Samuel Davis (primary interviewee) and Maxine Davis interview recording, 1993 June 15
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| Maxine Ormond Davis | [indistinct 00:00:00]—Salisbury North Carolina. It was one of the better neighborhoods for Black people. We had the two paved streets in the city for Black people, and they were Monroe Street that the college was on and Horah Street that was paved partially. And the houses were pretty good houses. Most of them had at least two or three bedrooms in them at the time. | 0:39 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did most of the people in the neighborhood work? | 1:22 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Most of the people in that part of town worked as teachers and doctors, and I don't remember that we had any lawyers at all, ministers, and like that. | 1:24 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Was your neighborhood segregated? | 1:40 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Very much so. | 1:44 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did they separate your neighborhood from the White neighborhood? | 1:46 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, let's see. There was a certain street that separated us from the White neighborhood and I think maybe the railroad track? | 1:51 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Railroad track— | 2:05 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | We didn't have the railroad track? Well, the railroad track wasn't that far from us. | 2:08 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No, it was over there where you were. | 2:11 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | But there were certain streets that separated us from the White neighborhood. | 2:13 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I want to come back to you, but I wanted to know about the neighborhood where you grew up. | 2:20 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well, I lived two or three blocks from where she lived, and the neighborhood—Of course the term ghetto, I never even heard that word until I got to the '60s or to the '70s. And so where we lived, it was about a 4, 5 bedroom house, and we had indoor plumbing. I didn't know anything about taking the bath out on the porch or like that. So where I lived, I thought it was good and I still think it was good. But the term ghetto came in later on and since where all Black people live I guess was ghetto. And now they say that but it was no ghetto then because we lived 4 or 5 blocks from town and you could walk to wherever you wanted to go, to the college or the high school or elementary school. That's where I grew up. | 2:26 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Then later on we moved to another section, and it was integrated because there were White people lived there. In fact, the sheriff of North Carolina lived one block away from where we lived. But at that time people didn't worry so much about where the Blacks lived. It was not a hard fast line, even though it was undercurrent that this street here divides the Black and the White. But it was never pronounced like that. | 3:24 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did any Black people and Whites live on the same, like you said, you lived on the same street? | 3:55 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, we lived on the same street. We were in one block and the sheriff of Rowan County— | 4:00 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Rowan County. | 4:08 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | —lived on the next block. | 4:09 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | But you had certain streets divided. | 4:10 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | That's right. I'm saying it was a street that was between the two neighborhoods. But if you went to the store and where like that you went right from your neighborhood right to the White neighborhood because the store was in the White neighborhood. | 4:13 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How was it? Was it all right to go through the White neighborhoods? Were you ever harassed or anything? | 4:26 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I was never harassed. I wasn't, were you? | 4:33 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I was never harassed as a kid because I stayed basically in the Black neighborhood. But later on I can talk about some harassment. | 4:35 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | People had lived like that for years before I was born, so it was not a big thing at that time. | 4:46 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Was Salisbury a rural city or urban city? What type of community was Salisbury? | 4:59 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Salisbury— | 5:04 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | It was more of a small urban town. It wasn't so much rural, but Rowan County it's— | 5:07 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | The county was. Yeah, it was all around us but we called ourselves being in the city. | 5:11 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I lived in a situation where the elementary school for Black kids was two blocks away going in one direction. The high school was two blocks away down a dirt street going another direction. And the college was two blocks away going in another direction. So all of my education was in that little circle. And the church was about two blocks away in another direction. So everywhere we went, we walked. So my education was on foot, going in that circle and it was a Black community so— | 5:24 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Who were some of the important people in your neighborhood that you looked up to? | 6:01 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | The principal of the school, the teachers. We had some very good teachers even though we were segregated. We had some very good concerned teachers about the—well, they were concerned about the whole child. And if you didn't have clothes and proper shoes, they were the ones to go out and get the things for you. And I looked up to my father. He was an important person to me and my mother. | 6:06 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well you look up your father. At that time, everybody looked up to the parents— | 6:39 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | The preacher. | 6:43 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | —and then to the minister next and then to the principal of the high school and then the teachers. That was just the hierarchy of things. In fact the preacher, I think had more power than the principals I believe because everybody seemed to listen to him more than they do than anybody else. | 6:46 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What did you do in your neighborhood as children for fun? | 7:02 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well, what I did was for fun, we made our own wagons, our own scooters and that took all day to make it and then you'd take 5, 10 minutes to tear it up because if you rode it, it would break and then you go back and build it again. So that took the time. Then we had a great big hill in the neighborhood. We could go that hill and slide down on pasteboard boxes. That was fun. And then we walked to the creek maybe once or twice a week, we went to the creek and swam. | 7:08 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, what we did, I grew up in a family with, there were six of us, and I was in the middle. And I always was interested in teaching school so I used bottles and jars out of the kitchen to teach the little children poems and things like that. And then we played school outside in the backyard. We made our own little wooden car, a big wooden car, that we sat in, even though we didn't have a real good car of our own to ride in. So we would sit out there and play that we were traveling around somewhere. | 7:41 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And then we played in the grass with the plants and things, and we made cakes and pies out of mud and then we had some little plants out there. I don't know exactly, clover I guess that we used for corn and we planned eating affairs. Then we had some old tires from somewhere that we just rolled and ran behind them, rolling the tires. That's where we played most of the time. | 8:23 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And then we told stories. We just made up things. We did imaginative kind of creative kind of thing because we did not have television at that time. And we listened to the radio some. | 9:02 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What kind of music did you listen to? | 9:14 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, we just listened to the typical. My father was a musician, and we listened to some classical music, and we listened to country music. I don't think there was too much rock and roll kind of stuff. I don't remember— | 9:17 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | There wasn't any rock and roll. [indistinct 00:09:39]. | 9:38 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | —too much rock and roll. | 9:38 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | It was jazz. We listened to jazz. | 9:40 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | We just got an appreciation for all kinds of music. And then our favorite kind of course was hymns that we learned in church and in Bible school. | 9:45 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever interact and play with White children, was it integrated— | 10:01 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, well not when I was really young. When I got to high school, I played the violin and her father taught me to play the violin. So I took violin lessons from the White high school. And that meant after I got there you had to wait till school was out because they didn't allow you in there. But after I started taking lessons, then the other students wanted to react with me and so they had their parents bring them over to my house, and we would play trios and quartets together. That was way back in the '50s? No— | 10:03 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Forties. | 10:44 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | That was in the '40s, yeah. | 10:44 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well yeah '40s because— | 10:44 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No it was in the '40s— because I finished in the '50s. | 10:44 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | —you finished. | 10:44 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. And I would go to their house and play. And then I went to their church and this was back in the '40s. And the people were nice to me, but they stared at me. But these people who had invited me and asked the minister if I could come, and evidently he said yes because I was there. And we did a program like that in this White church and all and that was not even heard of in those days. | 10:54 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What was the reaction in the Black community for you doing that? Did you get any notoriety for doing that? | 11:26 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Oh no. | 11:30 |
| Sonya Ramsey | It's a very rare thing. | 11:30 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | They laughed at you. | 11:30 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did it happen to other musicians too? | 11:33 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No, I was the only one because— | 11:38 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You had one other guy. | 11:41 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | But he never played with us. The founder of Livingstone College grandson played violin, but he never played with us. He was a rich boy, Black rich boy. He's a doctor now. He was considered rich in those days because he had more than anybody else. But I did that. And Black people, it didn't make no difference to them. It was no big deal for some reason. But I played for them in the high school and they admired that—How would you say they reacted when I played in the high school? It was no big deal then was it on programs? | 11:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | No, it was accepted. | 12:32 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, it was accepted. | 12:32 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You were the one person who had some talent. | 12:32 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | It was accepted. But like I said, it was no big thing because—I don't know why it was no big thing, but it was a big thing to me. (laughs) | 12:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were you nervous about that? | 12:38 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | When I played with the White people at the church? No, I wasn't nervous to because I didn't have sense enough to be nervous. (laughs) | 12:41 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You didn't feel a responsibility as a Black person? | 12:48 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Uh—uh, I didn't know anything about that. That was the time before Blacks knew anything about being a martyr or being an outstanding person. I was just doing what came natural for me. But my sisters all thought it a big deal to be playing with them. And my mother thought it was a big deal, but the other people didn't. Because see, at that time, I don't understand whether White people could come to Black people's houses. I guess they always could, couldn't they? | 12:51 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | They always could. | 13:18 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | But you couldn't go to their house. | 13:23 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah, they could come to your house but you didn't go to their house because you worked for some. | 13:27 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, you worked for them. But that's how it was in those days. | 13:28 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did you develop an interest in the violin? | 13:30 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I developed an interest by hearing bits and pieces of classical music on the radio. I would hear just a tiny bit. My sister couldn't stand it, she was the one in charge so she cut it off, and she kept denying me that privilege. And the more she denied me, the more I pursued it. And she doesn't even know today that she's the reason I played the violin. Because everybody else at that time was playing in the band the trumpet, trombone and all those band instruments. Of course, I did play in the band too, now don't get me wrong, but my favorite instrument was a violin. | 13:34 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Tell her how you came by getting a violin to play. | 14:08 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I was working for a lady who had one and. Like I said I was denied by my sister. When she turned the radio and classic music game on it, it would catch my attention and she'd turn the channel. And then I was working for this lady who had a violin. Her daughter played the violin one time. And so I worked for the lady and she let me keep the violin as long as I worked for her, which was about two or three summers and then I bought my own. | 14:11 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did you buy your own violin? Did you have to work? | 14:40 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Oh yeah, I worked for these people, like I said before, then I was working, I think I put about $20 down on the violin on a layaway plan. And then the man asked me, "Why don't you go ahead on and take it out?" And he said, "All we need was your mother's signature," and my mother was already paying bills so she didn't have any money to buy any instrument. And she told the man she just could not be responsible buying the violin. And so what he did, he said, "Well, we'll let have it anyway." | 14:45 |
| Sonya Ramsey | That was nice. | 15:15 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | So I got it anyway and after I got it I started taking lessons. And then when I finished high school I went to Livingstone College in Salisbury. The one she was telling you about. And there was a man there on the seminary, a preacher who was studying to be a minister, could play the violin and he was right there with me on the college so he started teaching me after I left her father. | 15:20 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay, I wanted to go back and ask you some questions about each of family. Did any of you have remembrances of your grandparents? | 15:48 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Mm-hmm, yeah. | 15:55 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 15:56 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I remember my grandmother. I think my grandfather passed when I was very young. But she was a very hard working person. She lived in the eastern part of North Carolina, which is a little bit different from the western part of North Carolina. And they did a lot of farm farming and everything. And their kitchen was outside of the house. You had to go outside of the house to another house where they had kitchen. And she had 21 children and my father was the oldest child. And she worked her fingers to the bone, that's what I say, her fingers to the bone because when she died, 19 of them survived, she left every one of them land. And she always told them that land was important and to hold on to the land. | 15:57 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did they acquire that land? | 16:57 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, I'm not sure how— | 17:00 |
| Sonya Ramsey | That's a lot of land. | 17:03 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Uh huh, she had a lot of land. They lived in the country and I don't know whether her father had land. Or I'm not sure how they were able to acquire land. But she was kind of a tightwad too. Understand she didn't spend a whole lot of money on herself, but they were able to acquire a good bit of land. I'm not quite sure how they were able to do that. | 17:08 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Do you remember any experiences you had with her or anything she told you? | 17:34 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, I can't remember anything just other than to try to hold onto the land. Really right now I can't remember anything directly that she might have said, but I just always remember that she cooked a lot of food, treated us nicely and worked hard from sun up to sun down. | 17:41 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | My mother was raised by an aunt. And she lived in High Point, North Carolina so on Sunday after church we would go to High Point and that's where we'd visit her. She had a very big house, and like she said, they always cooked lots of food in my family. My mother and all six of us would go there and have dinner and visits like that. | 18:12 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | And the only thing I can remember that she left with me was the impression that education was important and you have to try to get as much education as you can. And of course that was my mother's philosophy also. You have to just try to go on and get as much of education as you can. | 18:40 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Because my father's people—he was raised by, I don't know whether it was his aunt too, but we would go to Baton, North Carolina and visit his people. And that was the same kind of thing, it was a great big family then. And we would go and have dinner out on the lawn because it was four, it was two houses together and one up on the street. And all these people were kin to us. And that's when you had the feasts out there on the lawn under the trees. But it was about 17 children there and don't you know as of this day, I don't know any of them. Everybody left the South and went north and I guess never came back home again. | 18:59 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Could you talk some about your parents? You talked about your father, where his family was from, but could you talk some about your parents and what you remember about them? | 19:48 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Okay. What I remember about my mother is she got married very young so she started having kids early. So she got her education along with my second oldest sister. She finished high school along with my second oldest sister. And my father had finished what was considered as college at that time and he started out being a school teacher of sorts. After that, he went into the postal service with the railway and he was a postal clerk for most of his life. And after that, he went into house wrecking in his own business wrecking old houses and tearing them down and selling the materials from that. | 20:01 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | He started the big celebration. | 20:57 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well then they had a big celebration. He was a Legionnaire. He was in World War I. And the National Cemetery, of course is in Salisbury and he's worked with the Legionnaires in town and he was instrumental in having the celebration at the National Cemetery. And the parade, they always had a great big parade. And all of the schools closed down and participated and the children wore uniforms, certain kind of uniforms that were made for them. And they played the Taps and everything like that. | 21:01 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And then he was also instrumental in helping to get a recreational place for the Legionnaires or the veterans to have a place to go where they could eat. I guess you'd call it clubhouse or something like that. | 21:49 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Was the Legionnaires segregated or integrated? | 22:09 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Legionnaires were segregated. | 22:13 |
