Wilhelmina Jones interview recording, 1994 July 18
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| Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Jones, could you tell me when and where you were born and something about the area that you grew up in? | 0:02 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I was born in Keysville, Georgia in a rural area. The most important thing in that area, I suppose at that time was a private school, which was run by the Presbyterian Church Boggs Academy. The school which I attended from kindergarten on through high school. That school was located between Waynesboro, Georgia and Augusta, Georgia. | 0:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. | 1:09 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Mm-hmm. | 1:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you remember predominantly where the teachers who worked at that school, where did they come from? | 1:15 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Those teachers? Most of them were sent in by the Presbyterian Church, and they came from the north mostly. There were some who were from the south, but initially most of them were from the north and were White. | 1:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | Most of the teachers were White at that school. | 1:51 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, in the beginning. | 1:55 |
| Paul Ortiz | In the beginning. | 1:55 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | In the beginning. And the first principal of that school was Reverend John L. Phelps, who was from Elberton, Georgia, which is another small rural town in North Georgia, I believe that is. | 1:56 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was there also a Presbyterian Church in Keysville? | 2:19 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | There was a Presbyterian church located at the school. | 2:27 |
| Paul Ortiz | At the school. | 2:33 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Right. John I. Blackburn Memorial Church. It was named for one of the donors to the school. | 2:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | And was this a church that you and your family attended? | 2:49 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes. Most of my relatives were members of that church. The community had been settled by members of my family years before the school started, and the land on which the school was built was donated by an uncle of mine and my grandmother. | 2:52 |
| Paul Ortiz | So your relatives actually settled in this area, they were the first. | 3:25 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Right. They were the Walkers and the Greshams. | 3:31 |
| Paul Ortiz | Can you tell me about the Walkers and the Greshams, what they did and when they settled that area? | 3:41 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, I can't tell you too much about that because back then—My parents talked about a lot of these things, but somehow not realizing the importance at that time. Some of the things didn't stick. But they were farmers for the most part, very well-to-do farmers. And, of course, my grandmother and her parents had been owned, they were slaves. They had been owned by some of the Walkers who had settled in that community. And, of course, some of our relatives were Whites, who had settled there earlier. And it was called the Walker Settlement. | 3:49 |
| Paul Ortiz | So do you have a memory of your grandparents? Were they still alive when you were? | 5:12 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, my grandparents, yes. My grandparents were Horace and Julia Gresham. My grandmother had been a Walker. She was one of those walkers whose relatives had owned this land, but I don't know about my grandfather. I don't remember exactly how he got into this, but anyway, my grandmother's parents were those Walkers who owned the land there. | 5:17 |
| Paul Ortiz | What kind of relationship did your parents have with your grandparents? They were living in the same community. | 6:14 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | They were living in the same community. And as I recall, my grandmother, they worked for the Walker family, and they were all given parcels of that land by these relatives. And, of course, when I knew my grandmother and grandfather, they were living on that parcel of land that was very close to the school that I attended. And, of course, as I said before, they had given that parcel of land to the school. So it had at one time been a part of the land that they owned. | 6:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. So they became rather substantial landowners in that area? | 7:19 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes, they were all very substantial landowners. And my grandmother's brother, he was a Walker and he owned quite a bit of land in that same area. | 7:23 |
| Paul Ortiz | What would be, as a child, your primary contact with your grandparents? Would they come over? Would you go over to their house? | 7:46 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, I lived for a good while with my grandparents, who was just a stone's throw from the school. And my mother and my father were living in another little town, not too far away, called Girard, Georgia, G-I-R-A-R-D, Georgia. And, of course, I was sort of shuffled back and forth between the two. | 7:56 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you remember stories or maybe events that your grandparents talked to you about that happened to them when they were growing up? Would they ever tell about their own upbringing or tell you stories about what life was like when they were growing up? | 8:31 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, my grandmother worked for one of these relatives on whose land she lived, who had given them the land on which they lived. She worked for that family. And, of course, she never had to work in the fields as the other people did. She stayed at the house mostly and did general cleaning and cooking and that kind of thing. And, of course, she couldn't read or write. And I remember as a child, it seems that the government established some sort of program. When I was a little girl, I can remember that my grandmother was trying to learn to read and write through this program, and she did eventually learn to write her name. | 8:53 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was that during the 1930s? | 10:06 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | That was earlier than the '30s, but the '30s was the period that I was living with them. | 10:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 10:18 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | 'Cause I graduated from that high school in 1937. So all the period before that I was— | 10:18 |
| Paul Ortiz | What— | 10:30 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | And, of course, my grandfather, he had a small farm of his own and he ran a little store. He was quite a character. People just loved to come to the store, not so much as to buy his products all the time, but they just liked to talk to him. He had a sense of humor, and he had many stories to tell and all that sort of thing. And they just enjoyed coming and talking to him. I remember that very well. And he had an old chum of his, who was his age, called Uncle Thomas Walker. | 10:31 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Now, he was also a member of that same Walker family, but he lived a few miles from where my grandfather lived. But on Saturday afternoons, he would come to visit him, and he would sit, I guess through midnight, I can recall that. And they both smoked pipes and they sat and told tales about their experiences and that kind of thing. And I can remember too, they told a lot of ghost stories. | 11:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, really? | 12:07 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | And I can remember my being frightened by those, especially when it was time for me to get to bed. And, well, I guess that's— | 12:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you remember the name of his store? | 12:29 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Not really. I don't believe it really had a name. It was just a little grocery shop, and he just kept the little things that people in that little area needed. And back in those days, people smoked a lot, particularly older people smoked pipes, and a lot of people smoked the cigarettes that they used to buy. The tobacco came in little pouches that was tied on the end with a little draw string, and they made roll their own cigarettes and that sort thing. So that's the kind of thing that he had on his shelves. And he had little things like sardines and little— | 12:33 |
| Paul Ortiz | Canned goods. | 13:24 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Canned goods and crackers and candies for the children and that sort of thing. And also, he kept things like—In those days there was a lot of people used cornmeal, which was ground at a mill somewhere nearby. And that was kept and flour and things like rice, because I remember the big barrels sitting back in the store with those kinds of things in it. | 13:27 |
| Paul Ortiz | And now this was your uncle? | 14:06 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | That was my grandfather with the store. | 14:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | Your grandfather's store. His name was? | 14:10 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Horace. | 14:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | Horace. | 14:16 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | H-O-R-A-C-E Gresham. | 14:18 |
| Paul Ortiz | Horace Walker? | 14:21 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Gresham. | 14:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | Horace Gresham. | 14:21 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | See, my grandmother was a Walker, but she became a Gresham when she married him. Her name was Julia. | 14:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did elders in Keysville, perhaps your grandparents as well. Did they have memories of slavery? Do they talk about it? | 14:39 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes. My grandmother talked about it. She talked about someone owning slaves right there in that area where she was living and working. And I remember her telling the story about some slave that during the winter, he was tied out on the grounds to some tree or post or something like that. And his toes were frost bitten and all that sort of thing, fingers. And that was the kind of life that some of them had to live. And this grandfather— | 14:52 |
| Speaker 1 | Oh, you're back. | 15:55 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Hello. | 15:55 |
| Paul Ortiz | It's been so long. How are you? | 15:58 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | How are you doing? | 15:58 |
| Speaker 1 | Good to see you. I haven't seen you in a while. How you doing? | 15:59 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Oh, pretty good. I called you and Helen wants to see if he was still around, but you must've been busy at the time. | 16:01 |
| Speaker 1 | You know, we had been out. | 16:09 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I was talking about— | 16:09 |
