out there in that cotton." So they were always high strung. So quite naturally they didn't stay there long, they had to leave and move. But they weren't going to put up with this impertinent nigger, but they were so impertinent and they didn't really know how to mess with him. | 25:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Right. | 25:50 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | So that's the reason they got to be one of those people that they didn't lynch, because they all had this attitude. But when my daughter went to college she looked up—They did some kind of study of history of looking up your name. | 25:50 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, yeah. | 26:02 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And when she went back and researched out that the Twillies were never slaves. So I guess that's why they always had that high strong attitude with them. They were Frenchmen, and they came over and they got off this ship—And I can't really tell it all, but she was telling about it. And so my mother said, "Well, I had always figured that out," that they were never slaves because of the attitude and the way that they did. And the way that they were able to get about it and maneuver and get by, so that's what they did. It was two brothers, I believe, so if you run across any Twillies anywhere, they're all kin to us. | 26:03 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And we looked it up, and I think when my brother got this book at that time there were 35 families of the Twillies that were in the United States. They did like that, and so they were always that way. And they just didn't take no stuff. And I guess they always kind of knew how to save a penny if they got a dollar. So they were just down to, "I don't have no bread," so if something was done that they didn't like, they got up and moved and just left. | 26:38 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | So then they bought that farm. So my father and his brother both were able to buy farms near to each other. The farms are near to each other and they do it like that. | 27:03 |
| Stacey Scales | Would any of those people run away to the north, did they go all the way that far? | 27:15 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Oh, you mean from here? | 27:19 |
| Stacey Scales | When they would have to leave that place. | 27:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yes, that's where they would go, they would go north. | 27:24 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | So they wouldn't know, just like when they went to Mississippi. My grandmother lived in Mississippi a while, and the way she done, she came over here just like you say your people did. | 27:25 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Mm-hmm. | 27:33 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | And then this truck come back over to visit her and they loaded up that night and pushed the truck on past the boss' house and cranked it up. When they got up in the morning they were gone. | 27:34 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That's the way they'd do. | 27:45 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's just the way they did. | 27:46 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And so, it wasn't— | 27:48 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | But if you were a good worker and a big family, they didn't want you moving, they wouldn't let you move. | 27:50 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And they won't let you move. | 27:54 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | See, they always said you owed them something, there were some strings there, you know. | 27:54 |
| Stacey Scales | What if they would have caught the person that was trying to get away, what would they have done? | 27:58 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I guess they would have whooped them, or had them whooped. | 28:02 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah. But Black people, they were smooth. They had covered their tracks. | 28:04 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 28:10 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | The one that got away, they had set down—Because we put our heads together— | 28:11 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Planned it out. | 28:14 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —we could master any situation. | 28:15 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 28:18 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And they knew exactly how to do it. | 28:18 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 28:19 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They knew what time the boss went to bed, when he went to sleep. They knew what to do. | 28:20 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 28:23 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And you know, a lot of these songs—And some neighbors if they knew about it, they were probably outside singing, shouting, having a big dancing time, praising the Lord, keeping it up. And the other people were getting away, and they would sing, "Go down Moses." | 28:23 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 28:40 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They were wanting them to leave. And if the man—And they would be singing a lot. Some of them got away in the daytime. They would be in the cotton field, and if they would tell them, "Wade in the Water," | 28:40 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They know what to do. | 28:49 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They knew that the boss man was on their trail, and they would get in the water. They literally would get in the water, because the dogs and the horses couldn't track them. | 28:50 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | In the water. | 28:58 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And see, they knew how to do this swimming underwater where they couldn't see them. And they literally got away. And most of those songs that those people sung in that day when they were out in the field— | 28:59 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mean something. | 29:07 |
| Stacey Scales | Those were messages. | 29:09 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They were messages. | 29:09 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 29:09 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They were not just to be singing, but they didn't know it. | 29:12 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 29:13 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Because we got this, and they would be shouting, and they just thought, "Oh they're down there and done got drunk." They were not drunk, they would be shouting because they know that one of their brothers had got away from that. And so if they didn't keep up enough noise that distracted everything, so they just thought that everybody was still there. And they didn't know everybody wasn't there until they got up to go to the field the next morning. And they're in Chicago or St. Louis or wherever they wanted to go. | 29:13 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And see the thing about it—And another thing, you said, "What if they would catch them?" If they crossed and got out of that state there was nothing they could do with them then. | 29:39 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh. | 29:43 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | So if they got over in Arkansas, they were no longer their nigger. Or if they got in St. Louis— | 29:45 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They were no longer their nigger. | 29:51 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —or if they got over to Louisiana, any of those places, or Alabama. So they'd be in all those places too. | 29:51 |
| Stacey Scales | Were there people that would help them along the way? | 29:56 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Oh yeah. | 29:59 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah. | 30:00 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Any of them, you could run and they would hide you from them. | 30:01 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh yeah? | 30:01 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm, until night again when you'd go. | 30:04 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Until night again. You might be up under the bed and you could breathe. | 30:06 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 30:07 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And they'd come there and look everywhere and the dog can't smell, can't find. And they had, they'd tell, if you sprinkle black pepper around the dog wouldn't know which way to go. | 30:11 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 30:19 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And you know, Black people had all those songs and it worked for them. But it worked because God was in the plan. | 30:19 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 30:23 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Because those were his children. | 30:24 |
| Stacey Scales | Right. | 30:25 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | So it did. And I mean, you could just sit there—I wish my sister was here because she knows me tales that daddy told her than I do. Because my daddy and mother would tell her. But those were just ones that they always told. And see, actually, mama wasn't supposed to be there because that man, when he came down there after she whooped his child. But when he left there he had hair standing up on his head. | 30:26 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Because she was ready for him, huh? | 30:49 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Mama said she knew he was coming. She had a gun laying right there beside her, because she didn't know what he was going to try to do. But see, he didn't because he knew that child was wrong. But she told him, "Your kids had no business down at my house whooping my child." | 30:51 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 31:03 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | So that was just it. So that was the law then. And they had that name, that they were bad, so the White people were kind of afraid, they didn't mess around with them Twillie boys. And then see, they lived in a—They may have tried to do something but they were living in an all Black neighborhood, and everybody down there owned their own property. | 31:04 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And they weren't like we are now. If anything's going on, we don't say. And you're talking about people can holler, they can wail, they can sing. My great grandmother, as old as she was, she could holler from her house over to ours, over a mile away and I could hear it and know what she was saying. | 31:25 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 31:39 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And at that time I had good lungs like she did. And I'd holler all the time, I'd holler back to her. And I would get on over there. | 31:40 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 31:46 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And they had signs that they would put out, different colors— | 31:46 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh yeah. That meant something? | 31:48 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Right, that meant something. And they had words that they would use, and that meant something. And they would know to get together, because somebody is coming up. | 31:54 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 32:00 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | So therefore, that made the White people afraid to come in that neighborhood, because they didn't know what the signs were and they wouldn't know what's going on. | 32:00 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 32:06 |
| Stacey Scales | When they get on these people's places, and it came time for them to praise God— | 32:10 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Oh, well we never— | 32:14 |
| Stacey Scales | —would they be able to separate from the— | 32:14 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Oh yeah. They always out past sundown. Here, they always had Sunday. Sunday was a day that you know you were going to church. They even set up church— | 32:18 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Uh-huh, they gave them land for churches and they'd give you some money on a Saturday, "Here's $2." | 32:25 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah. To pay your preacher or whatever. | 32:29 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | To pay your preacher, you know. Tell the preacher, "Go ahead and preach the hell out of them niggers." | 32:35 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They'd tell the preacher what to preach, and the guy on the farm would tell the preacher what to preach to them. They couldn't go preach that it's wrong to do this, do that. They had to preach— | 32:38 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, they would have to preach— | 32:46 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —they did what that master, that guy said, for those that weren't afraid. | 32:50 |
| Stacey Scales | And this was when y'all were growing up, they would do that? | 32:54 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | No. This wasn't when we were growing up, not when I was growing, but when my parents were growing up. Not in my day and time. | 32:54 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, okay. | 33:01 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | It was different, because I don't know if it was ever going on in the community where I was. Because like I said, all those people down in that area for 4 or 5 miles were on their own property. And they were kind of big people, because in those days in the 30s and late 20s they had their own Model T Fords and they were driving their own cars and things. My great grandparents, they sold milk and butter, and they would bring it downtown. | 33:02 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Eggs. | 33:30 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And eggs and chickens. And my great uncle, he raised horses and things for the market. So they did little things to get money other than just the cotton. You see what I'm saying? | 33:30 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, okay. | 33:40 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And they had their own little fruit orchard, their own apples and peaches and things like that. And they raised their own gardens, so they basically raised all the food that they ate. | 33:41 |
| Stacey Scales | And when they would raise that food, would they use signs like the Almanac and things like that? | 33:48 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah, most of them did, they did. That had that MacDonald's Almanac, it was the main Almanac that they used, and they planted by it. | 33:54 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Old MacDonald to come down. | 33:54 |
| Stacey Scales | They planted by this? | 33:54 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Yes. | 33:54 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah. And the Cordial Eye Calendar and the Cordial Eye Almanac, those were the things that they used then. And they used that for going fishing, they used that for planting, they used that for pulling teeth and all those things like that. | 34:16 |
| Stacey Scales | So they followed those signs. | 34:20 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They followed those signs. | 34:20 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 34:20 |
| Stacey Scales | And did it work out better when they did that? | 34:22 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Well it seemed like it did. | 34:23 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | You know, I really don't know because my mother wasn't a real sign user. | 34:25 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 34:28 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And one time a sign really aggravated me the first time I had a toothache. | 34:30 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 34:34 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And I wanted to go to the dentist and have my tooth pulled. And my husband was talking about the sign wasn't in the right place. And I'm talking about, "The sign isn't in the right place, but my tooth is hurting." | 34:34 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Your tooth was hurting. | 34:43 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But you know what? | 34:43 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 34:44 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I guess that it was good that he did that, because I don't know what was wrong with that tooth, but it was hurting me so bad. Until I said, "Lord, you know my husband won't take me to the doctor to get right." And I went on and told him about my tooth— | 34:45 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 34:55 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —and do you know, that tooth stopped hurting and never hurt anymore. So the sun must not have been in the right place. I wanted to go to lose that tooth, that's what I'm saying. So, you know, that was probably the reason the Lord did that for those people. | 34:55 |
| Stacey Scales | Yeah. | 35:06 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And it worked, because they believed that. | 35:07 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. That stuff comes back to belief. | 35:09 |
| Stacey Scales | Would people back then use herbs? | 35:11 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Oh, yeah. | 35:17 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yes, yes, yes. My grandfather would call a Medicine Man if anything happened. His name was Gus Twillie. If anything happened in that community they would go to him, for him to doctor on them, fix what was wrong. And the only thing I hated about it, grandpa didn't tell nobody else, nobody else what he used and what he did, so none of us don't know. | 35:17 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Don't know that. | 35:38 |
