Cora Flemming interview recording, 1995 August 07
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Flemming, can you tell me when you were born and something about the community you were in? | 0:02 |
Cora Randle Flemming | I was born in 1933 in this town [indistinct 00:00:14] of Mississippi, but in the rural community of Chapel Hill. There were ten children born to this family. There's six girls and four boys. And back in those days, whenever people had a hard time, they had nowhere to live, our parents, anybody's parents in the Hill would always take those people in. No matter how much room you had in your house, because we only had two bedrooms for husband and wife and ten siblings. And we took a lot of people in off the street. They were sick, had sores and couldn't heal. My mother always take them in and heal them. | 0:07 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. | 1:01 |
Cora Randle Flemming | So we were reared in the community where we cared about others. We didn't take anything for granted. We took one day at a time. And with ten children in the household, we didn't have sufficient clothes like every other little young ladies had or young men had. We had to do the best we could with people sending box from the North. And we survived that way through our raiments we wore. But yet, we survived learning to care for others. | 1:01 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Flemming, which county was this in? | 1:44 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Oktibbeha County. | 1:48 |
Paul Ortiz | Oktibbeha County. | 1:56 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Because we were — Since I've been to the Delta, I've found that our life was a whole lot different in the hills than they were down here. | 1:56 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 2:08 |
Cora Randle Flemming | We were raised to be independent, not dependent. We [indistinct 00:02:18]. We were raised on the plantation. We had our own home, our own land, and that made a big difference in our upbringing in what we feel or felt about the conditions of the Delta. Because I didn't have many problems like a lot of people have down here, because we just from the town where White folks were. | 2:09 |
Cora Randle Flemming | We didn't hardly ever go to town. We used to go to town, my mother would take us to town with her to peddle vegetables. And the one thing that always has stuck in my mind mostly, about when I was a child growing up, we went to sell these vegetables to the White people downtown, which was downtown. They had dogs and they never called a dog back off of anybody, the hounds they sell their vegetables to. We were on it many a day, and the dogs. We didn't sell any vegetables because we was afraid of the dogs. | 2:43 |
Cora Randle Flemming | And that hurt me to the day, because I couldn't understand why they would let a dog chase a bike, hit another human being. I didn't know then, because I wasn't raised up around White people. When we were out, I was grumbling and complaining because I always had a big mouth. And I was grumbling and complaining, Mama say, "Just shut your mouth." Said, "One day, you're going to understand." But I didn't understand then, and then what had told us with my mother, my great-grandmother was raped. Well, in those days you didn't rape, you just took what you wanted from the women. | 3:21 |
Cora Randle Flemming | And my grandmother was conceived through that rape. And I was told that she was cold, so cold as ice, she didn't let me round. And he raped her in those woods. And I always didn't talk about too much because we was young. | 4:11 |
Paul Ortiz | That was the White man. | 4:38 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah. We didn't understand. They didn't tell us too much of that kind of stuff. We hear them talking. And now, to be protective of us, for one thing. So then he raped her and one child was born to that woman, my great-grandmother. Her name was Eliza, I believe, a very pretty woman they say. She could sit on her hair. Her hair was so long, she could sit on her hair, braid it up. So she's a very nice person. She gave birth to, I believe, eleven children. But one woman was raped. She was raped. She had eleven or twelve children. Suddenly, all of us come in from that rape. | 4:43 |
Cora Randle Flemming | So we were mixed on both, my mother's side and my father's side. My mother's side was Irish and my father's side was Indian and Caucasian. | 5:39 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Flemming, did any of this then happen in Oktibbeha County? | 6:06 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah. When we were born. | 6:09 |
Paul Ortiz | Like in the early twentieth century? | 6:12 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah, early twentieth century. Yeah. But we survived and I left the Hills in 1951. I went to the North. I did a new state, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio. And I learned a lot. I didn't learn too much growing up, be honest with you. I didn't finish high school at that time, I just finished the ninth grade. But at that time, I was so easy and good in the feeling that hearts on the field, I married the first somebody that came along. And I left my home, and my parents moved here to the Delta in 1952. | 6:13 |
Cora Randle Flemming | And I moved here, came back here in 1961. I had learned a lot about segregation, integration, hardship, living pretty good at times, then the rest of the time living rough. I came back here in 1961, I believe, '60 or '61. And I detected so much difference and with people down here than really any other place I ever been before. There was sharecropping, not so much sharecropping. I didn't understand what sharecropping was while I'd been in the Civil Rights movement. And I find out people work for doing nothing, pick cotton for really nothing from sun to sun, can to can't. | 7:21 |
Cora Randle Flemming | And I didn't understand that kind of stuff. But eventually, by the grace of God, I found out what it was all about. A lot of people didn't have any place to hardly sleep that was decent, and I got involved in the Civil Rights movement. And I was living in this house here then, right here then. I'd be complaining to my husband all the time, wanting him to buy a new dress every week he got paid. I be raising all kinds of sin about a new dress. At that time, I loved a dress so I had got accustomed to dresses in the North. So I just had start before he came in the Civil Rights movement, where we did door to door canvassing to recruit children for Head Start. | 8:35 |
Cora Randle Flemming | And I was going to people's homes and I said, I looked at so many people's houses, I believe. See, we had in my household, we had plates, the glass plates and things. Some people had died, my aunts, they had died and left us quite a bit of stuff. So I thought everybody lived like that, had the couches and pretty nice furniture, nice dishes and stuff. When I began to go to people's houses in road trip Head Start, I was actually really shocked at some things that I saw. That was the early '60s, in the '60s. | 9:46 |
Paul Ortiz | '60s. | 10:28 |
Cora Randle Flemming | People didn't have, I went to their houses, their homes and they had the beds on the floor. Some had chips in them, some had rags in the bed for mattresses. Some had to be eating out of tin pans and stuff, those and their children. And I didn't know that people lived like that so I came home that evening, I told my husband. I said, "You know what, John?" He said, "What?" I said, "Long as I live, I'll never complain again about not having a new dress or new shoes." Because I told him, a lot of people today, I'm a rich woman compared to them. I'm living like a queen compared to those people. They didn't have anything. | 10:33 |
Paul Ortiz | So that was when you were working at Washington County or had started? | 11:29 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Uh-huh. Sunflower. | 11:31 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, Sunflower. | 11:32 |
Cora Randle Flemming | More often, later I worked in Washington. I organized Sunflower Washington in Sequena [indistinct 00:11:43]. I was one of the main organizers of their program here. It was started here. And we had organized here and in the normal, in 1965 I believe. I think we had a church. We had got everything already together, had the money funded through CDGM. Really came through with down here and organized in Mississippi, all the counties around. | 11:34 |
Cora Randle Flemming | We got the program organized, got all the children enrolled and everything for school, and come to find out we thought so sure we'd have a church, that Head Start going to build a missionary church down here. In my church, our church, the family church. And like I said, by them being from this side down in Mississippi, down in the Delta, they were different from us. They fearful of everything. I was never too fearful of anything like that, because my mind was, I'm going to do it. If I get the opportunity, I'm going to do it. | 12:24 |
