Willie O. Powell interview recording, 1993 June 29
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Karen Ferguson | Well, maybe by asking you where you grew up, and to talk a little bit about the community in which you grew up. | 0:01 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, I grew up in three and a half miles outside of Enfield out in the country on a farm, which I enjoyed very much. I guess like the lady said the other day, we were going to town and have our fellowshipping and we'd meet people in the town on Saturday afternoon or Saturday, and church on Sunday. I guess we were quite busy. Very seldom we visited anybody outside of [indistinct 00:00:47], but we did. Every now and then we did. You know? | 0:08 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 0:49 |
Willie Otto Powell | I guess about the same amount that anyone else visited each other. You know? | 0:52 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 0:56 |
Willie Otto Powell | It wasn't a daily thing, a nightly thing. It might be once a week, maybe once a month, twice a month, something like that. On the farm we grew all our vegetables. We had fruit trees. We had a cow, milk. To me, it's a normal life considering the time back then. Now, things have changed. Back then, we had mules, we had plows by hand compared to the tractors and things they have now. The quality of life's supposed to be still improving, but I don't know, but maybe it was better back then because we didn't have all these pesticides and all these things. | 0:56 |
Willie Otto Powell | So, maybe our vegetables and so forth were more wholesome or more safe to eat. I don't know. I had a bike. I used to ride bike, the normal, what they considered a toy like everyone else. You know? | 1:52 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 2:13 |
Willie Otto Powell | We had a car. We always had a car. We'd go riding in it. I can't remember a time that we didn't have what we required to carry on our lives. We had it, whatever we required to do what we had to do. | 2:13 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. Who did you grow up with? | 2:31 |
Willie Otto Powell | My mother and father. | 2:31 |
Karen Ferguson | Your mother and father? | 2:31 |
Willie Otto Powell | Mm-hmm. | 2:31 |
Karen Ferguson | Did you have any brothers and sisters? | 2:31 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. I had two brothers. There was really, well, three brothers but one died something like six months after born, and my older brother died in 1983. | 2:31 |
Karen Ferguson | So, you have two brothers? | 3:03 |
Willie Otto Powell | No, there's only two of us left now. Yeah, uh-huh. | 3:06 |
Karen Ferguson | No sisters? | 3:06 |
Willie Otto Powell | No sisters. | 3:06 |
Karen Ferguson | No sisters. | 3:11 |
Willie Otto Powell | No, no. I didn't really miss them. | 3:12 |
Karen Ferguson | Why do you say that? | 3:18 |
Willie Otto Powell | They don't [indistinct 00:03:18]. Right? Nah. I didn't miss them because I guess it's something you don't have you don't miss. You see, you can't miss what you don't have. | 3:20 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah, [indistinct 00:03:23]. | 3:22 |
Willie Otto Powell | That's what they really say. I don't know, maybe that's true, but really never thought much about it. My mother, I think she would've liked to have had a daughter, somebody to help cook or something like that. | 3:22 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 3:38 |
Willie Otto Powell | I always told my mother, I said, "The biggest mistake you ever made, you didn't teach me to cook," because I left home and went to New York and so forth. I was always around restaurants and everything. | 3:39 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 3:48 |
Willie Otto Powell | I never suffered for food or anything like that because—but I still would've liked to learn to cook. I like to go through the books, the magazines and see the different recipes. You know? | 3:49 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 4:04 |
Willie Otto Powell | I said I like to experiment with that. A lot of people say that I can't do that. I was like, "But I'd like to try to even find it—" when I finished it, I looked at it, threw it out. Maybe I might be successful, maybe not. You know? | 4:04 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right, right. | 4:18 |
Willie Otto Powell | That was one of the things. | 4:20 |
Karen Ferguson | Did anybody else live in your house? Were there any other children that your parents took care of or anything like that? | 4:22 |
Willie Otto Powell | No, no. Just us. | 4:26 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah, just you. | 4:28 |
Willie Otto Powell | Back then, everybody had kept their own family, not like the children now, but if people pick up and take their safe places or whatever there. | 4:30 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 4:37 |
Willie Otto Powell | Back then, everybody took care of their own family and you didn't have that kind of a—once in a while there might be a cousin or something would stay with people like that, but we didn't have anyone. Actually, we had overnight guests or somebody come and stay for a week. They didn't necessarily be family. Could be some little kid my mother took a liking to. She would want to say, "Let him come with me," and he'd come out and stay for two, three days or something like that, but otherwise—yeah. | 4:37 |