| Stacey Scales | So he could get that famous again? | 35:39 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah. He could get them together, he could—Whatever it was, he would heal whatever it was he did. I remember one time— | 35:42 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They'd go dig up roots. | 35:46 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —they kept on telling me, "Don't jump off the porch," and I jumped off the porch and boy, I gashed that foot wide open. She immediately sent to my grandpa and told him what it was. And he mixed up something for me to have to put on there, and I put it on. And I tell him all the time, I say, "I got grandpa's ability in knowing how to use herbs and do different things. Because I do, I use a lot of herbs, a lot of different things. And it be wrong, and when it gets—Even with the pneumonia, you know, doctors, they go to school and they spend 8 and 12 years. And my son, 2 years ago, had the pneumonia so bad. | 35:47 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And my daughter-in-law called me and told me what it was. I said, "Girl, there's nothing wrong with him it's just pneumonia." And she said, "But mother, he's been to the doctor and the doctor it ain't pneumonia." Because she was fixing to carry him back. And they within two days before they found out it was pneumonia. And they were giving him frozen orange juice and everything. And I laid up that night and I prayed I said, "Lord, let him send my son home." | 36:19 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 36:39 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And when I called my daughter-in-law I said, "He can go home." I said, "Check him out and let him go home." And she was crying the tears, because she knew her husband was going to die and the doctors knew it too. I said, "Take him home, and when you get him home call me." | 36:40 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | She called me and said, "Mother, I got him home." I came over by the store, I got every kind of juice that I could get. I bought me some onions, and I got me some vinegar, and I got me some soda, and I went on out there. I made him an onion poultice. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't hardly do nothing. And my mother-in-law, she didn't even know. She said, "What?" She's older than I am. | 36:51 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I made an onion poultice and put it on here— | 37:09 |
| Stacey Scales | Mm-hmm. | 37:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —and once I put it and I gave him some warm juice. They couldn't get his temperature down. And I took that soda and vinegar and I bathed him all over in that soda and vinegar. And I bathed him and wrapped his feet, and in about—The doctor gave him enough medicine, antibiotics, I believe, for 4 or 5 days. When that time was up he went back to the doctor. He liked to shock the doctor. | 37:12 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | The doctor didn't expect to see him. | 37:32 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | He thought he was going to be dead. | 37:33 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, wow. | 37:33 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | He thought he was going to be dead. And then he asked, "What did y'all do for him?" | 37:33 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 37:33 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And then he said, "Well, whatever y'all did, keep on doing it." But see, I can smell pneumonia a mile away. I got that from my daddy, he could do that. And see, I was on the telephone when she told me that. I said, "Honey, it ain't nothing but pneumonia." And I knew what to do for it. See that onion poultice, he couldn't—He was almost hollering to breathe. | 37:42 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Uh-huh. | 37:58 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And when I laid that on there it started easing down. And as it was starting to get cool, he would ask for another. You put it on there hot. And we did that until well into the night and we were tired and sleepy. And the Spirit told me, it said, "Get you a hot water bottle, fill it up with hot water. Get the hot poultice, put it on there and the hot water bottle on top of it." See, that kept it warm and that's how I got his fever down. But anytime you got a fever, you bathe them off from head to toe with that. | 37:59 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They used to do it with alcohol, they tell you don't bathe children with alcohol. But we never did, we always used that onion poultice. And even for swelling. My son was hot, he got bit by a wasp. When he got to the house his face was just swole all up. I started bathing him in that cold water, and you could see the swelling going down. | 38:24 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right, it sure goes down. | 38:42 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | So I use a lot of herbs. | 38:44 |
| Stacey Scales | Which are the other recipes that they have for sicknesses? | 38:45 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Okay. They made mullein tea. A lot teas, other people say that they made it. Mullein is a wild— | 38:50 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Big old wide leaf thing. | 38:56 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —big old wide leaf in it. | 38:57 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, really? | 38:58 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And they use peach leaves— | 39:00 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm, make tea out of them. | 39:01 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —make tea out of that and then they also bathe in it. They use sage, it's a lot of things. You know what you put in your dressing, you cook with it. But you can bathe it off if you get a sore or swelling, you bathe it with the sage and you can drink the sage tea. Cherry tea— | 39:03 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm, cherry tea is good boy. | 39:18 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —and cherry bar. You use that cherry bar tea for colds and different things. If you have a fever you can bathe with it. And that cherry is really good for colds. | 39:18 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | And now they say they have cherry tablets at the Health Center. | 39:27 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Oh, they do? They have cherry tablets at the Health Center? I know you can buy that Cheerwine Cherry Cough Syrup, but that's a sad to buy, Cheerwine. And you use that in a lot of them. They use the Sweetgum for, they call it diarrhea now. | 39:30 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Right. | 39:42 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They chew those leaves, it's good for that. And they got another Blackberry Root, that's good for upset stomach. | 39:43 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Right. | 39:48 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | You know, you make a tea and you take that root and you eat it. Some things I don't know, that old people knew about. | 39:48 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. I don't forgot about it. They used to have [indistinct 00:39:49] Root, and you don't even see that no more. | 39:48 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | No more, because I guess they don't know. And they use— | 39:48 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They done run out I guess. | 39:48 |
| Stacey Scales | Who delivered the babies back then? | 39:48 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They had midwives. | 39:48 |
| Stacey Scales | Okay. | 39:48 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They had what you called lady—What was it called? | 39:49 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Midwives. | 39:54 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Midwives. | 39:54 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Midwives, and they'd come to you home. | 39:54 |
| Stacey Scales | How did they learn how to do the delivery? | 39:54 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They, a lot of them, they're mothers, they just did it. | 39:54 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Uh-huh. And I guess the mothers would help them to learn. | 40:19 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Helped them to learn. And too, they had midwife books. I had one, and I guess when we moved from here, or some books got—We were moving out of that house on the other end, and it came up a rain and we were gone and a lot of books got wet. | 40:24 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 40:39 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And it was really good, and it told you—And see, because I don't know how they learned way before that time, before they learned to read and write. | 40:39 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 40:45 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Because you see, people back there, like my mother and her mother, they read—They could read and write. And I don't know how far back, but I know those three generations, they could read and write. | 40:46 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I know they said they would measure the cord like this. | 40:58 |
| Stacey Scales | With your finger? | 41:01 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Uh-huh. Back then a long time ago, so they would measure. | 41:02 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They'd measure. | 41:04 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | And it's something that comes from the cord and goes to the afterbirth. | 41:06 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Mm-hmm. | 41:12 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | And then it comes back from the afterbirth and goes back to the stomach. But when it comes back, that's when they would cut it. | 41:14 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Oh, see, she knows a lot. So they had told her. See, that's how they learned, like they told her. | 41:24 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Uh-huh. Yeah, I hear him saying it. | 41:26 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Uh-huh. You're talking about it. | 41:27 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Anyway, they'd measure it off and they'd be standing there with these scissors. And they would watch this, whatever this is that would leave the afterbirth and come back into the stomach. | 41:31 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Mm-hmm. | 41:39 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Then they would cut it. | 41:39 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They knew it was time to cut it. See, I didn't know about that. | 41:41 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They'd tie it off and cut it. | 41:42 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Mm-hmm. So see, I'm learning something here now. Yeah, that's good. | 41:42 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | So, that's just the way it was. | 41:42 |
| Stacey Scales | That's all right. Did they have Black doctors back then? | 41:57 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | There were some, few. Every now and then, but mostly that was on down the line further. You know? Because I know this Black doctor was at Madison. What was his name? Do you remember him, a doctor? | 42:02 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I didn't know no Black doctors in Madison. But they tell me it was a Black doctor at—I believe it was Dr. Cass. | 42:13 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Yeah, Dr. Cass. | 42:22 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Uh-huh. And then we had Dr. Banks in Forrest City when I was a child. | 42:23 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Uh-huh. | 42:28 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | So the doctor from out there. And my husband's grandfather was a Black doctor. | 42:30 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 42:36 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But he was so good. I forgot about that. | 42:36 |
| Stacey Scales | What was his name? | 42:39 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | His name, oh my goodness, he was a Woods. His name was Woods, and I was trying to see— | 42:44 |
| Stacey Scales | Was he from the Forrest City area? | 42:48 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | He was from St. Francis County, born and raised in St. Francis County, which Forrest City is the town. | 42:50 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 42:55 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And he was such a good Black doctor, until he would get a lot of the White trade. And they hired a man to kill him, but somehow or another—And the man was with him and I guess they were walking. They said that the man shot him, but I guess the gun—What do you call it, the kick? Anyway, it didn't go off, it didn't shoot him, and they were crossing the field. So then he knew that he was hired to kill him, so he left. He had to leave Forrest City, because they were going to kill him. | 42:55 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 43:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And he moved out to Oklahoma, and that's where he died, out in Oklahoma. Well what happened, he got out there. And by him being a doctor, he had this big ranch with cows and stuff. And somehow or another they had bailed some hay and there was a snake bone in it. I guess they didn't know much about snake bones. Maybe at first when it peered through he just thought it was a stick and do much about it. And that poison got in him. They just weren't able to save him. | 43:21 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh no. | 43:43 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Uh-huh, that's what happened to him. But that's the reason he had to leave Forrest City. | 43:44 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | He had to leave Forrest City. | 43:46 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | So that's the reason why he wasn't known too much around there, because he left I guess when his grandson was a little bitty boy. I didn't ever know him, but once I married into that family they told me about him. | 43:47 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 43:57 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But his son is still living, he's my father-in-law. He's still living, but his daddy was a doctor. Now he could tell you some things. He could tell you some stuff that happened back then, because he's 87-years-old and he knows a lot more stuff than I know. He would be back there in the time that you would be wanting to know, in the early 1900s. | 43:58 |
| Stacey Scales | Right. | 44:14 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And I'm sure that his—He was raised by his uncle, so I'm sure that his uncle told him a lot of other things that happened. | 44:15 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Other stuff, mm-hmm. | 44:22 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Because a lot of the stuff, they've been down and came in contact with the other people because the fact that their people owned their own property too. And they lived on that property, so they didn't come into a lot of the things that other people that didn't own their property did. You know, and stuff like that. | 44:23 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | There's a lot of people that didn't own their property. They seen some hard times, let me tell you. | 44:36 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They seen it hard. They tell me that they couldn't hardly hide themselves. They didn't get enough to make clothes. Especially if a lady was expecting and didn't know how to sew or do nothing. They didn't have no clothes. My mother-in-law was talking about how they couldn't hardly hide their knickers. | 44:38 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 44:51 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They didn't have money or clothes, and their master didn't give them nothing. He didn't care, all he wanted was—And they wanted Black women have lots of children then so they could work the farms. | 44:54 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm, so they had somebody to work. | 45:01 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And like she said, when they'd been on these plantations they may pick out one good strong Black man and don't care if the women had husbands. They wanted children. | 45:03 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | He'd tell him, "Go have them women." | 45:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | He had to go around and— | 45:12 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | He'd have those women. | 45:13 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —impregnate all those other women so they could have strong children to work the farms. | 45:14 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 45:17 |
| Stacey Scales | And how would that effect the family? | 45:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That's the reason we have such a problem with the Black men learning how to stay with their families and take care of them. | 45:22 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm, that's right. | 45:29 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And see, it's not that they wanted to do, but it will be a while before they can get that out of them. Because it's instinct born in them. | 45:30 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 45:36 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Because, the White man didn't ever think that the Black woman was important for the husband to stay there and take care of his family. He may send him off for days and weeks at a time. | 45:37 |