| Paul Ortiz | Memories of slavery in your family— | 16:09 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Slavery, that's right. And the way that this family treated the slaves. And that was one example that I gave you there. And, of course, she said that she was treated fairly well. I don't know. I'm trying to remember if there were any—Now, as I said, my grandmother was treated fairly well, and I never heard too much about my grandfather's treatment. I can't say too much about that because I never heard too many stories from him. | 16:17 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Now, my grandfather was really related to a White family in that area who were Greshams, and they were residents of Waynesboro, Georgia and were big landowners in Burke County. And, of course, they had a pretty good relationship with him. They kept in touch and that sort of thing. And seemingly tried to do certain things for his children as his children grew up. Of course, none of them ever went to college, but I remember learning that my aunt taught school in Burke County. And, of course, I don't know why, but this brother of my grandfather was the superintendent of schools. So he looked out for his relatives and she happened to be one of them. And so, in that way, they, I guess tried to in some way compensate for some of the other things that they didn't do, I suppose. | 17:32 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah. When you were going to school, you would live with your grandparents? | 19:26 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I lived with my grandparents, that's right. | 19:31 |
| Paul Ortiz | What was family life like with your immediate parents when you would go back? | 19:33 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Oh, I was always very happy to get back with my parents all the time. My father was a pretty good farmer and provider, and that of course, I enjoyed. And both of them, although they never had the advantage of an education and that sort of thing, they always wanted to see me go as far as I could and that sort of thing. And they tried to do whatever they could to help me along. So I was very appreciative of that kind of encouragement and interest. And, of course, my grandparents were too. They were not educated people, but they seem to understood what it meant to have had an education, and they were always encouraging me to keep at it also. | 19:41 |
| Paul Ortiz | Who is responsible for discipline in the family? | 21:02 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, I would say that both parents were in my immediate family. Say, my mother did the little spankings, my father didn't have to spank. All he had to do was just to give me a kind of a look and say what he intended me to do. And that was it. And I obeyed, but I don't think he ever got the belt or a switch or anything like that to me. But my mother did, of course, she got little switches and tanned my legs and whatnot. But I think they were both equally responsible. | 21:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | How about in terms of say, financial matters or budget decisions who was responsible, do you recall? | 22:00 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, I think my father was really more in charge of that, as I can recall. My mother was a real good housekeeper, and she kept the home and looked after me. And when I was 12, she adopted a son, and she looked after us. And then, of course later on, my uncle died and left two children and she took them. She was a very, very caring type person. My mother was. | 22:08 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was that a relatively common occurrence in that area if a relative, a single parent had died and left children that the members of the family— | 22:55 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Members of the family, yes. Usually took on the responsibility. | 23:12 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, speaking of responsibility, when did you begin to do chores around the house or the farm? And what kinds of responsibilities would you— | 23:24 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | That I have? Well, as I said, we were on the farm, and I never did have to work in the fields. But my father had people hired to work for him, and they worked, and my mother worked in the fields, and I did the cooking. I attended the meals. She would prepare them and put them on the stoves. And those days they had wooden stoves and coal stoves. And, of course, she would get everything prepared and set up, and I had to tend them while they were in the fields. And that was early on, I guess maybe I must've been beginning around eight years old, I guess. | 23:36 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | And my mother, as I said, I didn't know, she was just a wonderful person. I can recall that on Sundays in the country, people would go to church. And after church, it seemed to me like everybody made their way to the Griffin's home. My father was a Griffin and she fed everybody who came by. And, of course, I had to wash the dishes, which I didn't like too much at that time. And, of course, would fuss about having them come every Sunday. But, of course, I did that behind the door to myself, not openly. But I can recall that people would come by from other churches and stop in and have dinner just regularly. | 24:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, were they coming primarily from the—You gave me the name of the Presbyterian Church. | 25:52 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | No, they were coming from any church with the Baptist, Methodist, other churches that were located in the community, but they were friends. And some neighbors. | 25:58 |
| Paul Ortiz | So would it be fair to say that your parents had a position of leadership in Keysville among the Black community or— | 26:12 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, I would say so. Yes. Because they were very well respected and very well thought of by members of the community. | 26:23 |
| Paul Ortiz | Speaking of that, was there a sense that there was a Black community in terms of residential patterns? Was it spread out throughout Keysville or, I mean, in other words, was there a side of town that African American people lived in? | 26:45 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, Keysville was a little town that was our post office. And we didn't live in the little town of Keysville. The mail came from Keysville. And I remember, I began working as a student at the school when—Let's see, I started in high school. My first year in high school, I believe, working in the principal's office. And we had a lot of mail that we had to take to Keysville to post and that sort of thing, and to get other transactions taken care of. Because during the summer, a lot of kids sent money for their schooling in the fall and money orders and all that sort of thing. And I was responsible for those and getting them to the post office and cashed and brought back and all that sort of thing. And I can remember once having gone to Keysville to take some mail and some of the other things that I had to take. | 27:06 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | And I was talking to the postmaster as he transacted the business. And as he talked, I would say, "Yes, so-and-so." He would ask me questions and I would say, "Yes." And all of a sudden, he just slammed the mail down on the counter and he said, "Can't you say yes sir to me?" I said, "I don't think there's a requirement for me to say yes sir to you." He took the mail and shoved it back through the window there on the counter. And I took it up and took it on back to the school. And I reported to the principal, Reverend Phelps, what had happened. | 28:33 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | And during those days, it seemed that small town post offices got a percentage for the amount of mail that they received, it seems. And, of course, most of their mail came from our school. I think we were the biggest contributors. And Reverend Phelps stopped his mail from going to that post office and started sending it to another little town, which was Waynesboro that I mentioned earlier. And he said, "I'm going to send it there until something happens." | 29:32 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | So the next morning, this postmaster from Keysville came down to the school and said that the young lady had just misunderstood him. And I don't know whether he said he wanted to apologize, I don't remember that. But anyway, he said that I had just misunderstood him, and he wanted Reverend Phelps to send his mail back. So I think Reverend Phelps held out for quite a little while to make him feel it. And then, eventually he did send the mail back. But we never had that trouble anymore with him. | 30:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | Reverend Phelps was White? | 31:00 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | No, he was a Black minister. | 31:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. Did you have other experiences with discrimination, segregation growing up? | 31:15 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. I remember living not too far from a White family. That's my mother and father. And the two families were very friendly. And the names have all gone from me now. But anyway, one of the young men frequented our house very much. And he and my mother would talk, and they have fun talking and that sort of thing. Eventually, he got married, so he brought his wife down. And my mother's name was Pearl. And he said, "Pearl, I'm married now." Whatever his name was, I can't think of it now. "You can't call me that anymore." My name is mistress whatever that last name was. It was real funny to my mother because she was a real—Oh, boy. She was some lady. But anyway, I don't think she even tried to give him any reason why she shouldn't or whatever. But she kept on calling him what she had been calling him all the time. And nothing ever occurred, but he didn't like it. | 31:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | She call him by his first name? | 32:48 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | By his first name, yes. He was a young man. They had been friends for years and the whole family had. My father and his father and parents, they were very good friends. And we had other White neighbors. I remember one neighbor in particular, she was a seamstress, and she made all of my clothes as a youngster. My mother and she were very good friends, and they just had a real good relationship. | 32:53 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | And I can recall two one time in this little town, Waynesboro, my mother was going somewhere on the bus, and they had separate waiting rooms. And, of course, it was in the winter and in her waiting room, where there was no heat, and it was real cold 'cause I wasn't with her. But she said she went over to the office to tell the man that there was no heat in that room. And he said, "Well, you know, I don't care if you freeze to death." And, of course, that didn't sit too well with my mother, but I think the bus came along not too long afterwards. But she told me about that. And I remember telling her, "Well, I just wish I had been there," but I wasn't. | 33:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | Your mother sounds like she was a person who would really speak out. | 34:39 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | She would speak out and not in a hostile manner. But she would speak out if she felt like she needed to. And my father also was the same way and, of course, they brought me up. | 34:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were there any particular crises that happened in your community where you're maybe involving discrimination or racial issue that your parents had to intervene in or had to help out in some way? | 35:12 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I think at one time, I don't remember all of this, though. I remember my mother talking about the Klan once coming to—They took somebody from the community, and everybody was terribly frightened and that kind of thing. But I can't recall now the results of that. I just remember her mentioning that incident. And the people that the Klan were after had taken lodging up in the roof of the barns. This was on the farm, where they had the barns and that sort of thing, and the Klan went after them. | 35:38 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. Was there any other activity— | 36:42 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I can't remember. | 36:48 |