Karen Ferguson | Did you have relatives who lived around you? | 5:15 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. All my relatives lived around, my aunts and uncles and all that. Yeah. Relatives around there, could visit them right over here. I guess you could say they were within walking distance. Yeah. We would see them quite often. Sunday afternoon was a get-together at Grandma's house or something like that. Yeah. | 5:21 |
Karen Ferguson | How about other people in the neighborhood? Were you related to everyone in the neighborhood or were you—? | 5:42 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. no, there was some strangers in there. The other people owned the farm. I don't want to say they're sharecroppers but they worked on other farms, and so they lived around us, other people. Yeah. | 5:46 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. These people were working on other Black people's farms? | 6:00 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. | 6:03 |
Karen Ferguson | No? | 6:03 |
Willie Otto Powell | They were White people's farms. | 6:04 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay, okay. | 6:04 |
Willie Otto Powell | Some cases. | 6:04 |
Karen Ferguson | Did your family own their own land? | 6:09 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, mm-hmm. Yeah. They all had built their own land. | 6:10 |
Karen Ferguson | Do you remember your grandparents at all? | 6:17 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 6:19 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah? | 6:19 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. Except my grandfather on my mother's side. I never knew him. He died back in the '20s. | 6:20 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 6:27 |
Willie Otto Powell | That was before I was born. But my father's side, grandmother and grandfather, I knew them. Of course, not as long as I would've liked to because like I said, I left home quite young. | 6:28 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 6:45 |
Willie Otto Powell | That's the only thing I really miss being here. Even though I was gone, my mind was always home. You know? | 6:47 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 6:55 |
Willie Otto Powell | In that was, but I did have a sufficient amount of contact with them just to carry me over. You know? | 6:57 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah, yeah. | 7:07 |
Willie Otto Powell | But there's always longing, no matter where you go, to come home. You know? | 7:08 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 7:11 |
Willie Otto Powell | I said, "One day I will." Somebody [indistinct 00:07:17] but I returned. You know? | 7:12 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. Did your grandparents ever tell you about their childhood, or did they tell you any stories about your ancestors? | 7:22 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, sometimes sitting around but nothing I can remember that I didn't already know That's one of the things I missed, talking, because when I came home I didn't know there were two, three—what do you call it, generations? | 7:29 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 7:45 |
Willie Otto Powell | Had came along and I had to come back and get to know names and whatnot, and I'm still trying. I've been back 10 years and I'm still trying because when I was working, when I would go and come back, I had two weeks vacation. I'd come back but that wasn't enough time to get in contact with everybody. There are a lot of young cousins or whatever they are, they're now that I see them sometimes, I don't know their names. I'm still trying to readjust, get reacquainted or whatever the word is because most of the older generation has passed on that—when I left. I missed a lot that they could have told me. You know? | 7:48 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 8:36 |
Willie Otto Powell | Of course, I'm not saying I didn't get a lot, but there was a lot more I think that would've been valuable for me. | 8:36 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. What did you do with your grandparents? What role did they play in your childhood? | 8:46 |
Willie Otto Powell | I used to go and stay with them all night, overnight or something like that. Something. Sunday afternoon, we'd have lunch or dinner with them, or whatever. You know? | 8:52 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 9:06 |
Willie Otto Powell | Things like that. They always had apple trees. We had some but we'd always go down and collect the apples and bring them home or whatever, even— | 9:07 |
Karen Ferguson | Did they own their own land as well? | 9:17 |
Willie Otto Powell | They owned their own land, yeah. Yep. | 9:18 |
Karen Ferguson | How did your family come about to own land? | 9:20 |
Willie Otto Powell | That part, I don't know. Just like magic. It's like they'd pop-up and they stay out and that's it. | 9:30 |
Karen Ferguson | But they always owned land while you were— | 9:31 |
Willie Otto Powell | They worked for it, I know that. They paid for it, but how they came about it, they were hard workers. I would say if it wasn't for segregation, if they could have done as well as they did under the system. I was telling my wife the other night, I said, "What would they have done if they had not been segregated?" | 9:33 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 9:56 |
Willie Otto Powell | See? Or if everything had been opened up. There was a fear. You know? | 9:56 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 9:58 |
Willie Otto Powell | They wanted the fear for segregation, I believe. Keep people from progressing, you know? | 9:58 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 10:06 |
