Mayonie Daniel interview recording, 1993 June 29
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Chris Stewart | And if you'd like, I can continue to let you know about the project and what's going to end up happening or you can continue on with what you were talking about. | 0:06 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah. You still run on it. | 0:13 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. What will happen with all these oral histories that we collect this summer and for the next two summers, is that they're going to be placed in a collection in an archives and it'll be called the Behind the Veil Collection. We're hoping to get about between 2000 and 2500 interviews when we're done. The reason why we're doing it is because we need more information from the perspective of African Americans about what went on during segregation so that we can teach in our classrooms, so that we can read and research this period more carefully and more better, period. And so the collection will then be used for those purposes to help teachers talk about, and students learn about this period of legal segregation. | 0:14 |
Chris Stewart | Like I said, we're spending time in North Carolina the next two summers. We'll be going into different states in the south. In each place that we go to, we will be returning a collection. The collection that we collect here, I think right now we have 75, we've done 75 interviews in this area. So those interviews that we do, will be returned to this area for the community to use as they want to use as well. So in each place that we go, each community will receive a copy of the tapes and the transcripts for their own views. | 1:22 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Have you been interviewing them here in Enfield? | 1:59 |
Chris Stewart | We've been interviewing people in Enfield. We've been interviewing people in the Tillery area, lots of people in the Tillery area. We've been interviewing people in Scotland Neck, and up Roanoke Rapids way, Rocky Mount. We've gone as far as Louisburg and Franklin County. So we've been all over the place so far. | 2:01 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh, good. Yeah. | 2:24 |
Chris Stewart | Most of the people that we've been interviewing are people who grew up on farms or are still farming. And this has been one of the most important. This area has been one of the most important places for us because there's more research done or there's more information about African Americans in cities than there is about African Americans in rural areas. And so the time that we've been here has been really important, really important. And people have been really helpful. We feel very lucky to have been able to come here and spend some time here. So do you have any questions about anything? | 2:26 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, I knows it all, I have lived it, so that it just seemed part of my life. And then to talk about it, I hardly knows how to start. | 3:16 |
Chris Stewart | Well, I will ask questions to help you get started. | 3:35 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, you ask the question and I'll do my best to answer. | 3:35 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. You mentioned that you were raised on a— | 3:42 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | On a farm. | 3:44 |
Chris Stewart | On a farm. Were your parents also? | 3:44 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah, they were sharecroppers. | 3:50 |
Chris Stewart | And where exactly? Did you say two miles west? | 3:53 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Just about a mile west of out of Enfield, going out from Franklin Street, is where we growed up. It used to be named the Dickens Farm. | 3:56 |
Chris Stewart | Dickens Farm. | 4:07 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, it's not that now. So the Dickens been dead for many years and it's been sold over and over. I don't know who owns that now. | 4:09 |
Chris Stewart | But when you were growing up? | 4:18 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | It was the Dickens farm. | 4:20 |
Chris Stewart | How long did you live on that farm, do you recall? | 4:21 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | About 25 years lived. We lived over there about 25 years. And then after my parents, my mother died, then we moved over here in town right up on, I've been here on McDaniel Street since 1940. I've been right on McDaniel Street just from one end up back to right here. I lived in three homes. The first home was up near 301 service station. The other home is right up three houses over there. And then I've been in this house since '71. But over there on the farm, we had to go in the field and work and you name it. And we had had to do it from plowing and planting and chopping and housing and everything. It was our crop, the people would come, "Oh, you got pretty cotton, you got pretty this." And then time to sell it, it was their crop, time to sell it. | 4:28 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | But the farmers is always back then. They didn't get very much out of it. Because in time they come, they said you had used it all. But when they were giving them about 25 or $30 a month to live on, things they had to buy. But people used to raise majority of everything they eat. So like rice or coffee, sugar or flour was about—nearly about the only thing we had to buy. Because we raised, had cows for the milk and butter, we had chickens for our eggs and to eat, we had hogs for our meat. And now people said pork will kill you. But we growed up on it. Didn't hardly ever have anything else except on the weekend when we had chicken, maybe beef once a month, something like that. But now pork will kill you, now you can't eat it. And it didn't kill us, and we're still living. But I reckon it would by now. I reckon. I don't know. | 5:35 |
Chris Stewart | Did your father own all of the livestock that you're talking about he had? | 6:40 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah, he owned it. | 6:44 |
Chris Stewart | He had hogs, and a milk cow and a—? | 6:45 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | All of that, he owned back then. And we furnished all this equipment and the mules and everything and the labor, and the owner furnished the land. | 6:48 |
Chris Stewart | So your father had equipment as well? | 7:01 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah, he had all his plows and everything you work with. | 7:03 |
Chris Stewart | And his mules? | 7:07 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | And his mules. But then when the end of the year, see the crop was supposed to be divided, his half went to—half of the crop went to him, half went to the owner for the land. Then the owner would say that he had used up all of his part. All the labor and everything was worth nothing because I used didn't know it was a payday. I didn't know people paid for working, when I was growing up. When I was growing up, I did not know people paid for working. | 7:08 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | And we going to school, the road wasn't paved back then. It was mud. And when it wasn't too muddy, when it's too muddy, they'd take us on the wagon and bring us up to the edge of town. And we'd walked from there all the way out here to Inborden. And when the weather was good enough for us to walk, we walked those well from Inborden back home with me about four miles, back and forwards every day. And when I was younger going to school, we had to make a fire after we got there, they had those old long heaters and we had to make a fire. The first one get there to make a fire. But the few coming warm up a while, then they'd go back to their seats and the next one would come and warm up. And so that was school life. Then the time to go in the fields, majority of the children had to leave school and go to the fields. | 7:42 |
Chris Stewart | Were you one of the children? I mean, did you have to— | 8:34 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh, yes. | 8:34 |
Chris Stewart | Go up to the field when the— | 8:35 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | When the time come, go to the fields. So it wasn't too much time to go to school. Back then, the school usually closed a couple of weeks in August because all the children would be going to the cotton fields and wasn't enough children in school to keep it open, wasn't like it is now. And nowadays, it's so much equipment has taken over. The children don't really have anything to do now. People complain about children on welfare but they got to have something. I know it's a struggle. I never had any help, not even with these children I raised, but children used to could go to the fields and pick cotton and shake peanuts and things and help get a little something for the winter. Help buy their winter clothes, because when my boy was growing up, I used to take him to the fields in picking cotton by the pound, shucking peanuts. He would make enough to buy his winter clothes back then. | 8:41 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | We would buy up our meal and flour and sugar, this big round thing of cheese, all stuff for the winter back then. But nowadays, children can't get a job. They got to go and sign up. For children, now a child, when they come maybe 14 or 15 years old before they can work, you got to go up that Halifax and sign up for them to be able to work. But machinery has taken over all the farm, everything that anybody's supposed to be done by hand now, it done by machinery. But people don't have anything to do. If you look back, you know what I'm speaking at, I know it's a lot of welfare and stuff is wasted unnecessary and not used right and not distributed right. But if they didn't get something, children would be hungry because they don't have any. | 9:42 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Then the people say "No, they don't want to work." But every job comes open, you hear talk one job and it'd be 50, 60 people there trying to get that one job. So that shows that people would work if they had anything to do, and that's what makes it so pitiful. But people still think oh, the first thing they can think about is old city one won't work, old city one won't do this, that and the other. But a lot of them they don't work and they had nothing to do. A lot of them maybe don't want to work, but if they had anything to do and think they could make a little something, it would be better. And I don't just really complain and run people down because they don't have anything to do. Because when you get out there looking a job, where do you go? So life used to be a people feel like now they are living so well. Well, in a way they are. But life used to be, it was harder, but it was better than— | 10:36 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember the house that you grew up in? Do you remember what it looked like? | 11:43 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh, yeah. | 11:46 |
Chris Stewart | What the yard looked like. | 11:46 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh, yeah. Every bit of it. Now, my mother was a woman she loved flowers. On our wood pine, when we cut up wood. You know how you go in the woods and haul the wood to the, how they got to cut it up. Well the chips and things, we didn't leave them. We got them up always to burn to makefire with. She had flowers all the way around it and the lot where the mules stayed in the lot, had flowers around the lot. In the path that lead it out to the road, on the end of every cotton row she had some flowers set. We used to call them Octobers. I think they call them mums now or something, I reckon. But anyway, she had them sitting all up and down end of the cotton rows, and then they bloomed in the fall. They was so pretty. | 11:50 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | I don't think we had—every Saturday was our cleanup day. We didn't have no lawnmower, but we had things like a sling blade. She let grass grow where we sling it off. We had to chop and keep it edged up, scrub on our knees, scrub that porch and scrub that kitchen floor and clean the hearth, you know, the fireplace, all of that stuff back then. Well nowadays, I know when I used to go to the field work mornings at 10 o'clock, somebody would leave the field to go to the house to cook, cook dinner. | 12:35 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | I could go to the garden. I've been cooking since I was a little child. I could go to the garden and get tomatoes and cabbage and white potatoes and things. Go to the house and make a finally cooked stew. Have it ready about 12 o'clock. So somewhere along this, the times is shrinking without people feeling it and thinking about it. Because I believe the hours used to be longer because nowadays, you got everything right there in your refrigerator, freezer, you don't have to make no fire. You turn on your stove and everything, in two hours time you still ain't done nothing. | 13:16 |