Cora Randle Flemming | So they didn't no have a church. Well, the main Washington County— Sunflower County go to Washington County and leaving to see if we could get a church over there to have the Head Start in. We transferred our children on over for some Black kind of Washington County. | 12:59 |
Paul Ortiz | Y'all had to go all the way over? | 13:15 |
Cora Randle Flemming | To Leland in Washington County, because there was no buildings here. They were fearful, too afraid that they're going to bring that. And that had burned anyway, so they were afraid of being burnt down or something. So now I look back, I can't really blame them because that's the way it was in those days. I can't blame them afraid. | 13:17 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Flemming, I wonder if you can go back a little bit. You talked earlier about your mother; she was a healer. Tell me about that and how she learned. | 13:36 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Oh. She came from a plain sort of people, religious set of people. Her background very religious. And it was something that came natural with her. It came natural with her. She prayed for you, you down in, she could get you up. That's the kind of pretty she was. | 13:49 |
Paul Ortiz | She would lay, and she'd lay hands on people? | 14:18 |
Cora Randle Flemming | I can do that too. Yeah. She lay her hand on people and by the grace of God, something happens to them. Yeah. She was very good. She did more taking people in, like if somebody come in. I remember we had an uncle, we called in Uncle Prince. I called him Prince. Anyway, he came here a lot of sores that she would heal. She worked with those sores, she'd work with them and work with them until he was healed. That's the way she was. Anybody, she didn't care who you were. You could be White or Black. If somebody came by and needed it, you can go. | 14:25 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Of course, that never did happen with the White though. Understand, if they had to have it, she would've done it. I'd say it happened back in those days. When I was a kid, child growing up, I overhear them talking about this man that raped my grandmother, my great-grandma. And one old White man lived down the road from us, way down the road. And I thought he was the one did it. (laughs) He'd pass by, I'd throw bricks at him. | 15:10 |
Paul Ortiz | You'd throw bricks at him? | 15:40 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yes, and hide behind the tree, because I thought he was the one that did it. He was the only one we ever knew that passed by there, that's close to us. But it wasn't him, it was somebody else that somebody had did it. My mom told me, "You stop doing it. That's not the White man that did it to your grandmother. You quit that." I got a good whipping though. They were very strict. They raised us strict. My mother always told that even if somebody had done something, you don't fight them, you pray for them. I told prayers take care because they're going to be answered. They take care of it too. | 15:42 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Flemming, it sounds like sharing was a really important part of your family. | 16:23 |
Cora Randle Flemming | It was. | 16:26 |
Paul Ortiz | And life. Were there other people in your neighborhood? | 16:26 |
Cora Randle Flemming | We had community. Everybody knew, felt the same way. If somebody had to — We had chopped our farm and lay-by. We'd go the next person's farm and help them out. The same with the next person, everybody get lay-by, help the next person. | 16:31 |
Paul Ortiz | Now did you have, Mrs. Flemming, was your family you owned land? | 16:49 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah. | 17:05 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 17:05 |
Cora Randle Flemming | We owned the land up here. | 17:06 |
Paul Ortiz | About how many acres did you have then? | 17:06 |
Cora Randle Flemming | I don't know, I guess about maybe about fifteen or twenty, I guess. I think it was about 100 and something acres altogether with the other family, everybody together. Maybe twenty-five, twenty acres. Yeah, somewhere in that maybe. We had our own. A little more, something, I don't know. Back then, I didn't know where that woods go to. I know we had a large, a big plot of land then. | 17:11 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Flemming, can you tell me about your father's side of the family? | 17:47 |
Cora Randle Flemming | I didn't know much about my father's side of the people. We didn't, because I asked him before he died. He tried to tell me who his people were and I think that they got their land and stuff through the White man. There was already grandfather, grandfather's son. I think he sold it to them for a little less, like five dollars a acre. We just wouldn't say come and give it to him, let him know that what he was doing. He gave it through a small amount of cash for the land. | 17:55 |
Cora Randle Flemming | I don't know. I know they was all very independent. They all worked; some were smart and had more than others because they were able to work harder, had more children to work. And some people, we didn't have to work that hard because my dad wouldn't make us work that hard. He wouldn't make you work that hard. He was kind of on the sleepyhead side. But my mother kind of, she must've been round our household. She was the backbone of the household, of our family. | 18:41 |
Cora Randle Flemming | My mother, she taught school for a long time. And my father, he was very smart and real, but he didn't finish school. But the transfer thing from the school was sending him to work the crop from the school. So he was very smart, he just didn't get a degree behind it. | 19:42 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Flemming, did other stories about your ancestors pass down to you about their struggles and where they had come from? | 20:15 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Mm-hmm. Depends of my mother, all of them. My dad didn't on his side. They never had it too tough, not to my knowledge. We always had everything, a lot. Like when summertime come, whenever winter is over and the spring of the year, and we'd used up all the food in the summer for the winter months. So there was always somebody around to help the other one out. I never went hungry, I never went barefoot unless I wanted to. I never did go without any clothes. Might be too big or too long, but I had clothes on my back. We all did. | 20:33 |
Paul Ortiz | Were other children in the community less fortunate, Mrs. Flemming? | 21:27 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Some, and some, there's more poor than we were. I had a cousin, a lot of time she would rip all of her — Well, I guess he kind of rich, I reckon. I had worn her clothes in many day, she'll get her a dress. He go buy her the nice chiffon dresses, blue and white. She'd be dressed in blue and white, and blue and white shoes, bag and everything to match. And she wear it one time and then she'd just give it to me. It'd be secondhand, but knowing her, I was proud to have it. That was a little long— Hurt then in those days, thinking back on it now. But then I realized too, my family didn't have it. They didn't have it. If they had it, they would've given it to me too, but they just didn't have it. | 21:32 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Flemming, were there people in the neighborhood or community that didn't take part in the sharing, that were less sharing than others? | 22:38 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Not that I know of, because those that had, they helped the ones that didn't have. Because my cousin, her father, he and my mother were first cousins. So that made him always would look after the family, our family as well. And my father's side too, they all helped each other out. All of them did. My dad always kind of slow, he didn't. My oldest fussed at him all the time about it. But he made it, he lived longer than she did. She had the burden on her shoulders, tried to take care of everybody, and him too sometimes. | 22:51 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Flemming, when you were growing up, did your parents use signs to plant minds? | 23:48 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah. I do it too today. | 23:56 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 23:59 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah. | 24:00 |
Paul Ortiz | What other kinds of signs have your parents passed down? | 24:01 |