Willie Otto Powell | My people were hard workers and they were very—after the system, well like it was, they just stayed within certain limits and did what they had to do. I think they got along quite well. God willing to pray. They prayed a lot, went to church. They were churchgoing people, too. They were generous. If they had anything, they would give to the other people, and friendly. | 10:08 |
Karen Ferguson | Were there many Black landowners around where you grew up? | 10:40 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. There were quite a few around there. Yeah. Around where I lived, they owned their own land. Uh-huh, yeah. | 10:43 |
Karen Ferguson | You said there were also tenant farms. | 10:53 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, that worked on other people's farms. | 10:55 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Was there a reason why Blacks owned land in that part? Were there places where Blacks couldn't own land? | 11:01 |
Willie Otto Powell | I never knew that they couldn't own land. Maybe if they couldn't have owned it, it was because it wasn't for sale. You know? | 11:08 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 11:17 |
Willie Otto Powell | Certain people had certain land they didn't let go, and certain people had land—they sell it now. Like now, you see a lot of land for sale now. | 11:18 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 11:25 |
Willie Otto Powell | Anybody can buy it if they have the money. | 11:26 |
Karen Ferguson | There was no limit? Black people wouldn't be denied being able to [indistinct 00:11:34]— | 11:29 |
Willie Otto Powell | Not that I know of. Ain't no particular area or nothing like that if you had money because if you buy land, you buying a farm. It wasn't like, say, you're living side by side in a house with someone. Your farm would line, run over there and over here and over there and over there. You'd be in the center of it. There was no reason why anyone's denied land. You know? | 11:35 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Right. Did you associate much with the tenant farmers who were around there? | 12:02 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yes, yes. When you're small, you don't look ahead from then this far. Sometimes you'll see people, you'll know their name and they disappear. They go away and the name goes with them. You think about them, and sometimes I think about someone, I says, "I can't remember their name." I went to school with children that today if they walked in the door I wouldn't know them. | 12:06 |
Willie Otto Powell | I know their names, some of them, but I can't remember even their faces even. When you're small, you're not storing away for the future. You're just trying to get past from day to day, I guess you might say, which I was. Now, I see how much that would've been valuable if I could—of course, you can store so much anyway. You can only store, so you have to let something go to take something new in, the way I look at it. | 12:36 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 13:04 |
Willie Otto Powell | It wasn't all that, would not have done all that much for me, but the people that back then I would've liked to have kept contact with. You know? | 13:07 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 13:17 |
Willie Otto Powell | But then, people move, move here or there. That's life. | 13:17 |
Karen Ferguson | Were you guys friendly with the people who were tenants as the people that— | 13:20 |
Willie Otto Powell | Sure. | 13:24 |
Karen Ferguson | —landowners, did you go to their homes and so on? | 13:24 |
Willie Otto Powell | I didn't know any difference, or not that it would've made any difference. | 13:27 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 13:31 |
Willie Otto Powell | Just sit there. Whether they tenants or not, I would've—it was same. Everybody was the same. We didn't make any difference. It was just the racial line that made the difference. You know? | 13:31 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right, right. | 13:42 |
Willie Otto Powell | One side and the other, but we didn't—tenant farmers or who, my mother never taught me to dislike or hate anybody because of their race or their color or anything like that. She'd tell as I was saying, and says, "I don't care if you're polka dot." I remember one time, she says—she was working at the school system in New York and someone says—it was something to cook, saying the school needs a cook. Somebody in the back yell out and said, "What color is they?" She says, "I don't care what color they is just so they can cook." That was her, that was her attitude. | 13:43 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Right. | 14:31 |
Willie Otto Powell | She didn't care. Yeah. Only thing she know if you was a nasty person or a good person. You know? | 14:34 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 14:42 |
Willie Otto Powell | That's the only difference. It didn't make no difference to her otherwise. | 14:42 |
Karen Ferguson | Did you have to do work on the farm when you were growing up? | 14:48 |
Willie Otto Powell | A little, but I did the lighter jobs. We hired people to pick the cotton and plow the fields, and so forth. I had very little contact with actually hard work. I had picked cotton. I'd shake the peanuts. I guess you know what that is? | 14:53 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 15:12 |
Willie Otto Powell | Mostly, I went to school. I don't think I did as much as I should have. I think I got away with it. Well, say, got away with a lot. You know? | 15:15 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 15:32 |