| Sonya Ramsey | So he did a Black— | 22:14 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, they were segregated until Memorial Day. Memorial Day everybody participated. | 22:16 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay, so the parade went to— | 22:21 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | —and went to—Yeah and then they would have speakers. The whole town would turn out for that. | 22:23 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What did your mother do? | 22:31 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, my mother was more of a housewife. She had six children. She was a homemaker and on occasion, but not very often, she would work in a school cafeteria and sometimes she would work in the cafeteria at Catawba College. But I can never remember her working more than six months at the time. She would work so long, I guess if she needed a piece of furniture or something, she would work long enough to get that and then she would come back home and take care of the kids. I could remember her 99% of the time she was always home when we got there. | 22:33 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | But she was not a domestic. She was not a cook. She was a clerk at that school. She always took up the money in the lunch lines so that's what she was doing. Because she was working but that's the kind of work she was doing. It wasn't a cook. Well, my mother didn't work. | 23:14 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | She worked in that laundry one time. | 23:35 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I'm talking about when I was a little boy, she didn't work, honey. She didn't work up until the time my father died. I was the last one of her children and she went back to work after my father died when I was a teenager. That's when she started working in the laundry in Salisbury. | 23:36 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | And my father worked at the hardware store. He was a deliverer. He delivered whatever they needed to be delivered at the time. That's as far as I can remember what he did. But evidently he made a pretty good living because he had a house built, the house that I was born and raised in, he built it so he must have been doing something right. I don't know what they were paying at that time, but that's what he did with his money. At that time people didn't live in houses like that. Most of them were called shotgun houses or three bedroom houses and they rented them. | 23:53 |
| Sonya Ramsey | I wanted ask, did your father ever share with you any remembrances of World War I? | 24:33 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well he used to talk about Germany and France and how devastating war really is. But as far as telling me something definite about it, I can't remember anything except it was a horrible experience. | 24:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did he talk about being a Black soldier and the experiences? | 25:01 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Being a Black soldier in the World War I? | 25:05 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 25:05 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, not really. He just was that kind of person. He just didn't say too much about it. I'm sure they were mistreated and a lot of places they could not go that the White soldiers could go that the White soldiers could go. | 25:05 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | They had a horrible time as a solider fighting for the country. | 25:25 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Mm-hmm. | 25:25 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What was your reaction to the Black soldiers coming back to Salisbury? Do you have any remembrances of that? | 25:30 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | For World War I? | 25:44 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Or were they accepted sometimes had a problem? | 25:45 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I couldn't remember anything about World War I because that was too far away. But I did have a cousin who fought in World War II and the only thing that I can remember about it was that he was just really glad to get back. But I don't think that World War I veterans or World War II veterans were so mistreated like the Vietnam veterans, when they had what the VD Day for World War II? All of the people were happy to see it. | 25:45 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. What did you do around your house? Did you have chores to do around the house? | 26:18 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Oh yeah. I had chores to do all of the time. | 26:25 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What kind of things? | 26:29 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I had to keep the house clean and I did that on a regular basis. I kept the house clean and kept the sidewalk swept off. Eventually we got a sidewalk. And the front porch and kept the wash. At that time in the beginning we washed in, we had two great big iron—well, before we got the iron tubs in the basement we had big washtubs outside and a wash pump where we boiled the clothes and put bluing in them and hung them on the line. | 26:30 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Then eventually we got some iron cast big tubs in the basement and we washed down there on a rug board. And after that we got one of these ringer washes where you put the clothes in and put them through a ringer and hung them out. And we never did get a dryer. We never had a dryer. | 27:10 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What chores did you do? | 27:37 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | We had to make fires. It was four boys and we would have a week each to make fires. That means you had to get up in the morning and start the fire, because also that night you had to bring in your kindling and your coal or your wood so you could have it to make the fires in the morning. And that's what you had to do every morning. But we had a week to do that— | 27:39 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | We had to do that every day and wash the dishes in the afternoon. I mean we did, the girls in my house had to wash dishes. | 28:03 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well I had to sister so we had to make the fire, that was our basic job, bring in the wood and coal and keep the fires going during the day. | 28:03 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | My brothers made the fire and my mother did most of all of the cooking. We cleaned the house and washed the dishes and helped her wash the clothes. On Monday was her wash day so we did that. | 28:19 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Who made the decisions in your family? | 28:33 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | My father. | 28:36 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | My father. | 28:36 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He made the decisions. He was making the money, he made decisions. Now when my oldest sister started to college, but then money was scarce because there were six of us so she took a civil service test and went to Maryland and started working for the federal government, social security. Now it was her job to help to educate the next one, but my next oldest sister had polio so it wasn't so hard for her to get a scholarship. So she went to Fayetteville State and she got a scholarship to go to Fayetteville State to do that March of Dimes and she became a teacher and taught one semester and couldn't stand teaching. So she went to Baltimore and started working for the federal government. | 28:40 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well then I was next in line. So my father had always told us, he said, "Now I've got to got a college two blocks away." He really wanted all of us to go to Livingstone College because we were in his eyes. And so I went to Livingstone and my older sister helped to educate me. So then after that my brother, it was my job to help to educate him. Okay, well he went so far and then he decided that he wanted to get married. He went up to his junior year. | 29:33 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Then I have a sister that lives next door and she did not want to go to Livingstone. She wanted to go to North Carolina Central. So it was really almost my total responsibility to educate her. She was able to get some money for her books and her clothes. And then after that she was supposed to educate the next one. He went to Winston-Salem State and she educated him so far but then she decided she wanted to get married so then it was still my job to help to educate him. So I really helped to educate three of my brothers and sisters. | 30:08 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you have a choice in that responsibility? | 30:45 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah. It was almost understood that we helped each other out but I was the one, I was not married at the time and I didn't marry for 14 years after I finished college. So I was the one who was working who had the money and I helped to educate them and I didn't really mind. And I also sent money to my mother every month whenever I got my paycheck that she would have some money of her own because she was not working. And the money my daddy was making, that was to help to keep the house going and everything. | 30:48 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | [indistinct 00:31:33]. | 31:28 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | (laughs) | 31:28 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Who made the decisions? You said your father made the decisions? | 31:35 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | My father made the decisions. | 31:37 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How were children disciplined in your family? | 31:44 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well most of the time now my mama could talk and talk and talk. But when my daddy spoke we understood that you stopped. It wasn't like you had to keep telling the child over and over again to do something. We understood, if your mother looked at you, your father said something and you stopped that. | 31:47 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well at the time though your parents— | 32:10 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And then plus they would spank you and it was not abuse either. | 32:12 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No. | 32:14 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | But you got spanking if you did the wrong thing. And now of course my brothers, they ended up getting the most spankings because the girls, we just would stop whatever it was that we were doing if they said stop. | 32:16 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well that's the way it was. At that time parents when they would tell you something— | 32:34 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Parents were in control of their children. | 32:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | —and they told you and if you didn't listen then they would spank you and that was— | 32:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That's right or punish you in some way that you wouldn't enjoy. | 32:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | —the way it was. They would get a switch and burn your legs up and that's how it was. And you didn't call it child abuse, you call it correct the child. And of course the church is— | 32:48 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Plus they made you go to church on Sunday too. That was an important part. | 32:59 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, and the preacher enforced that too. And that was a double whammy when the preacher would preach from the pulpit spare the rod, spoil the child and quote these sins from the Bible and then the parents carried that right on out. So when you got to church, you could hear what was going on so you would listen. You didn't find the hardheaded people. Well, you found, but they didn't last long. | 33:02 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Plus on Sunday you went to church, you went to what we call Christian— | 33:28 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Sunday school. | 33:31 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah, you went to Sunday school first. Church, then you went back in the afternoon to what we call Christian endeavor. | 33:33 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | It was called BTU. | 33:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And BTU in the Baptist church. Then at night your church might have a service. But if your church didn't have a service— | 33:43 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | It did, every time it'd have a service. | 33:50 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | —then we went to other people's churches and that was our social life. You see, we met up with the teenagers, we were all going to church and of course we had to walk. We didn't have any cars to ride in so we didn't get in a whole lot of trouble. We'd walk, decide which church are we going to this Sunday night and we enjoyed it. | 33:50 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | That was the key I believe but it was religion and your faith in God kept you out of so much trouble because you didn't have that free time to just do nothing. And most everybody, I don't know any family that did not require their children to go to church and to Sunday school or BTU. That was just understood and everybody did it. | 34:12 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What role did religion play in each of your family's lives? Was it an important Role? | 34:33 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Very important. | 34:36 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Very important. | 34:36 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Extremely important. | 34:36 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | They read the Bible to you and they prayed their prayer at night. And you said a blessing before you ate anything, I don't care how hungry you were. | 34:41 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That's right. You always had family altar. | 34:44 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, you had that and that was the way it was. You just prayed and you read the Bible. And I think that religion gave you those strong points to carry over those hard points because like you said, at this time segregation at it's peak. You couldn't do nothing. You couldn't even do nothing. But by having that religion surrounding you, it kind of kept you away from thinking about all this other stuff. | 34:53 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And our fathers were in charge all of that. My father was always in charge of the religious life at the house. He was— | 35:21 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Oh yeah. That's the way it was with everybody's house. | 35:27 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He did the praying and we could say Bible verses and things. We always had to say Bible verses. And he read the scripture and he laid down the law. So we just accepted that. That was just a way of life. We never debated whether or not we were going to do it because that was just like getting up, brushing your teeth. | 35:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were there any other members of the neighborhood that could discipline you if you were misbehaving— | 35:53 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Oh sure. | 35:57 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. That's what somebody said that it takes a whole community to raise a child. | 35:58 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | A whole village to raise a child. | 36:03 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | A whole village. That was true but we didn't know it at that time. I didn't know anything about that saying. But I know if I was doing anything that I had no business doing, the people on my block, the older people would get a switch and tear you up and then they'd call your mother. They wouldn't have a telephone. They'd come to the porch and call like that and tell your mother what you did and you'd get another whopping. | 36:09 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | And the same thing with school. If you got whooping in school, you got another one when you got home. So it was like the school disciplined you, the community disciplined you and your parents. So you couldn't do anything unless if you were outside of your neighborhood. Like if you were on this side of Charlotte and you were way on the other side where nobody knows you and you were cutting up over there maybe you could get away with that, but you couldn't get away with that in your neighborhood, the total neighborhood, you couldn't get away with it if they knew your parents. You just couldn't get away with it. | 36:30 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to talk to some about your school now. Did you both go to the same elementary school? | 37:11 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah. | 37:16 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, only one school. One elementary and one high school. | 37:16 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And what type of school was that? What was the school life? | 37:21 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | School life was fine. We loved going to school, I did. We had good teachers. The teachers were kind, they were concerned about us and they were determined that we would learn. And when I was going to elementary school, I don't remember anybody who got out of seventh grade who could not read like we have children nowadays. | 37:25 |