Cora Randle Flemming | It's with the moon. The moon will be on full first quarter, second quarter. You don't plant on full, when dark of the moon. You plant when everything's growing. | 24:06 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay, you plant when the moon is getting bigger. | 24:29 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Right. Yeah. Yeah. It was a full moon, you don't plant. When it's a dark moon, you don't plant on dark moon. You plant different things, different times. You plant, you have a sign for the top of the ground and you have a sign for the under the ground, for potatoes and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Use the Almanac. It's kind of hard to remember. I can get an Almanac and I can tell you the exact day when to plant on. (laughs) We plant when the moon in Scorpio, Cancer. You don't plant in June now because a bearing sign. | 24:35 |
Paul Ortiz | Don't plant in June. | 25:26 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Uh-uh. You don't plant in Sagittarius, I don't think you do, or Leo. You don't plant in those signs. You plant in Cancer, Libra, Pisces, Scorpio, Aries are the days. | 25:27 |
Paul Ortiz | I'm Pisces, so that's a good thing. | 25:49 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah. | 25:54 |
Paul Ortiz | So that's a good planting. | 25:55 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah. A lot of fruit comes up, but it's a good time. It's a good sign. My sign is completely barren. That's a Gemini of the twins. You don't plant nothing in that time. Get rid of weeds on some signs. | 25:56 |
Paul Ortiz | Were there examples, Mrs. Flemming, of people that didn't use the correct signs and their crops kind of messed up? | 26:21 |
Cora Randle Flemming | I imagine so. I did it one time. I didn't know because I had planted flowers then. And a lot of people had done that too, planted on a bad sign, and the crop didn't do anything. I planted on the flower day, had beans running everywhere. Prettiest beans I ever see, green as they could be, nothing but [indistinct 00:27:00]. Everything came on fell off, so I don't plant. I go and use the time in the Almanac from then on. I'll never try that again. Never guessed it. | 26:34 |
Cora Randle Flemming | And on my mother's side, they were mostly educated people on my mother's side. They taught school down through all of them. Uncles and fathers, they taught school. They were great church workers and stuff like that. They were the ones had the cars and things. I don't have the cool car. | 27:17 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Flemming, I have to ask you this question. Since I've been an adult, I've heard people talk about something that people would do to try to ward off storms, and it had to do with planting an axe. Have you heard that? | 27:54 |
Cora Randle Flemming | I've heard that too. I've seen my mother do that, my father too. | 28:11 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 28:17 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Between the stars come, they stick the axe in the ground to split the stone. If it comes from the south, they would face the south and stick the axe in the ground and split it. And in recent years, I seen them use the Bible, the ninety-first Psalms. | 28:17 |
Paul Ortiz | The ninety-first Psalms. | 28:48 |
Cora Randle Flemming | The first two verses of ninety-first Psalms. | 28:48 |
Paul Ortiz | So that was something that was also, and I've heard about that being done in the Delta, but that was down in the Hills. Okay. | 28:54 |
Cora Randle Flemming | In the Hills too, yeah. It's kind of tradition. But they don't do the axe too much anymore. Everybody use, I don't guess, but most of them use that ninety-first Psalm. And the seventeenth chapter of Isaiah. And that ninety-first Psalm works too. I was at my window one day maybe two years ago, and it was storming from the earth, a tornado coming. So my window was up in the room in there, so I went to let the window and pull the curtain. That wind got in that window and got that curtain and twisted that curtain around. All I could think was the ninety-first Psalm. I dropped that Bible, went to the back of the Bible, opened that Bible. | 29:01 |
Paul Ortiz | It stopped. | 30:00 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Just like that. Went around the house, couldn't top our tree running. Sure did, cleared out. I said, I couldn't get that Bible fast enough. I was scuffling to get that Bible, get that window too. Everything had me, my arm took that thing too. | 30:00 |
Paul Ortiz | Like the window shade? | 30:19 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah, the curtain, because the window was up. It was just that strong. | 30:20 |
Paul Ortiz | That was when it was really blowing. | 30:27 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah. Yeah. About two years ago. | 30:29 |
Paul Ortiz | I see you have your Bible open on the ninety-first Psalms. | 30:32 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah, I keep it there. Yeah, when those storms come back, keep that Bible open all the time when you're here. | 30:36 |
Paul Ortiz | What is the special significance of the ninety-first Psalm for that? | 30:43 |
Cora Randle Flemming | It's protection, the first and second verse. If it's happening, that's because of the way it is. | 30:47 |
Paul Ortiz | Yes, ma'am. First and second verse, "He that dwells in the secretive place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge, my fortress, my God and He has all my trust." | 31:05 |
Cora Randle Flemming | That's it. | 31:20 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 31:20 |
Cora Randle Flemming | So nothing come near you and harm you. | 31:20 |
Paul Ortiz | And now I'm less familiar with the seventeenth chapter of Isaiah, but it does have this too. | 31:31 |
Cora Randle Flemming | And I'll use that, I will use the nineteenth, the ninety-first. I have read seventeenth sometimes. But I learned about that one. | 31:43 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. And now you can, what you do is you just say those aloud and you have the Bible with you? | 31:45 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah, and read. Just familiarize yourself, memorize it. But I usually read it. I just open it to that. It's open, let it lay there. | 31:52 |
Paul Ortiz | And that is kind of now in place of the axe. | 32:03 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Right. Refer to the ninety-first Psalms. | 32:08 |
Paul Ortiz | Did your mother ever tell you, Mrs. Flemming, about the origins of the axe, of people using the axe issue? | 32:13 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Only thing she would say is hit the storm. If a storm is coming, it was split and it would go around you. I might've done something in the Hill. We had a lot of storms in the Hill. They say one time when my mother was carrying me, they had a storm that year and it blew the house up the block. And they say I have a friend child growing up, because she was praying. She was praying real hard for it was the storm of the year that year. And as I look up many times, they all were in there praying, just singing the spiritual songs and things going on. I guess she [indistinct 00:33:12] that. I'm still that way sometimes. Not as I used to be. | 32:22 |
Paul Ortiz | Did she learn how to use the axe from her mother? | 33:17 |
Cora Randle Flemming | My Mother, and hers. Yeah. | 33:21 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 33:28 |
Cora Randle Flemming | My father's side. And now I think a lot of them might've come from the Indians, because we had Indians in our family too. They believed in stuff like that. It might've come down through the generations. I guess, I do recollect it became less significant I guess. Got a little less. | 33:30 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Had they known, they would tell them and stuff. We had great chicken, we raised cows and hogs. We raised turkeys and guineas. Whatever we grew on the farm, we used, we raised it. And the ducks and the goats, and the sheep. We never had no sheep, but the goats. We farmed, raised cotton, corn, cane with what you make your syrup from. Ground our own meal. | 34:03 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Flemming, do you market, your family market your own crops? | 34:48 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah. | 35:01 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Flemming, when was your first experience with segregation, the first time you really — | 35:01 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Realized about segregation. I guess about them dogs, when they'd get the dogs off of us. I guess the first time I really realized now that something wrong somewhere, people stand to see a dog eat you up and don't try to get him off of you. | 35:09 |