| Paul Ortiz | —like that, any violent activity, White Citizens' Councils, or lynchings on that area that you remember? | 36:48 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, there were lynchings, so I heard them talking about, but I can't recall too well. But I do remember hearing about lynchings occurring. | 36:57 |
| Paul Ortiz | So you were going to high school. It was a private high school. And, at the time, did you have any particular career aspirations when you were in high school? Any goals? | 37:14 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, I wanted to get to college. And, of course, I knew that my parents weren't in a position to send me to college. So I came in contact with some Presbyterian women having worked at the school in the office there. And a Presbyterian woman from San Bernardino, California paid my college tuition. And I went to Paine College in Augusta, Georgia, which was not Presbyterian, but—It was really a Methodist institution. | 37:38 |
| Paul Ortiz | That must have been quite a move. | 38:36 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | It was. And I kept in contact with this woman until I came to Tuskegee in 1942. She kept in touch with me, we corresponded, and she had pictures of my family and my children and kept up with them as they grew up. But she died later. But that's how I got to college. | 38:38 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. And what particular subject areas or material, or I guess areas of interest did you have going into college? | 39:17 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, I majored in English and social studies, that's my minor. And at Paine, they had mixed faculty, which I enjoyed very much. And, of course, I remember an experience with one of the faculty members who taught history, I believe. He was from Memphis, Tennessee and we had a little conflict with him. It had to do with—In our class, there was a White girl, I believe, and I can't remember all of the circumstances right now. But anyway, whatever it was, she was involved in this. And whatever action he took, it was really prejudicial, and we had to bring him to task about it, and he finally left the school. But other than that, I think everything ran very smoothly with the faculty. And I guess we had about not quite half-and-half White and Black faculty. | 39:33 |
| Paul Ortiz | How about in terms of the student body? Was this an all Black? | 41:24 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | All Black, except this one girl. I think she was taking a special course because she was working in the library at the time, I believe. And of course, the librarian was White, and there was some special course I think she was taking. But she was the only one from the White side that was enrolled at that time. | 41:28 |
| Paul Ortiz | At Paine College, did you have any spare time to get involved in social activities or community life there? Extracurricular events? | 42:06 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | What was the last thing you said? | 42:27 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, extracurricular— | 42:29 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Extracurricular activities. Yes. And I was involved in some of the civic things in the city, and of course there was a lot of discrimination because lot of times riding the city buses, we couldn't sit anywhere we wanted to sit in the bus. They had the dividers that they moved back and forward as people got on and off the bus and that's what I was saying. And I can remember too, that we had at Paine, some very fair Blacks that really, if you didn't know, you wouldn't have known the difference. And they didn't know the difference. And when they got on the bus, they always invited them back where the White sat. And when they didn't come, they would get furious. | 42:31 |
| Paul Ortiz | [indistinct 00:43:48] bus driver didn't come. | 43:49 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Bus driver. When the student didn't come to sit where he wanted them to sit, he would get furious. Because he thought they were White. | 43:49 |
| Paul Ortiz | How did you feel about Black people who passed during that time? Was there— | 44:11 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, I don't think I really thought too much about it. It was a convenient thing for them to do, and as long as they used it for convenience, I didn't think too much about that. Because I remember having a classmate who did, she eventually left the south and lived in Los Angeles, I believe it was. But she passed many times riding the buses and things like that in her travels because she talked about it often. | 44:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | I mean, it was really okay for you as long as it was something that involved personal convenience. | 45:20 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes, right. | 45:27 |
| Paul Ortiz | I mean, in your opinion, would there be other times where passing would involve other perhaps less—I mean, more controversial times where people would pass and— | 45:33 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, I think so. I think there were times when it would be more controversial and perhaps was more controversial, depending— | 45:58 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | But I can't recall any particular situation that I can point to. | 0:04 |
| Paul Ortiz | So you were at Payne College in 1938? | 0:28 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | '37. | 0:30 |
| Paul Ortiz | 1937, started in '37. | 0:30 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | No, no, I'm sorry. That's right. Yeah, that's right, 1937. | 0:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | You were there until 1941? | 0:49 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | No, I graduated in '37 from Payne. | 0:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, you graduated Payne in 1937? | 1:02 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Uh-huh. | 1:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 1:02 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Right. | 1:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. | 1:02 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Then I took a job at Prairie View College in Texas. That was not too far, about 40 miles from Houston, between Houston and Austin, Texas. We experienced a lot of segregation in that area. The school is located way out in the country. There was really just a little station that was close to the school where the students came into the school on the trains from other Texas towns and that sort of thing. They had one little store there that served food and some groceries, and they had a little movie theater. Of course, we couldn't go to, couldn't sit in the regular section of the theater. We had to sit upstairs in the balcony. | 1:03 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you remember other occasions of segregation or other types of discrimination in that area too? | 2:27 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | In Texas? | 2:36 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah. | 2:38 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes. Let's see. I remember in the stores in Houston, some stores Blacks couldn't try on hats and that sort of thing, and of course, couldn't eat at any of the restaurants. I remember coming in from Prairie View to Houston, there was a YMCA, and that was the central point for persons coming from Prairie View to Houston to shop. That was the only place that we could eat, at the Y, but not at any of the other restaurants. | 2:38 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. Now, during all of this period of time growing up, and you mentioned the experience that you had with the postmaster, did you ever think, "My gosh, this whole system is ridiculous. I'm going to break this rule or that rule?" Or did you ever challenge that? | 3:44 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I challenged it, but it was not, well, I guess you said breaking this rule or that rule. Well, I always felt like letting people know that I didn't like what was happening. You know what I mean. I didn't have any tendency to become violent or anything like that, but I spoke out when it was necessary and that sort of thing. I remember, this was not in Texas, so I believe what I'm thinking of was in Alabama here. I came from Texas back to Alabama to work. | 4:12 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I came first to Miles College in Birmingham, and I noticed discrimination in the stores in Birmingham quite often during that period. That was in the late '30s, early '40s. You would go to the stores to buy something, and if you had a charge account and they wanted to know what your name was, even if I said, my name is Ms. Wilhelmina Griffin, they would not write Miss, of course, and they would write the name. But I always gave the title whether they wrote it or not. | 5:19 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | In many instances, you could tell that they didn't like that. Then, of course, after Birmingham, I came to work at the Tuskegee Army Airfield in '42, and oh, there was just loads of it then, even at the airfield. See, there was a Tuskegee Army airfield where only Blacks could train, and that's where I came to work. We couldn't eat in the main post exchange where food was served. There was a little house off the base, almost off the base, an old farmhouse that they had set up for the Blacks to eat, and there was just quite a bit of that. | 6:13 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I can recall in some instances where, as I said before, when I would give my name as Miss, I would always give it whether they wrote it or not. Well, at the base, they might not have had Blacks to come in the post exchange, but I would try. I would pretend I didn't know the difference, and I had to be told, "Well, you know Blacks can't eat here." You know what I mean? | 7:29 |
| Paul Ortiz | Uh-huh. | 8:03 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | But I'd make the attempt to do it. I got a reputation, I think, for being that way. Of course, when I would go to Montgomery, and of course, in '44, I got married, and that's when my family started. There were still signs on water fountains and that sort of thing, and I never did tell my children that, "This is Black or this is White." If they happen to drink at a White fountain, well, they just drank there. I never did tell them the difference. But I can recall an instance in Montgomery, in one of the stores there, up on the mezzanine, there were these fountains. It happened to be on the floor where they sold fabrics. This old lady was in the head of the fabric department, and my children went to the fountains and they drank. | 8:03 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Really, I thought she was going to have a heart attack. She said, "Oh, but they can't drink there!" I said, "Oh, but they have." That's all I said and went on about my business. But she was, oh, I just knew she was going to fall out from a heart attack and that kind of thing. I remember at bus stations, we were supposed to go in a separate door, and I would always make the attempt to go in the door that was available. Most of the times, of course, I was told that, "You can't come in this way. You have to go that way." I remember one time my daughter telling me, my little daughter, she was a little girl at that time, and she was saying, "Oh, mom, I think I'm going to stay out here while you go in." That was in Montgomery. | 9:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were there other people that you knew during those years who challenged the system in the way that you did? | 10:30 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I didn't know too many. No, I really didn't. I remember here in Tuskegee, my kids were among the group that integrated the schools in this county, in Macon County. Tuskegee