| Sonya Ramsey | It went to the seventh grade? | 37:46 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Mm-hmm. | 37:47 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | The elementary school went to the seventh grade. | 37:50 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And how long were the school terms? | 37:51 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Nine months. | 37:54 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Nine months. | 37:55 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | We would get out the 30th of May because school would never be out on June anyway. But we'd get out a couple days before 30th of May. We were always free at that time. It was just nine months and people learned to read. | 37:57 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | We had recess for one hour every day. | 38:10 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Right and you ate your lunch. | 38:13 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You ate your lunch, you went out, you could play. | 38:15 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | And we would have free time. We called it free time. | 38:17 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You had free time on your own. The teachers were not standing over you because there were not a lot of fights or anything. We even had a playground across the street. After you got in a certain grade, you could go across the street to a shaded area and play on that ground over there. | 38:19 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | But then too, on those days, like we said before, the teachers punished you if you did anything. | 38:37 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That's right. If you did something wrong, they had a strap. | 38:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | That's right. | 38:47 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And if you didn't know your lesson, they had a little strap. | 38:50 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | We had to learn poems and Bible verses and— | 38:53 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | We had devotion. | 38:56 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | —we had the Gettysburg Address. My granddaughter was reading that the other day. And we had to learn that from memory along with the Bible quotation of the Bible. The 23rd Psalm was one of the main things out of the Bible, everybody had to learn that. | 38:58 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Learned all of that in school and I think that the Supreme Court did a great injustice to the children of America when they took God out of the schools. Because they allow the devil to come in, and the teachers can't do anything with them, the children don't want to learn anything and it is ridiculous. | 39:13 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Buy you had Jewish kids and Seventh Day Adventists—the same kind of religion then as you got now. But the Jewish people would go to public school for a while, then they'd go to their private school. But they went to public school where people prayed and it didn't bother them. Jehovah's Witnesses, you name it. So I don't know where they got to some knowledge that can't say anything because you'll offend somebody. | 39:32 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah. Talking about God but you can talk about them and that's all right. | 39:54 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What was the name of your high school? | 40:03 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Price High School. | 40:03 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And what was Price like? What kind of experience did you have at Price High School? | 40:04 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, we had pretty good experiences I think because that's where our social life started evolving. And all of us were only in the same class, I guess. The class, the social class so there was no such thing as trying to look down on somebody or somebody looking down on us. | 40:08 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did the teachers ever play favorites among students? | 40:36 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, occasionally. | 40:41 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well what they did— | 40:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Occasionally, because the teacher's children, they probably got a little bit better deal. But basically I think that they were pretty fair. | 40:43 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well, they would take a person if he excelled in a particular subject then they [indistinct 00:41:07] like they do now and talk about this child and then all of them would rally behind this child like that. I guess they do that somewhat now, but they did it at that time because I was never one of those who excelled that much so I never was in with the easy life, like she said because now we know some guys who were. Abbott Reed— | 41:01 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You don't have to call their name. | 41:29 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | They won't know who Abbott Reed is. He's a doctor now so he deserved it. | 41:31 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He had good ability. | 41:36 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, he had good ability. He deserved it. But then there were others, we won't call his name, that they excelled him, they praised him and then he ain't doing nothing but is an alcoholic now I think. | 41:36 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well basically they pushed you to learn. They pushed everybody to learn. | 41:48 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | But they pushed some stronger than others. | 41:51 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were there ever any favoritism played on skin complexion and things like that? | 41:52 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Oh yeah. | 42:00 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well not really because Abbott Reed was light skinned, but there wasn't that many light-skinned people in Price. | 42:01 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | But that had that entered in then because the light skin. | 42:01 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | But there wasn't that many light-skinned people at Price, is what I'm saying. | 42:05 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, you're the one always talking about it. You ought to be the one— | 42:08 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I'm talking about when I went to Central. Central in Durham where you had all the people coming from Ahoskie, you know the light-skinned people from Ahoskie? That's where they played in. And then they hired all the people— | 42:13 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I'm talking about at your school. | 42:29 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I know but I was just saying that's where the color played. But in Salisbury most people were our complexion. | 42:30 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well even those that weren't our complexion, we got along pretty good. | 42:38 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, and I think you had one or two girls who had long hair and I don't know whether they were set apart or not. You know Viola Hargrave, but she was a majorette. | 42:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, she was not light-skinned, huh. | 42:54 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I didn't say she was, but she had long hair. | 42:54 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | (laughs) She had long hair. What does that have to do— | 42:54 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | In other words, what I'm saying is that they didn't use color because they didn't have any various colors to pick from. But they used something to set them apart from others. But it wasn't like it was a whole set thing there wasn't that many people, the school wasn't that big anyway. | 43:00 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You said you participated in music, but did you participate in any other activities outside of your academic work in high school? | 43:18 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, I played football. I played football and played band. | 43:24 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I played basketball for four years in high school and four years in college. | 43:29 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Was basketball major sport for women at that time? | 43:35 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. | 43:38 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah, we had a girls basketball. | 43:39 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Now there's quite a few women that play basketball. | 43:39 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | That was it, basketball and football, that was the thing. | 43:39 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Basketball. You sang in the choir. | 43:40 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Oh yeah. | 43:47 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever get to travel? | 43:48 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, that's why you did it. | 43:49 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yes, that's how you got to travel, through the band or through the— | 43:50 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Football or basketball. | 43:54 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | —football or basketball. | 43:54 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you travel throughout North Carolina— | 43:58 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No. | 44:00 |
| Sonya Ramsey | —or what kind places did you go? | 44:00 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Charlotte. Salisbury to Charlotte. | 44:02 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | We didn't go that far. We went to South Carolina. | 44:12 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Once in a blue moon you'd go to South Carolina. Where was that school down there? It wasn't South Carolina State was it? It was Clemson? No, it wasn't Clemson. But was that Black town? | 44:12 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Clinton. | 44:20 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Clinton. | 44:20 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | [indistinct 00:44:22]. | 44:20 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | But you didn't go that often. The band didn't go that often either. I don't know where we went to South Carolina. I don't think we did. But we came to Charlotte and we played in Salisbury. | 44:22 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What instrument did you play in the band? | 44:35 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | The trombone. | 44:37 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Different from the violin. | 44:38 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. | 44:40 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you have to take lessons for that too? | 44:41 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well they had a band at the school. | 44:43 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | They had a band teacher they started in the '40s. | 44:45 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | They started band so we had the band there all the time. And that was one of the big days, anytime at homecoming or a big football game, that was your day for entertainment and fun and this kind of thing. | 44:47 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did they have beauty queens? | 45:05 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yes. | 45:05 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Oh yeah. | 45:05 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How would they— | 45:05 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You'd raise money. | 45:05 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Raise money. | 45:08 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Raise money. My sister was Ms. Price one time. | 45:09 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | But it was not done on color. | 45:15 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | It wasn't done on color because she's dark complexion. | 45:17 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Her sister was dark and all the Price High School girls were— | 45:19 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | But she had long hair. | 45:20 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | —her complexion so it was not done on color at that time. | 45:20 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | It was done on who raised the most money. | 45:26 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | That's right. | 45:28 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you know each other then in high school? | 45:29 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah, we knew each other from the fifth grade. | 45:31 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | We went to school together. | 45:33 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Our mothers knew each other. | 45:33 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, Salisbury isn't that big a place. | 45:33 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Our sisters knew each other. | 45:33 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | And didn't have one school, one elementary, one high school and one college. So, only way you didn't see each other every day, it was that you went to different churches. Other than that you were at the same place. | 45:41 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were y'all dating during high school? | 45:55 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | We started dating in high school. | 45:57 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | But they didn't call it dating. | 45:59 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What kind of things did people who dated you? What kind of things— | 46:02 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, whoever took you to the prom, see. (laughs) | 46:05 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Dating, at that time, you went to the movies— | 46:08 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Occasionally. | 46:09 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | —occasionally. | 46:09 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And you had to walk to get there. | 46:12 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, you went to the movie and that was a date. | 46:14 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And you sat in the balcony because they did not allow you to sit on the first level. You had to sit in the balcony. You had to walk up a lot of steps to get up there. And it was about 10 cents to get in the movie. | 46:15 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I don't know what it was. It wasn't much because nobody had no money. | 46:26 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You'd have 10 cents most of the time. Money was very scarce. That's that, go to the movies. | 46:27 |
| Sonya Ramsey | So where did people go to shop in Salisbury? Did they have any Black-owned businesses or anything like that? | 46:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No, not for clothes. Only thing Black people had was beauty parlors, barber shops and cafes. That's where you'd buy your hot dogs and sandwiches, sodas and— | 46:47 |
| Sonya Ramsey | It was a chicken restaurant. | 0:00 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Chicken Shack. They called it Chicken Shack. They sold chicken sandwiches and they would open up about what time? | 0:01 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I don't know because I wasn't allowed to go to the Chicken Shack. I wasn't allowed to go to the cafe. | 0:13 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Why weren't you allowed to go? | 0:15 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Because my father forbade it. | 0:16 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | The Chicken Shack was for grown folks. | 0:19 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah. | 0:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 0:21 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That's for grown folks. | 0:21 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Those who had cars, we were drinking alcohol, or beer, or something. But the cafe, now, that was just like a store, but it was open all during the day, evenings. And that's where most of the teenagers went. They had hot dogs and sodas and potato chips. And they had a place that you could sit there and then you could dance, so that was the place most teenagers went. | 0:21 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I didn't get to go to any of that as a teenager. | 0:48 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I did. | 0:49 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Whatever. I don't even remember going to any clubs when I was in college. | 0:55 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Oh, no I didn't go to no clubs in college. | 0:59 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I got to go to a place like that after I started working, got out and got on my own. | 1:02 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay, I guess we can move on to college. And you went to Livingstone College? | 1:07 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I went to Livingstone College. | 1:11 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Because it was local, in the area? I was going to ask why you selected— | 1:12 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Two blocks away. | 1:17 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And you went to North? | 1:17 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I went to Livingstone first. | 1:17 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 1:17 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | And I went to—I was trying to major in music and they didn't have a instrumental music major there. And that was why I transferred to Central, North Carolina College at that time, and stayed there for the balance my time and graduated from there. | 1:21 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah. But you see, in between the time that—When we got to college, we kind of got separated when he went to Central, then he married somebody else. | 1:36 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 1:46 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You see? And had two kids, but that person—How long did you all—You married to her about what? 13 years? | 1:47 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I don't remember the exact— | 1:58 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | About 13 years, I think. | 2:00 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Married at 19. I finished in '54. We must have married in '53. And she passed away— | 2:08 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | She passed, yeah. | 2:09 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | —'60 or '63, '61, or '62, something like that. So then I came back to Charlotte. I was teaching in Durham and then she came here. She got a job here and I got a job here. She passed away when we built this house. When we started building the house, she passed away. So then Maxine was working in Gastonia and this is why we got back together. I saw her at one of the schools. They had a teachers meeting here in Charlotte. And this is why we started—We got back together at that time. | 2:09 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, that's nice. That's romantic. Would you go back and talk about your life in Central and what experience was that? What was Durham like as compared to Salisbury. | 2:48 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Oh, Durham is a very big town. You talk about being segregated among—Being segregated twice. If we went to Durham, all the light-skinned people worked in North Carolina Mutual. If they didn't, they were bleaching themselves trying to be light-skinned. And that was the top. They were the top dogs in Durham, I don't care where you work at the college, or high school, or elementary school. North Carolina Mutual was the place to work if you wanted to be recognized. Then Central was the next, then Hillside was the next. Then they got to the elementary schools, and they were the lowest thing on the totem pole. If you say you taught school, they would say, "Where?" If you said, "Elementary school," everybody looked down on you. | 2:58 |
| Sonya Ramsey | They were very class conscious there. | 3:44 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yes. Class conscious, and the social life, everything evolved around that. And if you worked at the college, you only associated with college people. High school, the same thing. Hillside was an institution itself. If you worked there, you just work with Hillside. You part of the Hillside people. But the elementary school, you had to be part all the elementary teacher people. And beyond that, I don't know what happened that because I was low on the totem pole as you can get socially, because I work at the elementary school. They don't invite you to nothing. You don't get invited to no parties, no dances, no nothing. | 3:49 |
| Sonya Ramsey | While you were at Central, did you participate in any activities outside of your schoolwork? Any clubs or organizations? | 4:25 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, I was in the band. I played in the band. I was in the band. I played the violin and the cello. They had, somewhat, a school orchestra. And I was in the choir. And I traveled all over. That's where you travel all over the country. We went to New York City, to Harlem, to you name it. And then traveled all up to Connecticut. | 4:37 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did you travel? | 4:59 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | By that charter bus. And at that time, you couldn't stay in nobody's hotel. Of course, when you got to New York City you could stay there. What's the name of that place? Theresa? | 4:59 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Theresa Hotel. | 5:10 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Theresa Hotel. But other than that, you stayed in people's homes from all over the states. That's the way we traveled, by charter bus. And you go into the city, you went to the church. And then when you got to church, the people who you were assigned to stay with would come and pick you up and take you to their house. | 5:11 |