Paul Ortiz | That was their dog. | 35:34 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah. I guess the first time I really experienced real segregation, it was down here in the Delta in the '60s. Or I can go back further than that because I in '55 knew Emmett Till was killed, I believe. I wasn't here at that time, I was in the North. But I learned a lot through reading the papers that listed the news, just how bitter people really could be toward one another. That's when I really began to understand about the evils of segregation and the hatred that go along with it. | 35:36 |
Cora Randle Flemming | But it's a strange thing, I don't know. I used to hate that kind of, hate people. Somehow I changed, the Lord changed me. He changed me, because we're all human beings. We're all God's children. And I can't see my Maker hating you or anybody else. I can dislike your ways, but I can love you still. So I learned, I have learned, I've put that stuff behind me. | 36:37 |
Paul Ortiz | Back in those days. | 37:29 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Right. I really hated. I really did. | 37:31 |
Paul Ortiz | Did you decide to move North, Mrs. Flemming, to get out to escape the Southern? | 37:37 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Really just escape that feel. That was my only thought was those days. | 37:44 |
Paul Ortiz | The fear. | 37:49 |
Cora Randle Flemming | The feel, the feel. | 37:50 |
Paul Ortiz | The feel. | 37:50 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Chopping that cotton and corn and stuff, then that's my only thing is that particular time. But when I left and I came back here to live. See, I hadn't been there where everything was, well, I wouldn't say perfect, but it was better than it was here, the North. But after I— | 37:51 |
Paul Ortiz | What city were you in? | 38:19 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Huh? Chicago. | 38:19 |
Paul Ortiz | Chicago. | 38:19 |
Cora Randle Flemming | In Detroit, Ohio, Cleveland, Ohio, Akron, Ohio. Toledo, Ohio. Dayton, Ohio. But there I learned a lot. When I came back here, it was such a difference here. I remember I was working for a lady here one time, domestic work. And the girl, she gave her goddaughter 400 dollars. She said, "Delane?" She said, "Yes, ma'am?" She had never, of course, seen that wasn't no 100 dollar bill because she'd never seen it before. I said, "Honey, where I came from, I would make penny money. And that 400 dollars ain't worth a damn thing when you're working [indistinct 00:39:18]. It don't mean a damn thing." That's his wife in my house, child. | 38:21 |
Cora Randle Flemming | I've got where I was, don't mean I got mad with it. Don't mean a damn thing to me. It's you they work. So later on, that same woman, now I didn't mind that they helped me when I do anything. This particular day, she brought some clothes over to this woman's house I worked for. Wanted her to wash them, wanted me to wash them for her and fold them. And I said, sure, I'd do it for her. So she getting ready to come with the clothes that evening, I didn't want her to give me anything. But guess what she come handing me? Guess, a dime. | 39:22 |
Paul Ortiz | A dime? 1961? | 40:02 |
Cora Randle Flemming | '64. A dime. I said, "Honey, you take that dime and go buy you a cup of coffee. You need it, because this is all the money you got. You need that dime. Go buy you a cup of coffee and maybe it'll work." And when you need it, I don't. | 40:12 |
Paul Ortiz | So she was trying to add an insulting— | 40:31 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah, yeah. And so on me. But she did, by God, I kind of got her though. She looked back at me, she's wondering who in the hell she thinks she is, talking to me like that. But so she didn't know who I was either. I'd have knocked her out, she knows. I'd have probably been in prison. I'd have knocked her out. | 40:37 |
Paul Ortiz | Is there other ways that employers would try to have belittling you, try to put themselves on top? | 40:51 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah. One day, people came from up in the Hills, who visit their sister down here in the Delta. When they came in, everybody spoke and shook my hand, because they treated me like I was family, the people I work with. Like I was saying, but this man came in there with the [indistinct 00:41:26]. "Mrs. Cora, meet her." He looked at me and turned his head like he didn't see me. I said "Okay." So they were having coffee. I fixed everybody a cup of coffee. I gave him a drop. | 41:02 |
Paul Ortiz | You gave him what? | 41:44 |
Cora Randle Flemming | I fixed everybody's kind of coffee. After everybody's coffee, I can give him a taste. I can give him a drop. He looked around at me [indistinct 00:42:00] they wouldn't have me. "I'll give you coffee, I'll give you some coffee." He said nothing to me because he knew I'm going to raise some sense. | 41:50 |
Paul Ortiz | You were all angry. | 42:11 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah, right. You don't do me like [indistinct 00:42:15]. Don't do that to me. I'm going to treat you with all the respect there is, regardless I'm going to treat you nice. If I think you're hurting me, I'm still [indistinct 00:42:25] house. I'm going to still treat you right. That's my job, do my job then. | 42:12 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Flemming, were there other ways that you could assert your dignity working in White people's houses, other ways you could stand up? | 42:30 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Many times, there was color television. I remember one year The Summit. They had The Summit somewhere, it was overseas. And they got to fighting. They got to fighting and it was White, Black, and everybody was fighting each other. I don't know how, I forgot where I was again. I said, "Tear their White ass up." (laughs) That woman didn't look at me, just laughed. She said [indistinct 00:43:18]. She said, "Cora, you're getting there." I said, "I sure do. You're fighting them all for nothing." | 42:43 |
Paul Ortiz | That was The Summit. | 43:20 |
Cora Randle Flemming | I think it was in about '63, I believe. | 43:27 |
Paul Ortiz | '63? | 43:33 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Uh-huh. | 43:33 |
Paul Ortiz | Was that a sport? | 43:34 |
Cora Randle Flemming | No, no, that was a big United Nations meet together. | 43:37 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, yeah. | 43:42 |
Cora Randle Flemming | I think it was The Summit. I think they called it The Summit, they had the Summit that year. All of them met together like this. The Russians, the Japanese, the Germans and everybody met, had this big meeting. That was a new year, I think. Yeah. But they haven't seen them fighting since that time. They were sure fighting and just going to town. They were tearing them up, lock and all. [indistinct 00:44:13] I don't blame, I tried to work in the room without no shame. | 43:43 |
Paul Ortiz | So there are ways that you could— | 44:21 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Yeah, express yourself. | 44:23 |
Paul Ortiz | — express yourself. Were there other ways? | 44:25 |
Cora Randle Flemming | No. A lot of times, we got to talking about different things. And then sometimes, yeah, because the same family, they were only known that they did these things or they'd probably still be hurt today, family. They went to the library. We didn't go to the library in those days. We didn't have a library to go to. So this lady got this book from the library. I can't name what that book was, but she got it. She checked it out for me. I remember the race for nations and how they had killed people, Black people, how they had murdered them and all that kind of stuff. | 44:35 |
Cora Randle Flemming | Well, she let me read that book and I just struck that with her. And then that she was telling me a lot of things that she would tell me. She told me she never meant, because they would kill her too. But the rich millionaires, they had Black people. We didn't know that then. We all Black folk got this thing and so we had a lot of millionaire Black folk. You just didn't know it. Matter of fact, now my people are self millionaires down in Texas, but I don't know them. Well, very close kin people, very first cousins and stuff like that, but we don't know them though. We never met them. I think [indistinct 00:46:23] this past, this year in July. Down to a family reunion and a lot of them were there in Chicago. | 45:24 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Flemming, when you were back to the Delta, were you look. | 46:36 |
Interviewee | I lived in the house right down the street here, at 507 Chandler Street. I lived right down here next to my mother, at 404 Chandler Street. Then I moved in this house in 1964. | 0:02 |
Interviewer | On this side of the tracks, has this always been a Black neighborhood? | 0:31 |