| Stacey Scales | And they would have that one Black man impregnate— | 45:48 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 45:51 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | All the women that they— | 45:51 |
| Stacey Scales | —because he was strong. | 45:53 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Because he looked strong. | 45:54 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Thought that he looked strong and they wanted strong children to be able to work their farms. | 45:55 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They wanted strong children. | 45:58 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | To work the farm. | 45:58 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 45:58 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And shoot, so that's the reason why they're kind of like they are now, because you may not know it now, but however you are, your children will be like that. | 46:05 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm, be like that. | 46:14 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Because it's already in them, because it's in you. So people don't believe that. A lot of times they say it's just the women, but it's the men too. Whatever the man does or is, the children are going to be like that. He may not ever be around his daddy— | 46:14 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm, or even never see him. | 46:27 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —and never be around his mama, never see her. But he'll be acting like that. And that's the reason why a lot of that goes on. | 46:28 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 46:34 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And they just have to grow up to it and learn, because it's been done so much. | 46:35 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | So to learn that it's better just to have your wife and your family. Men have 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 families. | 46:40 |
| Stacey Scales | Would that break up families sometimes, when they would send that one man in there? | 46:52 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Oh no, mm-mm. Where was the woman going to go? And she didn't have anything. | 46:57 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Oh no, she didn't go nowhere. And the husband, the man, got him over yonder farming somewhere. And the woman ain't going to tell her husband, because she knows that he might get mad and go and do something. She doesn't want— | 46:58 |
| Stacey Scales | So the husband thinks that's his children. | 47:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Probably— | 47:12 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They really didn't have the choice. | 0:02 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | The men were just happy to be there with their families when they could because if the man decided that he needs some money, he might sell John off his plantation and send him all the way down there, and the children grow up without their daddy because they all do enough to work. He going to give them some beans and peas or something or other. Or maybe the woman work in the kitchen, and she get the leftover food and clothes and stuff like that. | 0:03 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 0:27 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That went on in my day and time, even though I wasn't in it. | 0:27 |
| Stacey Scales | In your day, did women do a lot of working in White folks' houses? | 0:32 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Yeah. | 0:35 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah. They worked in their houses. | 0:36 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You cooked. | 0:37 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They cooked. | 0:37 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You raised they children. That's what I was telling you at first. But yet and still, you wasn't good enough to come in that front door. When you'd come, you had to go around and come in the back door. But you could go in there and cook, see to the children, and do all that in the house once you get in there, but you couldn't come in the front door. | 0:37 |
| Stacey Scales | Did you all ever have to do that type of work? | 0:55 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | No, I never had to do too much of that work. | 0:58 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I never did that. | 0:59 |
| Stacey Scales | Okay. What was your first job [indistinct 00:01:04]? | 1:01 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | My first job— | 1:04 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Other than chopping the cotton? | 1:05 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | —was just chopping cotton. | 1:07 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, chopping cotton? | 1:07 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Picking cotton. | 1:07 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | See, my daddy—See, we had to chop and pick our own cotton. Like I said, I chopped and picked cotton for my great-grandmother and my grandmother. then there was some other Black people there. If we'd get through at our farm, they'd hire them, but they'd always hire some of the children in the neighborhood. Basically, it was just us though work because it was a lot of children of us, and most of those people— | 1:10 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You all was good workers. | 1:32 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —most of those people were aged people that didn't have no children or all their children was gone and they were still farming because they didn't have a lot of Social Security like they have now. It was hard for people to get on and get any help. See, and when my grandfather died, my daddy went down and tried to get his mother on Social Security then. He had eight or nine of us was there then because everybody was born. It was 10 of us. Let me see, was everybody born? No, Barbara and Ed wasn't born. Like I said, it was about eight or nine because more children were born after my grandfather died. They asked him was he not able to take care of his mother. | 1:32 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Take care of his mother. That's right. | 2:08 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | He got all of these children, and they living on the farm. | 2:09 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's what they used to ask. | 2:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | See, that's what they used to have you taking—He said, "No, I'm not able to take care of her." Then they gave him —I had ran across some of those papers the other day where he went down there and the little money that they were giving her. It was hard for them to give her anything— | 2:11 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. It wasn't that much. | 2:24 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —to live off. It wasn't like it is now. They give her a little bit but by my daddy farming and doing stuff, they was able to take care of with the little money that they gave. My great-grandmother, what I'm telling you about never did get on anything. She had a stroke and couldn't move. We had to move around and do everything for her. She never did get on anything but they thought because her son was a school teacher and they lived on their farm, because school teachers didn't make a lot of money then. He raised, like I said, they sold milk and butter and raised horses by himself, but she never did get nothing. | 2:26 |
| Stacey Scales | Did they have healthcare for Blacks when you all were growing up? | 2:53 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Oh, no. | 2:55 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They still had the health department. | 2:57 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They did. | 2:57 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | We went down there and got our shots when I was—I remember, we'd go to the health department, get our shots and then you remember in the school one time when syphilis and tuberculosis was raising in the county, they would come to the schools and get all the children x-rays and they would test them for the syphilis. They'd take the blood test to see if they had that. Tuberculosis was the— | 2:58 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Disease that was really raging. | 3:25 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They gave x-rays for the tuberculosis. | 3:27 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, yes. | 3:28 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Then if they found anybody that had it, they would send them to Alexander. | 3:29 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I remember them sending them to exam. | 3:33 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I know one—They came up with one girl in our community that had it and I guess they didn't have a space for her over there, but they had her people—They had to quarantine her in their house and she was in that one room and nobody—They wouldn't allow them to go in that room. They thought they'd catch it. They had to give her her food through the door and she didn't eat out the dishes. They ate it separate until they sent her over there. | 3:34 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, okay. | 3:57 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They had that. Well, see, I know my mother used to—The health department then was in the courthouse and when my mother, she would take us up there and we got our shots and things there at the courthouse. But then see you all made it come up from down there to do it. | 3:58 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | No, it was a doctor— | 4:09 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That came out there. Okay, well it's— | 4:12 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | —uh-huh, and gave us ours. That's the reason I didn't think it was a health department. | 4:14 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They had that. I remember going to that. | 4:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I guess he was working for the health department but he came out. | 4:19 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | We'd come out and come out and rule there. See, they started going around to the schools. They'd go out to schools and rule and they take them by class and line them up— | 4:21 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 4:26 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —until they'd get everybody. | 4:27 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Until everybody would get their shots. | 4:27 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They did that where'd they'd get their shots and they would come out to the schools and vaccinate everybody. | 4:33 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 4:36 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They did that, too. | 4:37 |
| Stacey Scales | You were telling me earlier that you went to school in different sessions? | 4:38 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Two months in the summer. | 4:43 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, okay. | 4:46 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Maybe three in the fall. | 4:46 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | See, like you know— | 4:47 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Depending on how the cotton was gathered. | 4:48 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | July and August— | 4:50 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | August, you went to school. | 4:51 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | You know what? You may didn't get two months in the summer— | 4:51 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Right. | 4:51 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —because sometime— | 4:55 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You didn't get through chopping. | 4:56 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —that cotton—You didn't get through chopping or either that cotton, you'd start picking cotton about the middle August. You go to school all of July— | 4:58 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 5:02 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —and part August and maybe— | 5:02 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Then you'd go to picking cotton. | 5:03 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —if they got through the cotton early, you'd go to school in June. You may go to school in June and July and then part of August. | 5:07 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | There was a split term. | 5:13 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I remember. It was split term. Finally, they had in Forrest City the Black schools would open up in September like the White schools. That was only for the children that was in the city. | 5:15 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | City. But the country children— | 5:24 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —could go to school. | 5:25 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | —couldn't go. | 5:25 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Country children didn't get go farm. | 5:25 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | On the farm, they couldn't go. | 5:25 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They couldn't go. | 5:25 |
| Stacey Scales | It was an all Black school— | 5:31 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | All Black. | 5:32 |
| Stacey Scales | —you all were in. What type of things were in the lesson? | 5:34 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Well, we got the books when the White people— | 5:38 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That's right. | 5:39 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | —got through with them. | 5:40 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | When we—All our books were old books that the White people that passed on down. | 5:40 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Down to us. | 5:43 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Down—Then even after we got up, when I was in the ninth grade, you had to buy your own books and our books—That's one reason why they was trying to get all the schools to be one. It was a young lady, we caught the school bus at the same place and we were the same grade but her books were different from my books. | 5:45 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 6:03 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | We had different books. | 6:04 |
| Stacey Scales | They had new books? | 6:06 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. And we had the old. | 6:08 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | We had old books and when they were giving you free books, first through what, eighth grade? When you got to 9th, 10th, 11th grade you bought your books. | 6:11 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Bought your book. | 6:17 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I guess the school decided the curriculum that you take. Your books would be new then, but until you got to then, you had hand me down books. | 6:18 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 6:24 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They'd bring you all these books from the White school. | 6:25 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's what they said. Bring them from over there by the truckload. | 6:27 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah. That's what we studied. | 6:29 |
| Stacey Scales | Would you study things like Black pride and Black history? | 6:31 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Oh, no. | 6:34 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | We didn't study Black history until we got in high school. I had Black history in high school. | 6:35 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | It wasn't too much then. | 6:39 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | We had one class and then our teachers didn't know to say, "Well, it's important that everybody take Black history and make it a mandatory subject." Some of it, like American history and— | 6:40 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 6:50 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —things like that. That was what you call an elective and you could take it if you wanted to. I wanted to take it so I took Black history but a lot of people didn't. They had one class of Black history. | 6:50 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. When I really got chance to really read about Black history, my first daughter went to college here, Pine Bluff. She brought me a Black history book from the library over here for me read. | 6:59 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | For you to read. | 7:10 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's when it really carried me on back to things I hear my grandmother say and all that because it was in there, see? | 7:13 |
| Stacey Scales | Did they have leaders that they would talk about people? | 7:21 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Leaders? | 7:23 |
| Stacey Scales | People you should look up to? | 7:24 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Oh, no. They didn't tell you nothing about that. They didn't want you look up to nobody. | 7:26 |