Public was a school to which my children went first, and that was when George Wallace, of course, came down and closed the school. But during that period, everything went very well. There were Whites who cooperated very well, and we had really a real nice thing going. | 10:48 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | But I can recall, I was president of the PTA, and we had a principal down there who had been doing some things with the private school. I wanted to make an academy, and I wanted to ask him some questions about it. So I was down at the school one day to take some PTA notices, and while I was there, I wanted to see Mr. Dean, but I couldn't find him. Sitting outside of his door was one of the teachers, and the man who was in charge of the buses, he was a little White man, and the other lady was Black, Mrs. Keaton. So I couldn't find Mr. Dean, so I left. | 11:38 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | As I was leaving the school, he came out on the steps of the school. When I looked back, I saw him standing there, and he yelled to me, "Don't you ever come back down to this school, you communist you!" I said, "What's wrong with him?" "Don't you ever come back down here again!" My first impulse was to just ignore him and go on back to work. I was working at the Veterans Administration at the time. Then on second thought, I said, "No, I can't do that. I have to go back and challenge him." | 12:35 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | So I went back, and when I went back in, he had gone into his office real quick and closed the door, and I couldn't get him. I knocked on the door, but he wouldn't come out. I asked Mrs. Keaton and the man who were there, I said, "You saw Mr. Dean when he came out?" I said, "I'm sure you heard him yelling to me from the steps." They said, "Oh, yes, Ms. Jones, we heard him. We heard what he said." So I wrote a letter to the school board asking for his apologies. | 13:25 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | That was, I guess something like maybe in March or April, and the chairman of the school board wrote me a letter. Of course, they were very dissatisfied with his conduct, but they said, "In as much as we planned to get rid of him in May anyway, we would like for you to just drop the case," and of course, I did. But it was real funny that after he left the school in May, they did get rid of him, and he went to work over in Auburn. My young son, who was a student down at the school, he was over in Auburn one day. He said, Mr. Dean was selling insurance at that time, and he recognized Doug, and he said he came up to him and wanted to sell him some insurance. He said, "Oh, no, Mr. Dean," said, "I'm not going to buy your insurance." He said, "You remember you calling my mother communist?" He said he looked very, very surprised when he told him this. Of course, he kept moving. | 14:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | He ran off. | 15:27 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Mm-hmm. But a lot of little things like that did happen. | 15:30 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now you came originally to Tuskegee to work at— | 15:34 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Tuskegee Army Airfield. | 15:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | The Army Airfield. | 15:39 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Mm-hmm. | 15:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | I've lost track of my notes here. That was earlier, right? | 15:44 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | That was in 1942. | 15:49 |
| Paul Ortiz | 1942. So what brought you to Tuskegee to stay as it were? | 15:50 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, I was at Prairie View in Texas at the time, and of course, pay with the government at that time was a lot different from what we were receiving at—You'd be surprised that I went to Prairie View for, I was a records research and transcript clerk in the registrar's office, and I got paid $75 a month. I thought that was a lot of money, and it was at that time 'cause I could do a lot with it. But pay for Civil Service was a lot better than that, so I passed Civil Service Exam and of course, came to work at Tuskegee Airfield. Then two years later, I got married to one of the military people at the field. | 15:56 |
| Paul Ortiz | So you settled here in— | 17:00 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | In Tuskegee. | 17:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | —in '42 or '44? | 17:03 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, '42, because I was living here. Even though I was working at the airfield, I was still. Then my husband and I, after we got married, he was working for the Veterans Administration, and I did too. When the base closed, we both got jobs at the Veterans Administration— | 17:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 17:27 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | —and we settled here. | 17:28 |
| Paul Ortiz | Where did you move to? Where did you really settle down, in what part of Tuskegee? | 17:31 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | What part of Tuskegee? | 17:37 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah. | 17:37 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Out at what they call Green Fork. | 17:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. Now I've heard people talk about, I think I'm getting confused because I've heard people talking about Green Fork, Greenwood. | 17:41 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Greenwood, that's right. | 17:56 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, Greenwood is right next to the Institute. | 17:58 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Next to the Institute, down where the post office is and all that area, that's Greenwood. | 18:00 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 18:05 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | And I'm out further. | 18:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 18:08 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I'm out to the next intersection. | 18:08 |
| Paul Ortiz | In Green Fork. Now, during this time, during the '40s, was there a difference in, and I guess the occupational status perhaps, of people who lived in Greenwood say opposed to people living in Green Fork? Was there a— | 18:12 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, green Fork and Greenwood were very much the same, I think, as far as occupational status, 'cause a lot of those people worked at the university or at the Veterans Administration Hospital. | 18:35 |
| Paul Ortiz | I have to run these by you, because I'm still getting the lay of the land as it were. I've heard also of two other, actually three other areas. Now I've heard of, there's a Rockefeller community— | 18:58 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Rockefeller Hill they call it. | 19:14 |
| Paul Ortiz | Rockefeller Hill. Who would've lived in Rockefeller Hill primarily? | 19:15 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Some few of the same people who worked at the university or the VA in lower positions, as custodians, nursing assistants, maintenance people and that sort of thing. | 19:28 |
| Paul Ortiz | It was a lower middle class area? | 19:52 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes. Right. | 19:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | What about Mount Zion? Is that Mount Zion community? Was that next to Rockefeller? | 19:59 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I'm not sure, but I've heard of that, but I don't know too much about that one. | 20:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. Heard of Mount Zion, and then the one, oh, here it is. Now there's a Lake Shore now— | 20:17 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Lake Shore. | 20:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | But I've heard that at one time during the '30s and '40s, it was a much different kind of area. | 20:23 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Right, very poor. | 20:29 |
| Paul Ortiz | Very poor? | 20:30 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Mm-hmm, very poor area. That's where the area in which our mayor was born, Mayor Ford. | 20:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | I had the chance with talk to him a few years ago. So it sounds like Tuskegee was quite a place in terms of space and community, quite a diverse area. You have a— | 20:41 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Right. | 21:00 |
| Paul Ortiz | —middle class area, a lower middle class area, and an area where poor Black people live. | 21:01 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Right. | 21:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was there a sense of separateness between those communities and say the Institute during those years? | 21:10 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I think there was, not as much now as there was then, I believe. I don't know, I can remember that people, especially people who lived at the university or very close to the university felt a little bit above the rest of the areas. | 21:19 |
| Paul Ortiz | It was a status type thing. | 22:08 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Status type thing, right. | 22:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. Would that carry over in terms of say, social activities, cultural events? | 22:17 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes, I think so. They did. | 22:23 |
| Paul Ortiz | Would you and your husband attend events at the Institute? | 22:34 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Did we do what? Attend events? | 22:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah. | 22:41 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Oh, yes. Well, at that particular time, most of the cultural events and that sort of thing were provided by the Institute. I think they had what they called a Lyceum Series, and they had movies on campus, and they brought professionals in for various things. The audience was made up mostly the community people. | 22:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see, on the college campus? | 23:17 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Right. | 23:19 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. You were saying there's a Lyceum Series. | 23:20 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Right, and there was something going on all the time on campus, and people from the community that really took advantage of it. | 23:23 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now you became involved in the PTA. | 23:37 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Right. | 23:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | About what time did you start that involvement? | 23:41 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I don't know if I remember exactly the year, but it had to be in the '60s because that was when my children began going to school at the Tuskegee Public School. That's when Wallace, I was PTA president when he closed the schools. Of course, they were sent then, my children were sent—One daughter was sent to Notasulga, this little town just north of here. One was sent to Shorter, which was between here and Montgomery. They had to ride the bus from Tuskegee to these schools every day, and my son remained at Tuskegee Public. I'm trying to think now, what did he do? Well, the school was finally reopened, but parents had to keep surveillance of the buses going back and forth to these schools every day because the county sheriff and other law enforcement people wouldn't do it. | 23:51 |