Chris Stewart | How many kids were there in your family? | 13:49 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | I had four brothers and myself and one sister. | 13:54 |
Chris Stewart | So six kids? | 14:00 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | But they wasn't all home together because my older brother, he's living now and I got one more brother living. My older brother now is 93 years old. He lives in Portsmouth, Virginia. My other brother lives right out there where we growed up. Jesse Lewis and he is 81 now and I'm right there with him because I'll be 78, my birthday coming up. | 14:00 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | And we used to could look up at night and see the stars, everything, we could call ourselves, see the Milky Way and all that stuff. And it wasn't that dark. And now you go in the country, with no light, it's blackest dark, you can't see nothing. And even now you can look up in the sky, you can't see all of that stuff you used to see. But I understand now they says so much pollution up there now between what we used to see because back then there wasn't all this factories and cars and things making it. So I guess that's the reason. | 14:30 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | But that's what I'm told anyway. But I know it's a big difference. And last couple of weeks ago we had this storm through here and we didn't have any light. Answer your telephone. So all of that makes a big difference in living for what it used to be. As a fellow was telling me one time I was talking about, I said, "My mother used to, they go visit, they would walk with one other home and had time to walk from one house to the other and stand talk and visit." I said, "Nowadays you don't have time to visit nobody." | 15:08 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | You got all the conveniences. Back then, we had no conveniences and had plenty of time for visiting. Nowadays, you don't have time to visit. Not even your neighbor. You got be busy. Well, he said well back then, said, what it is now keeping you busy is your conveniences. So some days it take you half a day to clean your refrigerator, take a day to clean your stove and things like that. Cleaning your conveniences. Said, back then we didn't have none. We didn't have nothing to bother with. So your conveniences is what working you down. Said, that's the truth. | 15:42 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember what the relationship was between your father, your family and Mr. Dickens? The people who owned the land? | 16:17 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh, they were wonderful to us and because we was out there working, keeping the farm clean and growing these beautiful crops and all they had to do was come and get them and sell them and have the money, and they said we had used it all up. So they got along fine to treat us nice far as talking to us. | 16:25 |
Chris Stewart | But they didn't pay you? | 16:50 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | No, we wasn't paid anything because we were sharecropping. We were supposed to furnish the labor free. I didn't know anything about getting paid until after my mother died and we moved on the farm here in town and I got a job, working that house and I was working for $3 a week, seven days a week, and be there every morning at seven o'clock, cook breakfast, clean up the house, wash everything, cook dinner. I get off about 1:30, I go home from 1:30 until about 5:30 I'd be back today to cook supper. Cook the supper. It'd be about 7 o'clock when I got off. Walked back home. They was there for $3 a week. Then I finally got on at Columbia Peanut Company was running then. And I worked there, see about 20, about 22 years. I worked there until their children mother died and I had to stop work to take them. | 16:51 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | But working there 40 hours and I don't know. But anyway, my payroll was $9 and 38 cents a week. I thought I was making money, big money then because I used was working the house for three. So then I started to evenings and times, was going picking cotton in the fall of the year. And I found out they could make more like that, picking cotton and shaking peanuts and stuff like that. So I left the house, housekeeping and I got a job at the peanut mill and worked down there until I got, in 1966, in my last work and I stopped and I took the children in '66. So I haven't worked out anymore since that time. | 18:02 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | But during this, just before I got the children, in this fighting and doing in the streets, here was really pitiful. I didn't go out in the street and march with them or anything— | 18:56 |
Chris Stewart | Talking about civil rights here? | 19:09 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah. And when they was trying to integrate things around here, but it was people, a lot of White people that came from California amd places here. And I slept over there to my house. I didn't have any children, just me and my husband. We slept about six. Three women and three men at night. They was helping out, helping the Black people out. And there's some old couples that was—helped run anything, and they would get them, come and get them in the morning, I'd be there and give them breakfast. And then they would go in the streets. And the lady lived next door to me over there, Alice Evans, she and her grandchildren was in it marching and doing with them. They got washed down the street with the hose and all that kind of stuff. Well, that's the type of thing that I was doing to help out with it. | 19:11 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | But I didn't go out in the street myself. But she and her family did. And they put in jail and they'd get them out. They go right back out there on the street and that's a big mess. And then one morning they was gathering up town, was supposed to have a speaker to come here and talk to the Black people at the town hall down there. And the crowd, it was a big crowd down there. And the sheriff, Chief Sykes, the chief of the town was named Sykes. He got in there and he had this little smoke blower or something. He was going to throw it in there among the crowd and he was going to run out and he grabbed them and shut the door and kept him in there and there with his own stuff. They know they covered his nose and things. | 20:07 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | They was on to catching the devil. And they kept him in there among his own doings. How they was trying to do the Black. And the cafes and things that the Black people could work there. They go in the back door, they could do all the work, all the clean up, all the cooking, get the hands all in it, everything. But they couldn't go in the front door. But they had White people to serve it. Prepared food, you know, for traveling people. And the Black folks, when they traveling, they didn't have anywhere to stop. But the White, see they could stop at all these places. And this house right here, used to call the hotel home. | 21:00 |
Chris Stewart | The house that we're in? | 21:42 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | This house that I'm in used to belong to them. The White people owned it called it [indistinct 00:21:48]. They both dead now. And when we bought it, it used to be sign out there in the front yard, the light up. Said "vacancy, no vacancy," and stuff. They used to take in people traveling, really only just White people. | 21:44 |
Chris Stewart | They'd take in White people traveling? | 22:05 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | That's right. But no Black people, I don't know where they stayed, but they couldn't travel much. And they had a few Black places, just small places. And they would go to places where they'd know people and stop in and stay with their families and stuff, then go on the next day, all that type of stuff. Well, that's the way it was run around here in this time. | 22:06 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember when you were living on the farm, did you have relatives that lived around you? | 22:29 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh, yes. | 22:34 |
Chris Stewart | Who did? | 22:36 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | My uncle and his family and my brother as he was married in the family, it was about five houses on that farm and each one, everybody had a certain amount of land that they—We always called our two horse crops. We had two mules, and we'd just tend what those two mules could plow, and each one had that. | 22:37 |
Chris Stewart | Did you have family gatherings or celebrations when all the relatives would come over together to celebrate at somebody's house? | 23:02 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, not as much as we do now. Because last week we had a family reunion. Last week up to Holiday Inn in Roanoke Rapids. But back then, when they used to get together a lot, they used to have to shell all the peanut for plant by hand. And when they had the pea shellings, different families would come together, they'd shell up this house this night, help shell up this family next time we'd go to somebody else's and we'd have a little something to serve, somebody make a cake, make some punch, something that had plenty of fruits, grapes and stuff. And then used to make the grape wine and the peach brandy and whatever. Or had something, anything to serve back then. But people don't grow themselves nothing anymore. | 23:12 |
Chris Stewart | What about hog killings? Wouldn't you have hog killings? | 23:58 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah, the families. Families, sometimes the people from the other farms across the road from us, they work together in killing hogs and when they cut it out, then we had to work with the chitlins and cleaning the chitlins and stuff and the grinding the sausage. | 24:01 |
Chris Stewart | The women you mean? | 24:18 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | The women. They was grinding the sausage and cutting up the fat and frying up the cracklings for the lard and all that type of stuff. | 24:20 |
Chris Stewart | What about holidays? How did you celebrate holidays? Christmas or birthdays or— | 24:31 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, the birthday it was just a birthday. But Christmas time, they used to cook up a lot of really unnecessary stuff. I know my mother used to cook as many as six cakes way back then and three or four pies. And around Thanksgiving is when she would make her fruitcake. She had this big tin covered thing where she'd put this fruitcake in and pour wine over and put a apple in there, shut it up. They was staying there until Christmas. But it was better eating a lot then. I don't know how these people learned to cook the way they used to cook. But I know my family, I even had a brother, he died a few years ago, to make the best pineapple cake. And they ain't know anything about no recipes, anything. They just could cook. | 24:36 |
Chris Stewart | What did you do with all these cakes and pies at Christmas time? Did relatives come over? | 25:29 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | People coming, different people coming and eating and fixing plates and carrying to older people and— | 25:34 |