Interviewee | Yeah. Some. We had some whites. Now they have all moved other side of the railroad track now because Blacks are moving all back in that area over there where there wasn't nothing but whites. Now they moving all across town. They moving everywhere now. The Blacks today ain't got no special place to live anymore. They're moving everywhere. But I never did understand that though, and it's still a mystery to me, because I remember times when people had a little money and they couldn't buy anything. They couldn't do anything. Now, the worse the time get, the more they progress. Have you ever noticed that? [inaudible 00:01:35] the tougher times get with the Black race of people, the more they progress. They still moving up. They knock you down here. They're moving somewhere else. I guess the times is changing. Time is right for it. | 0:35 |
Interviewee | I know that God said it would be, that they would come, but it still seem like a mystery to me, because everything you get, they take it from you. You try to accumulate, like the federal program stuff. They take that from you. But yet they surviving. I see them buying new car. They won't do welfare. They're doing everything to them now, and they're yet surviving. I don't know. | 1:56 |
Interviewer | Mrs. Fleming, I have one more question about your childhood, and then we can move to your adult life [inaudible 00:02:39]. Can you tell me about the schools that you went to and what kind of experience you had? | 2:32 |
Interviewee | Yeah. They were the row schools. They one-room schoolhouses. They had one or two teachers, maybe two teachers, in a classroom. Maybe had 150 kids, maybe two teachers. They might separate the back of that classroom, that one big room into two classrooms. We sat on benches. But there was a ton we learned. We'd go to school maybe eight, six month. [inaudible 00:03:43] we'd get out of school, go to the field, and gather the crops. Then we would go back to school after the crop had been gathered. It like a split session. | 2:48 |
Interviewee | We had from pre-primer through eighth grade. To us at that time, it was good because we didn't know anything different than that. When I went to high school, I finally realized a lot of things was different from the rural community school. | 4:04 |
Interviewer | Your high school was in a different county? | 4:39 |
Interviewee | Same county. | 4:39 |
Interviewer | Same county. | 4:43 |
Interviewee | Uh, huh. Arkansas County. But the high school was downtown in this [inaudible 00:04:53], but the rural was out in the rural community, in the country part. A lot of kids in those days, those young women and men, they finished high school and made something of themselves. They did. I had a cousin. He finished at Jackson State. I love him today. He's dead, but I love him today because when he would come back to the rural community to check where we lived, where we was raised, he never came back there acting like he was Mr. High-and-Mighty. He always dealt on everybody's level. If he said something and he didn't think you knew the meaning of it, he would break it down for you. I remember he would use the word incomprehensive a lot. I remember that. So he told what it was, what he meant by that. I love him for that today, because he took time to instruct and teach as he did everything else. | 4:46 |
Interviewee | He had a brother who was different from him. This other one, Lucius Williams, I remember I saw him in the news, in the JET one time. He died in Mississippi State. He was transferred from New York back to Mississippi State. Lucius Williams. He was a great teacher. He had, I think, four doctoral degrees. Had about three BS. He just did real well. He was a smart man. When he died, his brain had get to where he cancer in the brain. He was very, very smart. | 6:06 |
Interviewer | Mrs. Fleming, what was the name of your high school? | 6:51 |
Interviewee | OCTS, Oktibbeha County Training School. O-C-T-S. Oktibbeha County Training School. | 6:53 |
Interviewer | Mrs. Fleming, why did you decide to move back to Mississippi? | 7:08 |
Interviewee | Now, when my mother got sick. And I don't know. Just something else forced me to come back here. It just got I came here to visit in 1960, and I went back to Chicago and packed my clothes and sold my stuff I had there, and I headed back to Mississippi. After I got back, my mother got sick. My mother always said the Lord sent me back here, because he knew she was going to get down. She got sick in '64. She died in '64, and I was here. During her illness and the time when she passed, I was here. I've been here ever since. | 7:20 |
Interviewer | Now, in '64, you were also working. You were doing domestic work. | 8:11 |
Interviewee | Yeah. | 8:11 |
Interviewer | How did you get involved in the local civil rights struggle? | 8:19 |
Interviewee | They had several meetings here. My mother was sick during that time. We saw some of the people coming down the street. The civil right were coming down the street in front of my mother house right there on the corner. I just looked at them, and my mother say, "All you all need to be going to those meetings." I said, "Man." Said, "You go to that ..." Said, "All you all need to be going to those meetings." I said, "Why do you say that?" She said, "Because there's so much and you all need to know what you don't know. You had to mix with people to learn the ways of life and learn how things are going. You see, I'm sitting here sick today, and my parents haven't been to see me." Said, "Very few of the church folk come by to see me." Said, "You got to learn how to do things to help yourself, because nobody, when you're down, nobody care anything about you." So I went to that meeting that night. I got there, and I had a big time at that meeting. I had to make a speech that night. | 8:24 |
Interviewer | At your first meeting. Where was it at? Where was the meeting at? | 9:55 |
Interviewee | On the back of the school ground there. They burnt the building down. | 10:01 |
Interviewer | Oh, [inaudible 00:10:05]. | 10:04 |
Interviewee | Yeah, they burnt it down. I made a speech in that building that night, and that meeting led to another meeting. They kept on meeting. Means I kept going. | 10:05 |
Interviewer | What did you say when you got up and spoke? | 10:25 |
Interviewee | I was telling about the sharecropping and all the things they was going through down here, and you could do better. I said, "You learn right there, and you can do better for yourself." I said, "Don't stoop to no man. Don't bow to anybody. Treat everybody right, but yet you be a man. Stand on your own two feet." The thing that Mr. Farrakhan talking about now, I talked that back in the early '60s. | 10:25 |
Interviewer | Oh, okay. | 10:51 |
Interviewee | But it did not come to pass. It wasn't time for it then, but it's time for it. We're getting ready for it now. I was telling them how to treat their children, the boys, the young men, and the girls, daughters and things, and the mothers, how to raise their children, what it's going to take in this life to make them be strong. You got to be firm with them. Don't beat them to death, but be firm. Make them obey you. Make them mind. Don't let the child make you mind him, but you make the child mind you because you're the adult. I was telling the men to take time with their boys, the young men. Teach them things. Do things with them. Play ball with them. Go hunting with them. Do a lot of things with the children that you don't do. Take time with the children. Teach them things. They need to know these things, know you care. Take time to talk to them. Teach them things about life and about adult life, about the young women they go out with and how to protect those women from getting these babies and stuff. All this stuff, but they didn't ... They laughed at me then. I said, "The day going to come you're going to wish you had listened." | 10:53 |
Interviewee | Today, I can be in the church sometimes right now. I was in church about five or six years ago, out on the floor testifying. The Almighty God took my thoughts completely from me, what I was talking about, and put his words in my mouth, telling these parents to make these children obey them. A lot of killing, a lot of blood going to be running in the street. That ain't going to happen, would be surprised your children will be one doing it. Sure enough, it wasn't two weeks before that blood began to ran everywhere. Killed one in the street. | 12:05 |
Interviewer | What happened. | 12:45 |
Interviewee | They begin to kill each other. Started to kill each other on the street, just shooting people down. That's somebody crazy. Get to time talk a little, teach them these things. It's important. Not how to go out there and steal. Don't teach them those things, how to rob somebody. They do wrong, do what you're supposed to do. Tighten a belt up on them. It ain't going to kill them. You same them. You can love your children to life or you can love them to death. When you love them to life, you chastise them. You love them to life then. Let them do what they want to do, you love them to death then, because death is sure to come if you don't chastise them and make them do right. Love them to life or you love them to death. That's the way. It's where it's at. But they- | 12:49 |