| Paul Ortiz | They had to keep surveillance? | 25:36 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | The parents did to see that their children were protected and that sort of thing. | 25:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | As a parent, during that time, did you feel like your children were at risk riding the bus— | 25:49 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Oh, yes, I definitely felt that way. My daughter, who went down to Shorter was telling us that how when they first got down there, the principal had all of the Black kids to, they had to present their little bags, their purses and that sort of thing. They were looking for knives and all the instruments, I guess that they—I don't know what they thought they could have had at that time, but they did all sorts of humiliating things to them. Up at Notasulga, people in the community had all kinds of displays on the campus grounds and on the porches of the buildings and that sort of thing. | 25:53 |
| Paul Ortiz | Displays? | 27:05 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Drawings and statements and all that sort of thing, signs with statements like, "Nigger, go home," and many others. | 27:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | This was Notasulga, was that one of the schools that your child was being sent to? | 27:22 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Being sent to, yeah, she was transferred there, and she was on the bus. During that time, one of the buses was stopped on its way to Notasulga, and these news people were beaten and their equipment was taken from them and that sort of thing. But you're probably too young to know about that. | 27:27 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah, I've only read— | 27:56 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Maybe you read something about it. | 27:56 |
| Paul Ortiz | I don't know much about it, though. | 27:57 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Right. | 27:59 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was it a newspaper from a Montgomery station, or, I'm sorry, a reporter from a Montgomery station. | 28:00 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Montgomery and also from Atlanta at that time, the Atlanta Constitution. | 28:05 |
| Paul Ortiz | Who beat them? That's what I don't know. Do you know? Was anybody ever— | 28:15 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | It was some law enforcement person who did it. Let's see. I did recall the name of the—some sheriff. His name was very prominent. I can't think of it now. | 28:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. But it was a Macon County Sheriff? | 28:40 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes. | 28:46 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, from what I'm finding out from people that I talk with, it seems like the period, in terms of Black political participation and organizing, it seems like the early 1950s were key years in political organizing. Did you take part in this, in some of these organizing efforts or see these things happening, such as, say, with the Tuskegee Civic Association? | 28:56 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Oh, yes. I was a member of the Civic Association, and they did take a leading role and that sort of thing. | 29:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | What year did you become a member or start going to the meetings? | 29:46 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Oh, I don't remember the year, but it had to be in the '50s, I believe. Somewhere in the '50s, early '50s. | 29:46 |
| Paul Ortiz | Say, before the boycott? | 30:05 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Oh, yes— | 30:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 30:06 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | That's before that, because right after I came in 42, we were trying to get to register to vote, and we couldn't do it. We had a friend who worked at the Veteran's Hospital also who could pass, and Dorsey, he lives out in California now. Whenever we would go over to the courthouse to get registered, the registrars would hide from us, wouldn't let us know where they were, and we couldn't find them ever. So he found them and got us into register. That's how we became registered. | 30:13 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, so that was in the early '40s. | 31:09 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Huh? | 31:12 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was that in the early '40s? | 31:12 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Early, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. | 31:12 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 31:12 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | The early '40s. | 31:12 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. So once you actually tracked down those elusive registrars— | 31:18 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yeah. | 31:23 |
| Paul Ortiz | —at that point, was it a straightforward process, or did they try to— | 31:26 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, they tried to, they had little ways of trying to make it difficult for you; had you reading certain parts of the Constitution or some other things now that I don't remember. But they did all kinds of little things to make it hard for you, because some of those people couldn't read as well as others, and that slowed the process, of course. Oh, dear. Those were some days. They really were. I remember I went to the church up the street downtown. It was a Presbyterian church and was invited out. Of course, there was no real physical confrontation or anything like that, but they wouldn't let you remain. | 31:30 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. Now, was that part of an organized effort or was this— | 32:58 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | That was not an organized effort, no, that was just an effort just to see, because things had been moving along. That was not an organized effort, no. | 33:04 |
| Paul Ortiz | This is the church right downtown. | 33:19 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Right downtown, uh-huh, Presbyterian Church. | 33:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | You attempted to do this during a regular service? | 33:26 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | A regular service, uh-huh. | 33:29 |
| Paul Ortiz | What led you to do that? Had you been thinking about doing this all along, or had you— | 33:38 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, no. I've been a Presbyterian all my life, and I just felt like finding out if they were really living up to what the Presbyterian Church was all about or what it was supposed to be all about. | 33:50 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. | 34:12 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I just went, and of course, I knew two or three people there too, who were pretty liberal folks, but of course, they were in the minority. But I just wanted to feel them out and see if they were really what I thought they should have been. | 34:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | What was that confrontation like? Did you actually get inside of the church? | 34:47 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yeah, I got inside, I got inside. An usher came and to tell me that I couldn't worship there. I said, "Oh, I can't?" I said, "Well, I'm surprised," but it wasn't any prolonged conversation. I just turned away and moved on out. I believe after that I did write an article for the paper. | 34:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | For the news? | 35:29 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | For the news, Tuskegee News. I did a good bit of writing back in those days for the paper about various things that were happening in the community. | 35:31 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now I understand that there's a group of people, including yourself, other people who might've had similar experiences and grew up in the Presbyterian Church, who at some point decided to come together to begin the process to found your own Presbyterian church, Westminster. | 35:46 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Oh, yes. See, we couldn't go to the White church, and there was no other Presbyterian church here. So we started a meeting on campus, and we met in the little theater on campus for, I don't know, two or three years I guess, until the group got a building and called a minister and that sort of thing. | 36:13 |
| Paul Ortiz | How would you meet each other, and I guess to find out that—There had to be some kind of maybe recruiting effort, or did you know that there were other Presbyterian people who really wanted to worship? | 36:55 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, we knew others who wanted to worship, 'cause there were some on campus and some in the community. We just all got together, and it was quite a group out at the Veterans Administration. So we all came together and worshiped on campus until we could have our own church. | 37:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | So you would've started this— | 37:44 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | A charter member. | 37:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | A charter member. You began to meet in the early 1950s? | 37:47 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes. It's real interesting that even today, that church downtown, I seldom see anybody there. | 37:56 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah, I thought it was abandoned. | 38:19 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | It looks like it's been abandoned. Just the two churches, Presbyterian churches in the city, I've always felt that why couldn't we all worship it together? We do have some Whites in our church, but of course, they were not members of that Presbyterian church. But some of the people who worked on campus all along, we've had people in our church. But some of the people who hold some of the positions in the church downtown, like the Greggs, I think they were very willing to do that type of thing, but they were never able to get the others to do it. | 38:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. Oh, so was this attempt or the years leading up to the founding of Westminster, were there White people involved in that as well? | 39:24 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes. We had a Reverend White, and of course, he was pastoring that church at that time downtown. | 39:36 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. | 39:47 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Of course, they let him go because he was too liberal. But he did quite a bit to help get this church started, Westminster. | 39:47 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was he the first pastor here? | 39:58 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Now, I'm not sure. I don't think so. I don't think he was. | 40:01 |
| Paul Ortiz | But eventually, he ended up pastoring here or being an associate pastor? | 40:10 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | No, he left and he went somewhere else. I don't remember now, but he came back on several occasions and preached for us and that sort of thing. | 40:16 |
| Paul Ortiz | I've read the Cornerstone at the church, and I think it says you received a charter in '55 or— | 40:38 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Something like that. | 40:46 |