| Sonya Ramsey | I was going to ask that. Okay. That's how you found places. | 5:25 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | What about your experience at Duke University? Didn't you take some— | 5:27 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Oh, yeah. That was when I was teaching there. | 5:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | I'll get to that as I go. I'm going to get to you next. I wanted to ask, did you join any fraternities or other organizations? | 5:34 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No, I didn't join the Omegas at that time because you had to have lots of money and you had to have a real high grade average. And I had neither one of them. That's why I was determined, when I finished college, I was going to be an Omega man, and I was going to have what everybody else had, and I was going to have more than what they had. We going to show you up or you did so you can go back and tell them, "We did it." This house, it topped all of them. I've been to visits a lot of people, doctors who were in my class, who were living good but they're not touching me. | 5:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | I think so. I wanted to ask why you selected Omegas. What made them different than the other fraternities? | 6:23 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Oh, they were the party boys. All the women look up to the cues. They still do. They love a cue man. I don't know what it is. They just love them. So you go to town now—Because I'm glad I did join because you could go in any town and tell everybody you an Omega man and boy, the red carpets rolled out for you. And that's the way it is right now. Friendship. That friendship is essential. | 6:31 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask, what was your experience like at Livingstone? | 7:01 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I had a very good experience at Livingstone. I majored in business education and I was good at it. | 7:04 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What did you want to do? What was your career aspiration? | 7:17 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | To be a teacher. I always wanted to be a teacher from when I was a very young child. And so I went through it without any difficulty. But now I can tell you about an experience I had the first day I went there. My daddy had told me, he said, "Go over to Livingstone and register." Well, I had finished high school when I was 16 years old. I didn't know anything about college. I didn't know anything about a major or anything yet. | 7:21 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | So I went over there and got in the line. And when I was about the third person away from the desk, I saw that they were paying money. You see, I didn't realize. So I got out of the line, went home crying and told my dad, I said, "You have to pay money to go to college." But he knew the registrar. He said, "You go back over there and register. I will call the lady and tell them that I'll pay the money eventually." But he didn't say eventually, but that's what he meant. He meant she would understand. You register and I'll make arrangements to pay the bill. | 7:49 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you stay on campus or at home? | 8:27 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | No, I stayed at home. | 8:29 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What kind of activities did you participate in? | 8:31 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, I participated in basketball. And I joined a sorority. I joined the Zeta Phi Beta sorority when I was a sophomore. At that time, I didn't know anything about sororities either. But one of the ladies in the community had gotten to somebody on campus and told her, she said, "I want you to contact these five girls." They were my friends and all of us went into the Zeta Phi Beta sorority. | 8:33 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Was your pledge process an intense process? | 9:05 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Oh, yes. It was intense at that time. It was extremely intense at that time because you could do hazing and all of that then that you can't do now. | 9:09 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How many people were on your line? | 9:18 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Oh, I think we had about seven. | 9:22 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. After you were a member, how did you go about selecting members? What qualifications did you select for? | 9:25 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, qualifications. Top average, extremely high average. Good character, leadership ability, and let me see—Scholarship, leadership, service. | 9:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What made the Betas stand out from the other sororities? | 9:51 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, now they were not the partying kind. They were not the kind of partying kind. Finding one's womanhood is what we stressed. | 9:54 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were you in any other organizations aside from sorority? | 10:06 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | My goodness, that was back there in 1953. The business education club. And I don't know about Spanish club. Do we have a Spanish club? | 10:11 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | We didn't have a Spanish club. We both took Spanish though. | 10:27 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That was the main thing I guess. But I did manage to graduate first in my class. | 10:33 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh good, great. You did do well. Okay. | 10:43 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yes. And from there I went on to work, and to Columbia University of New York. | 10:45 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I want to ask you about Columbia, but how did you get your first teaching job or your first job? | 10:52 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, the way—Well, I want to back up a little bit. While I was at Livingstone, I did some teaching. I taught juniors and seniors when I was a senior for my business—In the business department. And they had promised that they would give me a job in the business department if I didn't get a job right away. But by being first in my class, the information about me was put in The Crisis magazine and it went all over the United States. | 11:01 |
| Sonya Ramsey | That's the end of the late fifties? | 11:36 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Uh-huh. And then a principal in the eastern part of North Carolina read it and wrote me and sent me an application to apply to his school. Because the school was way down in the country. Wise, North Carolina, if you've ever heard of it, near Henderson and Norlina. But I was glad to get that application. I filled it in, and went for an interview, and that's how I got my first job. | 11:40 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were you nervous about leaving home? | 12:03 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | No, I figured at that time it was—I was, what? About 19? | 12:05 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You were ready to go. | 12:09 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I figured it was time for me to travel around and see something that was going on in the world. And by being a Taurus, I didn't mind going to the country. | 12:15 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. Dr. Davis, could you describe your first job? | 12:24 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, my first job was, after I finished North Carolina College, everybody needed somebody—Everybody wanted me to come work at their school. Well, the band teacher recommended me, the band teacher at the high school recommended me to work in the school system. So I got an application and then I had to go and see the principal. At that time, principal did a lot of hiring. Didn't he? | 12:30 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Principal did the hiring. | 12:54 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I went to the principal's house. He was going to shop and he said, "Come on, ride with me." So I went with him and we shopped. We got back. | 12:55 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And had the interview now. | 13:04 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No, I had no interview. He bought his groceries and then we took the groceries in the house and then he said, "I'm going to wash the car." I went out and helped him wash the car. And then he says after he finished that he said, "I think my grass needs to be cut." By that time, another teacher drove up. He got the lawnmower and cut the man's yard. And after that, after he finished cutting the yard, wash the car, and everything, then we went back his family room, sit down and talked a little bit. And he says, "Davis, go on down to the superintendent's office and tell them I'll hire you." That's how I got my job. "I'm going to hire you. Go down there and tell him I'm going to hire you." | 13:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You never had an interview. | 13:47 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | All that taking in the groceries, that was the interview. See if this man would work. | 13:49 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | See what kind of person I was, I guess. Or will I follow instructions or would you—I guess, all of that, that was probably the best interview you could have. | 13:57 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He was watching every step. | 14:03 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, I carried his groceries and I was patient while he picked out whatever he wanted to pick out at the grocery store. And he washed his car. We washed the car together and then this other man drove up and cut his grass. So I guess maybe that was an interview by him. | 14:04 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | But I'd like to tell you something about between elementary school, high school, and college. The way I have to get a lot of my money for my books and things. When I was 13, I started working in a laundry up in Catskills Mountain for the Jews. And I worked up there every summer from the time I was 13 until I finished college. | 14:23 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did you go about getting that job? | 14:46 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, there were some people from Salisbury who had been going up there, some adults. And I don't know how they found out about this man needing some workers because jobs were hard to get. You didn't have Burger King and all of that to get your money. So I was very tall, well, as tall as I am now. And they thought I was older, because you were supposed to be 18 years old. But I went up there with my mother the first time, and then the next time she sent me with some of her friends. And then when I got to be 16, some of my 16 year old friends, we went together under the guidance of another adult. We all stayed in the same room. They provided the rooms for us and the building, because we were working for a laundry that was doing hotel for all these rich White people that would come to the Catskills. | 14:48 |
| Sonya Ramsey | That's a vacation area? | 15:55 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yes, a vacation area. | 15:56 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What was that experience like being in the Catskills? Did you get to have a social life there? | 15:58 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, yes, with the people that were working there, a lot of them came up from Beaufort, South Carolina, places like that. And now, that was the first time that we were able to go, what we call down to the village, and be served in a restaurant where you could get your hamburger. Of course, they serve kosher pickles, kosher kind of meats, and stuff like that on a sandwich, where we could go in without being—Where we were accepted. | 16:03 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You said you worked for Jewish people. Was it a Jewish kind of resort? | 16:34 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah, Jewish— | 16:37 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Jewish owned hotel? | 16:39 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Jewish owned business. | 16:41 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 16:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Now, we were treated nice up there by them. | 16:43 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Tell me all. Okay. After your—What happened? I guess we can go on after you first started teaching and then what did you do? What was the next step after that? | 16:47 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well, after I started teaching and I started playing in the orchestra, that's what I was telling you about Duke University. I auditioned to play with the Duke Orchestra and I was accepted, but at that time they told me I could not play in public. I could come and play over on the campus. I could practice with them. And before I could do that, I had to have an interview with the president of college and he asked me, "Is it true that all Black men love White women?" | 17:05 |
| Sonya Ramsey | He did? | 17:31 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | He sure did. And that was way back in the old days, and I told him, "No, that's not true." And he was asking all these stupid questions. But I was surprised that he was asking that kind of question. At that time he was scared of losing his job if I had—Was not allowed to play in public so I could rehearse with them. I could rehearse with them. And just prior to the concert, I'd have to fall out. And I don't think I ever played with—I never did play in public with them. Maybe so at the end of my term in Duke in Durham, but I don't even remember that because it was not impressive if I did play. | 17:35 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Why did you decide to go on and still practice with the orchestra? | 18:17 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well I needed the experience. I did it basically for the experience. While I had taken private lessons all my life, I never had a chance to play with a big group. I did play with a group in Salisbury but not with a big group like that, an orchestra. And that was the first chance I had, so I just did it. And I'm glad I did too, because that gave me a lot of practical information I would not have gotten other way. | 18:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did the other orchestra members treat you? | 18:45 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well, they treat you about the way all orchestras treat people. They don't speak to nobody. | 18:48 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh okay. | 18:52 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | White people don't like White people, even though you think that they do, you think that—You see them on the stage, so you think they love each other. They hate each other's guts. They don't like each other at all because they feel they are in competition. That's what it is. They in competition. Because if you are a first chair, you make the money, or you have the prestige. But if you're back in the back, nobody gives a hoot about you, so that means you trying your best to get this man's job. | 18:55 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | But see, it wasn't that way with me because I wasn't worried about it because I had a job teaching school. A lot of people do that for a living and that's what it is all about. But they don't like each other. They can't stand each other and don't get along with each other. But they make us think that all White people just love each other to death. (laughs) | 19:24 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What was your next step after your first teaching job? | 19:46 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, let's see. After I started teaching in Warren County? Well, I just worked down there. I was the school secretary, the business teacher, and the bookkeeper all at the same time. I had to go down there at least about two weeks before school opened. Started getting all of the— | 19:50 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | She knew who was getting fired at the end of the school year. | 20:16 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And as the secretary, the principal would decide around about March or April who he was going to get rid of. Of course, a lot of those people I was living with in a teacherage because we all lived in a teacherage out there. The principal lived on the school grounds too. His house was beside the school. And we lived in a teacherage and it was a school that went from grades one through 12, and it was called training school at that time. Black schools, a lot of them were called training schools at that time. But it still was just a regular public school. So I worked down there and enjoyed it. Met a lot of young teachers coming in. | 20:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What was it like living in the teacherage? | 21:05 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Oh, it was nice living in the teacherage because at that time we had a cook, a lady who came in, she did the cooking, she kept the general areas, common areas, clean. And we paid $35 a month, a piece. And that was our room, and board, and our food, because we bought our groceries together. And then it paid the maid because we paid her $25 a week, which was big money at that time. She made a hundred dollars a month. Do the math. | 21:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you have a roommate? | 21:49 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah, I had a roommate and got to travel around a great deal because people from all parts of the state—And Washington was not so far away. Richmond, Virginia was about two hours, and Washington DC wasn't so far away. I had some friends from Fayetteville, and we just went home with each other like that. That was our entertainment. But now, even though a teacher up there during the fifties, we did try to go to a movie in South Hill, Virginia, and they wouldn't let us in because they said they didn't have a balcony. | 21:51 |
| Sonya Ramsey | So they didn't admit Blacks at all? | 22:30 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | They did not admit Blacks to their movie. That was before the days of Martin Luther King. What you doing? | 22:33 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | [indistinct 00:22:43] | 22:38 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | (laughs) | 22:38 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. How much do you— | 22:46 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | No, I don't want [indistinct 00:22:48]. (laughs). | 22:47 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. You had mentioned that you went to Columbia University. | 22:47 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Oh, yes. | 22:51 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What time? | 22:52 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I went to Columbia University in the summertime to get my master's degree. | 22:53 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And what was that experience like? | 22:57 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That was a pretty good experience because even at Columbia, a good many of my teachers seemed to have been Jewish, and I didn't have any kind of problems up there. Some of my girlfriends from Salisbury, we went at the same time and stayed in the same dorm, but we generally ate our food in the city. You could go to the restaurants and all then. | 23:00 |