Interviewer | Mrs. Fleming, you said your first meeting, you got up and you made a rousing speech. | 12:49 |
Interviewee | Yeah. | 12:49 |
Interviewer | Then do you know of people there who were at the meeting? | 13:22 |
Interviewee | Mm-hm. I knew some of them there. Uh, huh. I knew some of them there, but they didn't know me too well. I just had gotten here about three years earlier and I hadn't done anything in the community much because the illness of my mother. But they learned me right quick. They found out right quick what I stood for. [inaudible 00:14:17] I learned how to rile them up. I know to rile them up. I was having to work in the private home. How many bringing home $20 a week? Seven days a week. | 13:53 |
Interviewer | Is that what you were making? | 14:35 |
Interviewee | Mm-hmm. $15 a week. They were making, some of them, they were making less than that. I knew how to rile them up. How many quart of milk can you buy for your children with $7 a week or $15 a week? How many pair of shoes they have? How many stocking could they buy, or sock could they buy? You don't get the $15, you ain't got nothing. But you those you work for, earn it, but look to higher grounds. While you do that for a little money, keep looking for something better. Test yourself. Test your mind, your skill, your ability, things you can do to help yourself and help others in the community around you. | 14:39 |
Interviewer | Mrs. Fleming, part of your message was economic self-help. | 15:35 |
Interviewee | Right. | 15:41 |
Interviewer | What kinds of movement activities did you get involved in at first, in addition to your speaking? | 15:47 |
Interviewee | The kind of things we did? We marched. COFO. SNCC. We had a lot of involvement with the different things, different things in the community. Some went to jail. I didn't go to jail, but I helped get them out. We fixed food for those that were marching. Some of those marches, we fixed food for them. Bought pop and stuff and food for to eat while they out on the picket line somewhere. We might have done all the going to jail, but someone had to be outside. Everybody couldn't go to jail, so I tried to be one didn't go to jail. | 16:01 |
Interviewee | We had a lot of people worked. A lot of people helped. You going to talk to Ms. Giles. They had a great hand in everything, too, Mr. and Mrs. Giles. And a lot of other people. Rev. Porter. | 16:50 |
Interviewer | Rev. Porter? | 17:11 |
Interviewee | Uh, huh. He's deceased now. We had a lot of elderly people that's dead that participated real well in everything. We had people from Inverness like Mrs. Hood. Mr. Jim Heron was killed in a tornado in '71. He was very active in the community. He was chairman of our board. Ms. [inaudible 00:17:52] from Moorhead. Ms. Vera Lewis. Ms. Thelma [inaudible 00:17:57] is dead. Ms. Vera Lewis is alive. Ms. Fuldust, she's dead, from Moorhead. A lot of people from Moorhead. | 17:14 |
Interviewee | You had from rural [inaudible 00:18:06]. You had Ms. Dukes from [inaudible 00:18:13], Ms. Davis from [inaudible 00:18:17], Luma Davis from [inaudible 00:18:18]. You had Ora Dawson, Ruby Dawson, younger people from [inaudible 00:18:25]. All those people from [inaudible 00:18:27], they did a good job, and many others. I don't want to slight anybody. We had many others that was involved. | 18:04 |
Interviewer | So there were a lot of local people in the meetings? | 18:32 |
Interviewee | Right. Uh, huh. Charles McLon, all those people. All them, very active. | 18:37 |
Interviewer | I talk to him tomorrow. | 18:37 |
Interviewee | Oh, yeah. He was very good. | 18:49 |
Interviewer | Mrs. Fleming, in the beginning of the struggle here, the local struggle, what were the main hopes, goals, aspirations? | 18:54 |
Interviewee | Main goal for me was to make tomorrow a better day for our people. My goal was to try to see that happening, to do what I could to make sure that it didn't finish out how started it. At least give them food for thought, and let them try to meet on common ground. | 19:14 |
Interviewee | I see a lot of things that I hope for come to pass. There was a lot of jobs that they didn't have. Of course, they don't do quite as I think they should do, because once we get the job, we forget about from whence we came. We get the jobs and forget about the steppingstone they went over to get there, who helped them make the job they have. Hadn't been for some of us in the movement, they wouldn't even have integrated schools yet. Wouldn't have anybody work in the bank, in the gas and light place, none of those places. Our struggles came, became our struggles. A lot of them that have the positions in community now didn't do anything for it. Just stepped in and took over. But that's all right, too. They're moving up. But when they move up, don't forget about the one that they're passing by. Don't ever forget about them, because they're the ones called you to be there. | 19:50 |
Interviewee | That's my main thing. I just don't appreciate looking them looking down on some people, because none of us any better than that the other one. May live a little different because the Lord has blessed us a little different, but you don't take your blessing and criticize others with it because he'll take it from you after he give it to you. | 21:09 |
Interviewer | Mrs. Fleming, did you and your family face dangers from participating- | 21:37 |
Interviewee | Oh, yes. That window there was shot out. | 21:41 |
Interviewer | Right here, this picture window, right? | 21:47 |
Interviewee | Yeah. | 21:48 |
Interviewer | Shot out? | 21:49 |
Interviewee | My bed window shot out twice. People had to leave. They sat there and watched the house. They even seen people come through with oil with different cans, down the street over there. There's tall grass that [inaudible 00:22:10] out there now. Was a cotton field though. People been caught out laying in the grass, trying to get to my house to do something to us up in here. They shot in my house one night, and the glass flew all over my bed. I was in the bed in there. Was all over the bed in there. One time we were down at a civil right meeting downtown, and they made me walk chalk line. Probably ain't never seen nobody Black act like I act before. | 21:50 |
Interviewer | Chalk line? | 22:51 |
Interviewee | Yeah. Had to walk the chalk. They called it the drunk line. | 22:52 |
Interviewer | Oh, the police pulled you over. | 22:58 |
Interviewee | Yeah. We were leaving a meeting, and made me walk the line because they never seen a Black woman act like I act. | 22:59 |
Interviewer | Assertive. | 23:00 |
Interviewee | Right. Yeah. But then- | 23:07 |
Interviewer | You questioned their authority. | 23:13 |
Interviewee | Yeah. True. Sure did, down at the big meeting. I get about 200 folk there that night, down at City Hall. | 23:16 |
Interviewer | Wow. | 23:16 |
Interviewee | They couldn't stand that, those white [inaudible 00:23:27] policemen. I don't know how many there was, but that man had me walk that line that night. Oh, I was so scared. I'm telling you, I was so scared. I didn't get scared until after everything was over, because I begin to realize how they do people. They take you out and kill you like that. They'll murder you. | 23:23 |
Interviewee | When the police stopped me, you wouldn't believe that all those folk who left that meeting left me with the police uptown. All those left me right downtown the police. Acted like they didn't see me over there. They police had me over there cornered off. I was so [inaudible 00:24:20]. We left that meeting downtown, went to the church down here, to Mount Carmel, and [inaudible 00:24:30] a newspaper reported followed us down to the meeting after I got away from them downtown. I came on downtown to the meeting, and there was all got together and sang. We had a meeting. There was talking, discussion, everything. We Shall Overcome. Sang We Shall Overcome. While I was there a man made me so mad. He grabbed my hand on We Shall Overcome. Then he made mistake of calling me Cora. | 23:51 |
Interviewer | The reporter? | 25:07 |
Interviewee | Uh, huh. Called me Cora. They didn't call Black folk Mr. and Mrs. in those days. I said, "You don't address me as Cora." I said, "To you, I'm either Mrs. Fleming, or don't call my name at all." I said, "I'm not your brother or your sister. I'm not related to you. I'm not that familiar with you. So for me, to you, I am Mrs. Fleming." "All right." Now, he addressed me, "Yes, ma'am," and, "No, ma'am," like we have to do you all. Yes ma'am and no ma'am. He had in the paper the next day. But from that day on, people been called Mr. and Mrs. In this town, ever since, Black folk, from that night on. | 25:08 |
Interviewer | Mrs. Fleming, that was a turning point. | 26:01 |
Interviewee | Right. | 26:01 |
Interviewer | In '65? | 26:03 |
Interviewee | Right. '65. | 26:03 |
Interviewer | Okay. You forced through the newspaper. | 26:03 |