Chris Stewart | I see. | 25:43 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | And then having a big celebration at church carrying a lot of food to the churches and people used to, different sections would feed at churches every Sunday and the tables on the outside, and this set was feed today and the next Sunday would be another group that fed the people used to get together and eat at the churches and things and have all these big singings, had quartet singings and things coming for entertainment, stuff like that. We didn't have to pay all this money you have to pay now. | 25:43 |
Chris Stewart | Quartets would just be people in the congregation, members of the church who would get together and do quartet singing? | 26:19 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | No, they'd have, unless it was a group that belonged to the church, they would come from other places to the sing at churches and schools. They used to have a lot to do all the time. Different or two or three times a week. Sometimes they had some big celebration at the school. Especially PTA nights. | 26:25 |
Chris Stewart | At the Bricks School? | 26:52 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | No. I meant, the Bricks was Inborden. | 26:52 |
Chris Stewart | Inborden? | 26:52 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well older Bricks. Now, that has started going down when, see I was most of the time when really things was happening over the Bricks, was when I was little. The first time I remember ever eating light bread, you know, regular factory bread was at Bricks. My sister, she was 12 years older than I am, and had what they call farmer's day at Bricks and she took me with her and had all this good soup and had this light bread. My mother used to make yeast bread at home, but looked like to me it wasn't just like that because that was the first time I had any, they cooked it in loafs, but they had to slice it and they had all those kind of things over there. | 26:52 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, here after I got these children, the Bricks wasn't teaching anymore, anything over there. Because the elementary school—they did have elementary school over there, and that was going down over there. But they had camp over there every summer, and they had the swimming pool when they first built this swimming pool, my children was small then and started this going over there. Everyday a bus used to come through to Whitakers and the Enfield every morning and pick up children and take them over there five o'clock in the evening they'd be bringing them back home. You had to pay so much a day for each child. But I had all six of mine up there, over there every day. And they could—had horseback, pony back rides and they had them working in the yards and playing in different games and swimming and it was teaching them and well it was a lot going on at Bricks. | 27:35 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Then Bricks began to get down and down and down and until it has now about gone and it changed, it went out one time and some family, I don't know who it was from New York, I understand, bought it— now it's called Franklin Center. It's not called Bricks anymore, it's still a Bricks community. But I would love to see Bricks, something going on over there again because it really used to be a good times over there. Big outings and lot people. I know when there was a college, because I wasn't old enough to go—well I reckon, I would've been, but— | 28:32 |
Chris Stewart | It was a college after it was the agriculture normal school. You didn't go to it? Did you ever go to it? | 29:13 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | No, I didn't ever visit that school. See, I went to Inborden here, it used to be Enfield Graded School back then. But then they named it Inborden right later. I was a good size child when they named it Inborden. Now I never went to school too much myself, because I was working on the farm, I didn't have the privilege to go a lot like children that living right in town that didn't live on the farm. But I learned majority of my learning from book learning, was from my son going to school and with the children now, I have helped them helping I studied with them and I learned with them. And so that's where I got most of my book learning, is from the children. Instead of the school. Then I have been able to travel a little as my children got up and the grandchildren got up. One that was in the navy in Japan, he gave me a trip over there. | 29:23 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | So I was able to go over there and that was a great experience for a man. And then with the family, I traveled to New York and that was the experience in this one that I just showed you that live over there. He was at Fort Stewart, Georgia for a good while and I made a lot of trips to Georgia and he took me to Florida and places. So I've learned a lot from children, from raising children. It's been my greatest learning. Is from traveling with them and working with them. And they were little, I was going places that I never would have been going if I hadn't had them. Because I used to take them up to Gaston Dam and let them swim a lot and all to the Boy Scouts things when they was in the Boy Scouts I used to go with them to the meetings and just so much you can learn with children. | 30:23 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | People nowadays ain't got time for children. There's so many pitiful children now that the mothers ain't got time, the mothers can be right home and ain't got time to even pay the child no mind. There's so much of these children is being bad. They wants attention. They've done a lot of things for attention that they don't get at home and it's really pitiful because I know one time and mine, this little girl right there and she was going on a trip when she was in—No it was the boy and I carried her with me because I—And each parents that went, had six children to take care of that day when they out on this trip. And the six I had among them was one little White boy, bad. He was one of the worst. And I found out and I took him back there with me and I talked to him and I gave him some of my little girl lunch and showed him and just now I saw he wanted attention. | 31:21 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | He wanted to be recognized, he wanted somebody to pay him some attention, special and all. And they didn't understand how I kept him quiet, but it did. And I found out that people, they got children and spend a lot of time with them. Now my grandson's wife that there in Durham, she got these two little boys, she runs this daycare. Her little boy now, he is four. And even the one is two. Anything you sing, they can sing it. They knows all their colors. He knows that he can print his name, he knows his telephone number, his address. And he knows—Well because now when he get in kindergarten, he going to be bored to death because he already know it all. | 32:25 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | He knows it all. And the little ones just two years old. Well Maybe she teach him a little bit too fast. I don't know. But I feel like from the time they get in kindergarten and all, they can know everything in kindergarten teaches, and that's going to be a boring year for him. But maybe they have enough to do to keep them going. But that's what I know. When you pay attention to children, it's a difference when children that they go home and nobody—I don't know. The way people are living their lives now, not paying that much attention to children. And there's a lot of it, bad children in school nowadays. I think if they was getting the right attention at home and all, it wouldn't be as bad. But now it's getting near by dangerous to go to school. | 33:17 |
Chris Stewart | I'd like to go back to when you were a child. Do you remember church activities? Did you belong to a church? Your family belonged to a church? What church did you belong to? | 34:18 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Crowell. | 34:28 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, right at the— | 34:29 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Down here by southeast is near Crowell. Going out on 481. | 34:30 |
Chris Stewart | I know a couple of people are—Lillie Fenner who belongs. | 34:35 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh, yes. | 34:47 |
Chris Stewart | And also Mrs. Plummer, Vera Plummer. | 34:47 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh, yeah. Well that's where I was baptized. | 34:49 |
Chris Stewart | Can you tell me about your baptism? | 34:51 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh, yeah. And do you know the man that baptized me is still a pastor of Crowell Church? (Stewart laughs) McKinley Nicholson. They have to drag him up there in the pulpit— | 34:54 |
Chris Stewart | Mrs. Plummer told me. | 35:01 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | —and drag him down, but he will not give up. | 35:01 |
Chris Stewart | That's what she said. | 35:06 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | He is still there today. | 35:07 |
Chris Stewart | Do you recall your baptism? | 35:11 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yes, baptized in this swamp. But if you go down in there, snakes with each up now you can't go in a place like that. But back then the snakes wasn't in there. And I was eight years old when I went down there and got baptized. I thought they about drowned me but they didn't. And then baptized from Crowell. But after times got tight and we didn't have any transportation and I had moved right up here across from St. Paul Church, I changed my membership from Crowell to St. Paul Church because I could walk right across from my house to the church. And I didn't have any transportation to get the Crowell. But I still Crowell is my home church. And that's still family church down there. And we used to go down there on the wagon, back and forwards was on the wagon to Crowell. | 35:11 |
Chris Stewart | How long did it take you to get there? | 36:10 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Hmm, near about an hour, I reckon. | 36:10 |
Chris Stewart | How did getting baptized affect you? Did you know what was the scope of what was happening? | 36:18 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yes, I know— but the thing about it and I was at the mourners' bench and the children were jumping up and I was sitting there waiting, thinking was something that's going happen to me to make me fly off like they were doing. I was sitting there and nothing happened. Nothing happened. So I just still sitting there. So when I looked around, everybody had got up and me. So I just got up and stood on up too. And finally the preachers came down, they come around and shake your hand and make your [indistinct 00:36:56] for baptism and everything. And then when I got baptized, some of them was shouting and coming out of the water and everything. I was baptized. I still didn't feel no different from what I feel now to tell the truth. I didn't feel like that I was so excited or something I had to be. | 36:25 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | I still don't believe in all of that. I still don't believe the people got to get up and try to beat the other fellow near about to death, sent out to shout that much. Because I have never, but I have really, I understood what it was. My mother had taught me enough to know the difference in being baptized and being saved and not to. I understood all of that. So that's the reason I was doing it. But that feelings that some of them act like they had, I didn't have it. Up until the day I go to church. I can sit in there and people beside me get all shouting and I hold them back and all this kind of stuff. I got these feelings but I never had that. And I really, I don't go to church as often as a lot of people. Because right now, I have been under the weather myself and I haven't been doing it. | 37:17 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | But I have been Saturdays and Sundays, I have been waiting on, even after my, with the children here, they growed up a little bit. Because when the children were little, I couldn't go. Because I stayed home and took care of my own big crowd. Then I got the job, I worked for different people on Saturday and Sundays where sick people, they have invalids at home. And the people that worked there all the week, they had to be off Saturday and Sundays. They didn't work the weekends. Well I would work, take care of them the weekends. And Dr. Wood, Ms. Woods used to be a doctor here, Dr. Wood— | 38:16 |