| Paul Ortiz | It was built in '58. | 40:46 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | It was in the '50s. | 40:46 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was there ever a time during that long founding process where your group might have had some doubts as to whether be able to pull this off and— | 40:52 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes, there was, yes, indeed. There were times. | 41:08 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. Would you have events like fundraisers to— | 41:26 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Right. Yeah, we did some of that. Not as much as some of the other churches do, because that was one of the things Presbyterians didn't believe in doing, having a lot of fundraising— | 41:30 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, I see. | 42:07 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | —activities. | 42:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. A couple more questions, during the '40s and '50s, what if any kind of contact would people here have in terms of maybe civic activities or political activities with people in Montgomery? Was there any sense that there was any kind of interplay between [indistinct 00:42:43] | 42:14 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, I can remember that there was one family in Montgomery, the Durr family, D-U-R-R, who very much a part of what was going on in this community, Mrs. Durr especially. Of course, she was from the White community, and of course, there were Blacks also who—There was one particular Black woman who worked very closely with Mrs. Durr, the two of them. I can't think of her name right now, but they worked together. | 42:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | Would they ever come here to speak— | 43:38 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes, they came here. When we held meetings and that sort of thing, they would come. | 43:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you remember your reaction to the, you mentioned Mrs. Durr, your reaction to the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott? | 43:59 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | The reaction on whose part? | 44:17 |
| Paul Ortiz | On your part, did you know that something was happening, or were you surprised when that effort began? | 44:22 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, I wasn't totally surprised, no. I really felt rather proud that it did. Of course, every opportunity that I had, I participated in whatever the activities were. I remember being a participant in the walk from Selma to Montgomery, but I, of course, didn't walk from Selma. I went down to Montgomery and joined them out at St. Jude and walked to the Capitol, which was several miles. | 44:30 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | One thing that interested me a great deal is as we were marching, I marched with a White young man who was on crutches, and he marched all the way from St. Jude. I didn't see how he was going to make it, but he did on crutches from St. Jude to the Capitol that day. All along the way, you just wanted to do something for him, or you just wanted to help him in some way. But he was just so independent and so determined that wasn't anything you could do for him, but it was most interesting. | 45:14 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 46:05 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Jones, after you moved to Tuskegee, did you keep in contact with your family, relatives, that remained in Georgia? | 0:05 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes, somewhat. | 0:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | Would you go back to visit? | 0:29 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes, occasionally. I did. | 0:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | And then you married in— | 0:53 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Tuskegee. | 0:55 |
| Paul Ortiz | Tuskegee. 1940— | 0:56 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Four. On April 1st. | 0:57 |
| Paul Ortiz | April 1st. | 1:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | You had second thoughts [indistinct 00:01:13] April Fool's joke. | 1:11 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | All fools day. Oh, dear. | 1:14 |
| Paul Ortiz | Looking back on your life experience, what have been some of the, perhaps, philosophies or scriptures, perhaps, or sayings or things that have really motivated and inspired you to keep striving as you have throughout your life? | 1:25 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I think, really, it was my early training, having gone to a Presbyterian school and grew up in the Presbyterian church and having taken part in many of the church and school's activities as a youngster, I was certainly inspired by the things that I learned there. | 2:01 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I must say, too, that my husband was a great inspiration to me. Doug was a very, very wonderful person and I don't think we could have had a better marriage. And also my mother, who came to live with us, was a great influence in all of our lives. The adults and the youngsters. And the youngsters, not only my children, but all of the children in the community, loved her. When she passed, the young children whom she had loved and been associated with were her pall-bearers or whatever else was necessary at her funeral. And it was just wonderful, and she was certainly a great inspiration for all of us. | 2:57 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | And, of course, my husband was a very caring and sharing person. I don't think he ever thought of himself. It was always a thought for someone else and what I can do for someone else, and a little of that rubbed off on me. | 4:17 |
| Paul Ortiz | To you, what have been some of the most important changes for African-American people, say from the time you were a child to now, having lived through segregation and having, obviously, firsthand experience with it? | 4:54 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I think one of the most important things to me, I think, is to see now how much of a change there has been, although not enough, there has been in providing opportunities for Blacks to hold certain positions and to move up into higher positions than were available at one time. And it's just remarkable to see as many faces as you see now in the media when, at one time, there weren't any. | 5:18 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | And I think that's very important because those type things, I think, tend to inspire the youth of today, whereas we didn't have that kind of thing to look forward to. Although, things are still not where we would like to have them be but, certainly, they aren't where they used to be. | 6:14 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Jones, you were telling me the other day that you had another experience that you wanted to share regarding segregation. | 0:04 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Right. This was in 1943. I had come to Tuskegee as I think I told you before in 1942 to work at the Tuskegee Army Airfield. On a Saturday afternoon, another couple who were friends of mine and another friend, male friend of mine, decided to ride up to Opelika, Alabama that afternoon. | 0:12 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | We got back into Tuskegee just about dusk. As we drove north on Main Street, where the Alabama Exchange Bank is now located, just before we got to the median on Main Street and, of course, I was driving the car, we heard a whistle blow and my friend, who was riding in the back with his friend, said, "Well, Amina, I think the police is blowing for us and maybe you had better stop." | 0:58 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, I had seen a man standing in the middle of the street at the median with a lantern, but so many people at that time would try to hitchhike from the city back to the Tuskegee Army Airfield. I really paid no attention. I thought it was someone trying to get a ride back to the Tuskegee Army Airfield, and I drove slowly past. | 1:49 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | My friend said again, "I think he wants us to stop, so you better stop" and I did. When I stopped, he got on his motorcycle, which was located down by the Alabama Exchange Bank and drove on up to where we were. He drove over to the side where I was, of course, who was the driver and he wanted to know didn't I see that man standing there with a lantern? I told him, "Yes, I saw the man but I thought he was trying to get a ride back to the Tuskegee Army Airfield." | 2:21 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | He said, "Well, no. He wasn't trying to get a ride back. There had been a fire", he said, "Across on the next street over, and there was a firehouse stretched across the street." I said, "Well, I certainly didn't recognize that and if it were, it felt just like one of the ridges in the pavement", wheels sometimes you know when you ride over that kind of a ridge in the pavement? | 3:01 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | He talked on, and in a few minutes, he said—Oh, no. My friend in the rear of the car said, "Officer, well, if we have done any damages or if we've done anything that we shouldn't have done and there is a fee or whatever, we're willing to pay whatever is necessary", so he said, "No. You're going to have to come down to court on Monday." | 3:32 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | My friend still tried to persuade him to let us do whatever else would satisfy the situation, but he wouldn't and then he looked at me and he said, "What's your name?" I said, "My name is Miss Griffin." I wasn't married at the time. He took his little pad, which he had in his hand and his pencil, and he put it down on his motorcycle and looked straight at me, and he said, "Don't you know we don't Miss any niggers down here?" I didn't say anything, of course. | 4:05 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | He then picked up his little pad again, and he started writing. Again, my friend tried to talk to him and say, "Well, Officer, what is it we have done? If we've done anything that we shouldn't have done, we're willing to pay whatever is necessary." | 4:44 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | He wrote on. He said, "No, you're coming down on Monday to the mayor's court." He wrote the ticket out and gave it to us, and we drove on. Of course, after we left that spot, my friend was saying, "It looks like we're going to have to come back down to City Hall on Monday, and you know how these people are about outsiders, and especially if you're from the north and that sort of thing, they're not going to be very kind to us, and maybe you'd better not use the word miss again." I said, "Well, I'll do the best I can." | 5:03 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | On Monday, sure enough, we came back down to City Hall and we had to go into the mayor's office, and he had us in this large room with this long table. At the end of the table, he and the sheriff sat. He put me at the other end of the table, and—Oh, yes. I need to back up just a little bit. | 5:54 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | When my friend came back with me on Monday, he came dressed for the occasion. He had on overalls with one suspender hanging to the side and a cap with the beard turned in the back, some old dusty shoes without strings, and his sleeves rolled up, that sort of thing. Collar open. | 6:27 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | The mayor told him to take a seat over here by the wall, and he did. The mayor was facing me down the table. He went on to say, "Didn't you say that man standing out there with the hose on Saturday?" I said, "Yes, I saw him." Well, he went on to explain, again, that there had been a fire and all of this sort of thing, that I had run over the hose, and I explained that, well, I didn't know that I had run over a hose. I wasn't driving fast at all. It just felt like a ridge in the street. | 7:02 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | He said, "Well, there had been a fire. You ran over that hose." Furthermore, he said, "Where were you raised?" I hesitated for a moment, and I said, "I was reared in Georgia." He said, "Well", he put his hands on the side, both sides of the table, and he sat up straight, looked at me, and he said, "Well, you should have known better than to call yourself Miss Griffin." He said, "I haven't ever Missed a nigger in my