Interviewee | Right. | 26:03 |
Interviewer | Respect- | 26:03 |
Interviewee | That's right. | 26:03 |
Interviewer | ... your title. | 26:04 |
Interviewee | From this day on, I'm Mrs. Fleming to you, and yes ma'am or no ma'am, just like we do you all and do you all. He put it in the paper. | 26:13 |
Interviewer | Mrs. Fleming? | 26:27 |
Interviewee | Uh, huh. They carried that message in the paper. I'm not kin to you. I'm not that familiar with you. | 26:28 |
Interviewer | Oh, he actually printed that part, too? | 26:41 |
Interviewee | Yeah. | 26:43 |
Interviewer | Okay. | 26:43 |
Interviewee | He printed all of it. Yeah, I've got a record of that somewhere now at the [inaudible 00:26:49]. | 26:44 |
Interviewer | [inaudible 00:26:51] | 26:51 |
Interviewee | Yeah. | 26:52 |
Interviewer | What was his name? | 26:53 |
Interviewee | Wallace Dabbs. | 26:54 |
Interviewer | Daves? Davis? | 26:55 |
Interviewee | Dabbs. D-A-B-B-S. Dabbs. | 26:57 |
Interviewer | Oh. | 26:58 |
Interviewee | We sang We Shall Overcome. He was down at it, too. I got so mad at that man. | 27:05 |
Interviewer | Mrs. Fleming, during that dangerous time, did you and your family and other families have to arm themselves to defend your houses? | 27:12 |
Interviewee | We always did that because we knew it was dangerous. At that time, we had white people staying in my house, too. | 27:26 |
Interviewer | Were they civil rights workers? | 27:34 |
Interviewee | Yeah. Frank Glover, he was a very nice person. He worked with me and taught me a lot of stuff about the programs and stuff that we were involved in. | 27:38 |
Interviewer | You were armed? | 27:52 |
Interviewee | Yeah. Right. We were armed, yeah. [inaudible 00:27:58] | 27:53 |
Interviewer | Now, if you don't mind me asking, what did you use to arm yourself against the ... Did you have a shotgun? | 28:00 |
Interviewee | Shotgun and a pistol and everything. | 28:06 |
Interviewer | Okay. Did some of the people that came from outside, who were talking about the nonviolence, did you all ever class with them or just have minor disagreements? | 28:12 |
Interviewee | We had some disagreements, but I always told them like this. If you can stand and be slapped on one side and turn the other cheek, more power to you. But you can't take it, more power to you. If you can't take being slapped and hit, don't take it, but be sure you got enough somebody to cover you before you [inaudible 00:29:00] because they'll probably leave. I always had a laugh about that. They'll probably leave you in a minute and think nothing of it. They'll leave you. | 28:30 |
Interviewer | Mrs. Fleming, there were other families around here ... I talked a little bit to ... Who did I talk to here? But there was a sense that if you lived here, you had to stay here all year round. You didn't have the luxury of coming here and then leaving. If you had to live here, you had to defend yourself. | 29:15 |
Interviewee | Yeah. That's true. I think most other people came in, they had some kind of something to defend themselves. I guess, well I don't know too many of them that had anything. The one that came, I don't think they had too much anything. But maybe SNCC might have had some. SNCC probably had some, because they didn't ... I don't know about COFO. I don't believe they had anything too much. Some of them got beat up. Some of them got killed. | 29:36 |
Interviewer | It must have been real difficult, Mrs. Fleming, in this town, being the center of the White Citizens' Council. What was that like? You were really in the belly of the beast, in a way. | 30:27 |
Interviewee | It was tough. You're fighting against the chief of police. You had some stuff out in a book written by Polly Greenberg, The Devil Has Slippery Shoes. The Devil Has Slippery Shoes. I think I say a lot of that stuff we have gone through, I forgot it. | 30:40 |
Interviewer | That was the- | 31:17 |
Interviewee | Come back in bits and pieces. | 31:18 |
Interviewer | That was written in that book? | 31:20 |
Interviewee | Yeah. A lot of stuff in that book about the movement in those days. Look back on it now and it is really fearful, scary. We had [inaudible 00:31:50] time we had the federal programs that first came in here. I wrote proposal for the program. It had submitted to some kind of progress the [inaudible 00:32:14] agency to get your funding. They didn't know how to write a proposal, so they took my proposal and re-copied it and submitted it as their own. They still submitted ours, but they had cut our budget down to literally nothing and they got our big budget. Got our budget. Got the whole thing we had. | 31:23 |
Interviewer | These are the whites? | 32:43 |
Interviewee | He was Black. | 32:43 |
Interviewer | Oh, he was Black? | 32:43 |
Interviewee | Mm-hmm. But his superior was white. | 32:46 |
Interviewer | School board? | 32:50 |
Interviewee | Uh, huh. Police department. He was on the police department. | 32:51 |
Interviewer | Police department. | 32:53 |
Interviewee | That's one of the things I always try to teach the Black people. It's a hard to do for themselves. It's your Black children they're teaching. It's your Black children they're going to be telling what to do, training what to do, how to be still a little pickaninny. Don't have a mind of your own. Use your own mind to grab your own money, your own children, their own minds. Don't let tell you what to do, how to live your life. You got a life of your own. Be independent. Be progressive in your own thoughts. When you act that way, you come out successful. Don't be dependent on anybody else's mind. Just grab your own. I can do it. I did it back in those days. So I had never lived in my life all this segregated stuff. I'd never been around that kind of stuff. Up in the hills I wasn't. But I came down here and I saw how different it was, and I couldn't see myself living that kind of life down anywhere I go. You can't go to the store. No. No. You know what I mean? My dad said, "You're going to get yourself killed, girl." I said, "Dad, [inaudible 00:34:28] that I was going to do for myself, Dad. I'm doing something for somebody else." | 32:57 |
Interviewer | Mrs. Fleming, what was the process that led you into working at Head Start? | 34:35 |
Interviewee | We had been in the civil right movement, and they had ... I guess, they were checking out, during those days, who had leadership ability. Now there was some Black people from COFO, I think some from SNCC and different areas. They decide, when they heard about this program, the Head Start coming through, through the CGM project, they came and got me, Mrs. Giles, Ms. Anna May King, and two other people. We got two more people to start the committee off. | 34:45 |
Interviewee | During the time we were trying to organize, get organized in this area, we had a big meeting down in Edwards, Mississippi. About two to 5,000 people there at that meeting. They had to have a chairman of the meeting, that big meeting. I think we had about five or six different nominees to chair that meeting. It ended up I had to chair that meeting. Scared me to death. I had never been no kind stuff that before in my life. When I got a chair at the meeting, I think I did real good. Because that meeting must have been done pretty, because they had a tape over at the university. | 35:49 |
Interviewer | Oh, for leadership? | 36:59 |
Interviewee | Yeah, leadership from Edwards, Mississippi. They had it in different universities, that speech that I made. I chaired that meeting. A lot of [inaudible 00:37:12] from that meeting came out in this thing. | 36:59 |
Interviewer | Mrs. Fleming, now were you [inaudible 00:37:19] with the federal government officials? | 37:15 |
Interviewee | Right. Yeah. And the local. | 37:21 |
Interviewer | Local. | 37:21 |
Interviewee | One thing I also remember when I was really getting down in that meeting, I didn't know I could talk that much either. I studied a lot. I have a speech handicap. I have a speech handicap. But I didn't know I could talk that much either. Even when I was starting to get dry, done like thing when the [inaudible 00:37:55], I'd always think of some funny joke to tell. That would bring them back into the realm of the meeting. | 37:30 |
Interviewee | I remember, one time, I told them one time, I did tell them that one out in Chicago, I had to get up in the church. They called me to pray in the choir rehearsal. I said, "I couldn't think of my prayer to save my life." I said, "All I could say is our Father which art in heaven. I couldn't think of nothing there for nothing. I just stood there like I was going crazy. I couldn't think of nothing to say," and them folks near killed their selves laughing. That took their mind off of the meeting getting bored. It gave them something to laugh about. Said I couldn't think of another word. [inaudible 00:38:39] my prayer, I couldn't say another word. That made them tickled for a while. I think everybody in that meeting brought it on through. I made speeches in Washington D.C. the same. | 38:04 |