Chris Stewart | I heard some— | 38:53 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | When his mother was living, I used to go there Saturday and Sundays because the woman worked there, she worked Monday through Fridays and she didn't come back on Sundays. Well, the people need somebody that's in bed Sundays to do Monday. Sick people. And so Sunday morning sometime like that, I was doing that. Ms Cofield over here, she has a daughter and she had this muscles sclerosis, whatever they call it, MS. And I hope her for a long time, Saturdays and Sundays that I would go because it didn't regularly help, because the regular help over there now is still during the week. And she had somebody for Saturday and Sunday until I just run myself down. | 38:57 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | My brother, he got some chemical in his eye over there on the farm, a couple of years back. And that eye turned to look just like puss. And I was carrying him back before I was down here, to Wilson Clinic and they gave him an eye, a human eye. So he told him that this fellow was in a car accident and got killed. So when we went he had to wait for an eye. And when he got one he called and I found him and got him down there. So when I hear he seemed good out of it. Doing fine. And every for six weeks, every morning, seven o'clock in the morning, even including Sunday, because on Sunday the doctor would meet us there, and seven o'clock in the morning I had him in Wilson backwards and forwards. And I got a old station wagon out there now about to fall apart. | 39:44 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | And other people just because I had this wagon, I was hauling people up to Halifax to the Social Security place and hauling to pick up food and just running all the time. All the time until I just give out myself. And so last summer, the doctor think I fell because on the count of my pressure that I was having, but I think I just stumped my foot and I crushed this hand. But my blood pressure one day even I sit down, it looked like the whole wall started turning. They said my blood pressure was 210 over 80. So I've been having a little trouble with my blood pressure since that time. | 40:43 |
Chris Stewart | You take medicine for it? | 41:27 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah, I take arthritis medicine, blood pressure medicine and—arthritis, blood pressure. And what else? Something else I take. Anyway, every day. Well I fell and I crushed this hand. They couldn't put a cast on it because it was crushed too bad. It was't like a crack or break. They had to put pins, see right there and right there and right here and had this bridge up on it too. Bridge my hand back to my arm. And every day, twice a day, they had to go and press that flesh back from them pins and run that [indistinct 00:42:09] around it. They keep that flesh back from them pins that it stayed for eight weeks like that. And they're giving that chance to heal up. And right today that hand still is not just right. And the arthritis has settled in because I have arthritis in this shoulder. It has settled in this hand. And see right now I'm using it but I can't. You can see it's still just—It's just not right. | 41:28 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | So that's what slowed me down. And I haven't been doing very much since that time. But far as growing up and going to school, we Black children had to walk when they didn't bring us on the wagons to town. But some of them had gotten cars, old T Model Fords and things. They could pick us up sometime with it, but didn't do it too much because those cars get stuck so bad in the road. So we had to walk. The White children that lived right across the road from us a little further down, they had the bus. This bus would come along every—Pass right by us, sometimes wouldn't be about six on the bus and spouted the mud and water on it. They'd ride and we walking. The Black children didn't have no privilege back then. | 42:37 |
Chris Stewart | What kind of things did you do for fun when you were growing up? What were the fun things? What did you do to play for entertainment? | 43:32 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well we played, the girls played as much as the boys. They played ball, baseball and— | 43:43 |
Chris Stewart | Did you have a baseball? | 43:49 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh, yes we had— | 43:51 |
Chris Stewart | —did you make some? | 43:51 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, they made—get twine, and make your ball, what we called tobacco twine and make your own ball. And they make your own bat with wood, stick wood make your own bat. When they'd break up the land in the springtime, sometimes get ready to plant, they had to break a part of it over because we'd be done packed it down playing ball. And we'd play games and they had picnics at different places on Sundays and times after church. Sometimes they had picnics at the churches and times. There used to be a lot of places they called it Piccolo joints. And my mother didn't give us much chance to go there. But we slip there, sometime we get out before we go back home. We slip by, go there anyway. | 43:53 |
Chris Stewart | Where were the Piccolo houses located? | 44:45 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | A different section of town and well, most every end of town they had one. And the people didn't used to go there and fight and do like to do now, because my brother got killed, my younger brother got shot and killed. He was 17 years old, at one, but he wasn't in the place, he was on the outside. And he and another fellow got to arguing over some girl and the fellow went home and got his gun come back and shot him out there. But he wasn't in the Piccolo place. They didn't used to be that much. | 44:47 |
Chris Stewart | What kind of music did they play at the Piccolo? | 45:21 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | They had the records. You know what a Piccolo looked like? | 45:25 |
Chris Stewart | Mm-hmm. | 45:28 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | And the records? And the music back then was a whole lot better than now. | 45:28 |
Chris Stewart | What was it? Do you remember what kinds of things you listened to? | 45:35 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, the most like jazz and blues and you name it. And most anything. All the old music that you hear now, you can tell when it's old it sounds so much better. So you can understand every word. The singing. And now the singing, you don't know what they're talking about. | 45:37 |
Chris Stewart | Do you have favorite songs? | 45:53 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, I just like music, I like them all mostly. Like my children now here. Sometimes especially one in Durham and the younger one that lives here, is singing. Sometimes when they get in here singing, I tell them, I said, "All this good voices that you all have and ain't making nothing on that." And then some of this stuff I hear on TV and stuff that don't sound like nothing, but not bragging about it. But my boys can sing. The girl, too, she took music lesson from Miss Mary Baudette over here. Over here [indistinct 00:46:35]. You did? | 45:56 |
Chris Stewart | Uh-huh. | 46:36 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | My daughter and this younger boy, they study music under her and she learned to play and sing. She was a pretty good singer because she and the baby boy, one time they was on Channel 11 news. | 46:37 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | And the children is. Did you hear? | 0:00 |
Chris Stewart | We've interviewed four of the Grant family. | 0:00 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Carrie Grant? | 0:00 |
Chris Stewart | Carrie and Richard and Mr. And Mrs. Grant. | 0:00 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well I know all the of them, and we used to, different ones we used to work together with the music stuff, with the children, and Evangeline, the one that got them on child 11 then. And my boy, he was picking the bass guitar. The girl she was singing and dancing and all that. | 0:01 |
Chris Stewart | What kind of values do you think that your parents instilled in you as a child to take you into adulthood? | 0:36 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Hard work. I didn't have all this time to be running around, and going to bed on time, getting up on time, and working, and going to church, going to school and what time I had, and going to all the good activity things. The good outings and things like used to have over at the Bricks and different things. Those are the different type things that we went to most all the time. | 0:43 |
Chris Stewart | When did you feel like people started treating you like an adult? You felt like you had become an adult woman? | 1:18 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, I have really felt pretty good all my life, because when I was eight years old, or the Dickens that were living on the farm, they had a girl. She was about three years younger than myself, but I know how to stay out the street. He used to come and pick me up and bring me over there to the house to play with her, and I'd play with her about all day, and he'd take me back and late in the afternoon. So I have been mixed up with White people most of the time. | 1:27 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Then later in life and everything, I went to Petersburg, Virginia and I had a sleep-in job. I already knew of the sleep-in jobs. And I moved with, he was the city manager of Petersburg, and he moved to Durham. He was a city manager of Durham, back then, and fought in—Wait a minute. He was city manager of Durham from '40 to '47. Anyway, early in the '40s. He was the city manager, Yancey, in Durham, and I was staying there, out there in Forest Hill. On sleeping in. And I stayed there until my mother died. When my mother died, then I came back. | 1:58 |
Chris Stewart | How did you meet your husband? | 2:50 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well he was living here, out there on the farm right across the road from there. I've been on the farm, because my brother's married to my husband's sister. | 2:52 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. | 2:59 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | So family, you know how they— | 3:01 |
Chris Stewart | Sure. | 3:04 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Folks out there know everybody. | 3:05 |
Chris Stewart | When you got married, you were living here in town? | 3:06 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | No, out on the farm. | 3:09 |
Chris Stewart | You were out on the farm. Was he a farmer as well? | 3:11 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah, they all was. Everybody's mostly farming. | 3:13 |
Chris Stewart | After you got married, were you a farmer? | 3:16 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | One year, then we moved to the town and I started doing housework here in town, and in the fall of the year, then we started. I'd take some days off and trucks used to come to town and pick up, get loaded every the morning, hauling people to the cotton fields to pick cotton, shake peanuts. So I've done a little of all of it. | 3:18 |