| Sonya Ramsey | So did you stay on the campus? | 23:27 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah, we stayed on the campus. | 23:29 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did you interact with the White students there? | 23:31 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, up there in New York it was fine. Didn't have any problems. | 23:33 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did you select Columbia University over other schools? | 23:43 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, the way I selected Columbia was because I knew the Columbia granted degrees to Black people and a lot of other institutions didn't. Plus, the time of their summer school was convenient. Their schedule was convenient to the schedule, to my working schedule, because they were right kind of dead in the middle of the summertime. Not too far at the beginning, nor at the end. And I could go to school and then get back to work, or leave work and go back to work without any problems. The most segregation that I found—(microphone rustling) | 23:47 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | This is my little grandson. Now, go on back until I get finished. You stop that, Melvise. | 24:29 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Keep 'em in there, Melvise. | 24:39 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | —Was not in Salisbury, not at Columbia. And I worked in Gastonia for a while, not at Gastonia— | 24:39 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Come here, get it, Melvise, come on and get it. | 24:51 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | The most segregation I found was when I got in, started teaching in Charlotte, North Carolina. | 24:52 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | That's what I'm telling you. | 24:58 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Now, the White teachers here were more prejudiced. I found more prejudice right here than I had found anywhere in my lifetime because when I was growing up, my daddy wouldn't let us work for White people. He just—We wouldn't do it. (laughs) | 24:58 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Actually that gets me back to a question I should have asked back then, what did your parents teach you about or tell you about segregation or White people? | 25:20 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, they said that they were mean-spirited people, but they also told us that they were no better than we are. So I didn't ever have that complex about them being able to outdo me in any kind of way. And they had never really stopped me from doing anything because I never had been around them. And the Black people that had been around had always pushed me. So I didn't feel that— | 25:27 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well, my parents didn't tell us anything about them per se, other than, they instilled in front of us our own worth as a person, and we had the same rights as anybody else. But they didn't talk about them. They kept telling us the positive things about us. So when I got around White people, it didn't bother me at all because I felt that I was equal or better than. And that's been my philosophy all along. When we played with these various—I played with various orchestras, we have to be better than they are to get in because they don't let you in. See, we got to audition like they do, but they make us do more than they require of White people. | 25:59 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Because he and one of his friends integrated the Charlotte Center here in Charlotte. He played with the Charlotte Center for how long? | 26:43 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | 13 to 14 years. But we had to be better than they were to stay there. And that's the way it's always been for us. So I had no problem dealing with White people because I've always had to be better, and I guess that's the way it is. | 26:51 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And then he played with the Savannah Symphony, the Hickory Symphony, the Salisbury symphony. | 27:05 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I played all around, I played out. | 27:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What was the reaction of the Black community to playing in a symphony, that's usually different than most other types of music? | 27:18 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | They jealous of you. Jealous. They hate your guts. | 27:27 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | They don't accept Black people playing in symphony so much. Some of them do and some of them— | 27:28 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | They just don't like—They don't like—They say they don't like symphonies. They think that you are better than they are. You think you bigger than they are because that's why you're getting away from your roots. | 27:36 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | They think you're getting away from your roots anytime you're not— | 27:44 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | You're trying to be White. That's one of the main—That's what they used to say. I don't know what to say now, but I don't worry about what they say. But they're jealous of you and they talk negative about you to your face, behind your back. But doesn't bother me now because I play now and I get paid for it. | 27:47 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah, he just played for a wedding. | 28:07 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. | 28:10 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Saturday. They have a trio. | 28:10 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | And every time we go out, we get 125, $150 for two hours playing. | 28:14 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Each person. | 28:19 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Each person. I don't care what they say. | 28:20 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Wanted ask you about, how long did you teach in Durham and did you go straight from Durham to Charlotte? | 28:27 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I stayed in Durham from the time I started in '54 to '60, I think it must have been '60 or '61, somewhere like that. Then I left. Directly, I came to Charlotte and taught here. | 28:32 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | But you had somebody to help you get here? | 28:44 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. The same guy she was talking about. | 28:47 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | His preacher's— | 28:49 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No, I didn't get here through her. | 28:49 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Oh, you didn't get here through her? | 28:49 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No. Ms. Wyatt. I didn't get back out here through Sellers. Sellers was working here, and the lady here wanted somebody, and she asked Sellers. Sellers told her about me and they sent the application to me and I came on down and filled out and got the job here. So I spent all my years like she did, teaching in North Carolina. So that meant that we could retire early and not have to work all these years. Most people are still working or they're just finishing. | 28:51 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I retired 10 years ago. He retired in— | 29:24 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Seven years or eight years ago. | 29:29 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did Charlotte differ from Durham? | 29:32 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well, Charlotte, when I got here they could care less about color. They accepted you for who you are. I felt, when I left Durham, I been living up there for seven years. I just felt free when I got here, for some reason. This must've been home for me because I've been here ever since. I didn't have to worry about trying to be the best because there's a whole lot of people here who was good. And then you'd have to worry about friends because everybody was friends here. Somehow or another, all the band teachers were—Because this a much larger place. In Durham, you had two or three band teachers and everybody else. Here in Charlotte, when I got here, how many teachers would you say? | 29:34 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | A lot of teachers. | 30:23 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | 35 or 40 band teachers and everybody else. So it was not like in—Six, I think at the one time, let's see, Blondell Sellers. | 30:25 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You don't have to name them, honey. You're on tape. | 30:34 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well, some people up here. I was just trying to think and tell you how many band teachers live in this community when I came here. We all built a house. Well, don't name them, but all of us came here and built the house the same time. All of those was friends and we all built in the same neighborhood. That meant that you had your own a group of friends right around you all the time. | 30:36 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What was the name of this neighborhood that you all moved into? | 30:54 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Here? | 30:54 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | This one. Hyde Park. | 30:54 |
| Sonya Ramsey | When you first arrived in Charlotte, what neighborhood did you move to? | 30:54 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well, we all lived in Double—What was that? | 30:55 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Double Oaks. | 31:08 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Double Oaks Apartments. That was your stepping stone. You got an apartment downtown and you start building a house [indistinct 00:31:18]. | 31:08 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What neighborhood was Double Oaks? | 31:18 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | That was downtown. That was— | 31:21 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | On Statesville Road. | 31:26 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | There wasn't no ghetto, but that's all the teachers— | 31:26 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Wasn't a ghetto then. | 31:27 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No, all the teachers— | 31:28 |
| Sonya Ramsey | McCrorey Heights? | 31:30 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Uh-uh. | 31:31 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That's a good community, McCrorey Heights. | 31:33 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | McCrorey Heights was big shot. | 31:35 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Double Oaks was just apartments. | 31:35 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | It was a whole lot of apartments. | 31:36 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Built on a garbage dump. | 31:40 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. Where everybody who was somebody lived there. They don't care what they say. | 31:41 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | They didn't have apartments in all for Black teachers. | 31:45 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | The only place that you could live was Double Oaks. And they had a section there for teachers. They had a section for doctors, a section for whoever. You know what I'm saying? They kind of grouped you there. It wasn't necessarily segregated, but he just kept this area of Statesville Avenue—Statesville Avenue over to Newland Road was kind of reserved for teachers, everybody that taught school. | 31:46 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | But that was about the only place the teacher could live unless you lived in a home with someone. I've been through that too. | 32:14 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | And that was nice because everybody around you, the teachers, we were all striving to move, to build a house somewhere. | 32:21 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | This telephone keep ringing. | 32:26 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | And some of us came here and some went to University Park, that was just being developed there, and those who had lots of money moved to McCrorey Heights. | 32:28 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. So what was the first school you started teaching at in Charlotte? | 32:38 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | When I came here? It was, I believe it was Biddleville. They tore that school down years and years ago. That was one of the first schools I worked in here. And after that, they kept transferring—Band teachers, you had to just move wherever they wanted a band teacher, or orchestra teacher. I taught both. So then Yorkwood High School, I worked there for a while. | 32:54 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Was that in the county? | 33:20 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, that was the county then. And you name it, I worked there. | 33:20 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever work at Second Ward? | 33:23 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No, that was city. That was the elite. | 33:25 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. You worked mostly in the county schools? | 33:28 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, well that was the county schools. Well, but what happened though, in the sixties, they started combining the schools, making one school system. And I worked—It was like that. I was in a transition period. It was county for a while, but then now everything changed over to city, even back in those days. | 33:31 |
| Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask you, when did you first move to Charlotte? Well, how long—You said you taught at Gastonia and then did you— | 33:53 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I taught in Gastonia, and I moved to Charlotte in 1966 when I married him. | 34:00 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. You were a latecomer. Okay. What was Gastonia? Was that a small town? | 34:04 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah. Gastonia is a small town. It's about what? 25 miles? | 34:12 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | It's a mill town. They make fabrics and stuff like that. | 34:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And what grade did you teach? | 34:22 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I taught high school. | 34:23 |
| Sonya Ramsey | High school. Okay. | 34:24 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I taught high school in Gastonia. I enjoyed living in Gastonia. I enjoyed working in Gastonia. | 34:26 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Why was that? Why was that? | 34:36 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, because the teachers from the elementary school and from the high school, you got a lot of young friends together. We just did a lot of things and just enjoyed, and we had a good principal. | 34:37 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were you involved in any social organizations or other activities outside from your actual teaching? | 34:51 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | None other than the sorority. The church and sorority. | 34:56 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. So now that you're in Charlotte, when did you join Omegas? When you were in Durham? | 34:56 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Oh, when I got to Charlotte I joined the graduate chapter over 1969 or '70. | 35:09 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Prior to that, when did you move to—Did you move here in 1966 also? | 35:16 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No, I came here in 1961. I can't be exact, I believe it was '61. | 35:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were you involved in any other organizations when you first got to Charlotte or anything like that? | 35:34 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No. Well, at that time, because I think everybody joined NAACP. I don't guess you talk about that. Well yeah, everybody was a member of NAACP, even though we were teachers, you couldn't say anything about it. That's why we didn't say anything about it prior to now because at that time if they had known that you were a member of NAACP, you probably wouldn't have got the job. So that was one of the undercover organizations you belonged to but you never talked about. | 35:41 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, we always belonged to the teachers organizations. | 36:08 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, teacher organizations. | 36:09 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You talking about like that? | 36:09 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What were some of the goals of the teaching organizations that you belonged? | 36:13 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well, basically I was trying to keep you from getting fired. | 36:16 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Keep you with a job. I worked in Teachers Association and I was president of the Association of Classroom Teachers for a while. | 36:20 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | See, the system, the superintendent, fire Black teachers for any reason. And this teacher organization kept you from getting fired or they would take you to court. And that's what Junior Chambers was doing back in those days. | 36:27 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Teachers Association. | 36:40 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | They would take the school system to court and to fight for you. And that's really what it was all about, to make sure you had a job. | 36:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I was secretary for the State Teachers Association at one time, so we did all our running around with the Teachers Association. | 36:51 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | They would dump you for any reason, any reason. You had to go. | 36:59 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | They still doing it. | 36:59 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What role did the principal have as a kind in between the teacher and the superintendent? | 37:06 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | He knew what—They don't have a role other than to help the superintendent get you fired. | 37:10 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I always had good relationships with all my principals. | 37:19 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Keep the schools, keep the schools, or keep the peace in the schools. Really, that's what I see them doing. Keeping the peace in the school and reporting to the superintendent. That's what they used to do. I don't know what they do now. | 37:21 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | But you see, a Black person always has to have sense enough to watch his back. | 37:33 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Sure better watch about you. | 37:36 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And you have to know what to do when. Really, you just got to have good common sense in order to keep your job. There's always somebody out there gunning for you, even today. | 37:38 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | That's right now we're talking about. The principals trying to get rid of old teachers to like the White man. And that's bad. I shouldn't be telling you this, but that's the truth. | 37:48 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You both moved together in 1966 and things like that. Where did you live after you met? What was your wedding like? | 37:56 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Oh, our wedding? All right. Well, you see his wife had passed and he had started building this house. And then before we got married, the house was complete. The original house was complete, so when we got married, we moved right on into this house and just start from there. He already had two children. We had 14 people to spend a night with us. On our wedding night, all of my sisters, and brothers, and his, and cousins, and friends, and all that stuff. And I had to get up and cook breakfast for 12 people that next day. And after that I said, "Look, let's leave here because I'm not cooking dinner." | 38:10 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you have a honeymoon or anything like that? | 38:57 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | No. | 38:59 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 38:59 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | We just moved into this house and started living. We've been places since. Going to the Bahamas [crosstalk 00:39:08]— | 39:01 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I stayed here— | 39:08 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | —and stuff like that. He had lived in this house a year before I— | 39:08 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I don't want her to think that my wife died the day I was married. | 39:12 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | No— | 39:16 |