Interviewer | That was when Head Start really got off and running? | 38:55 |
Interviewee | Right. First got started. | 38:55 |
Interviewer | Mrs. Fleming, do you remember the night that the buildings around here were burned down? | 39:04 |
Interviewee | Mm-hmm. Yep. By the time we got looking at one fire, there was break out somewhere else. That really put everybody on their Ps and Qs then. Dudley Wilder's house was burned. You hear about his house, didn't you? | 39:13 |
Interviewer | Which house? | 39:30 |
Interviewee | Dudley Wilder. | 39:31 |
Interviewer | Dudley Wilder. | 39:31 |
Interviewee | Uh, huh. Ms. McGruder's house was bombed and burned. That's Buddy White's people. Mrs. Giles' house was burned. | 39:33 |
Interviewer | That all happened on one night? | 39:52 |
Interviewee | Uh, huh. That was a terrifying night that night. | 39:52 |
Interviewer | What was the initial reaction in the Black community? | 40:01 |
Interviewee | Everybody was upset, and everybody did quite a bit of talk that night about what had happened and what they were going to do and all that kind of stuff. They didn't do anything right then, but later on they began. They got back at the white folk and begin to snoop around and bombed four houses, too. They burnt up stuff too. | 40:07 |
Interviewer | What's that? | 40:36 |
Interviewee | They got back the white folk. They got slick too, burning folks stuff up too. | 40:37 |
Interviewer | Oh, just get even? | 40:41 |
Interviewee | Right. Yeah. So that soon faded down. After they started burning stuff, then the white folks stopped burning. They didn't burn any more things then, that I know anything about. They got back even. They started watching the Black folks then, see what they were going to do. Instead of watching them watching us, us watched them ... us watching them, them watching us then. | 40:41 |
Interviewer | Ah. So it sounds like the whites were hoping that they would just cause everyone to fear. | 40:55 |
Interviewee | Right. Plenty fear. There's a lot of fear. I think a lot of old folk still fear now. We're very fearful now. | 41:19 |
Interviewer | But- | 41:29 |
Interviewee | But not like it used to be. | 41:31 |
Interviewer | Right. | 41:33 |
Interviewee | Things are better. | 41:33 |
Interviewer | That occasion backfired. | 41:34 |
Interviewee | Yeah. Things are better now, to some degree. One thing, all of us try to get along with each other. That's good to try to get along with each other. | 41:36 |
Interviewer | Mrs. Fleming, what was the longterm outcome of Head Start in Sunflower and Washington County? | 41:59 |
Interviewee | What happened to it? It's still operating, but most the delta agencies went out of business because they took the program from us altogether. | 42:12 |
Interviewer | The federal government? | 42:26 |
Interviewee | Mm-hmm. Like having some folks that didn't believe in give other folk a chance, and opportunity to prove what they could be or they could do. I think what the government did wrong when they waste all this money training people like me. Waste a lot of money training us, and turned around and took the program from us. That money they wasted, see. Why you going to teach me a skill, do your way of doing things, then turn around and take it from me? Why you going to waste it? You got to train somebody to do the same thing over again. The government is very wasteful. I can tell you that. They are. They are very wasteful. A lot of things they do wrong I could see things. I can help do a little better if they would allow me to, but they don't want to let us do nothing. They rather give you a handout than see you working and making a living. | 42:27 |
Interviewee | That's one thing I never was brought up on. No welfare or nothing like that. In our time, where we come from, we didn't get no welfare when we were kids growing up. They gave us some kind of [inaudible 00:43:56] or something other, a tokens or something. I remember some tokens back in those days, but nothing other than that. You had to work for yourself. | 43:39 |
Interviewer | Mrs. Fleming, just a couple of questions. I don't want to keep you all night. I've had a lot of your time. | 44:15 |
Interviewee | It's all right. | 44:15 |
Interviewer | Throughout your life, what have been the major things that changed in the Black community, and then what have been the things that haven't changed? | 44:26 |
Interviewee | The major changes in the community? The major change I've seen in the community was where you can go anywhere you want to go now to eat, sleep. You can go to any hotel, motel you want to go to. You're seeing Black people in business they hadn't been before. They have more. I believe the best thing that I've seen so far really is Black people who stand up for themselves. They will stand up for themselves now. Though they have these jobs and getting ready to picket something or another or to put on a boycott something or other, they don't mind doing it, where before they wouldn't do anything. But the younger generation that's come up since the older people have gotten the way, they don't mind getting out there doing anything they have to do to survive, because they have children to take care of. They don't want to see their children see them be a weakling. That's one thing. They don't want to appear weak before their siblings. That's a wonderful thing, because you can't let nobody come and slap you in your face and you don't defend yourself, let your child see you being slapped. They'll consider you as being a weakling. | 44:42 |
Interviewee | One thing I like most about the thing, because they begin to stand up for themselves. They don't let anybody just run over them with what they can. Because I'm white or you're Black, I can do you any. I'm Black. I don't run from you because you're white. Or you're white. You run because I'm Black. It's not that way no more. They're going to stand up for themselves, and I like that about it. I like that. Because our younger people- | 46:15 |
Cora Randle Flemming | It's my biggest hope for today, is to see our young people get off drugs, stop having these babies, go to school, get an education, and better themselves before they decide to have a family because that's going to be— It's needed right now. | 0:03 |
Cora Randle Flemming | If you must have a baby before you get married, get something in your head first. That way you can take care of that child when you bring it into the world. Stop begging. Don't everybody need to be begging somebody for a handout. Be independent. Work and take care of yourself. You got enough sense to go out and have a baby, have enough sense to take care of it. Don't beg Sally Sue to take care of your child. | 0:24 |
Cora Randle Flemming | One of the greatest things I hate come from, I believe, the movie. They got broken down in their moral character. It's gone too far. It's sad. Babies having babies. | 1:04 |
Cora Randle Flemming | See, what these young ladies don't understand is, once you get a child, a woman get that baby, see the men can get one every night. Get that baby, go on about his business. Don't never see it no more. But that girl have a responsibility the rest of that child's life. It's her responsibility, to raise that child and nurture him, and make sure he comes to— try to be trained right. How does she train him when she having time to be training herself? You got to have a stopping point somewhere. You must. | 1:28 |
Cora Randle Flemming | It's not only for the Black and the White too. Hispanics and all races. They gone crazy with these babies. Gone crazy. Ain't none of them people going to try to teach them. A lot of folks not trying to teach them, they trying to teach them. But peer pressure. It's peer pressure. Can't take care of them chaps, how can they— They can't take care of themselves. They live with mama and daddy, or auntie and uncle. Somebody. | 2:02 |
Cora Randle Flemming | They're the coming generation. They going to be out of sight and out of reach. What about their children? What's going to happen to them? | 2:45 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Flemming, throughout your life and the struggles that you have participated in, what have been the main things that have inspired you to keep on striving and struggling all these years? | 3:02 |
Cora Randle Flemming | The main thing that kept me trying, the accomplishments we haven't made yet. There's so many things that we haven't accomplished yet. And to reach that goal, we must keep striving. We must keep moving. | 3:19 |
Paul Ortiz | Were there other experiences or stories you want to share, Mrs. Flemming, that we haven't touched on? | 3:57 |
Cora Randle Flemming | I think we've checked out everything, I think. Yeah. I don't think so. Unless there's something you want to ask me about. | 4:24 |
Paul Ortiz | Thank you. | 4:26 |
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