Chris Stewart | What kind of work did your husband do? | 3:41 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well he worked for the town here for the water and light department for about 35 years, and he had cancer, and he died. He was down about, I reckon, was right in and out of the bed for about two years. I used to drive to Rex Hospital every day except Saturday and Sundays. They take him up there for radiation, going to Rex. Because Rocky Mount didn't have anything like that at that time. Because he died in '83, and they was telling me then they would soon have some stuff in Rocky Mount, but at that time was driving in Raleigh to Rex Hospital. Every morning, be there by 8:30. | 3:43 |
Chris Stewart | What was the difference between the people you said you went to school here and Enfield, at the Inborden school? | 4:27 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well that was an all Black school. | 4:36 |
Chris Stewart | What was the difference between the Inborden school and the Bricks School? | 4:39 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well at Bricks, see Bricks, they didn't have elementary. They had a elementary school, for the people that lived in that vicinity, but it was a college back in those days, and a lot of people, they couldn't go off to college, went the Bricks. But see most of them is dead now, because see they would be much older than myself. Because people of my age, well most of them by that time was getting able to go somewhere else to school, but Bricks was still going on, but I don't know a lot of people that went to Bricks to college. I know quite a few, but most of them now is older than myself and is already dead. Some of them just died a couple of years ago, and if all this could have come up maybe five years ago, you could have got a lot more information than right now, because I know a lot of people that is older, that was into all that type of stuff. More so than myself. | 4:43 |
Chris Stewart | Better late than never though, right? | 5:49 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh yeah, but myself, see and I growed up on the farm and then I stopped farming. I was been doing housework and factory work the rest of the time of my life until I got the children. Then this, since I haven't been out and worked, in public work, since that time. I've been home, but growing up, raising these children, bringing them up has given me a chance to live and find out what life was all about in raising these children. But it has been a struggle. | 5:52 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | So we used to travel and go anywhere. We couldn't go to the bathrooms, because— | 6:24 |
Chris Stewart | Here in Enfield? | 6:32 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Right here in Enfield. It was White only, it used to be a fountain, right there by the train station, and one time the Black could not drink water out of it. That fountain. They had moved it now, and it hasn't been moved for so many years, moved since my husband died. That fountain there. After they got to everybody could use it, they moved that fountain. I used to know when we were passing there hot and tired from walking, and we could not stop and get a drink of water. | 6:34 |
Chris Stewart | Were there places that you knew you could stop, at people's houses? | 7:06 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, the only people that I ever went to the houses were the people that I worked for. The people where we've used to farm with, and where we drive to the back and go in there. But they treated me nice. They talked to me nice, and during this time I have kept White children, babysit. When I was working at that peanut mill, worked there until 4:30, and get off and go to folks houses and stay with the children nights. Babysit and stuff. I started working. | 7:11 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Now the first one I was started working at when they built this fire department. They used to have all these, I think they still do, have the big dollars and things up there, when I started working. Me and a couple of other girls working at that fire department, for the supper at night, washing dishes and cleaning up and all that type of stuff. And five or six different White people right here in the home, I helped with parties and cooking and suppers and things like that. | 7:48 |
Chris Stewart | How did they treat you? | 8:17 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | All right. I said I have never had any of them to talk to me ugly or to mistreat me. I can't say that they did. | 8:20 |
Chris Stewart | Have you heard of that happening to other people? | 8:27 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | I have. I hear that other people say that, "I left this job because this thing happened," and all of that. But the branches here, the Evan branch that—He's dead now, used to own it, he owned—His wife still owned the funeral home over there. He used to own this funeral home right here. Yeah, just a couple of months, about three months ago is when they sold this one over here, the Black man that bought it now. That yard runs right into my backyard. You'll see it when you come round there. Now it's called Clarks. But the branches, when I first moved to to Enfield, I started working in the branches home. The mother and father. I was with them when the mother died. I had stopped working there regular when the mother died, but they come and got me when she got real sick, and I was with her when she died. And so most all, especially all the older family, I don't think it's hardly too many White people in Enfield that don't know me. | 8:29 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember doctor by the name of Dr. DuBissette? | 9:27 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh yeah. Dr. DuBissette used to have a little hospital right down there on Franklin Street. That's been torn down. It ain't been but I reckon four or five years ago. | 9:33 |
Chris Stewart | When did he have the hospital? | 9:48 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | He had a hospital. It was small, but he had a hospital around there on the corner where he operated. | 9:51 |
Chris Stewart | How old were you when his hospital was? | 10:01 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | I reckon I was 12 or 13. I remember that good from time I was a baby, 11 years old on up, I remembered him. | 10:03 |
Chris Stewart | Who did he serve? | 10:11 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Black. Black. Just the Black. If White go there, he would wait on wait on them, but then the rest of the White folks found out about them, to be a whole lot said and all, they didn't want the Black—I meant the White to go there. So he just served the regular, the Black, and I remember used to have a doctor used to call it Dr. Parker, Dr. Nicholson, Dr. Ferdie, Whitakers, and Dr. Joyner. All those doctors used to be here, but they all— | 10:13 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember Dr. Wood? | 10:44 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh, Dr. Wood was my family doctor. He was the one, he still living. His mother's the one I used to wait on Saturday and Sundays all the time. He knows me well, and he lives now in that part of the section of town. | 10:47 |
Chris Stewart | Did he have a segregated office? | 11:01 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | No. Uh-uh. | 11:03 |
Chris Stewart | How did he treat you? | 11:05 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Beautiful. | 11:10 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah? | 11:10 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | He was, they didn't about want anybody to do some fashion. Dr. Wood treat me just like if we were kin. Even now, so when my husband was sick, he stopped here one night. Didn't come into it as a doctor, he just came as a friend, and he told me then, he said, "You have done all you could, it's time now to get him in the hospital." I told him, "It's so hard to get a rescue squad." He said, "Well, I'll get you one." He said, "You need to let him go." I kept him here, right here. I had a hospital bed for him. | 11:10 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | We took him out of here Thursday morning before day, on a Thursday. I reckon about two o'clock in the night, took him to Nash General, and he died that Saturday morning. Then when he died—he was a stout heavy fellow—when he died, I don't reckon he weighed more than 85 pounds when he died. But he went out of here clean. I kept him up until that time. But Dr. Wood, he looked after all these children for me. He was our family doctor. My doctor, Dr. Wood is, I meet him now, we starting talk 30 minutes or more. | 11:45 |
Chris Stewart | What about Mr. Judson or Reverend Judson King? Do you recall him? | 12:24 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | King? | 12:29 |
Chris Stewart | Judson King? He was out of the Franklinton Center. | 12:30 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh, oh yes. Not, I wasn't really acquainted, enough to have conversation though, but I knew about him, heard about him. | 12:37 |
Chris Stewart | What did you hear? | 12:43 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, just like, well just on everything. Nothing bad. I never had anybody talk bad about it over there. My son last night we was talking, I forget the name of the pastor that had moved in over there. Then he was telling me, my boy was talking to me about at— | 12:46 |
Chris Stewart | At the center? | 13:09 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah, he lived in that brick house over there, bricks and built in the yard in the middle of the yard or there. He's not there now, but he was, during the time when my children was going over there. The camp. My grandchildren, going to camp over there. It just been so much in my life, that some of it has been real hard, and some of it, the way the Black people was turned down. When I said they have treated me nice, I meant they were the one I was working with when I was taking care of the children and so on. They the ones that has treated me nice. But far as going to different places, I couldn't go in any more than anybody else. Now when I was living in Durham with these Ganses, they had one little boy, and I could go anywhere with their child. They were living up in Duke's Hospital—In Duke's Hotel. You remember a Duke hotel? It's not there anymore though, is it? | 13:11 |
Chris Stewart | Right. But I've heard of it. | 14:16 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Duke's Hotel was 14 stories, and we was up on the 14th floor, and I took care of this little boy. I could go all over it anywhere with that child, any drug store, whatever. I carried him that he wanted to go. They were the city manager's son. Go to drugstore, and sat to the table with him, everything. But if I didn't have him, I couldn't. | 14:21 |
Chris Stewart | What about—just answered that question. You said that your family doctor was Dr. Woods. Was he your doctor, what about when you were younger? | 14:57 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh no, I had a Dr. Parker when I was just a small child, then Dr. Nicholson. | 15:06 |
Chris Stewart | What about for women? Did women use doctors when they were having babies? | 15:13 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Midwives. Most of the time. And I don't know too many of the midwives names now, because they don't have, most of them is dead and all, but they didn't had to go to the hospitals and things like they do now, and they didn't have hard times like they do now. Midwives could come in a couple hours, a hour, the babies would be there, and going on, and next week. | 15:19 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | But used to, when I was young, I know people used to then have the people, women would stay home for 30 days. Keep the babies in the doc for a few days, for eyes and stuff, and they wouldn't ever take a bath in a full bath, and they wouldn't wash the hands a certain length of time. Now they had the baby in the hospital, you go get a shower, and everything is just, the world has completely turned around. | 15:48 |
Chris Stewart | Did you have your son by midwife or did you have a doctor? | 16:19 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | By midwife. The name was Sarah Tillery. | 16:21 |
Chris Stewart | Sarah Tillery? | 16:21 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Mm-hmm. | 16:21 |