| Stacey Scales | Booker T. Washington or nothing like that? | 7:31 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | No, you didn't get that until you got up in high school. | 7:31 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Then you got in that—Uh-huh. That's right. They didn't tell little children nothing about that. | 7:36 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They didn't talk about that too much. I didn't hear talk about that too much. | 7:36 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They have always wanted to keep that hid. You know what I mean? I tell you where the White man was really and truly, he wanted to keep all the good that the Black person had done hid so you would always look up to them, you know what I mean? They didn't want you to have no Black person to look up to. | 7:42 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I'm glad you said that. | 8:00 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Well, that's right. That's really true. | 8:00 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But, that made me think about something that my father-in-law said that happened. He says when they—The first two-row planter, a Black man— | 8:00 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Invented it. | 8:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —invented it down here— | 8:13 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | In Tuskegee. | 8:13 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | No, he said right down here in Newcastle area. A White guy came by and he had made this and you know what he was just doing his farm with it and told him—Came down there and bought it for him and told him don't make another one. See, we wouldn't—If the White man told him to do it, we wouldn't do it. I mean, he made it so then see, he—Then that's when they first started two-row planters. Then they went from there to the four row and six, eight row— | 8:15 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 8:39 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —like they do now and took it away. He patent that. He got paid for that. But the Black guy did it, like most of the things. That happened right here. | 8:40 |
| Stacey Scales | The Black guy's name? | 8:42 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I don't know his name. My father-in-law was just telling me about it. I know he knows it. | 8:42 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's just the way they done. They didn't want you to know nothing that— | 8:45 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I bet he could tell you. If you would get to talk to him, he could tell you all this stuff. | 8:45 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | —the Black had done because they wanted to keep you looking up to them, see. That's where that was. They wasn't going— | 8:45 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They knew he was scared. | 8:59 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They didn't allow the Black teachers to teach nothing about no Black peoples in the schools. | 9:06 |
| Stacey Scales | Did your parents ever sit you down and explain why things were the way they were? | 9:09 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. That's how I know as much as I do because my parents would talk to me and explain. Now my grandmother was a real thrifty lady. She sharecropped for a while until she could save up for some money and then she bought her place, see? | 9:13 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That's what they did. | 9:28 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | But now, there were some people I know that were sharecropping from the beginning to the ending and they never had nothing. | 9:33 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Because they didn't know how to save. | 9:37 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They didn't know how to manage their money and save, see? That's right. It's just the way they was. | 9:38 |
| Stacey Scales | When did you first realize that there was a Black society and then a White society? | 9:46 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Well, now I know that a long time before. I'm going to tell you. | 9:52 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I knew that every time I could remember. | 9:56 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I'm going to tell you something that happened a long time ago. My mother was washing for this lady and she was Fleming's bookkeeper. You remember Fleming, the [indistinct 00:10:05]? | 9:57 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I know him. | 10:04 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | She come to the house one time to pick up her clothes and she asked me, "Where's the girl?" I looked out. | 10:07 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | You didn't know who she was talking about, did you? | 10:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Because see, I'm the girl's mama. It's a woman. | 10:17 |
| Stacey Scales | Right. | 10:20 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. I looked out and she said, "You know what I'm talking about, where's the girl?" I said, "I'm the girl. Here I am." I said, "My mother's a woman." She told me don't get smart with her. I said, "Don't you get smart with me and call my mama no girl." (laughs) | 10:20 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | From that day on, I began standing up a little more and more, but she didn't say that to me no more. | 10:34 |
| Stacey Scales | She was referring to— | 10:42 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | My mother. | 10:44 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Her mother. | 10:44 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | —as the girl. That's what they would call you— | 10:45 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That's what they called you. | 10:46 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | —girl and boy. | 10:47 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Mm-hmm. | 10:48 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | When she drove me and said, "Well, where's the girl?" I looked at her and then she said it again. I said, "Hey, here I am, I'm the girl." (laughs) Then she told me, "Don't get smart with her." See? That's just the way they was. | 10:49 |
| Stacey Scales | They wouldn't use Mr. and Mrs.? | 11:01 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Oh, no. They didn't even want to call you by your name. | 11:02 |
| Speaker 4 | Hey. | 11:05 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Hey. | 11:05 |
| Speaker 4 | How are you all doing? | 11:09 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | All right. | 11:09 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Girl, that's right. | 11:09 |
| Stacey Scales | They didn't want to use your first name? | 11:09 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Uh-uh, much less call you like you're supposed to be called. | 11:14 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I guess they did me like that. My sister and I, our mother was sickly like and she never was able to go with us too much. This particular day, we were all in the store. That woman walked up and said, "What you girls want?" That made my sister and I really upset. We said, "Girls? She said, "No, Mama not no girl." We went on out that store. | 11:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They never did get grown, always waited when they was talking to you. I don't care if the person was 70 years old, "Hey, boy." You know. You never got grown in their eyesight. You always was a child. But see they wanted you to say as soon as they little mature and get this high, they wanted you to call them mister— | 11:36 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That's right. | 11:52 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | —and Miss. | 11:52 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That's right. | 11:52 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's just the way they was. | 11:54 |
| Stacey Scales | Even when they were little, you had to— | 11:56 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | See, if you were working in their place, I'd hear people say, "As soon as this kid get up—Mr. So and So." They'd start calling him that so you would, or Miss So and so. Isn't Miss So and so pretty? So you would say it. You see what I mean? That's right. That's just the way they did. | 11:58 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That's right. My daddy said it happened to him, too. | 12:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. That's just the way it was. | 12:16 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Talking about history. | 12:16 |
| Speaker 5 | I know a little something of that. | 12:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | We talking— | 12:16 |
| Speaker 5 | My granddaddy. | 12:16 |
| Stacey Scales | [indistinct 00:12:26] Black people? | 12:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You tell something about what your granddaddy said? | 12:16 |
| Speaker 5 | They call him a boy and he was on a stick. | 12:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 12:16 |
| Speaker 5 | He on a stick. | 12:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You never did get too old for them to call you boy and girl, an uncle and aunt. My grandmother told a White man once, she said, "Don't be calling me no aunt. I ain't no kin to you. I ain't none of your aunt." (laughs) You know, (laughs), they saying aunt. | 12:33 |
| Speaker 5 | I was little but I can remember going to this particular store. | 12:47 |
| Stacey Scales | Calling you— | 12:47 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 12:47 |
| Stacey Scales | —by that name. | 12:47 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 12:47 |
| Stacey Scales | Older, they called you Uncle So and so or something like—Or aunt. | 12:47 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | She told him, she wasn't no kin to him. Don't call her aunt. | 12:58 |
| Stacey Scales | Do people get very angry over that sort of thing? | 13:02 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You know you couldn't like it. | 13:05 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | You couldn't say nothing though. | 13:09 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | A lot of times you couldn't say nothing, but it always dug you. It always made you mad inside if you couldn't say it on the outside. Don't nobody saying uncle and aunt to you when you ain't no kin to them. A grown person don't want you saying boy and girl to them. That really was an insult. That's right. | 13:10 |
| Stacey Scales | How did people in the neighborhood respond to each other? Would they help the Blacks and other Blacks? | 13:34 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Oh, yeah. | 13:39 |
| Stacey Scales | Help with each other? | 13:39 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I mean, then—It is not like now, but if in our community—All Black community, if somebody got sick or they behind in their crop, looked like they weren't going to get it out, when other people would finish theirs— | 13:40 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They'd chop it out. | 13:52 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —they'd all go over there and give him a day. | 13:53 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 13:55 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I mean, give him a day. | 13:56 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 13:57 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Just chop his cotton out or plow it out. If he was sick, then they would just go over there and work that crop out. | 13:57 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 14:04 |
| Stacey Scales | They would help? | 14:04 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | People really stuck together more then than they do now. | 14:08 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Than they do now. Because I know my— | 14:10 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Seems like since we've been blessed, we got to the place we're not like that no more. | 14:12 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | If they were building a house— | 14:19 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Everybody go help build the house. | 14:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —all the men in the neighborhood would go and help build a house and the women would cook the food— | 14:22 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Food. | 14:24 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —and take it down there— | 14:25 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 14:25 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —for they could eat. They'd build that house, get that house built up, get sugar boy out of— | 14:26 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 14:30 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Then if the woman was sick in the house, the ladies in the community would come over and cook and clean up the house and wash all the clothes and everything. | 14:32 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 14:42 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They were washing on a rub board. | 14:42 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 14:42 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They would come over and do that. If it was a lady in the community and she had a lot of boys and she was sick or whatever and the boys tear their pants and do it—They don't do that now but they patched in. | 14:42 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Where they'd patch them pants and everything. | 14:50 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Tell them to send their pants over here and I'll fix the boys' pants. They send them over there and they'd patch their clothes and if they had vegetables in their garden they would say, "Send the children over here to get some vegetables." Either they'd carry them, they'd kill hogs, they would send everybody some of the meat— | 14:50 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Meat. That's right. | 15:05 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —and stuff like that. | 15:06 |
| Stacey Scales | Were there ever any from vast storms or disasters that ruined the area or crop? | 15:07 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Not in my time. I never heard my daddy and them talking about nothing that happened like that. | 15:16 |
| Stacey Scales | No? Oh, okay. | 15:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But it could have happened. But I just don't know about it. | 15:24 |
| Speaker 5 | I remember my granddaddy talking about that influenza that came through. | 15:25 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That just killed to people— | 15:31 |
| Speaker 5 | Because it killed his first wife. | 15:32 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | —they couldn't dig graves fast enough when the flu first came out. | 15:34 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | What was that date? Like 1912 or 1900? Early 1900s— | 15:38 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Something back then because— | 15:39 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | See, whatever. I forgot about that. My aunt, this lady I told you all I would like for you to meet. | 15:41 |
| Stacey Scales | Yes. | 15:45 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I think it was 12 children of them. But see, I told you, she—It was had to be the early 1900s because I told you she's 84—She's close to 90 years old. It had to be the very early 1900s and late 18, you know. They had it. The doctor gave them the wrong medicine and all of the children died but them two. Sure did. He gave them the wrong medicine. They all died and I think it was 10 or 12 of them. You talking about eight or 10 kids gone in one family, I guess probably one behind the other one like that. | 15:48 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | My grandmothers said she used quinine and whiskey. At that time, most of the whiskey was homemade whiskey and that's what she used. | 16:26 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That's what they used for that fever. | 16:30 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. She said she broke it with, that broke. That's right. | 16:30 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But my mother used to use that quinine for that fever and they knew how to dose it out. They would give a smaller dose to that. | 16:39 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 16:45 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They did that. | 16:45 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That would break that fever. Because she was talking about how many people died— | 16:46 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | You know they had typhoid fever. | 16:46 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | —when that flu first come out. | 16:50 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, yes. | 16:51 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | We were just blessed because I guess everybody in the family had typhoid. All my sisters, brothers that were born— | 16:51 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Had typhoid malaria. | 16:57 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —we had typhoid—We that and they don't know where it come from. See, I guess that's why we were tied up with the health department so much because they came out trying to test and see was it in our water and where did it come from and where did we get it from. They said the mosquitoes carry it. But they were coming out religiously. I was a small girl. I had to be about four or five years old but I can remember all of this. Then they had outside bathrooms and I can remember that instead of us using our bathroom, they had my daddy dig different little holes in the ground around places for they had to use the bathroom. I don't know exactly how long they came out and tested, but I know that they came out. These health women come out and they was testing—They were trying to see where did we get it from. | 16:58 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Where did you all get that malaria from? | 17:45 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Where did we get that malaria from? But the Lord blessed, didn't any of us die from it. The doctor came out and they gave me too many aspirin and made me I guess hallucinate or see things that weren't even there. But it was just look like big things crawling up the wall and I'd be wanting to get out the way to run. My daddy had to hold me in the bed and the doctor said— | 17:45 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That fever will do you like that. | 18:06 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —giving two many aspirins for me. I don't take aspirin now. Told me never to take aspirins anymore. It made me—I don't know if I was allergic to aspirins or what but it did that. But I had that fever, took out all of my hair. At that time— | 18:06 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | It'll sure take your hair. | 18:20 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —I had long pretty hair. | 18:20 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I had to learn how to walk again and everything. I had it. | 18:20 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, yeah? | 18:23 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I did, too. I had to learn to walk all over, too. | 18:24 |