| Sonya Ramsey | No, no. | 39:16 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I stayed a year. | 39:16 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | She died in '60 what? Four? | 39:16 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I stayed here by myself a year. And we were still dating, of course. | 39:22 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You weren't by yourself, you had two children. | 39:28 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well, I mean, that's still by myself. | 39:28 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He kept his two children. He raised his two children in that interim period. Took care of them. | 39:28 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Was Hyde Park like it is now? | 39:37 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No. This was country— | 39:40 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What did it look like then? | 39:40 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Wasn't nothing back here but one house. So two houses, this house and one right across the street. And it was— | 39:40 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And up on Crestview. | 39:46 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | It was swamp land. This was swamps on this side. Swamps and woods, dirt street out front, and one or two houses up on the front street. And that was it. That was Hyde Park. | 39:48 |
| Sonya Ramsey | This is such a beautiful home. How did you get the design to build it? Why did you decide to live here and things like that? | 40:00 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He designed it. | 40:06 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I designed the house. | 40:06 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He designed the house. | 40:06 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | The first house was not like this. | 40:06 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Because it burned down in '88. The first house. | 40:12 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | And then we built on the same foundation and I changed the design. In fact, it was a team of us that changed the design. She was one of them, her sister, and the guy from Washington DC, she was telling about the house and how to make them fancy, and this is what we did here. The same foundation. We lived in the same house for 25 years. | 40:15 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | First house was a ranch. | 40:48 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | That's the first house. | 40:49 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | This was a picture of the article that was in the paper about the first house, and then it burned down in 1988 while we were in Miami, Florida. And this is what they wrote about it burning down, and the second house. You can look at all of that later if you want to. | 40:49 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Made the press. Okay. No wonder you said that. You're right about your house. Okay. I wanted to ask, did you vote while you were in Charlotte, and did you ever have problems voting? Did Blacks in Charlotte ever have problems voting? | 41:10 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No. We voted in every election that came along. | 41:15 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That's right. We've always voted. | 41:18 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Always voted. I've never known anybody in Charlotte to have a problem. Not in Charlotte, per se. Maybe some of these counties around Charlotte, they might have a problem, but we had no problems. | 41:25 |
| Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask you, I guess I'm almost finished with my questions. How do you think your children's education is different from your—Has differed from your educational experience? | 41:35 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well, they differ because they have—Basically, it was all White teachers when they were coming along, and we had no White teachers other than graduate school, so that makes a difference right there. | 41:47 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | We did send our children to Black— | 41:57 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Colleges. | 42:00 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | —Colleges. But even so they had White teachers. Some were White teachers. | 42:01 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I think that was the biggest difference. I think you could tell my daughter gets a lot of spark uplifting her mother, and that's because that's the way she is. But you try to instill in your children that because they're not going to get that in school. They're not going to get that in what—They used to. We've got it. | 42:06 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah, we got it. | 42:30 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What do you think were some of the positives and some of the negatives of integration? | 42:31 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | The negative, I guess you say that the Black kids picked up all the bad habits from White kids. All the bad habits. And the positive— | 42:37 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | To got out of school. | 42:45 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | The positive things. Let's see, what could you say positive about? Well they got a chance to— | 42:46 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, they have opportunity. They have the same opportunity to learn. | 42:53 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | That's positive. | 42:54 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | They have the equipment, the materials, they have the computers and the books. Our books might have been 10 years old when we were coming along, but we learned whatever was in those 10 year old books. And the teachers gave you a lot of supplementary material. And then even our teachers even read to us when we were in school in the seventh, and we had a story hour where they told a story about Heidi and Sunnybrook farm. No, Rebecca was on Sunnybrook farm, wasn't she? | 42:59 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. But the thing that you look at, you wonder why Black people, Black children would pick up the bad habits from White people, and few would pick up the good habits. Now they have good habits. A lot of them have real good habits like studying and reading. And Black kids, at one time, didn't like to read, and some of them still don't read anything. But that was one of the things they could have picked up from White people, but they didn't. | 43:31 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, Dr. Davis, Dr., how did you get to be Dr. Davis, to be a doctor? | 43:59 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Oh, well, first of all, I went to North Carolina Central, Appalachian State, and Northwest University. And I was building this house at the same time, and I was going to graduate school, I guess you call it. I was going to graduate school, and then I was working with the church here and we were doing outstanding music like The Brahms Requiem. | 44:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What church was this? | 44:36 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | First Baptist Church. And I was one of the first people to bring a symphony orchestra in with the church choir. We were doing oratorios and things like this that you don't find in Black churches. You find them in Catholic churches. And we were doing the Handel's Messiah. And then this church school saw what we were doing here and they gave me the honorary doctorate, which took the pressure off of me showing up. | 44:38 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Which school here? | 45:03 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | This school was called the Teamer School of Religion. And they gave me the honorary doctorate. And so what I did then, I was building a house anyway, and I had already gotten a master's degree and she—Because she had her masters way before that time, and so she said, "Well, my time is up now. It's time for our children to go to college." We had to send two to college, so I couldn't go anymore. It would cost a precious penny to send those two to college. And this is how I got to be Doc Davis. And this is why I stopped working on an earned doctorate because it was their time to go to school. I was going down to Florida State. | 45:06 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Let's see. How did you come to join First Baptist Church? | 45:49 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well, when I got to Charlotte, I was looking for a church home. I was a member of Union Baptist in Durham, North Carolina. When I got here, I was looking for a church home and First Baptist was the one that was reminding me of my hometown church in Salisbury. Of all the churches I visited, First Baptist— | 45:56 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Church at my church anyway. | 46:31 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah, wasn't a lot of difference in the ceremony part of it, for sure. | 46:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Is there anything else that you'd like to add that I didn't get to ask? | 46:39 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No, I think we covered it all. | 46:43 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I'd like to tell you about one experience that I had. | 46:43 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 46:45 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Since we are talking about Blacks and White integration, etc. When they started— | 46:46 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | The time of the Freedom Rides, my sister and I decided to take a trip to California to see our brother who was, at that time, in the Air Force. | 0:01 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 0:11 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And we decided to ride the bus. we picked a seat on the bus in Salisbury, North Carolina about five seats from the front, middle way of the bus, because we didn't want to ride the wheels that far. And we got as far as Columbus, Mississippi where they decided to change drivers. A new driver got on the bus and got off. The next thing we knew, there were two policemen on the bus, both with two guns, a tall one and a short one, and told us to move and go back to the back of the bus. | 0:13 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, one time prior to that, I had been made to move when I was traveling from Baltimore to Salisbury, so that a lady could sit down and hold her baby. Well, you had empty seats on the bus, but they made me move and let this Black lady sit down beside me and she had to move her little boy, and she had to hold him. Now, he was about six or seven, a heavy child. At that time, I was a teenager then. At that time, I was determined I wasn't going to move anymore, so when these two policemen got on that bus and told me and my sister to move to the back of the bus and half of the bus empty, I just blessed them out. I told them I wasn't moving anywhere. | 0:55 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 1:52 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I probably was half crazy because realizing what could have happened after it all happened, I wasn't moving. At that time, President Kennedy was in office. I started quoting a lot of stuff about President Kennedy and this, that, and the other. They finally thought that we had been sent. They thought we had been sent to ride a bus. They thought that we were Freedom Riders. | 1:54 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 2:23 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | We were not, we were just taking a trip to California. | 2:24 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 2:28 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And so, we refused to move, and they said "Well, come on. We will get them off the bus." But as God would have it, they didn't come back, and we stayed in that place until we got to Dallas, Texas and had to change buses. That was a harrowing experience because the next stop was Jackson, Mississippi. | 2:28 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 2:48 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And nowhere did we get off of the bus and try to go inside because we knew it was rough being in the South. | 2:49 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | [Indistinct 00:02:56] | 2:56 |
| Sonya Ramsey | That's a long trip. What did you do for food? | 2:56 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Oh, yeah. We had all kind of food. We had plums, we had a great big duffle bag full of all kind of stuff to eat. We just had it, just that is what we used because we didn't get out to go to get water or anything. That's how we had planned it from the time we left home, not to get off and try to go and get food and all that kind of stuff. Now, when you got to Dallas, of course you could get off and go then, but South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, they said no. | 3:02 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What did you have to do when you had to use the restroom? | 3:35 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, just go to the back of the bus. | 3:37 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | They have Black and White. | 3:40 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Went to the back of the bus. They had a restroom on the bus. | 3:41 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. They had Black and White restrooms. | 3:45 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That's the worst experience that I have ever had with— | 3:47 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Black and White water fountains. I've seen some of that along this [Indistinct 00:03:53]. | 3:49 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Oh, yeah. | 3:54 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | We experienced all that. White water and Black water. | 3:54 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Experienced that water fountain stuff. | 3:57 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever break the rules? | 3:59 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah. | 3:59 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Always. We drank White water plenty of times. | 3:59 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever get in trouble for that? | 4:06 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | No. | 4:07 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No. We would have somebody watching. | 4:07 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You drink and you keep moving. | 4:10 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh. | 4:11 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | You'd be drinking, and somebody would be watching for you. | 4:11 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | But now I did have an experience in Warren County one time, when the Coca-Cola machines first came out, and they did not allow Black people to put a dime in there to get a Coke out because they said White only on the machine. | 4:14 |
| Sonya Ramsey | I hear something new every day. | 4:29 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Okay, it's pretty short now, we've been there two hours. | 4:29 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Goodness. Okay. Did you have anything else? | 4:40 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No, that was is. | 4:45 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Let me see. I'll just leave that on the form. The next part of the interview is biographical data forms, and you mentioned a lot of things during the interview, but this just likes to go down and put some basic things on paper. | 4:47 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Okay. | 4:58 |
| Sonya Ramsey | We ask some dates. I know it's hard for me to remember dates sometimes. | 4:58 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Okay. | 5:01 |
| Sonya Ramsey | So whatever you remember is fine and things like that. | 5:01 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | All right. | 5:04 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And I'm going to do both of you at the same time, so I'll alternate. | 5:04 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah. | 5:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Last name's Davis. Dr. Davis, what is your middle name? | 5:10 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Craig, C-R-A-I-G. | 5:14 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. Did you say G-R? | 5:19 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | C-R-A-I-G. | 5:19 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, Craig. Okay. | 5:21 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Craig. | 5:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Samuel is your first name? Okay. Okay. Okay. Your middle name? | 5:24 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Ormond. That's my maiden name. | 5:33 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. How do you spell that? | 5:35 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | O-R-M-O-N-D. | 5:36 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Your middle name? | 5:40 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | My middle name too? | 5:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm (Affirmative). They ask for both. | 5:43 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Huh? | 5:43 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Yeah, they ask for both. | 5:45 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Laverne. | 5:47 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And your first name? | 5:48 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Maxine. | 5:52 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. I have your address and your phone number. | 5:55 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Okay. | 5:57 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And for the record, would you like to be known as Maxine Ormond? | 5:57 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Maxine Ormond Davis. | 6:01 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. Would you like Dr. Samuel G. Davis? | 6:13 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | C. | 6:15 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I'm | 6:15 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | It's all right. | 6:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Your date of birth? | 6:31 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | July 29, 1932. | 6:33 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. In Salisbury, North Carolina? | 6:34 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yes, Salisbury. | 6:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. Mrs. Davis, your date of birth? | 6:47 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | May 5, 1933. During the time when they did not have doctors, they had midwives. And they didn't allow Black people to go to the hospital. | 6:49 |