Chris Stewart | Where did you do your marketing when you had to do it here in town, when you were living in town? Where did you buy things? | 16:30 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, Enfield used to be a town with a store, anywhere. Small stores, a big grocery store. We used to have A&P, and Red and White, and we had big—Meyer's grocery down there. And Enfield had two or three small places, and furniture stores on the street. And well, Enfield used to be so big that you would walk down the street, you couldn't walk on the—You had to get out there with the cars, to get down the street where you wanted. | 16:37 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | In all of a couple of years, Enfield started going to a ghost town. Dr. Wood, when he retired for, as a doctor, because he was getting older, he retired. Left his. Then the drugstore went down. Then on the corner down there was the, well I forget the name of it now. It went down. It just, store after store. The Cutres. | 17:05 |
Chris Stewart | Why do you think that's the case? | 17:43 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well people wasn't spending enough money in those places, all people, to keep them open. And in Mack Fields, they had a nice clothing store, but they wasn't getting enough customers, making enough money to really keep going to pay help and keep running them, and they had to close. And they closed, closed. The Roses 5 &10 store, they got that now. | 17:45 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, it used to have a Roses here? | 18:11 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah, right on the corner there. Now they got his frontiers where they have bingo and stuff. Well for a couple of years, they sat there perfectly naked, nothing. And the IGA store, and the Red and White. Red and White got burned, IGA store went out of business, and they built Byrd's up here. | 18:12 |
Chris Stewart | So did you shop mostly at supermarkets? | 18:29 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah, mostly. Mostly. | 18:36 |
Chris Stewart | At what age did you get married? | 18:37 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | I got married when I was 21. but see now we only have Byrd's. Well Meyer's is just a small place there, and they're still doing good business. But Byrd's is our only main store, and the prices there is outrageous, because they don't have any competition. | 18:41 |
Chris Stewart | I've heard a lot about people talking that they used to travel for great distances to go to Meyer's. People were talking about traveling from this, I mean, from Tillery area. | 19:05 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh yeah. | 19:16 |
Chris Stewart | Northern Halifax County? | 19:16 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well Meyer's has still got a good business. Right, today Meyer's has still got a good business. See, because Meyer's, like a lot of farmers, different people, people have stuff on time? When they get their checks they come in and pay, and stuff like that. But see, Byrd's don't do that. But Meyer's has still got a good business, and I think it always will have, because the Meyer's are nice to Black people. Real nice. | 19:19 |
Chris Stewart | It sounds like that's where a lot of Black people did their shopping. | 19:41 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah, they did, now, but now Byrd's is—But a lot of times, because my boys, they work at the Rocky Mount. They stop at Winn-Dixie, different places, and buy. I can't pay all the Byrd's prices there, but I do a lot of it, lot of my pickings up at Byrd's. But my main things, I let the boys get on when they stop at the meat houses and different places. They learned a lot of cheaper ways to pick up stuff, and since they're over there when they come from work, he stop and pick up stuff and he help out a lot. | 19:44 |
Chris Stewart | Can you recall ever having any heroes or people that you really looked up to when you were little? You were young? | 20:23 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well I didn't call them heroes. I don't really— | 20:43 |
Chris Stewart | What would you have called them? | 20:44 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | I don't know. Nobody I ain't ever looked up to so much. | 20:49 |
Chris Stewart | Even in your neighborhood? | 20:51 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well now my neighborhood people, now it's people around here that's like Ms. Cofield over there. I really felt closer to her as a friend than I did my own sister. Because when I was living next door to her, did you know who I'm talking about? Mae Cofield? | 20:54 |
Chris Stewart | We're interviewing her today. | 21:13 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh you did? You got to go there now? | 21:15 |
Chris Stewart | Somebody is coming to interview her at two o'clock today. | 21:17 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh yes. Well I moved in there, she used to live in the house next door to me, next door there. When she moved in her new house, I moved in that house. Well that's where I was living when I brought the children here. She came over that morning, we had left our key with her when we left to go to Chicago. We got back, we brought the children. When we went to pick up the key, she came on over, and she came to my house every single day I rang. I don't ring for six weeks, she didn't miss a morning that she didn't come there and help me feed and dress these children. | 21:20 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | She's one of the best neighbors that anybody want to live beside her, near her. A lot of people will talk about them because they think they owns a little more than—Other people think that's because they owns a little more, and all that they do. You know how people can kind of run you down, or they think they too good because they in business, and owns a little something, but they are nice people. She had those two grandsons. Kai, he's the mayor of Enfield now. And Tommy, he's been working with in Raleigh. | 21:56 |
Chris Stewart | Mm-hmm. I also interviewed Mr. Solomon. | 22:35 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Ruel? | 22:41 |
Chris Stewart | Who is— | 22:41 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Ruel and his wife. Lillie. | 22:43 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 22:45 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh yes. Well they are my friends too. | 22:45 |
Chris Stewart | We interviewed him the first day we were here. | 22:50 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Okay. Yeah, and I know Lillie, and she used to be at the central office, and then she wound up at Southeast, and she retired. | 22:51 |
Chris Stewart | She's very busy. She wasn't there when I was interviewing Mr. Solomon. | 22:59 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | And Ruel, he was the principal at Southeast. I mean at White Oak. Now, I don't know exactly where Ruel is right now. | 23:04 |
Chris Stewart | He's still the principal. | 23:09 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah, he is. I forget the name of school right now, but his daughter, I used to haul her back and forth to school with my children, all the time, Karla. All the time. We was real close. And the Cofields, we are just like from one to the other, all the time there, because when they had me a birthday party—I got a picture there now with Kai and Ms. Cofield over there, and we belong to the coalition together. They picks me up, and text me, and my son, sometimes he'll take—My grandson, he'll would take me and Ms. Cofield to the meetings, and all those kind of things. They're close friends. | 23:12 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | But she had those two boys and they, see they is a few years older than my boys. Maybe four or five years older than my boys, and she brought suitcases of clothes. They helped me with my children. The first two years that my first two went to school, I didn't have to buy them anything, and they were giving my children clothes to wear until my children caught up with her children and they couldn't wear them. Now those people had been God sent. When my boys was in college, I know one time—they're getting college loans, but the money hadn't come in, and in college, you ain't got your money that day, they don't wait on you for it to come. When his money hadn't come, | 23:50 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | I needed $500. I went over there, I told, Mr. Cofield was living there. I told him, "I didn't come visiting, I come begging." He said, "Now you know don't have to beg." He said, "What's the trouble?" I said, "I need $500 for Lance." | 24:35 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | He didn't ask me, "When is you going pay it back? How you going to pay it back?" He didn't ask nothing, he just wrote me a check. I went the bank and got the money, and took off to Durham, going to Central to take this money. Now they did, more than one time they'd done different favors for me, because I have done a lot to try to help them too through sickness and all, because I was there the day he died. | 24:50 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | But those people, and they knows how to save. She has taught me more how to save than anybody else I ever been around, and fixing compost piles and things like that. Now she don't throw in eggshell or cabbage leave. Not even her newspapers. Nothing. She will take those newspapers that she don't save, and she'll cut them up, tear them up and put them in water, and spread them in the garden, and when they add the garden, and they growing the garden up, and the butter beans all come up. They line the thing with newspapers, and they put pine straw over it. And they didn't ever have to chop them, and they stay there. She don't hire anybody to work. Even now she is 86 years old, and she works her garden and grows some of everything in it. | 25:14 |
Chris Stewart | Well Leslie, this woman who's going to interview her, is going to have a wonderful time, I think. | 26:07 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah. And they are just nice, nice people. And all of, and Ms. Exum up there. She is there. | 26:11 |
Chris Stewart | We interviewed her as well. | 26:20 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah. You going to get her? | 26:25 |
Chris Stewart | Yes. | 26:25 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh, you did? Well she is a real close, close friend. You name them around here, that most of the people that try to do things like that, they're friendly with me. | 26:27 |
Chris Stewart | Was there ever a time when you were growing up, or as long as you've lived here, that you feel like people didn't treat you like you were as good as they were? And I'm thinking mainly White people. | 26:36 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | No. Now as I say, I have dealt with a lot of White people in this town. Well they could have been treat me like because I was working for them, but they have always treated me nice, and they know how to talk to me. And I have always been fool enough if you didn't speak to me right, I'd speak back. | 26:53 |
Chris Stewart | Can you give an example of something like that that would happen, if somebody didn't speak right to you and you'd speak back? | 27:15 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, it may come to me. Okay. But this White family, both of them is dead now. Stevenson, he used to run the Columbia Peanut Mill after Mr. Briggs died, and I was working there. He had first moved to town. His wife, they had one little girl had just been born, and he started taking me from the mill to the house to help out at his house. I go to the house, when I finish at the house, I go to the mill the rest of the day. | 27:21 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well I stayed with those children until when they was in college, and both of them now. Steve, he's in Charlotte. Carolyn, she lives in Forest City. You know about where that is? | 27:56 |