| Stacey Scales | You had to learn how to walk? How old were you when that— | 18:26 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Oh, I guess I was— | 18:28 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I was four or five years old. | 18:29 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I guess I was about eight. | 18:31 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, yes. | 18:34 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | If I can remember. | 18:34 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | [indistinct 00:18:35]. | 18:34 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I had a first cousin to die because two of my aunts' children had and one of them died. Ooh, you was sick. You was just helpless, sick. | 18:34 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Sick in that bed. Couldn't do nothing. | 18:42 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. You was sick. | 18:43 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | It was hot and no fans and no electricity then. We got electricity, what, '49 in the rural areas. | 18:46 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. I know they had my mother boiling my water because they thought at first it might have been in the water. | 18:51 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | See, we had to do that, too. They thought it was the water. | 19:04 |
| Stacey Scales | In the water. | 19:04 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I don't know. I can't think of nothing else that happened that I heard them talking about. | 19:04 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I told you about the flu and we told you about the typhoid malaria and that's it. | 19:07 |
| Stacey Scales | Was there ever any hard times like Depression? | 19:11 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | All the time. | 19:15 |
| Speaker 5 | All of us went through Depression. | 19:16 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | My daddy said that— | 19:17 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That was a every day thing. | 19:17 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —it was plenty of job, but it wasn't no money. They would go to work and people pay them off in a ham, chicken, potatoes and things like that. | 19:20 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 19:28 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | My father-in-law said that he walked all the way out there from where I am down there to where Toll place is now to go to work to meet a man downtown. You're talking about eight miles that he walked to work and walked back in the evening. He might get paid off on the sack of potatoes. It was just no money. | 19:29 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 19:44 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I hear my daddy talking about it was no money. | 19:46 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | No money. | 19:46 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That was back in the '30s, that was Depression. | 19:47 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They were living Depression daily. | 19:49 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They were living it daily. | 19:49 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I think they went on, tell—Who was it? Roosevelt was elected President and he started the WPA or whatever. | 19:54 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I don't know about that, see, my daddy talked about—Oh, that's what it was? Okay. | 20:04 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Because at first I know they said it was setting out these vines that you see growing. | 20:04 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That's what my daughter tell me. She— | 20:08 |
| Stacey Scales | The vines. | 20:09 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Uh-huh. | 20:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah. | 20:11 |
| Stacey Scales | What were they doing? | 20:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | She told me that the honeysuckle vines that we have here and I can't think of that other vine—But it grow—And they brought it here and they set it out— | 20:15 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Set it out. | 20:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —to curd the—See, it's a hilly area. | 20:21 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | To stop the washing. | 20:28 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | The washing of the land and everything. | 20:32 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 20:32 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Now they say it is taken off. | 20:32 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Kudzu. | 20:32 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. | 20:32 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. But he let the WPA folks did it, see, and that gave them a job. | 20:32 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | A job. They cleaned off the side of the road— | 20:37 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Right. | 20:40 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —and cut the trees. I remember that. Because I used to scared to— | 20:40 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Set them vines out. | 20:42 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —run down the road. | 20:43 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. That was the first job that they had. | 20:46 |
| Stacey Scales | They were supposed to put those vines out. What were they supposed to do? | 20:48 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | The vine? | 20:52 |
| Stacey Scales | Yes ma'am. | 20:52 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They would keep it from washing. | 20:52 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | To keep the land from washing away. | 20:52 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You know how— | 20:52 |
| Speaker 5 | Erosion. | 20:52 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Big gullies and erosion, I guess you call that. Thank you. | 20:52 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | But that was the first job that they had. That was on Roosevelt? | 21:00 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, yes? | 21:03 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | After he was elected President, he set up this—What was it, WPA? | 21:07 |
| Speaker 5 | Mm-hmm. | 21:09 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Then started people to working. | 21:10 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And the CC camp. | 21:12 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | CC camp. That's right. All that was under him. | 21:13 |
| Stacey Scales | Did they have Black women's organizations and clubs here? | 21:17 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Well, I guess they did. | 21:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | My mother did. They had what they called a Home Demonstration Club in my community. They did a lot of things. In that time, too, when you talking about a lot of people didn't have— | 21:22 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mattresses. | 21:32 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —mattresses to sleep on. | 21:33 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They made mattress— | 21:34 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They were making straw out of them. They made their mattress out of straw and everybody had the straw. Then they set up in churches or wherever they had and taught to women how to make mattresses. | 21:34 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mattresses. That's right. | 21:43 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They made the mattresses with cotton and then they gave them mattresses to sleep on because most of—They were either feathers where they had picked off the chickens— | 21:44 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Or straw. | 21:53 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —or either straw. They'd go out with straw with grass. You go out and pull a certain kind of grass. They knew how to pull and put in these mattresses to make for their bed— | 21:54 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 21:59 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —to sleep on. | 22:01 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That was under Roosevelt, too. | 22:02 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I remember that. I remember that. I was a little girl but I remember Mama and them made those mattresses. | 22:02 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 22:08 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I know that we had feather mattress and straw mattresses before then. I remember that. | 22:09 |
| Stacey Scales | What other type of things did the Home Demonstration taught? | 22:14 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Well, they would teach you to can. | 22:17 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, they taught— | 22:18 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Because they would come around and can down there. | 22:19 |
| Stacey Scales | They'd teach you to can. | 22:20 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You get your stuff ready— | 22:20 |
| Stacey Scales | To sew and cook. | 22:20 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | —and everybody would meet at a certain place and everybody would can it. They'd teach you how to sew. | 22:25 |
| Stacey Scales | Sew and cook. Were there any other local organizations that women would get together and meet? | 22:33 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Nothing but the church meetings. They had those but that was the community. What they would do, if I had a lot of peaches and things and I was on can, Home Demonstration lady would come out and teach them how to can then all the other women that community be there to help. Then you go to their house and you do it. Also, they started teaching them how to sew— | 22:40 |
| Stacey Scales | Right. | 22:58 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —and make clothes. Then they were buying a lot of flour and they would be in 50 pound bags and they would take that material and most of the time they would try to get two sacks the same color— | 22:59 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Two sacks just alike. | 23:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —so they could make things. Then sometimes they didn't have them. Maybe the same flour and that's when they come out—People used to wear that different colors in the country and that's why they call the country look because the country girls would be wearing them two-tone dresses, we called them. | 23:11 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Right. | 23:24 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Now, they wearing that stuff. But the people then knew how to make them just like they're making them now. Maybe have one leg this color and then they make sure they had one sleeve and all like that. They wearing and got all the sacks. Then they would make their towels and pillowcases out cotton sacks. They'd be—The part that was on the ground that they drag would wear out. They'd throw the sack away and the women would take them them and bleach them— | 23:25 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | The top of it. | 23:45 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —and they'd make their own lye. | 23:46 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 23:47 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They'd bleach these sacks. They'd bleach them white and they made sheets and pillowcases and face towels out of them. | 23:48 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right—Out of them. | 23:56 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Maybe clothes if it looked real good, make some little pants, a little shirt tops— | 23:56 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 23:59 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —because they're good, heavy stiff though. They did all those things and they made their lye. | 24:00 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 24:06 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Make their own lye out of ashes. | 24:06 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I grew up to that. You like it? | 24:10 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They made their hominy. They did everything. | 24:11 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Oh, yeah. My grandmother set that wash pot out there after she had done all this canning and they be done pulled corn and she'd make a couple of wash pots of hominy. | 24:17 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, yes. | 24:24 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Then after that, she'd set the wash pot up and make her own soap. She always saved her meat drippings all through the year. She'd get her lye from town and make the soap. She had long wooden boxes. | 24:24 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But see, my great-grandmother made her lye and made her soap. She had a certain kind of wood and they put all these—When they'd take the ashes out the fire and— | 24:36 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You can do that. | 24:43 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —they save them and they'd put them in this barrel and they put some water in it and— | 24:43 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Make lye. | 24:47 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —then when it dripped, it would make that lye. Then they would save that and then they would make this soap. | 24:47 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 24:53 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Then they had certain kind of fat they'd save to make the face soap like chicken fat and ease the fat out their geese and ducks and all those things. They would cook that and that was what they made the face soap to take your bath in. | 24:53 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, okay. | 25:04 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Okay. Then this other—What you talking about the meat drippings and all that— | 25:05 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 25:08 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —that was the soap that made— | 25:09 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Wash their clothes. | 25:10 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —to wash your clothes with. | 25:11 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 25:11 |
| Stacey Scales | Was church mandatory when you were growing up? | 25:13 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | With my parents? Oh, yeah. You let church—Well, you didn't mind going because all— | 25:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You was glad to be going. | 25:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —the children were going be there. If you weren't having nothing at your church, you would go down to the next church— | 25:23 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Go to somebody else's. | 25:25 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —two or three miles and walk with those children. | 25:26 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 25:27 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Those children would come back up there with you. | 25:28 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 25:30 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Everybody wanted to go to church and say their speeches and sing their songs. | 25:30 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 25:33 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Because it was—What you call? Recreational. The children go to the shows and the ballgame and stuff like that. | 25:36 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You went to church then. | 25:42 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | You went to church and that was recreation and you enjoyed it. | 25:43 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 25:44 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They had something Wednesday night or Friday night, you were there. | 25:44 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 25:44 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They had what you call box suppers at the church. | 25:47 |
| Stacey Scales | What's a box supper? | 25:49 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Okay. Okay, each lady— | 25:50 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Fix a box. | 25:56 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —fix a box. A small little box. It'd be for enough food in there for two people. | 25:56 |
| Stacey Scales | To eat. | 25:59 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I would say, "I want you to buy my box," You'd pay me $5 for this box of whatever, $2. That went to the church and then we'd sit up there and ate and another couple would be over there eating and all like that. That was a box supper, is what we call fellowship now. | 26:00 |