Willie Otto Powell | Because I was shielded. | 15:33 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 15:33 |
Willie Otto Powell | We'd come home in the afternoon from school, we would just have a milk cow, just take it out someplace, go bring the cows in or something like that. No. Not a lot of work on the farm, no. | 15:36 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. Did your father work in the fields? | 15:52 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, he worked in them. Of course, like I said, we hired a lot of people. He did some work. He did what he wanted to do, put it that way. I don't think—whatever was necessary. You know? | 15:53 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 16:05 |
Willie Otto Powell | Like I say, not as much as maybe we should have, I guess. | 16:13 |
Karen Ferguson | How much land did you own? | 16:17 |
Willie Otto Powell | I don't know how much land my family owned. We have a map, and then I just never even looked at it. You know? | 16:21 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 16:29 |
Willie Otto Powell | It's just, I guess, a medium farm. | 16:30 |
Karen Ferguson | Can you make a stab at the number of acres? | 16:33 |
Willie Otto Powell | I don't know. 100, maybe over or less, I don't know. | 16:35 |
Karen Ferguson | 100? | 16:39 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, acres. Yeah, something like that. | 16:39 |
Karen Ferguson | Who were these people that you hired? Where were they from? | 16:42 |
Willie Otto Powell | They were from the town. | 16:45 |
Karen Ferguson | From the town? | 16:46 |
Willie Otto Powell | From the town, yeah. | 16:47 |
Karen Ferguson | They lived in town and— | 16:48 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. | 16:49 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 16:50 |
Willie Otto Powell | We used to go down with the car and bring them out. | 16:50 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 16:52 |
Willie Otto Powell | Bring the car and they'd make it two loads. You know? | 16:52 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 16:55 |
Willie Otto Powell | We'd have six to eight people and they'd pick cotton. We had one fellow that we hired regular that do the plowing and all that. He was a regular with us. Matter of fact, we had several. Now then, some died and I think a couple of them are still living because they're in the city now also. | 16:55 |
Karen Ferguson | How would you know where to pick these people up? Would they just be waiting or— | 17:18 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, you would go down. Sometimes you'd get information from somebody. They'd say, "Oh, such-and-such would like to work." You'd go down a Sunday afternoon or a Saturday, see them in town, and tell them, "Look. I have some cotton to be picked, shake some peanuts or something like that, and I need you to—" sometimes, you'd pick up a new one and one or two would drop out. You had people that if they—like I said, if they had a couple dollars they wouldn't work until that couple dollars is gone, and then they would go out and bring in some more. You know? | 17:21 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 17:58 |
Willie Otto Powell | They had that kind of thing. You'd maybe have two, three regulars. They would stick with you until all your cotton was picked, and three or four maybe just drop in and out. That was the thing that went on. On all farms it was like that. You know? | 17:59 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right, right. | 18:19 |
Willie Otto Powell | When they finished with us, they'd go move over to another farm. | 18:19 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. Were they just adults, or did some children work? | 18:23 |
Willie Otto Powell | Adults mostly. The children was in school. I don't remember. Every now and then, sometimes on a Saturday. Maybe if they picked on a Saturday they would bring the children out with them, but most children stayed in school. The one thing about the family, they wanted to make sure their children stayed in school back then. You know? | 18:27 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. How do you think it was different for them working for a Black landowner than a White landowner? Do you think there was any difference? | 18:46 |
Willie Otto Powell | No— | 18:51 |
Karen Ferguson | No? | 18:52 |
Willie Otto Powell | —I don't see no difference. | 18:52 |
Karen Ferguson | Better or [indistinct 00:18:56]? | 18:52 |
Willie Otto Powell | The money looked green and— | 18:56 |
Karen Ferguson | The same? | 18:57 |
Willie Otto Powell | —it stayed mean, so there wasn't— | 18:58 |
Karen Ferguson | Do you think the Black landowner would treat them better or— | 19:00 |
Willie Otto Powell | No, I don't think anybody— | 19:03 |
Karen Ferguson | No? | 19:04 |
Willie Otto Powell | —actually treated anyone better at that time. If anything were done, it was done not out where you could see it. You know? | 19:06 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 19:15 |
Willie Otto Powell | Everybody was nice. Like some other way, like keeping out of a restaurant, keeping out of places or something like that. The law, you know? | 19:16 |
Karen Ferguson | Uh-huh. | 19:25 |
Willie Otto Powell | That was about that. Everybody was nice. No matter who they meet, they were nice. Nobody would say anything or call you a name. It had to be in a back alley somewhere in the night, catch you out alone or something like that, which I never experienced. I [indistinct 00:19:46]. | 19:29 |