Chris Stewart | Mm-hmm. | 28:14 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Out that way. And those children, I was still helping at that house. I raised, well I could almost raised those children. I stayed with them when they were going out, and I'd go there every week, to clean and to wash and cook and whatever. When Carolyn was in school in Greensboro, I know one time she often speak about it, I took some applejacks, and her parents were going to see, and I sent her some. They come to see me right now, and Carolyn heard about, I had hurt my hand. When I looked up, one day, here she was. | 28:15 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Right here. When her mother died, it will be two years, this past February was two years when she died. Every rag that she had, they gave it to me. All the stuff that they had that they wasn't taking, they took the funding to, and everything else they gave it to me. And another woman that hope there's some, I divided a lot of, even her washing machine, everything they gave to me. They treats me, whenever they come. I got a picture in there right now. Come in, I'll show you. I'll just show this to you. 1917. May 10th, 1917. | 28:52 |
Chris Stewart | When did she die, ma'am? | 29:37 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | September 17th in '83. | 29:41 |
Chris Stewart | And where was he born? | 29:46 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, the place, he used to call it—Well, it's still Halifax County. It's called Buzzard Town or somewhere. | 29:50 |
Chris Stewart | And what was his occupation? | 30:02 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | He was utility. He worked for the town, he worked for the water, and sewage and everything. He did some all of it. | 30:03 |
Chris Stewart | Your mother's name? | 30:21 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Josephine Cofield. Lewis. She was Cofield before she— | 30:22 |
Chris Stewart | So were you related to the Cofields in any way? | 30:27 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, a real distance. My grandfather and their grandfathers was related, but Tommy got up to us. We just run out to close friends. | 30:31 |
Chris Stewart | When was she born? | 30:47 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | My mother? | 30:49 |
Chris Stewart | Mm-hmm. | 30:51 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Now, I don't know. She died in '37. | 30:51 |
Chris Stewart | How old was she? | 30:54 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | She was 55 when she died. | 30:57 |
Chris Stewart | '82. And where was she born? | 31:25 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Halifax County, far as I know. Yeah, I know she was. Halifax County. Never known anything else. | 31:29 |
Chris Stewart | And her occupation? | 31:36 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Just a housewife, farmer. | 31:38 |
Chris Stewart | And your father's name? | 31:38 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | His name George Lewis. | 31:46 |
Chris Stewart | And do you know his date of birth? (phone rings) [INTERRUPTION 00:31:58] | 31:58 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. Do you remember your father's date of birth? | 31:58 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | No. He died in 19—Wait a minute. 1960. | 32:01 |
Chris Stewart | How old was he? | 32:06 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | And he was 75 when he died. But the birth dates and all that stuff. | 32:09 |
Chris Stewart | We got it. He was born in Halifax County, you think? | 32:18 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yes, Halifax County. | 32:21 |
Chris Stewart | And his occupation was a farmer? | 32:24 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, but it had been a long time since he farmed. He used to just hold around town, doing yard work and stuff like that until he give out, and I kept him, because he was sick a couple of years and lost his mind and everything before he died, and I looked after him till he died. Then a few years after he died, I took these children, and I kept them. By the time they were getting up a little bit, my husband, he got sick. Got down. | 32:27 |
Chris Stewart | You've took care of people for a long time, haven't you? | 33:05 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah, and one then the other, then I took care of my husband, and then having another six folks, and I raised the children, and the Lord is—When he come back to the religion, and stuff like that. I know the Lord has been as good to me as he has almost anybody. As I say, I don't been in church all the time, but I doing other things, and I know what the Lord has brought me through, and I got as much faith in him as next fella. I know what he's brought me through because a whole lot of people ain't been through all the things I have, and I'm still on my feet. | 33:06 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | All through this hand, and stuff like this, I've been able to still make it. And I didn't know this hand, didn't know anything to do, until—I mean, this one got hurt. This left hand. This left hand, I didn't know how to hold a fork. I just didn't know nothing how to do with it, but now, it's come naturally and I does most of the stuff with it. I still can't write with it. I can't handle my pencil. I have learned to write a little bit again now with this hand, but most of my work now is with this left hand. | 33:37 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 34:11 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | But it was an odd thing to use when I first hurt my— | 34:12 |
Chris Stewart | I bet. | 34:16 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Right hand. So I have been working all my life. You name it, the kind of work, and I've been doing it. So work is nothing strange to me, and the Lord had blessed me to stay on my feet and make it. | 34:18 |
Chris Stewart | What are the names of your brothers and sisters? | 34:36 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | My older brother's name Ed, and then it was Willie, Jesse and Cherry. Now Willie and Cherry is dead. | 34:39 |
Chris Stewart | What was the last name? What last name? Shirley? | 34:55 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Cherry. | 34:59 |
Chris Stewart | Cherry. | 35:00 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Cherry. We always called him Che-boo. Everywhere we call, his name was Cherry, or something like that. He died in '37, and not a lot thought how to do him. | 35:01 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. Those are your brothers? | 35:16 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | That was the four brothers. I had one sister named Hattie. She was head of Bullock when she died. | 35:18 |
Chris Stewart | Bullock? | 35:25 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Bullock. | 35:26 |
Chris Stewart | When did she die? | 35:30 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | 1980. | 35:30 |
Chris Stewart | And where were you in the order of children? | 35:37 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Oh well, see, well I'm the youngest one now. Cherry was the baby. They're a bit older than me. Ed, Hattie, Willie and Jess. I was the fifth one. And Cherry made six. | 35:41 |
Chris Stewart | Your children's names? You have one son? | 35:56 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | It was Robert. He's a Robert Scott. Robert Lewis Scott. | 36:00 |
Chris Stewart | When was he born? | 36:03 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | September 29th, 1932. | 36:11 |
Chris Stewart | And where was he born? | 36:21 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Over there on the farm. Where he was used to work. Dickens Farm. | 36:23 |
Chris Stewart | How come he's a Scott? | 36:29 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well see, he was born before I married this. See Walter is his stepfather. That's what it is. | 36:32 |
Chris Stewart | Since you have raised all your grandchildren, I'll write them. We don't have a space to list grandchildren, but since you've raised them, we probably should with them. So what are their names? | 36:40 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Six boys. Darryl. | 36:58 |
Chris Stewart | These are all last name Scott? | 37:01 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yes. | 37:04 |
Chris Stewart | Darryl. | 37:05 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | D-A-R-R-Y-L. | 37:06 |
Chris Stewart | Uh-huh. | 37:10 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | David. Milo is M-I-L-O. Lance. Daniel. Jerome. | 37:11 |
Chris Stewart | With a J? | 37:35 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | J-E-R-O-M-E. And one girl, Robin. Robin Lynn. | 37:35 |
Chris Stewart | Is she married? | 37:43 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Not anymore. And the other two girls that I raised, I raised them from little bitty children, too. They belonged to my son's second wife, but I raised them, one of them named Angela Jones, and Vanessa Jones. I kept them from the time they were six and seven years old until they in college. | 37:45 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. Wow. Okay, now we want to put down your residential history or where you've lived for—You said for the first about 25 years you lived out on the Dickens Farm? | 38:18 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | That's right. | 38:32 |
Chris Stewart | And then you moved to Enfield, and you lived— | 38:46 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | The house is still there, right across in front of that—About 301 service station. It's right across the street from there. I lived there about, oh, about 20, yeah, about 25—About 23 years. Then I moved over there beside of Ms. Cofield in '64, and stayed there until '71. Then I moved here. So I've been right in sight of myself ever since 1939. From 1939 up until now, I could look down the highway and see where my house is right here. | 38:52 |
Chris Stewart | How's the street changed since you lived here? | 39:41 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | A lot, because where Ms. Cofield is living used to be between her house and that other house with three other houses, and this house, I know when it was built, it used to be two houses. Used to be a house right there where that service station is, and another house here, and they were torn down when—This one, the one that was in this lot, was torn down when this house was built. Now I don't know exactly what year this house was built, but it was, I think this house was about 24 years old when we moved in it. | 39:48 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. And 30, not in '39. '71? | 40:28 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | When we moved in here in '71, they said this house was about 24 years old then, and we've been in it since '71 up until now. So that's how old this house is. | 40:28 |
Chris Stewart | Has the street changed though, and the people on the street? | 40:44 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah, now over there where this clinic is, it used to be a house sitting there, and over there across the street on the other side of that same street there was house where the Branchs lived, and those two houses there were still, there were the White people was in them. There's two houses down below that house there, where it's heart is in this empty lot. They were houses. All that's been torn down, and all of this place over here, these houses was moved, and that Branch house was torn down, and everything has been torn down and rebuilt to make everything completely different. | 40:45 |
Chris Stewart | Sounds like it's become more of a business street rather than a residential street. | 41:31 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | That's right. Now, where the Family Dollar, that used to be the Chevrolet, Agnes Chevrolet Company used to be there. Well they went out business, now it's a Family Dollar store. Everything, well in the last 20 some years, it has just torn down and rebuilt. So many on the street going up, there used to be old cafes, wooden buildings. Cafes, and they used to have a few tobacco warehouses here. Some of the warehouses, still, they've been used for cotton and other stuff, but they're still sitting up there looking bare. Those gin houses in town that need to be torn down and moved out are sitting there growing up looking bare. You used to have cotton gins, across the railroad track that was there, there was cotton gins, what are called gins, and all this sitting up there just looking bare, making the town look worse and worse all the time, til Enfield, it just about not to be much. | 41:34 |