| Stacey Scales | Right. | 26:15 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | You know just sit up in the big table you go—But they call it box supper. | 26:15 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | At that time. | 26:18 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Each lady have a box decorated nice on the outside— | 26:20 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 26:22 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —and all this stuff. I never did do a box supper but I was a girl and I know when my mother used to do box suppers and went on that time. That's what they did and that's how they would do it. But it was really a fellowship, but they call it box supper. | 26:23 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | —that you went to voting, they thought if they would charge you a dollar that would block a lot of Black people from voting because they wouldn't have this dollar. You see what I mean? | 26:39 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, okay. | 26:47 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They went to charging a dollar and you'd go and pay this dollar and put your name and when you was born and everything on it and then that's when you would vote. But as things opened up, they'd find out that that was unlawful to make you pay a dollar to vote and they did away with it. But that went on for years. You had to pay that dollar. If you didn't pay that dollar— | 26:47 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | [indistinct 00:27:12] a dollar here. | 27:12 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | —you didn't vote. | 27:15 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Couldn't vote, mm-mm. | 27:15 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You'd go there, they'd open this big book, look for your name and if you hadn't paid that dollar then you didn't vote. | 27:15 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Sometimes your name wouldn't be on there. I went up there one time—Because my husband always—When he paid his poll tax, he paid mine. We got there and they couldn't find my name and we had been voting. I said, "Well, Lord, I won't get to vote today." And I didn't carry my purse that day. I usually carry my purse. We got home, my husband said, "Get out and go get it." Went on in that house and got that poll tax receipt. They give you a receipt. You usually keep it— | 27:24 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | A receipt. | 27:50 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —in your purse all the time. I don't know why I went without my purse because you've been going there and carried my poll tax up there and receipt. They had to let me vote because I had my receipt. See, that's how they tricked a lot of Black people. | 27:50 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Oh, yeah. | 28:00 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They didn't have their receipt and— | 28:01 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They couldn't vote. | 28:02 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —the name wasn't on there, they deliberately left that name off. | 28:03 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 28:04 |
| Stacey Scales | Now did that stop many Blacks from voting? That dollar? | 28:07 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Oh, yeah. | 28:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah, because a lot of them— | 28:11 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Didn't have a dollar. | 28:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Just like now, they don't have to pay to vote and they won't vote because— | 28:11 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 28:14 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —the White man done told them that your vote not going to count anyway. They still believe, "Oh, it's not going to count them now." Because when they first started, that's what they would tell you when they let Black people all— | 28:14 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You're vote's not going to count. | 28:23 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | "Your vote ain't but a half a vote or fourth a vote, it'd take four of y'all to vote to make one vote." And the people believed it. | 28:23 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 28:31 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Because they lived on Mr. Man's farm. He said it and they know he was telling the truth. | 28:31 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Some people believe now that they know when you vote whether you White or Black. Because I was trying to tell a lady, I said, "It's no way that they can tell who you is when you vote." Now ain't that right, y'all? But she believes still that they'll know that she is Black, her vote is Black, see? | 28:34 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Your name is not on it, but the people— | 28:51 |
| Stacey Scales | That would stop them? | 28:54 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 28:54 |
| Stacey Scales | That would stop them from going out. | 28:54 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | To vote. | 28:54 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Because they're afraid if they don't vote the way they—Because see, now a lot of way they do, see, they still trick us. They buy us. If they're afraid that they're going win an election, they'll go out and give me a little money to get a whole bunch on the voter. Those that like to drink, they'll throw them a big fish fry party or something and they'd be afraid not to vote for those people because they think they going know that they did vote or not vote. | 28:57 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Know that they didn't vote for them. | 29:19 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They go up there and vote for them. It's going on right now. | 29:19 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Right there. | 29:22 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Now that's not old, that's now. That's now. | 29:22 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 29:25 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But that's not what you want to know about now, you want to know about way back. (laughs) | 29:25 |
| Stacey Scales | It's all history. | 29:27 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | It's sure history. (laughs) | 29:27 |
| Speaker 5 | Another thing they would do is load up a bunch of them on the truck and he'd tell them how to vote and they'd go in and vote just like they told them. | 29:34 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That's right. | 29:36 |
| Stacey Scales | They'd put them on the truck? | 29:36 |
| Speaker 5 | Put them onto the back of a truck. | 29:36 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I mean the lady at the school, I worked at school for five years. Ms. Harris, she would come in—All us in the kitchen. She would come in and call herself, have a meeting and she was going to tell us who to vote for. Whether it's Ms. Johnson was our supervisor, I don't know where you never know her. When Ms. Harris left, I said, "She don't tell me how to vote, I'm going to vote like—" "Don't say it. Don't say it" She thought the woman could hear me and the woman was gone. She was just that scared. She didn't want me to talk. That's right. | 29:36 |
| Stacey Scales | People were afraid then. | 30:15 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They was really afraid. | 30:15 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Still afraid now. | 30:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 30:16 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I mean, that's late, what she talking about. | 30:19 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Uh-huh. | 30:20 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That's what, in the '60s or '70s? | 30:21 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | The '70s. | 30:22 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | In the seventies. | 30:24 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. She was afraid. She thought that woman still could hear me. That's right. "Don't talk like that. Don't talk like that." I said, "Why?" She was scared. I just hush because I knew I was going to vote the way I wanted to vote. | 30:24 |
| Stacey Scales | Right. Did they have an NAACP here? | 30:40 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah. We still have it here. | 30:41 |
| Stacey Scales | Would they do voter education and things like— | 30:44 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They do. | 30:46 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They used to do it more than they do now. | 30:47 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Than they do now. | 30:50 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They first started but they do it now. But not as much as they did in the early '70s and '60s. | 30:51 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Sixties. | 30:55 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They had what they called voters league and they would have millions and they would go block grant and they try to get all the Black people to vote one way. Get all your votes going one way. Well, actually that's the way we were able to get some Black people in office that we do have now. Because at one time everything was lily White. | 30:56 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | White, lily White. | 31:15 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Now we just beginning to start getting Black people— | 31:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Black in. | 31:18 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —in positions. The NAACP, that's why we got Black people in the stores and things. We literally had the boycott stores. | 31:19 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 31:24 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Some of the stores went out of business because of the fact we boycotted— | 31:26 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 31:27 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —would not buy. | 31:27 |
| Stacey Scales | Which stores went out of business? | 31:27 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | [indistinct 00:31:33]. They first, they said they would never hire a Black person. | 31:35 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Black person. | 31:37 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But they finally hired a Black person on the tail end, but the people just stopped—They really didn't— | 31:38 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Stopped shopping. | 31:43 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —shopping. They literally had to go out. | 31:43 |
| Stacey Scales | Out of business. | 31:45 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Coin's was one of the main big stores, they went out of— | 31:46 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They had to go out. | 31:50 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —business because the Black people just really stopped patronizing them. | 31:52 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Shopping. | 31:53 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | You all may know some of others that were big stores that went out business on account of that. | 31:53 |
| Speaker 5 | I got sick of going to Cohn's because they'd follow you everywhere you went. | 31:56 |
| Stacey Scales | They'd follow you in the stores? | 32:02 |
| Speaker 5 | Oh, honey. | 32:03 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | In Cohn's, they used to do, but then they finally hired some Black, too. But see it was too late. | 32:03 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Too late when they hired them. | 32:09 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Because the people that found out they could get good stuff other place. | 32:09 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Other places. | 32:12 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Then they found out a lot of the stuff that they thought was getting good was not good— | 32:13 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Was cheap. | 32:16 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —and so they had to go out of business because they were not getting the trade. Black people used to really spend their money there. They would go there because it was nice place. | 32:17 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 32:23 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And [indistinct 00:32:25] and Altschul's were the same way, too. | 32:25 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Same way. | 32:26 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They went down because they was talking about better stores. I was trying to see— | 32:26 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | There used to be a little hat store and bag right next to Altschul's, coming this way. She had to close. | 32:35 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Can't remember what the name. | 32:36 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | She finally hired a Black lady. | 32:36 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Sure did. They closed, too. What was the name? Velasque? | 32:38 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Something like that. They had to go out of business because they said they never would hire Black, but they finally had to have her, but was just too late. | 32:43 |
| Stacey Scales | Where did most people shop here? | 32:52 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Where? | 32:54 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | When—Now or after, when they had the boycott? | 32:54 |
| Stacey Scales | Back in the '50s and '60s? | 32:58 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They shopped in Forrest City at these stores what I'm telling you about. They were the main stores and they had Dooly's. | 33:01 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. They left here. | 33:06 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They had Graber's. | 33:06 |
| Speaker 5 | I forgot about that one. | 33:06 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | At one time we had a Goldstein's. | 33:17 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Sure did. He went out business. | 33:23 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Those stores went out of business. Now the other store—They moved out by Safeway. That men's store. But those were the stores that went out of business. That's where the Black people shopped that weren't able to go nowhere. At that time, some of the Black people were getting up and had a little money, they would go to Memphis and do a lot of shopping in Memphis. | 33:25 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Getting their own cars and stuff. | 33:40 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | When they— | 33:45 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They was getting to go out of town. | 33:46 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —started boycotting these stores, because they wouldn't hire nobody, then they went to Win. That's the closest little place. They bought their groceries and their clothes and— | 33:47 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | [indistinct 00:33:56]. | 33:55 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —things like that. But that's what did it, NAACP did that and that's how they got Black men on the police force. | 33:55 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 34:05 |
| Stacey Scales | Were there local people that were leaders in that movement? | 34:10 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yes. They had—Let me see—Ooh, can't remember all of them. Reverend Cooley was one of them. Cecil Twillie, Allen Twillie. Oh, we didn't tell about the time about the school. They need to know about that. | 34:13 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Boy, they tore that school up [indistinct 00:34:27]. | 34:26 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | You remember when they— | 34:26 |
| Speaker 5 | Wasn't there a guy named Sweet Willie? | 34:29 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Sweet Willie Wine. He was from Memphis came over and worked with them. | 34:31 |
| Stacey Scales | What did— | 34:33 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | What, about the school? | 34:33 |
| Stacey Scales | Sweet Willie Wine, what did he do? | 34:37 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Well, he was from Memphis. He was one of the people that was coming in talking to them and trying to help get them together and starting to the walking and everything. But even then, they beat him up real bad. | 34:38 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Sure did. | 34:49 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Police got him and beat him up real bad. But it didn't stop. They really had to do it. But with the school situation, the children from the Black school, they was tired of the stuff. They walked over to the White school and it was so many of them and they called the police out there. They didn't get all of them but they had a whole big two ton truckload of them— | 34:49 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Full of them. | 35:08 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —full of them and had a school bus full of them. | 35:08 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Sure did. | 35:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Had so many, they couldn't put them in jail. They took and put them in—They had what they call a White swimming pool. They put them in a White swimming pool in there. | 35:11 |