Karen Ferguson | Well, let me ask something else. What did you do when you were growing up as a boy for fun? Did you have many friends in the area? | 19:59 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, we had friends and I used to ride my bike. I was always occupied. I never lacking for entertainment myself because we knew how to do it, knew how to—how would you say it? We knew how to entertain ourselves. | 20:13 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 20:33 |
Willie Otto Powell | Sometimes it may be playing ball or chasing each other, or like the kids do, and we never thought much about anything else. If you had food and a good comfortable home and a good place to sleep, rest came natural. Yeah. I can't never remember an unhappy moment, believe me. | 20:35 |
Karen Ferguson | You never got into trouble? | 20:57 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, sometimes go out and stay longer than I should have. I'd be with a friend. It wasn't too strict because back then we didn't do anything that—it's the way you were brought up, you wouldn't do anything that brought shame on the family. You know? | 21:00 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 21:22 |
Willie Otto Powell | Everything went along normal as much as possible, that I could see. Yeah. I didn't see any bad kids there. We'd have our fights and scrapes like the rest of the kids, but that was normal. Nobody would run over to anybody else's house and say, "My son beat up your kid." Nobody never told anybody. | 21:25 |
Karen Ferguson | Oh, really? | 21:46 |
Willie Otto Powell | We'd never tell anybody we would fight outside. | 21:47 |
Karen Ferguson | If somebody in the neighborhood saw you doing something you shouldn't have, would they have called your mother, or—? | 21:51 |
Willie Otto Powell | They would have, but we would never do anything. We would never do anything that we shouldn't have done or let anybody see us doing anything. I don't know. It's one of those things. It was normal, just as normal not to do something as it was to do what you're supposed to do. | 21:56 |
Karen Ferguson | Were there any people, any adults outside of your immediate family, to whom you were particularly close or whom you looked up to? | 22:21 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, everyone was there and back then, people didn't travel too—everybody was always around, so you close to everyone. You were close to them and you weren't close to them. You never thought about it. They was just always there. Back then, at that time, you didn't have many deaths. I guess like I said, people were healthier back then. They lived longer, and they were always around. Most people I know that I was around was always there from the time I was small until I grew up. It was just like you're close and you're not close because you don't think about it. | 22:32 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 23:20 |
Willie Otto Powell | Physically, you would see them every day, but mentally you just didn't think about it, "Are they there?" You know? | 23:21 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah, mm-hmm. | 23:25 |
Willie Otto Powell | They're just there. It's a normal thing. | 23:29 |
Karen Ferguson | Were there any places that you weren't supposed to go when you were growing up, like any bad areas of town or people that you weren't supposed to associate with? | 23:35 |
Willie Otto Powell | Not that I can say. I can't say because I didn't have my own money. I didn't have my own transportation, so I couldn't go. | 23:49 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 24:02 |
Willie Otto Powell | I had a limited area that I could circulate in. No doubt that that was the case, but I just never ran into it. See? | 24:07 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 24:25 |
Willie Otto Powell | There was certain places I didn't stay in. They used to have a ballgame around here, some places used to have car racing, too. I think horse racing I think in Wilson at one time, because my aunt took me down and we stood near the fence. I remember that little story. You know? | 24:26 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 24:39 |
Willie Otto Powell | I understand there's a ballgame somewhere one time someone went to and there was a line or something there. Whites sit on one side and Blacks sit on the other side. Actually, I never ran into any of it. I don't know. I lived here and went to New York. Just one thing happened after another. You know? | 24:40 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 25:03 |
Willie Otto Powell | I don't know. Just never ran into it head on. You know? | 25:04 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 25:09 |
Willie Otto Powell | Even though it was out there, and I just did what I thought I would do normal, just normal living. I'm quite sure that a lot of other people did come face to face with it. You know? | 25:11 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 25:25 |
Willie Otto Powell | But by my family being as they were, and I grew up and I got large enough to take care of myself and I left, I can say I never ran face to face into anything there that would really—even though I must say it's a shame that this type of thing had happened. It's not that I'm happy with that it was out there, because I'm not. I'm still not happy with it, but I just never ran into it, to my— | 25:26 |
Karen Ferguson | What did you think of the system back then? | 26:08 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, when you're small you, like I say, you have food to eat and your own place to play in, and your own toys and whatever, you don't think much about it. You know it's out there but it's like you're here and that's over there. | 26:12 |