life, and I don't ever expect to." He said, "I played with niggers, I ate with niggers, but I never Missed a nigger, and I don't ever expect to." | 7:46 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Of course, while he said this, the old sheriff was sitting there just smiling. I didn't say anything after that. Then he turns to the sheriff and he said, "Well, let's see what this boy over here has got to say for himself." | 8:48 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | He looked over at my friend and he said, "Boy", and the moment he said that, my friend popped up, stood up, and started fidgeting with his trousers and that just pleased him to no end. He said, "Boy", he said, "What's your name?" He told him his name. He said, "Where do you work?" My friend said, "Your honor, sir", he says, "I work at the primary field." | 9:12 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Of course, the primary field meant the—Presently, it is the Tuskegee Airport. That's where they trained the Black pilots who fought in World War Two. He told them he worked at the primary field. He said, "What you do out there, boy?" He said, "I's the janitor, sir." Oh, that brought a big smile when he said he was the janitor. | 9:52 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | He looked at him, and then he turned around to his deputy, and he said, "Now, you see, he looks like a good boy." He said, "We going to be real lenient on them." He said, "We going to charge them $17." He wrote out this ticket, had the sheriff to write the ticket out, and said, "You write out a ticket there for $17." | 10:25 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | He wrote it out. He handed it to my friend. He said, "Now you take that on around there to the office, and pay him $17." Of course, that was the end of that. But I wanted you to know about that one, because I thought it was really, really interesting. | 10:53 |
| Paul Ortiz | It is. Why did he go in dressing like that? | 11:21 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Huh? | 11:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was that the way he normally— | 11:23 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | No. No. No. He did this because he felt like in doing this kind of thing would certainly make him be more lenient, which he was. He would have charged us a whole lot more if he didn't act the way he wanted him to react, you see. | 11:26 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. How were you dressed? | 11:45 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Huh? | 11:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | How were you— | 11:53 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Oh, I was dressed like I was on Saturday, the same way. I was well-dressed. As I talked to him, I didn't change my language at all. He wasn't very pleased with me at all, but he was very pleased with my friend, because of the way he reacted and the way he had come dressed and that sort of thing. That was right downtown Tuskegee. | 11:53 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you think that your friend was upset at you for not putting on that kind of act? | 12:20 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | No. He really wasn't. He really wasn't. No, because we laughed about it afterwards. He wasn't angry at all. | 12:27 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | But it would have been a whole lot I think harder for me to have done that, though. I just couldn't have done that. But knowing my friend, who did that, this sort of thing, he can do that sort of thing. He could shift from one personality to another very easily. It wasn't very hard for him to do. | 12:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | Afterwards, did he express a—Was he angry about the event or was it more like, "We really fooled them"? | 13:13 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | More like what? | 13:27 |
| Paul Ortiz | More like that he had actually fooled the man— | 13:27 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Oh, yes. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes. He really felt that he had been very deceptive. | 13:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | Who was the mayor at that time? | 13:50 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | It was Mayor Carr. He's dead now. | 13:52 |
| Paul Ortiz | I've heard of that. | 13:55 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | It was Mayor Carr. | 13:59 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you think there was—Oh, I'm sorry. | 14:05 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Hmm? | 14:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you think there was really a fire? | 14:07 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Do I think what? | 14:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | That there was really a fire? | 14:11 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I don't know that there really was, because I never did see the hose. I really didn't. There may have been one. I don't know. But I never did see it, and no one else in the car saw a hose. There may have been one before we got there, and they had pulled the hose or something. I don't know. I just don't know. But they did similar things to a lot of the people who were here at that time. Many of the people who worked at the Tuskegee Army Airfield came from other places, and they weren't nice to them at all. I know that this was not a wet county in those days. The fellas from the Army Airfield, if they wanted beer or maybe wine or something like that, there was a place between here and Union Springs, but it was in Bullock County, just over the line of Macon. | 14:13 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Any time those fellas would go over there and drink beer and that sort of thing, and come back, the policemen would be waiting for them and they would harass them and just anything to be harassing. | 15:27 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | They were accustomed to that sort of thing, and, of course, I think my friend knew that maybe this sort of thing was going to happen in this situation. | 15:47 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did he come from Macon County or was— | 15:55 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | He came from Florida. Down at Tallahassee, I believe where you're going. | 15:59 |
| Paul Ortiz | So that was your stand-off with Mayor Carr. | 16:11 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes. Yes. Indeed. But they did all sorts of things to humiliate you. Another instance, I remember on campus, now where the Forestry Service has its office there on Franklin Road, coming up Franklin Road, up to that point, I remember one evening, my husband and I were with some other friends. We had just left the corner down where you enter the campus just below there. Really, the car, the young man who was driving the car, I don't believe he had taken the car out of second gear from where he came onto Franklin Road down at that corner, and had just gotten up to this house where the Forestry Service is there now, and a policeman stopped him, and he had him get out and walk back and forth, up and down, by the car and wanted to say he was speeding, and all that sort of thing. Just to harass him. | 16:23 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Of course, he didn't attempt to arrest anybody or do anything like that, but he just tried to do little things to humiliate you. Those were the kinds of things that they did very often to intimidate. | 17:38 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was there a sense that the intimidation got worse around the institute as, say, compared to downtown or was there any— | 18:03 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | It was about the same I think. | 18:17 |
| Paul Ortiz | I have a question I haven't asked anybody. Did the police in Tuskegee come on campus? | 18:21 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | They didn't come on campus. They came through campus, on the street that comes right through the center of the campus, and on out here. They would come through there but I don't think they went on campus as such. | 18:32 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I remember once, somebody told a story about the Klan having come through there and they wanted to do something and I think they wanted to go on campus but they came through there, and just below the bookstore there on that street, they were in a truck and one of the Klansmen fell off the truck, and seemingly, some of the students had a lot of fun getting after him and he, somehow, got back onto the truck and they got away. I think that's as close as they got to going on campus. | 18:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was that in the '50s or '40s? | 19:42 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | That was in the '40s. | 19:44 |
| Paul Ortiz | In the '40s? | 19:44 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Mm-hmm. In the '40s. | 19:44 |
| Paul Ortiz | Would you say that there is a sense that during World War Two and having the airfield there seemed like it caused the police here to be—They didn't like the— | 19:52 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | They didn't like that at all. We had two youngsters—Well, the man who has the Jones business machines right up here on the highway now, he was one of the owners of Jones business, he and what's the other guy's name? It was Torrance. The two of them had a business machine place downtown right behind the—Well, it was located right in the parking lot that they use now for I guess you may have seen all of these buses parked out there right behind the probate judges— | 20:09 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | No. Not the probate judge but the tax assessor's office and RSVP, they're all in that building. | 20:58 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, that's where that old gas station used to be. | 21:08 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Well, and it's right behind also the drive-in part of the Alabama Exchange Bank. | 21:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. | 21:19 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | There's a big parking lot back out in there. Well, that's where this building was located. Someone shot into the building. Everybody felt that Mr. Hornsby, who is still around, and he was the sheriff at the time, and he knew exactly who did it and, of course, no one was ever apprehended or caught. | 21:19 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah. I hadn't heard about that incident but people have told me about other things that Hornsby did not seem to be sympathetic towards the Black community. | 21:53 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | No. He was not. He was not. Mr. Parker, he was—Well, I think he did a lot more than a lot of people but I don't think he was as true blue as he wanted you to believe. The reason for that, my husband and I had a little incident to occur with him, we had a small loan with the bank, and my husband said, "Well, let's go down and pay it off. We don't need to keep this and have to pay the interest that we're paying" and so on. | 22:11 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | We went down to pay it. Mr. Parker got the papers all out, and he started typing something there on the typewriter. My husband said, "Now, Mr. Parker this loan hasn't gone the full length of the term, so I'm sure we won't have to pay the full amount of interest." | 23:00 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | He became very, very angry, snatched the paper out of the typewriter, and tore it up. He said, "Well, people don't ask me when they come down here to get money, they don't ask me the kinds of questions you asking." I said, "Well, Mr. Parker, I'm sorry", I said, "We're going to ask you any questions we'd like to ask you, so now you can answer them if you wish, and if you don't, well, you don't have to but we're going to ask you questions that we think ought to be asked." | 23:26 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | He was very, very angry about it, but, of course, as time passed on, he was still back to his friendly self, so to speak, and we never did bother about borrowing any more money from Alabama State Bank, of course. Fortunately, we didn't have to borrow any more, but I just thought it was such an ugly way to respond to a customer. | 24:01 |