| Stacey Scales | They put them in a swimming pool? | 35:21 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Now you know where you go and dress to go in the pool. | 35:21 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh. | 35:30 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's where they put them. | 35:30 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They had them all out there. | 35:30 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They just had children. | 35:30 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They had all these children in there. Then they didn't really do nothing, but they just got lot of them. | 35:30 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | There wasn't nothing they could do but they was trying to scare them to make things stop. | 35:32 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | To make them stop. | 35:32 |
| Stacey Scales | This was Sweet Willie Wine, was he a leader in that? | 35:33 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | He come from Memphis— | 35:38 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | He come from Memphis. | 35:38 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | —is all I heard. | 35:38 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But he was the one [indistinct 00:35:45] that coming over here helping. | 35:39 |
| Stacey Scales | He was helping. | 35:45 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They had Reverend Cooley was one of the leaders here. Cecil Twillie, Allen Twillie, Steve Murray, Ralph Spears and some of the other people that I don't know, these just ones that I know— | 35:46 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Know about. | 35:57 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | You probably know some others that were working in at that same time. | 35:58 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Miss Lucille Bradley. | 36:02 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Miss Bradley, Ms. Black. She was a Ms. Black. | 36:04 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Miss Black. | 36:06 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Miss Nathaniels. But you know what they did? They shipped two of the Black boys away from here real quickly and they knew that they were going to kill those boys. They had to get what you call a habeas corpus to get those people back here before that they did anything to them. Reverend Cooley was instigating during that because see that's what they would do. They'd get you out and they would kill you. Because I guess they thought they were the ring leaders in it. | 36:07 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Ring leaders. | 36:25 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They had to get them out. Then they had to go to court in Little Rock and they carry these two bus of children over there to their court. | 36:28 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Over there to Little Rock. | 36:36 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | A lot of the farmers put their farms up to bail these children out of jail when they did this. My father was one of ones put his farm up to get these children out because they go the bail bond. | 36:38 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, and they would sell the land? | 36:48 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | No, they didn't do it. They just put it up for a bond in order to get them out of jail. Nobody had to lose any property. | 36:49 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | No, because [indistinct 00:36:58] wasn't going no place. | 36:58 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But see they didn't want to let them out. They wasn't going no place. But anyway, they won out. They didn't get to do anything about it. The superintendent, everything up there, the kids—Take the kids to tell you about it. | 36:58 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 37:03 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | When they went to court over there it was a mess. They won. Nobody lost anything but they just had—Well, see it was too many Black people coming together that time. That time it was all on one car. That's why they couldn't do nothing. If you could always get that many Black people to stand up— | 37:04 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | To stick together. | 37:17 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —because some people didn't want to lose their money and stuff. | 37:18 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 37:20 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They could get what they wanted. That's how they were able get what they wanted because the Black people refused to go over the picket line. Then the Black women was taking food and drink up there on the picket line for these— | 37:20 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Children. | 37:29 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —children. It was had— | 37:29 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | The people. | 37:29 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —grown men, all men. But anyway, they carried— | 37:31 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Whoever was marching, they was carrying them food. | 37:33 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —food up there. Whoever was marching, they was carrying food up there. Fry them up this chicken and this stuff. | 37:36 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 37:39 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They would eat. | 37:39 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 37:39 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | What they would do, they had it so if I marched two hours, three hours, they had somebody else there march. They had it set up religiously where they could march. People that will swear that they really couldn't march an individual working with the government stuff, they was behind the scenes— | 37:40 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Doing. | 37:55 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —working and helping those people that could march. | 37:55 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 37:57 |
| Stacey Scales | How did they go out and get all of those people together like that? | 37:57 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They told them they were going to have a town meeting and they just met— | 38:00 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Everybody just met. | 38:04 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —then all you had to was park. Everybody met and they talked and knew what it was. | 38:05 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 38:07 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Then they got together and they had what they called a peaceful coexistence, which was a Black organization and they set up their strategy and tell what they were going to do. They had to list all the people that were going to march. | 38:07 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 38:19 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They knew what time for them to march. We had Uncle Tom's in there. | 38:19 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That was tired. | 38:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Black men going back, telling what's going happen— | 38:22 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Telling it. | 38:23 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —when the meeting over that night, the White man know. But it was two men out there couldn't do nothing. If it had been two or three, that's where they come in and bomb you. But they couldn't do that. Because they know— | 38:23 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right because there was two men in there. | 38:32 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —somebody's going to see them. They'd get them. | 38:32 |
| Stacey Scales | Did that large group ever have any confrontation with the police or any of the people that were any resistance? | 38:36 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Like I said, one time downtown, it was a bunch of Whites on one side of the street. Did you hear about that? | 38:45 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I didn't hear about it. | 38:57 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | The Blacks— | 38:57 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But see, they had— | 38:57 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | —dared the Whites to come any closer— | 38:57 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | At that time, you had to have— | 38:57 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | —they didn't come no closer. | 38:58 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I think they had to have a permit to do this march. The people had went and got everything that they needed. Therefore, that's why I wasn't [indistinct 00:39:08]. It wasn't that they were just going into something, didn't know to do. They had people that knew the law— | 38:59 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Telling them what to do. | 39:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —but even though they got two at that time. They probably still have two law books for St. Francis County, one for Black, one for White. | 39:12 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | A Black one and a White one. | 39:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | You do this and you do that. | 39:22 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | [indistinct 00:39:23]. | 39:22 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That's right. They had—When Lawyer Walker was a lawyer that they had, I mean they wasn't just going in this thing blind. They had other people help them outside. | 39:23 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 39:26 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | He was the NAACP lawyer. | 39:33 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Lawyers. They had lawyers from Little Rock. | 39:35 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They wasn't just going into it. They had lawyers and if they had any cases, they had them and so they would fight them. They did it all legally where it was nothing they could really be done with. | 39:35 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 39:47 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They weren't doing nothing. But they had a certain amount of feet, they had to walk from the door. They couldn't—If I wanted to go in the door, they couldn't stop me, not let me go in. But now, what I'm going to look like you up there marching and I'm going to— | 39:47 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I'm going to go in. | 39:59 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —walk in the store. | 39:59 |
| Stacey Scales | Yes. | 40:00 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Very few people walked in— | 40:00 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 40:02 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —and bought anything over there marching. | 40:03 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 40:05 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Anyway, they was the number of feet that they had to walk the outside of the curve. They couldn't get too close to lock the door. But they was constantly marching in front of the business that they were boycotting and everybody knew that they were going to be boycotting that business before they went. | 40:05 |
| Stacey Scales | What year did this whole thing begin? | 40:24 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That had to be like, what, '65 or '66? | 40:26 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Somewhere along there. | 40:27 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Because the last school that we had for Lincoln was in '69 or '70? | 40:28 |
| Speaker 5 | Somewhere along that, '69, I think. | 40:37 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Shortly after they started marching and doing all this stuff, they were able to have them to integrate school. First they had freedom of choice. | 40:37 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 40:44 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Freedom of choice— | 40:46 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I got a letter. | 40:47 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —it was that I could sign my child up to go over there to that school if I wanted to. They did that, what, about a couple of years? | 40:48 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Mm-hmm. | 40:55 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That freedom of choice must have started by 1966 though, or '67. | 40:55 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I think it was. | 40:57 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Because I remember my daughter graduated from over there in 1968— | 40:57 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | My daughter graduated and I had a girl and a boy. | 40:59 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | That was before that they had totally integrated the school. | 41:04 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Right. They give you freedom of choice. | 41:06 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Then they had freedom of choice and they thought the Black people would be afraid to sign their— | 41:09 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | To go. | 41:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —children up to go over there. I signed mine. | 41:12 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | I signed mine. | 41:13 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They was telling me, "Well, they're not too good a student, you going to sign them up?" I said, "Well, I can't sign one without signing the other one up." | 41:13 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 41:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But she did good over there. They had a—You need to talk to them. They had a lot of confrontation going on over there, too, that we didn't know about. | 41:22 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Oh, yeah. | 41:29 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Some of the things that the children talk about it now. | 41:29 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Because my daughter [indistinct 00:41:33] daughter. He called, said, "Girl—" Well, you know how—This girl and her friends. Well, she was here and Hailey was over there and said this girl said something about, "They stink." He said, "Hell, yeah, I'm going to make you stink." [indistinct 00:41:50]. She come and told me, I said, "Very good." That's all I said. | 41:29 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Well, they did all kind of things. I know one day my daughter got off the bus and the man kept them on and he going to tell her about, "You all going have to do some of these big book satchels and things I have on the bus," and everything. When the man got through talking to them because—Let all other children off but just kept these Black kids on. | 42:00 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | To talk to them. | 42:17 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | He said, "I thank you all." My daughter said, "You're not welcome." The bus driver got upset and went and told the principal. But Mr. Collins was on our side. He had never had no trouble out of Gloria. He said, "Oh, I'm sure you're wrong." He said, "We've never had no trouble out of her." She has a speech impediment. He said, "I'm sure you misunderstood her, I'm sure she said, 'You are welcome.'" They didn't do nothing to the White bus driver at that time because they thought the Gloria couldn't talk correctly and they had her in his class for speech therapy. But she said, "Mama, I told that man, 'You're not welcome.'" But she didn't tell the man that she told him that and had the White guy on her side because she hadn't never given no trouble in school. | 42:19 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Given no trouble. | 42:57 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | He could not believe that this nice young lady said this to the man, "I'm sure she said, 'You are welcome.'" | 42:58 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Amanda got to fighting at the bus line up there one morning. Amanda said old girl had been meddling. Said she really show out. These other would get with her. She said, "I made up my mind, I'm going to show them who I am, too." That morning when it started hunting, Amanda went into a fit. They called the police. [indistinct 00:43:26] | 43:04 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I remember him. | 43:23 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | He finally called and he said, "Well, what's going on here?" Amanda went on to tell him how they had been doing her every morning. She just had got tired and she jumped on her. He said, "You all get on this bus and go to school." That's all he could do, Amanda had beat her up. They had their problems now. The first children. | 43:29 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | [indistinct 00:43:52]. | 43:47 |
| Stacey Scales | After that, did the situation get better with integration? | 43:54 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Well, it got better because they had to have it. Don't, they would have lost a lot of funds. | 43:57 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They lost a lot of funds. | 44:04 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They couldn't afford to just stand independent here. | 44:04 |