Chris Stewart | What about school? What were the names? You said you went to the Inborden school? | 42:41 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | It was Enfield grade school when I first started, and then it turned into Inborden school, and it's still Inborden now. When that was integrated, Ms. Cofield's daughter's oldest child was the first Black child to go into this Enfield. Her dad was Reed Johnson, and he carried her up there for the first Black child to go in there. The next year was her two boys and my one, my oldest one was the second one that started up there, when they integrated the park. | 42:46 |
Chris Stewart | How did you feel about sending your son as only like a group, I mean one of the first people to go into that school? | 43:34 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, I felt all right because I was looking after. Now when they integrated the park, my children were just small little children. They all used to be down here to this, the park down here, on Bell Street. You know, right down the street there, there now. But since Ms. Cofield's son has been mayor, he just had the park cleaned up and fixed parking space, and put White across there so that everybody couldn't drive in and clean it up and everything. Now that's a real nice park. | 43:36 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | But the Randolph's Park used to be for all White, they didn't have Black up there, but when they integrated that, the people came here from, well, White people, came here from other places, and most of them was from California and different places. They come here and asked, went around the house and asked the people, what children could they take up there? I was willing for mine to go. | 44:06 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well they went up there, in this park, they had this big picnic, and they cooked hot dogs and gave them watermelons and everything, and the White children was running out there and the family was running and getting them, carrying them back, trying to keep them from mixing. But I was out there, and I went out there if one of them hurt one of my children, I went out there to die with them. But as long as my children stayed and treat them all right, that was going to be all right with me. But that's how that got started. These Meyer's here has been working with them. They furnished hot dogs and all this stuff for the hot dogs and different things, sodas and things. Every time they have something up there, they— | 44:36 |
Chris Stewart | Meyer's Groceries, you said? | 45:27 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Meyer's Groceries. Them folks is giving something to help with them. | 45:28 |
Chris Stewart | To what grade did you attend school? | 45:33 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, I didn't go no further than about eighth grade, then. | 45:38 |
Chris Stewart | What about your work history? You were a farmer for the first how long? | 45:44 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | The first, up until I was 21, and then I started housework. No, I went to Petersburg when I was about 18. About 18, and I started sleeping-in on a job in Petersburg. Then when my mother died in '37 is when I came back to Enfield, and I worked housework around here. Then I started in 1941, I started work at the Columbia Peanut Company, and worked there until in 1966, when I took the children. Between the time since I had the children and all, I just been working at the different— | 45:47 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | When it comes to work, there ain't too much different kind of work that I don't know something about. | 0:03 |
Chris Stewart | What exactly were you doing at the peanut factory? | 0:10 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Picking peas. See the peanuts runs on a belt. And you pick out the bad peas. Just before I left, they began to get in this electric eye, they called it. Then cutting out handwork, picking it out by—For that thing could pick peas, too. All the things we missed, the electric eye would get. We separated peanuts. | 0:14 |
Chris Stewart | Have you ever received any awards, or honors, or anything like that? Maybe from your church? | 0:39 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Now, since I've been here I hurt my hand. My church, they sent me flowers, and checks, things like that. | 0:47 |
Chris Stewart | And your church, you're Baptist? | 0:55 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | I'm Baptist. I'm a member of St. Paul Baptist Church right down there. | 0:59 |
Chris Stewart | And you used to be a member of the Crowell? | 1:07 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Crowell. I was baptized as a child, small child at Crowell. Reverend McKinley Nicholson. And he's still there. | 1:09 |
Chris Stewart | Still there. | 1:17 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Still there. | 1:18 |
Chris Stewart | We'd love to interview him. But Ms. Vera, Ms. Vera Plummer, didn't think that we should. | 1:19 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | No, because he can't hear real good. He can't see real good and he already give up and go home. | 1:24 |
Chris Stewart | That's what she says, too. | 1:32 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | And tell you the truth- | 1:34 |
Chris Stewart | That's what Ms. Fenner says, too. | 1:35 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Yeah. But he's still there. Still there holding on. | 1:36 |
Chris Stewart | He's not going to give up. | 1:40 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | No. | 1:42 |
Chris Stewart | Are there any organizations that you belong to in this area? | 1:42 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, I don't belong to anything now, but the court, Halifax County Coalition. I belong to that right now. | 1:43 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 1:52 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | All the other things, when I got all these children I had to give up. | 1:58 |
Chris Stewart | Sure. | 2:02 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | So many things that I used to be mixed up in. So I used to be the secretary for the Inborden School, the PTA, and a lot of things mixed up then. But see, after I got all these children, and then tending to the sick folks, and all I give up on most of that type of activity. | 2:02 |
Chris Stewart | Can you list any hobbies or activities that you like to do? | 2:25 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | I can name a lot of them I would like to do, but those that I do when it comes to washing, ironing, and cooking, and cleaning, and tending to children, and seeing after other folks is about my hobby. | 2:32 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. That's the end of that big form. Is there anything I haven't asked you ma'am, that you'd like to have on this? | 3:04 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | No, I guess not. I rang out and talked too much anyway. | 3:14 |
Chris Stewart | Well, you gave us a lot of good stories. You talked a lot about your memories. | 3:18 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, life is—I have had a hard life and a lot of people would say it was a hard life, but I don't say it was a hard life because the Lord abled me to pull through it, enable me to do it. And I wasn't really burdened down to do it. And so I don't feel like I have. A lot of people ask me, "Ooh, how you on earth you make it with all those children?" It wasn't hard. I was used to working every day. Instead of leaving home to go to work, I was just working at home. I washed and ironed every day, Saturday, Sunday, you name it. And I washed. There ain't no Sunday, no nothing I didn't wash for that many children. And there wasn't any Pampers back then. Everything was cloth diapers. | 3:26 |
Chris Stewart | Right. | 4:16 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | And I had to wash them. But I did it. I got up every morning and while these children was small and near all of them was going to school, every morning when they got up, I had everybody know a certain place where they find their clean clothes. I'd lay them out at night before I go to bed. And they would get up in the morning. Some of them was started getting up about five o'clock in the morning going to the bathroom because we only have two bathrooms here in the house. Now, they started going—Go and get his bath, that bath, and they'd go back to bed and wake up the next one. By the time to get ready because everybody had to be done and cleaned up. | 4:18 |
Chris Stewart | You've got to be really proud of what you've done. | 4:58 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, it just life to me. And mornings, at night, I always had them to wash up good. Got a good bath at night before they go to bed, go to bed clean. And the mornings when they get up, I had the clothes. Everybody know where they find their clothes. I had nine piles out. And for breakfast mornings, I cooked breakfast. It was a whole gallon of milk. More than a pound of bacon, a loaf of bread, grits, a dozen eggs. Because there was 11 of us I was cooking for every morning. And I used to load them up to go to school. And there's so many them was getting out, people be counting them. All piling out, getting out. See when they were small, they could get in one car. Get them to school. And I kept them into everything that was to be in at school. All the trips, whatever. | 5:02 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | I had them there. They could go. I kept them in school. If anything happened and they were throwing up a little bit, and he called me, and said, "They sick I'm sending you one of them." Send them home. I take them back like straight back to school. I never let one stay out of school a day. I know one day I told the teacher, they sent one home. I told them that I did not appreciate this thing of sending children home because a lot of them would do things to be sent home because they know if they did bad they going put them out of school, and that's where they wanted to be in the street. | 5:58 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | I said, they didn't go home. The parents didn't know they wasn't in school. I said, "Now mine, the mother's dead. The dad is a thousand miles away. They here in my care and they're not going to be in the street. They going to school." I said, "Whatever other punishment, if it's the right thing to do. Okay. I didn't come out here to change no rules. But I did come out here to see that he go back to his classroom because he not going to be in the street" We'll find something else for him to do. I don't care. Wash dishes, clean up whatever you have for the duty, clean the yard. If it's for punishment, okay. But not going to send him home. But they ain't coming home. | 6:28 |
Chris Stewart | They ever send him home again? | 7:06 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | No. | 7:09 |
Chris Stewart | I bet they didn't. | 7:09 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | No, they didn't send none of mine home. | 7:09 |
Chris Stewart | But you really, like I said before, you've got to be really proud of what you've done for those children. | 7:11 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | Well, I'm thankful that the Lord enabled me to do it and all, but feeling so special, proud, and different from other things—I never looked at it that way. I looked at it as life and things that— | 7:18 |
Mayonie Lewis Daniel | (to someone else) Come to the front! | 7:32 |
Item Info
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