| Sonya Ramsey | That's common experience. | 7:00 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That's right. | 7:09 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. I'll fill out spouses. | 7:09 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I was born in the back room. | 7:10 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You talk— | 7:14 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | All of my sisters were born in the back room. | 7:15 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I'll go back and fill that in. Okay. And Dr. Davis, your mother's first name? | 7:23 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Maude, M-A-U-D-E. | 7:27 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. Her middle name? | 7:31 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | She didn't have a middle name. | 7:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Her last name's Davis. What was her maiden name? | 7:32 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Craig. | 7:39 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. And your mother's first name? | 7:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | It was Willie. | 7:44 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Her middle name? | 7:48 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Nicola Outerbridge Ormond. | 7:49 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 7:49 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Outerbridge. O-U-T-E-R-B-R-I-D-G-E. | 7:55 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. Your mother's date of birth? | 8:03 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | You got me on that. Come back to that. | 8:04 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Is she still living? | 8:04 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No, she passed away. | 8:04 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Do you remember the year she passed away? | 8:17 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | 1981. | 8:18 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, 1981. | 8:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And her place of birth? | 8:22 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Rowan County. | 8:24 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And your mother's date of birth? | 8:29 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | October 4th, 1902. | 8:33 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And is she still living? | 8:35 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | No, she died in 1985. | 8:39 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And where was she born? | 8:46 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Williamston, North Carolina. | 8:48 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And your mother was a homemaker? | 8:54 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Mm-hmm. (Affirmative). | 8:57 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And your mother was a homemaker? | 9:02 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Mm-hmm. (Affirmative). | 9:02 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 9:02 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | She spent more years doing that than she did working. | 9:03 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And your father's first name? | 9:08 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Harrison. | 9:11 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And his middle name? | 9:12 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Pete. | 9:15 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And his date of birth? | 9:15 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | You got me on that one, too. He died when I was a teenager. | 9:23 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 9:29 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I was 11 or 12. | 9:29 |
| Sonya Ramsey | During the 1940s. | 9:29 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. Yeah, he died in the '40s. | 9:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And where was he born? | 9:47 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I think in Badin, New London, that area, I don't know which one necessarily he'd call home. | 9:47 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And you said he worked for— | 9:48 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Hardware. | 9:49 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Hardware store. Okay. Okay. And your father's first name? | 9:49 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Jesse. | 9:49 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. | 10:01 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Thomas Ormond. | 10:08 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And his date of birth? | 10:09 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | October 4th. I'm trying to see. I think it was 1896. | 10:16 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And— | 10:37 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Either 1896 or 1893. I'd have to check that. I think it was '96. | 10:44 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And is he still living? | 10:45 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | No, he died in 1965. | 10:45 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 10:45 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Get that for me. | 10:45 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Huh? | 10:45 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And what else? | 10:45 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And where was he from? | 10:45 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Snow Hill, North Carolina. That's where he was born. He lived in Williamston. | 10:46 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And his occupation? He was a— | 10:52 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Well, he was a teacher, a postal clerk. | 10:57 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 10:57 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And a house renter. (laughs) | 10:58 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. It's amazing all the different careers people had then. | 11:01 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah, and a painter too. | 11:01 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 11:01 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He did a lot of that. | 11:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. On to sisters and brothers. I guess, Doc would be first. Your oldest sibling, their full name? | 11:15 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Beatrice Grant. | 11:21 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Beatrice Davis Grant. | 11:21 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I'm sorry. Beatrice Davis Grant. | 11:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And do you remember her birth date? | 11:21 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No. | 11:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Is she still living? | 11:21 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yes. | 11:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And where was she born? | 11:21 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Rowan County. | 11:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Rowan, okay. Okay. How many years older is she than you? | 11:21 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | She's 70. | 11:21 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | She's 70 this year. | 11:35 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | She's '61. I think she's 11 years older than I am. | 11:35 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I'll have to figure that out. | 11:35 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | She was born March the 2nd. | 11:35 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. That's no problem. | 11:35 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And she was 70 this year. | 11:35 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. And the next one? | 11:35 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Virginia Davis Worthy. | 12:06 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. Do you know her birth date? | 12:07 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Uh-uh. (Negative). | 12:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How many years older is she? | 12:07 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I don't know. She's 68 or 69, so— | 12:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. That's fine. Was she also born in Rowan County? | 12:07 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yes. | 12:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Were all your brothers and sisters born— | 12:07 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yes, all of them. | 12:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I will keep that. | 12:07 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. | 12:46 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. The next one? | 12:46 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Harrison P—Harrison President Davis. | 12:46 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Oh, that's great. | 12:46 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | For president. | 12:46 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Do you know his birth date? | 12:46 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Uh-uh. (Negative). | 12:46 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And how old is he? | 12:46 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | He would be 65, 66. He must be 66. | 12:55 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. | 12:57 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | James Andrew Davis. He's 65. He just retired, but I don't know his birth date though. | 13:02 |
| Sonya Ramsey | That's all right. Just the year is fine. Okay. | 13:18 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | And Clarence Alan Davis. He's 62. | 13:41 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. | 13:41 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | And then of course, I'm the last one. | 13:41 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I have you on the form, so okay. And you're the one, two, three, four, five, sixth born. | 13:41 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. | 13:41 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. And now on to your sisters and brothers. | 13:46 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Okay. Living and dead, huh? | 13:48 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm.(Affirmative). | 13:50 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Okay. Othela, O-T-H-E-L-A. | 13:50 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 13:53 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Ormond Simongton. | 13:53 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. How do you spell that? | 13:58 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | S-I-M-O-N-G-T-O-N. | 13:58 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 13:58 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Let's see. She passed last year. | 14:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 14:09 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And she was 68 when she passed. | 14:09 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I'll add that. | 14:11 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah, okay. | 14:13 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And was she born in— | 14:15 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Martin County, it's in Williamston, North Carolina. | 14:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. The next one? | 14:20 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Loris Ormon Slade. | 14:26 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. S-L-A-D-E? | 14:26 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | S-L-A-D-E. | 14:26 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 14:32 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And she was 66 this year. | 14:33 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 14:38 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And she was born in Salisbury, North Carolina. | 14:38 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 14:38 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Rowan County. | 14:39 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | On the side of the— | 14:39 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 14:39 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | In Rowan County too, but Salisbury. And I was the next one. You want to skip me, okay. Jesse T. Ormond, Jr. | 14:44 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 14:58 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Let's see now. He was born June 2nd. What year was he born in? Let's see now. He's two years younger than I am, so he's 58. | 14:58 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 15:08 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He's 58. | 15:08 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Born in 1935. | 15:08 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah. I can't never remember those years. | 15:15 |
| Sonya Ramsey | In Salisbury? | 15:18 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Mm-hmm. (Affirmative), Salisbury. | 15:19 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were all your brothers and sisters— | 15:22 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | All of the rest of them. | 15:22 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 15:22 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And Geraldine Ormon Williams. | 15:27 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 15:31 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And she must be 55. She will be 55 June 27th, this year. | 15:39 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. | 15:39 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | [Indistinct 00:15:48]. | 15:39 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Howard. | 15:39 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Howard. How old is Howard? Howard E. Ormond, Howard Edmond Ormond. How old is Howard? Is he 50? | 15:40 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, he's 50 something. | 16:07 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He's 51, because I'm nine years older than him. | 16:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 16:16 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He was born May the 2nd. | 16:16 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 16:18 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I can't remember all these years right now. | 16:19 |
| Sonya Ramsey | That's okay. | 16:21 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I just remember how old they are. | 16:22 |
| Sonya Ramsey | That's fine. We can count that. Any others? Is that it? | 16:24 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | That's it. | 16:28 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 16:28 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That's it. | 16:28 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And you're the third, fourth? | 16:30 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Mm-hmm. (Affirmative). We had one in between that died, but we don't count her and I don't know where she was born. | 16:33 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And I guess we'll go and do children next. So, your children? | 16:40 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Samuel Davis. | 16:43 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 16:44 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Samuel D. Davis. | 16:47 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. And his birth date? | 16:49 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | October the 29th. | 16:53 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | 29th. | 16:54 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | 1953. | 16:54 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And he was born in Charlotte? | 16:54 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. No. | 16:54 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | No, Durham—no, Florida. | 16:54 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No, he was born in Florida. | 16:54 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Born in Florida. He was born in— | 17:09 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Florida. | 17:11 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 17:12 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Florida. | 17:13 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Fort Lauderdale, Florida. | 17:14 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 17:14 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He passed in August— | 17:19 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Kwinia Davis. | 17:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, is he not living? | 17:21 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Uh-uh (Negative). | 17:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 17:34 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He passed August the 11th, 1989. | 17:34 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And the next one. | 17:34 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Kwinia. | 17:34 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | K-W-I-N-I-A. K-W-I-N-I-A. | 17:34 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 17:38 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Davis. | 17:39 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Eure. E-U-R-E. | 17:40 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And her birthday? | 17:43 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | April. | 17:45 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | April the— | 17:46 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | 10th. | 17:46 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | 10th. | 17:46 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 17:48 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | '55. | 17:48 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | 1955. | 17:48 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And is she still living? | 17:48 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yes. | 17:48 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Where was she born? | 17:54 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Durham. | 17:55 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Durham, North Carolina. | 17:55 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. | 17:55 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That's it. | 17:55 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 17:55 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | For children. | 17:55 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And you have grandchildren, I see. | 17:55 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah. | 17:55 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How many grandchildren? | 18:05 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Three. | 18:06 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Three. | 18:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I'll go over that now. Okay. Okay, now it's residential history. I'll put Salisbury first. From yours, Dr. Davis, when did you go to North Carolina, essentially? | 18:07 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | 1950. | 18:35 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And when did you leave Salisbury? | 18:35 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I left Salisbury in 1953. | 18:47 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And next, you lived in Durham. | 18:52 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He never did leave Salisbury. What you mean, leave? I was working out of town, but I was still living at home. | 18:53 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Well, I'll go back and change it. | 18:59 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah, that's when I graduated in college, in '53. I guess that's been on there. | 19:01 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay, about 1950 to—When did you move to Charlotte? | 19:08 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | '60, '61. | 19:13 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Would you like to mention the other places that you lived? | 19:13 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I've been in Durham, but that was the only place I've been. | 19:15 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 19:15 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Durham and Charlotte. | 19:15 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 19:15 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Salisbury, Durham, and Charlotte. | 19:15 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Well, that's home. | 19:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. And you— | 19:32 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Okay. I worked in Wise, North Carolina from '53 to '58. | 19:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 19:32 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And then I worked in Gastonia from '58 to '67. | 19:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And then Charlotte. | 19:32 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Wait a minute. I came to Charlotte in '66. I've got to say until '66. | 19:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Charlotte. | 19:32 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I started living in Charlotte in '66, but I worked one year still in Gastonia. | 19:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay, I'll add that on here. Okay, Charlotte. Okay. And education history. Okay. I'll put North Carolina Central. 1950 to what year did you complete? | 19:32 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | '54. | 20:33 |
| Sonya Ramsey | '54. And with a B-I-B-A— | 20:33 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Mm-hmm (Affirmative). That's a lot. | 20:34 |