| Stacey Scales | Right. | 44:04 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | By them having Black teachers on, see, at the beginning it was nothing but White teachers there. | 44:09 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | White teachers. | 44:12 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But it was the Black students there because they had been assigned to go to that school. They had no Black teachers. | 44:13 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 44:18 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Once they consolidated the school, then they had to put Black teachers in there. | 44:19 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Right. | 44:22 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Some of the things that they were doing to the children or saying, they didn't get an opportunity to do it because they knew the Black teachers there and they would see them doing it. I'm sure because see, she's a teacher. She works in the school system and she knows. I'm sure that they don't do the things that they did at one time. Even though they are prejudiced—They have to pretend that they're not. | 44:23 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 44:43 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Because see, I just had a bad experience with the Boy Scouts with my little grandson up there. They know in order to continue to keep getting this money, they need some Blacks in there. Once they get up in there, they don't know how to treat them. They treat them like a dog. I was thoroughly upset when I went and got him yesterday, I didn't notice when I picked him up. But then after he told me when he got in the bus and he was saying, "Ma—" I said, "No, honey, you will not be going back next year. That's for sure. You won't be there." Because they want you there, but then they—See, he was in an area where no Blacks, nothing and they just didn't do. I felt like the people that he was working with, they should have treated him differently— | 44:44 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | A little better. | 45:20 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —than what they did. They didn't do it. But I said, "Well, you don't understand because you're not used to it." He'd never been around, so he didn't realize—Know what they were doing to. But he did know that they gave him a raw deal. But he thought that, "Well, since they were elders, I had to do—" I said, "But no, you didn't have to do that." I said, "They had you up there making a slave out of you." That's what they were doing. I said, "Who else did they have out there cutting grass?" I said, "You going to cut—How long did you cut grass?" "About eight hours a day." I said, "When was your—" I said, "No." | 45:21 |
| Stacey Scales | The others didn't have to cut grass? The other ones didn't cut grass? | 45:48 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | [indistinct 00:45:52] | 45:51 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | No, they didn't cut grass. See, they thought that it was only for the niggers to do. I said, "Yeah." I said, "They had—" "Well, Mama, you see, I was the only one that could run this machine." I said, "No, they knew that you were a nigger, if anything happened to you wasn't come bothering by, you were going to go on fix it yourself. So they wanted you out there cutting that grass." | 45:52 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. That's [indistinct 00:46:10]. | 46:06 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I said, "No." I said, "You're not going to go back anymore so you don't even have to ask me about it." When they asked me, I said, "No." They talking, "We haven't had no Blacks to be up here and be on staff in 10 years." Then I guess not. I said, "Because I sure won't be recommended any more to go." | 46:09 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They don't know how to treat them. | 46:20 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I said, "You'll go up there and do your little camp and get your little eagle scout and get out but they're not going to be making a slave out of you." | 46:22 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 46:27 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I said, "If you don't have nothing to do but sit at home and twiddle your thumbs." | 46:27 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Set there and twiddle. | 46:29 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | You knew I was made then, wasn't I? I said, "You'll be sitting there twiddling your thumbs." But you know, I'm on the farm. I got plenty work. | 46:29 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 46:35 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Raise hogs. I got junk of stuff. You could have been there. | 46:36 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 46:39 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I mean, I said, "You couldn't make enough to get your school stuff. Whatever you got to have." I won't deal with that. | 46:39 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 46:44 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | It's still going on. | 46:44 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | It's still going on. | 46:45 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They try to sugarcoat it over like it's happened. | 46:46 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 46:49 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | See, he won't talk. I know the White guy knew what they was doing because he asked me how were they treating him, but I didn't pick up on it. Niami didn't say nothing to me about it when he talked to me. I knew about it. Because he don't like—You got some don't like it. It always been some don't like it. They know that they want to help you because they know that you need to go where you go. That's the way it is now. They know—They want right is right. They know I can't hate you and make it in Heaven. | 46:49 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 47:14 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | You got people that'll help you still— | 47:15 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —Better jobs, because they have to, because a lot of them have to be closed down if they don't hire some of us. And you have some people that didn't know nothing about Black people, they only had what they had heard. And once they work with you and find out you are nothing like what they have been taught that you are. | 0:01 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | What they've been told. | 0:18 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | So then they treat you differently. | 0:20 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 0:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And see, that's what happened to him. He came in, a little White boy saw that they were mistreating him and doing everything and I guess they had him stay at, he was supposed to be on staff, but they had him in his tent by hisself. And so this little boy moved out and came over there with him and help him, did a lot of stuff and help him. And I think they resented that fact, too. | 0:22 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right [indistinct 00:00:44]. | 0:43 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And then he said all the little children were running up behind him and hanging all over him and some of the little White kids was calling him daddy and all this stuff. And they didn't like that. | 0:43 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | No, they don't like that. | 0:52 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They didn't like that. So just one thing. But see, he knew his work, and any subject they came up with, he knew something about it. And so they didn't like this smart nigger, 'cause he knew too much for them. | 0:53 |
| Stacey Scales | Well, when you were growing up, what type of social activities did they have for young Blacks? What would you do for entertainment? | 1:05 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Go to church. | 1:15 |
| Stacey Scales | So church would be the— | 1:16 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Go to club meetings. We had clubs. | 1:17 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | [indistinct 00:01:20]. Yes, we had club meetings, and then they had, in my area, they had on Saturday evenings this time of year, I get start about June, they had what they called—At the school, we had a Black school out in the community and we had a ball diamond. And so they have a ball game. | 1:19 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | After school. | 1:36 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And we would go out there, watch the ball game and then it would be, people have stands set up and they'd be selling ice cream. | 1:36 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Selling ice cream, sandwiches. | 1:43 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Sandwiches, barbecue sandwiches. | 1:44 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Cold drinks. | 1:44 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Cold lemonade and stuff like that. And you'd go out there and do that on Saturday evening. And then like I said, they had movie but it was a Black movie. And the children in town, I guess they went to the movies. I don't know what they did. This is country, what I'm talking about. | 1:46 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | [indistinct 00:02:00] country. | 2:00 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | We in the country, so not in the city. So I don't know what all the children did in the city other than go to the movies. After the children got up, most of this was going on, the children could walk to it, and they would have it till get dark. It's not dark till 9:00 now. And then they would have those things. Then they'd have singing. We had a lot of quartet singing and people singing. The churches would be having something at night and they have quartets singing and stuff like that. | 2:00 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And at this school at, we had a Rosenwald school they called it. | 2:24 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's the kind I went to, Rosenwald. | 2:27 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh yeah, it's a Rosenwald? | 2:28 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Rosenwald school. It was this White guy pulled up this money named Rosenwald, built these schools— | 2:28 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | And built all these schools. | 2:37 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | —For the Black people. They had a home economic building. They taught the children how to cook and sew and all those things in that school. | 2:38 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | I guess they had a big room and they would have little dances and stuff like that. 'Cause they had Grafanolas where you wound them up to play the music. | 2:48 |
| Stacey Scales | Oh, the music boxes? | 2:55 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Right. The music—No, we call them Grafanolas. And you wind it up. | 2:56 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You call them music boxes. | 3:00 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | You call it music box. (laughs) We call it a record player now. But it was a Grafanola, and they had to wind it up, and you put this record on there and it'd play this music. They had somebody doing that. | 3:02 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | [indistinct 00:03:14]. | 3:12 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And they had little things like that. And sometime they had people that played pianos and guitars, and they would go to these houses and they would have socials there and the children danced and did things like that. | 3:14 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Did they have courting practices then that were different than now? | 3:26 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Had what? | 3:29 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Courting practices. When you would start a relationship? | 3:30 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Oh well yeah, it was different what it is now, because that boy, certain things that they do now, they wouldn't do. They know you going to come there by 9:00, you going to be leaving the house. | 3:35 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | You don't leave, the old parents do 'em and say, "Ahem." | 3:43 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They be watching that clock and they get up and go. | 3:47 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | It's nine o' clock, you go ahead and get out of there. | 3:49 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And they know they going come, what, Saturday night, or maybe they might come over, see them on Wednesdays. | 3:50 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Wednesday night. | 3:54 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They might go to church, walk them to church, or walk them over to if they have any socials at this house, they would take them to those things and take them out to this ballgame, what I was telling you about, and when they had a little stuff. That was in my time, and I don't know how they did it earlier before then if they didn't have that. | 3:55 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | It was still tighter, earlier. 'Cause I could tell him what my mother said. And see, back then it wasn't all these children born like it is now, because some of them father, they put a shotgun on you. You just didn't do that. You didn't come into his house and mess his family up like that. They just didn't stand for that. That's right. | 4:13 |
| Stacey Scales | So they take a weapon. | 4:32 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. They take their shotgun, and you'd marry that girl. And that's their right. | 4:37 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah. That was basically why— | 4:46 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | They just didn't stand for that. | 4:46 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | But they were a little more different than they are now, because everybody was—They got a lapse in there where they started telling the girl that she supposed to keep her dress tail down and the boy didn't have to restrain himself any. But back then, it was different. He knew that he had to restrain himself and the girls knew she had to restrain herself too. | 4:46 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Restrain yourself. That's right. | 4:59 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And so that made a difference. You didn't have as many. But when they got lapsed and started doing that, that's where the problems at. So now they trying to get back and let them know it's both of them's responsibility, not just one person's responsibility. 'Cause there's nothing that one person can do with the other person, he get his mind made up. | 5:02 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 5:17 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And so they learning that. So that was different then. They wasn't going to. Man, you better not mess with Mr. So-and-so daughter. He'll kill you. | 5:18 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. You hear them say. | 5:20 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And they knew that. So they had that mind, they head on the right place when they went there. They was going to talk, sit down, eat watermelon, or whatever they going to do. | 5:27 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | That's right. | 5:33 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Play their little game that they let them play. They played dominoes, checkers, and some people played cards. But my parents wouldn't let us play cards. But we did play dominoes and checkers and they have popcorn parties and little things like that and shoot marbles and ball at your house and hopscop and all these little different things and did stuff like that. And you enjoyed it. | 5:34 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | It was nice. | 5:55 |
| Stacey Scales | So at what point— | 6:03 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Kurt Woodall. | 6:05 |
| Stacey Scales | At what point did you know had—Or I guess you both answered the question, when you had gone from girlhood to womanhood? | 6:05 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | How did you know it? | 6:10 |
| Stacey Scales | Yes. When would you consider yourself having left, a grown person. | 6:11 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | At 18. At 18. | 6:15 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They did 18 then. And boy, 21. | 6:15 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Boys 21, you're an adult. | 6:20 |
| Stacey Scales | Okay. So did life change very much then? | 6:22 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Well, yes. And I don't know. Sometimes you hate to, I guess some of it you hate to get grown, 'cause you didn't have nothing growing up, you wasn't going have too much after you got grown. It wasn't like it is now, 'cause wasn't no work for you. And a lot of the people—You can take that. I know when they did get grown, they left and went up north. That's why so many people up north, 'cause they would leave as soon as they got old enough. | 6:26 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Because there no jobs here. | 6:54 |
| Stacey Scales | When they would come back and visit, would they be considered different people when they come back? Would people look at them different, kind of? | 6:54 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Well, yeah. They would maybe talk different and just act different. | 7:04 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | They didn't act the same or [indistinct 00:07:11]. | 7:11 |
| Stacey Scales | [indistinct 00:07:11] Be glad to see them? | 7:11 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | Yeah, they'd be glad to see them. Want to know how [indistinct 00:07:22]. | 7:18 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Be glad to, say, "How was things?" | 7:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | And they were glad that they had made a better life for themselves. | 7:21 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | A lot of times they'd be dressed nice, be drive in the car. They had got up there and got a job. And I know a long time ago, they'd be talking about they were working for Ford. They'd make cars. Chrysler and Cadillac. I knowed some that went got jobs at Cadillac. Good jobs. | 7:21 |
| Delores Twillie Woods | We done talked the time up out of here. | 7:40 |
| Thelma Woods Nash | Yeah. I didn't know it was 12:00. It's time to get off. | 7:42 |
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