| Paul Ortiz | That's interesting, because I've heard a couple of other things but even before we came here, there was—Well, I'm sure that you're aware of that book Reaping The Whirlwind? | 24:45 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yeah. | 25:00 |
| Paul Ortiz | The opinion of I think of, I don't know, of the author was that Parker was just a very liberal— | 25:03 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Liberal. Yes. Not nearly as liberal as he wanted you to believe, right? | 25:16 |
| Paul Ortiz | There was another side to his— | 25:21 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | There was another side. Mm-hmm. Because now I remember—I don't think I told you this the other day, during the days of integration, and when Sammy Young was living, he was the young man who was shot downtown, because he tried to enter a restroom at one of the filling stations, but he had tried to get Mr. Parker to hire Blacks. There were no Blacks at that time in the Alabama Exchange Bank, and he made a concerted effort with marches, and picketing the bank, and that sort of thing. | 25:22 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | One of the old residents of Tuskegee said to me one day, she said, "Miss Jones, I just wonder why Sammy does these kinds of things. Mr. Parker is such a fine person. He will let you have money when you need it, and that sort of thing." I said, "Well, Miss Washington, don't you think that's what a bank is for?" Of course, a smile, but she was very upset by it, because Sammy was doing these things to Mr. Parker's bank, and Mr. Parker did do some nice things. I think he had reason for it. He was not as sincere as he wanted you to think he was. That's the way it was. | 26:16 |
| Paul Ortiz | You would say scholars should have a more balanced view of him? | 27:17 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Hmm? | 27:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | You would say that scholars should have a more balanced view of him rather than seeing him as a shining liberal? | 27:23 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes, right. Right. | 27:33 |
| Paul Ortiz | They need to be more balanced in that. | 27:35 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes. I should think so. | 27:37 |
| Paul Ortiz | Well, because I had a question in my mind that came up earlier, in a couple other interviews talking with people who went through that process of getting loans, and it would have been late '40s, early '50s when people were moving from the projects to places like Colbert, and my question was if Alabama Exchange Bank was such an easy place to get loans, why were so many people going to the Tuskegee Federal— | 27:39 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Savings and Loan? | 28:18 |
| Paul Ortiz | Right. Nobody talks about that institution. | 28:20 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I'll say. | 28:25 |
| Paul Ortiz | Well, now I'm sorry, the interviewees, people I talk with talk about that, but people who have written about Tuskegee—In that book, Reaping The Whirlwind, you didn't really hear about it. It seems like a lot of people got loans from federal— | 28:27 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Federal Savings and Loan. Right. They did. | 28:48 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were there Black employees— | 28:56 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I thought of something. That was because most of those loans I think were really for home building and that sort of thing. Mr. Parker had made the statement to my husband that, "I will let you have a loan to buy a car" and what else he said? Some other kind of appliances and that sort of thing, "But I will never let you have a loan to build a home." | 29:00 |
| Paul Ortiz | I didn't know that. | 29:38 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes. | 29:38 |
| Paul Ortiz | The loans at Alabama Exchange were smaller? | 29:38 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Were smaller loans and I think things that—Well, I guess if you didn't pay a home loan, you can foreclose on that too, and I think there was some connection between Hornsby, Hornsby had some sort of car place, sales place where cars that had been reclaimed and that sort of thing, he would sell them again to Black people for higher prices, and that sort of thing. | 29:38 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I think that was really some connection between Mr. Parker's operation and Mr. Hornsby's, you see. | 30:09 |
| Paul Ortiz | It is often true of banks that banks will have connections with places. There was another incident that I was going to ask you about. I talked to the [indistinct 00:30:45] about this, and actually Mrs. Baldwin mentioned it to me, but I was on my way out of her house and the recorder was already off. | 30:26 |
| Paul Ortiz | She talked about that there was an event that happened shortly after the Buy From Your Friends Campaign began in 1957, that the word got out that the Klan had threatened to march down what would have been Montgomery— | 30:56 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Old Montgomery Road I guess. That's coming through the campus? | 31:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yes, ma'am. | 31:25 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yeah. That's the same road that I mentioned that the Klansmen fell off the truck, and the students—That's the same road. | 31:26 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah. They mentioned that there were rumors that they had intended to march down there again. This was shortly after the boycott started, and the rumor got out, they actually didn't end up marching but I was just wondering if you had heard about that particular— | 31:40 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I don't recall right now. I may have but it doesn't come to me right now. There was so much going on, I'll tell you. | 32:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | When the boycott began, or, of course, you didn't call it a boycott, where would you go shopping at? | 32:20 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Mostly to Columbus and Montgomery. | 32:41 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. Did you know people in Montgomery before that? | 32:43 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes. Some folks. | 32:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were you going to the Civic Sssociation meetings? | 33:09 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes. I went to the Civic Association meetings. Dr. Ghomelion was here at that time, and, of course, he was the person who got that organization started. | 33:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | Had you been going to those meetings throughout the '50s? | 33:37 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Mm-hmm. | 33:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | I don't want to ask you questions I've already asked you. I know that we won't be able to answer every question that we have. Oh, now when you were working at the primary airfield, now I forgot what your job was at that time. You were working as— | 34:00 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I worked as—The title of my position was employee records and—No. No. I was chief of employment and—Make sure that I give you the right title, but I was responsible for the hiring of employees. They came through my section to be appointed. | 34:36 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did you see out in the airfield signs that World War Two and I guess, for lack of a better word, the rhetoric around the war, this is a war for democracy, and fighting the Nazis, did you see that that had an impact on Black political consciousness? Or that Black political consciousness may have quickened during that period of time? | 35:14 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I think it did, to some extent. I think so. At that time, we could not eat in the officer's club where they served meals and that sort of thing. We were entirely isolated from the main portion of the field for purposes of serving meals and that sort of thing. | 35:59 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | The exchange was not open to us for—Well, none of that really came until I believe it was after Eisenhower became president, and things were changed. I do think that that did what you mentioned, did have some impact on the political consciousness of the Blacks. | 36:53 |
| Paul Ortiz | You mentioned that—Let me rephrase that. Did you see out of the airfield at places like the exchange where Black people were excluded, would Black people talk about being excluded? | 37:25 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes. They did. Mm-hmm. Very often. Very often, but there seemed to have been a sort of feeling of helplessness at the time for doing anything about it. The Air Force or the Air Corps, as it was called at that time, offered much better jobs than people could get elsewhere in the area. Although, they were conscious of what was going on, they didn't feel quite—They were reluctant to talk openly about it until much later. | 37:56 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. When did you first meet Dr. Ghomelion? | 39:05 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I met Dr. Ghomelion in the '40s. I don't remember the exact year, but it must have been somewhere around '45 or '46. I had heard about him before, but I think it must have been around that time when I actually met him. | 39:16 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was it at a social event? | 39:45 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes. Somewhere on campus I believe. | 39:49 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | I think you remember my telling you that the—The university really, at that time, provided many of the cultural activities for the community. We really shared a great deal of those with the campus community. | 40:04 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were you living out by the primary airfield at that time? | 40:40 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | No. I was living at that time close to the campus on Franklin Road that comes down. I know you know where that is, the Forestry Service office is there, and that street that comes right around by it and goes on back north, that way, well, I think the—What is it? I believe that's the Forestry Service has another building down on that street I believe that they just recently built down there, but there's a large area right out behind there where there were some homes built for military people and that's where we lived. | 40:48 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. | 41:38 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | It was called the Washington Homes. | 41:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. No. I've heard of that. After you moved to Washington Homes, where did you move to next? | 41:49 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | When did I move from that? In 1951. | 42:00 |
| Paul Ortiz | '51? | 42:02 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Mm-hmm. Moved out here where I am now in '51. | 42:04 |
| Paul Ortiz | Seems like there was a lot of movement going on during that time. | 42:14 |
| Wilhelmina Griffin Jones | Yes. There was quite a bit. | 42:17 |
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