| Sonya Ramsey | BA. Okay. In music? | 20:40 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yes. | 20:41 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And then you went to- | 20:44 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Appalachian State. | 20:44 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You went to—where did you go in Evanston. In the North. | 20:44 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I went to Northwestern. | 20:59 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah, Northwestern. In between there. | 20:59 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, in between that. | 20:59 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. And those were about—What year were those? | 20:59 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Let's see. It must have been '55, '56, around there. | 21:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. | 21:27 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | And then Appalachian State. | 21:37 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And that's from— | 21:59 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | When did I start there? | 22:18 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You start what? | 22:18 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Appalachian State? When did I go there? | 22:18 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | It was 1970, right? No, that's when you finished. | 22:18 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I finished in 1970. | 22:18 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You finished in '70. | 22:18 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | It would have been 1960— | 22:18 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | What, four years earlier because you went in the summertime. | 22:18 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. | 22:18 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | What is that? | 22:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, well. | 22:18 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | '70, '69, '68, '67. | 22:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 22:18 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | '67 is right. | 22:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 22:18 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I'll say. | 22:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, was that— | 22:18 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | That's it. | 22:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And then I'll go to Livingstone. Okay. And when did you attend Livingstone? | 22:18 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | 1949 to 1953. | 22:22 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And the degree you received there? | 22:24 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | B, what was it? BS degree. It was a commercial degree at that time, Business Education. | 22:29 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And after that you went to Columbia? | 22:35 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Mm-hmm (Affirmative), Columbia University. It must have been '55 through '58. That last is a degree in Business Education. | 22:45 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. Did you do any further school work? | 22:52 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That's it. Well, nothing—doing certificates in all these different places for business. That's the main one. | 22:58 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Now I go to work history. You were music and orchestra— | 23:07 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, band and orchestra. | 23:11 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 23:13 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I would just say instrumental music. | 23:13 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. And would you like to list some of the schools where you taught? | 23:14 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | So many. | 23:23 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | There's too many of them. | 23:23 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Too many. Okay, I can just put that. And just Durham and Charlotte. How about that? | 23:28 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. | 23:31 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You don't want to name any of them? | 23:41 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Uh-uh (Negative). Too many of them. | 23:41 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. From—Well a long time, from 1950. | 23:41 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. Well, I worked at Whitted Junior High School in Durham. That's where I spent most of my time. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Whitted Junior High School in Durham, and then I would say York Road here, where I spent a lot of time. | 23:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | York Road. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I spent a lot of other places. I think that will give somebody an idea. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 23:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | (doorbell rings) Albemarle, JT, who would— | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Go ahead. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And the dates that you taught in Durham? | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Same. Yeah, that would be the same. That would be 1950—I would say 1955— | 23:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You taught at Little River. | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | First year. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | '55, '56. The first year I didn't even teach. I didn't do anything. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Well, after 1956 to 1961? And then I'll do 1961 to present. | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. When did you retire? | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | '85. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Would you like to mention your other symphony work and things like that? | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, that would be fine. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What's the title? | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I was cellist. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | At the Charlotte Symphony, basically. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Is that Kwinia? | 23:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Uh-uh (Negative). | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And when did you play with the symphony? | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I started playing in—When did I start playing the cello in the symphony? I don't remember when I started. | 23:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Sometime in the 70s. | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | It must have been in the '60s. | 23:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You was playing in the '60s? | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | We started in the '60s. Must have been '63, and I played 14 years after that, so that would have been '70 something. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. And would you like to list any other? | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 23:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You played other— | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | But that was the major one. Charlotte Symphony was the major one. | 23:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He played the Savannah Symphony, the Salisbury— | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Go ahead— | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Modest, modest, modest. | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No, that's not really modest— | 23:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He played all those symphonies. | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | But that doesn't mean I did all that. Go ahead. | 23:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You don't have to date it, but you can put them down. | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Go ahead. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And your work history with business education? | 23:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah. Business education teacher, secretary, and bookkeeper. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 23:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I could tell you the type of all the tests. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. And would you like to list some of the schools? | 23:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | The Warren County Training School. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 23:42 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | There ain't but two, is there? | 23:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | The Warren County Training School. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay, Warren County. | 23:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I worked at Warren County from 1953 to 1958. | 23:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 23:42 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Then I worked at Highland High School then from 1958 to 1966, I believe. | 23:43 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And was that in this county? | 26:45 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Mm-hmm (Affirmative). This county. | 26:48 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. | 26:48 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Then I worked at Ashland High School. That was the first year for integration, Ashland High School. | 26:51 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 26:56 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | From 1966 to '67. | 26:56 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And that's in Charlotte? | 27:00 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Uh-uh (Negative). Gastonia. | 27:03 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Gastonia. | 27:03 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 27:03 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Then I came to Charlotte. | 27:03 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 27:03 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I worked at York Road Junior High School. I had to take one down in order to get in Charlotte. I worked there '67, '68, '69. Must have been '68 to '69. No, '67 to '69. | 27:09 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 27:25 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Then I started working at Garrington High School. That must have been from '69 to '83. | 27:28 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. It gets a little easier now. Okay. Have you ever received any awards or honors or offices that you'd like to mention? | 27:46 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No. | 27:51 |
| Sonya Ramsey | No? Okay. | 27:51 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah. | 27:51 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | No, I— | 27:51 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | He's been— | 27:51 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I don't know. I've been Man of the Year for church. | 27:57 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 27:58 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You've received— | 27:58 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I've received a lot of awards, but I don't think I should put all that stuff down. | 27:58 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 27:58 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | —whatever you think about. | 27:58 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 27:58 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | You received awards— | 27:58 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | The Man of the Year, that's the most important right there. | 28:16 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That's Man of the Year. He got an award for being the choir director. | 28:16 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah. | 28:16 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | For 20 something years at the church. Choir Director for First Baptist Church, he was honored at the 125th anniversary. | 28:25 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 28:30 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | For the choir director. | 28:30 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. okay. Would you like to mention any awards or honors that you won? | 28:31 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I can't even remember. I'd have to see. Let's see. Like I said, I was— | 28:49 |
| Sonya Ramsey | The office you held in the teaching association? | 28:54 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That would be— | 28:55 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Yeah, she was President. | 28:55 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Valedictorian. I don't even know. | 28:55 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | She was President— | 28:55 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I was—wait a minute. | 29:00 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, yeah. You were Valedictorian. | 29:01 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I graduated with highest honors from my college. | 29:01 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. | 29:05 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | They call it Summa Cum Laude. | 29:06 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 29:10 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And I was—You said offices? | 29:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You mentioned— | 29:20 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I was secretary of the North Carolina Teacher's Association. That is the state teacher's association. | 29:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And about what time was this, when you were secretary? | 29:36 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I can tell you it was around about '67. | 29:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 29:43 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Okay. I was the president of the local North Carolina Association of Classroom Teachers. | 29:48 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 30:00 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Now, when was that? That must have been about '76, '77 to '80. Two years, '76, '77, '78. Somewhere between '76 and '78. | 30:00 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. That's fine. | 30:12 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And they gave me some kind of plaque award for that. | 30:12 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Would you like to— | 30:21 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I have received—a social organization, like supporter of the year. | 30:29 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 30:31 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That's an international organization. | 30:34 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 30:38 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I was president of that organization for two years, and I received an award for that. | 30:38 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What's the name of the organization? | 30:47 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | [indistinct 00:30:47]. | 30:47 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What kind of activities do they do? | 30:47 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Huh? | 30:48 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What kind of activities do they do? | 30:48 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Mostly social activities where they help children. They help children. Well, it's mostly a big part of that organization. | 30:48 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What time period were you a member of that organization? | 31:01 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I'm still a member of that. | 31:01 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 31:01 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | 1970s is when the Charlotte chapter went in. | 31:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 31:08 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | 1970. | 31:08 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 31:08 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I didn't receive the award until sometime in the '80s. I really can't remember when. | 31:08 |
| Sonya Ramsey | That's fine. Any more that you— | 31:18 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | I'm sure I've got some more, but I can't even think of them right now. | 31:25 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And you and Dr here, both your religious denomination is Baptist? | 31:29 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Mm-hmm (Affirmative). | 31:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And your church affiliation is First Baptist? | 31:34 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | First Baptist Church West. | 31:35 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 31:37 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Because see, the White folks wanted us to change. We had an option from First Baptist Downtown, but when they got into the Tate Ministry, they didn't want our name to be the same, but we were determined we weren't going to change, so we just added the West. One of our lawyers said to put West on the First Baptist Church, West. | 31:38 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. And would you like to mention any past church memberships? | 32:00 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Huh? | 32:05 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Would you like to mention any past church memberships? | 32:06 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Past churches? What do you mean? | 32:10 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You've been a member of First Baptist a while. Some people have just changed churches, so they like to mention churches they were members of in the past. | 32:12 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Oh, well for 33 years I was brought up in the AME Zion church. | 32:19 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 32:19 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That was the church I was married in. | 32:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. What— | 32:22 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Moores Chapel AME Zion Church. I was brought up in the African Methodist Church. | 32:23 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And that was— | 32:26 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | And all of my family still with the AME Zion— | 32:26 |
| Sonya Ramsey | That is in Salisbury. Okay. | 32:26 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Yeah, those are the only two churches that I've been in. | 32:26 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Now, just would you like to list any organizations that you belong to? Community, civic, educational? | 32:43 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | On this side— | 32:47 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I thought so. Okay, okay. | 32:55 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | NAACP. | 32:57 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 33:11 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | Hey, Kwinia. | 33:11 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And— | 33:11 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | This is our daughter. | 33:11 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Hi. | 33:11 |
| Kwinia Davis Eure | Hi. | 33:11 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | We started— | 33:11 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | She's a school teacher— | 33:11 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | Arts and Culture Society. | 33:11 |
| Sonya Ramsey | The Charlotte Arts, okay. | 33:11 |
| Kwinia Davis Eure | It's terrible. | 33:11 |
| Samuel Craig Davis | I was just— | 33:11 |
| Maxine Ormond Davis | That's her little boy. | 33:11 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How are you? About what time period was this? | 33:11 |
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