Karen Ferguson | You were always aware of the system— | 26:28 |
Willie Otto Powell | I was aware. I mean, Bricks. You know Bricks? | 26:38 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 26:39 |
Willie Otto Powell | It was an all Black school, and I was aware that when we got on the bus there wasn't no Whites. The books that we used to get, if you get a new book because there was no other book available of that, like a science book—if they didn't have a science book that was passed down maybe from the White school that had been used, it was you would get a new one and things like that. Where I lived out in the country there, there was a White school up above me there, I'd say about a half a mile, and the school bus used to pass me every day. | 26:39 |
Willie Otto Powell | I had to ride my bike to Enfield to catch the bus in Enfield to come to Bricks, and the bus wouldn't run out there, and the White bus run past me every day. We were paying taxes, probably more, or just as much as anyone else out there, but yet still we didn't have the bus, on the bus was from Enfield to Bricks here. | 27:22 |
Karen Ferguson | What did you think when you were growing up when you saw the White [indistinct 00:27:51]? When you were a boy, you probably weren't thinking about taxes at that point, or were you? What did you think about this? | 27:47 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, I knew that Whites were in one section and Black was in another. It was just if you didn't notice it, you weren't looking. Your eyes weren't open. We always knew, and we knew who the extremely violent White—whatever you call them, racists, I guess you call them racists, were. | 27:58 |
Karen Ferguson | You knew who they were? | 28:34 |
Willie Otto Powell | We knew who the real violent—I guess I can't speak for them, but there are certain people that follow certain people. They won't do anything as long as anybody watching, but they will help you if nobody's watching. You know what I mean? | 28:35 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 28:53 |
Willie Otto Powell | That was the thing there. I'm quite sure there was a lot of discrimination going on because when I was a kid, I heard they said that when the Black farmer went to sell his crop, peanuts or whatever, the White farmer would get two or three cents more than the Black farmer. When you're a kid, you hear things like that. I had no proof of it or anything like that, but somebody must've known something if they would said it type thing. | 28:53 |
Karen Ferguson | What did you mean when you were talking before about the people following each other and not doing anything? | 29:31 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, if you get a look at a—what is it? Koresh? Koresh, out there in Texas? | 29:36 |
Karen Ferguson | Oh, right. Mm-hmm. | 29:41 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, followers like that. | 29:41 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay, I see. I see. There were people like that, extreme racists, and you knew who they were? | 29:48 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. Yeah. We knew who they were. | 29:52 |
Karen Ferguson | How did you know who they were? | 29:54 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, the people know them. You'd stop at a gas station and you'd buy gas, and you say something and they don't speak to you. They don't say nothing. | 29:56 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay, okay. | 30:04 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. I had that that happen. I go out and got gas one night at 11:00 and I spoke and he ain't say a word yet. White fellow that was selling gas. I'm buying his gas. He hasn't said a word yet, and hasn't said a word until now as I know. | 30:05 |
Karen Ferguson | You'd know to stay away from those people? | 30:24 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, right. Well that time, it was late at night and his station was the only one that was open. | 30:25 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah, right. | 30:26 |
Willie Otto Powell | I went in and got gas and— | 30:30 |
Karen Ferguson | Was it dangerous at nighttime? | 30:33 |
Willie Otto Powell | I wasn't out at night. Of course, I imagine that anyone was out there was prepared. If you didn't have that, the Klan thing—through here, I don't think—of course, if a Black person was just [indistinct 00:30:54] out alone, I imagine he was attacked or something like that, but most people, they'd get in with the family and what and around other people and— | 30:35 |
Karen Ferguson | Was that the reason that they came home, because they didn't want to be outside at night or—? | 31:05 |
Willie Otto Powell | Probably. Probably. It was a safe bet. I would think it could be. Of course, you could travel through the road and go into town and to the store or something like that. You weren't tight like that. Like I said, most of the things were done so-called legal law, like keeping you out of different places. If you were in the wrong place, they called the cops to get you out. You was paying his salary, and he come in and throw you out, which was illegal until somebody looked in the law books one day and found out it was illegal and they filed suit. | 31:10 |
Karen Ferguson | Do you remember any incidents, or maybe your parents telling you of any incidents where people were attacked in this random violence against Blacks? | 31:59 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, I guess there were, but parents has a way of protecting their children from fear and violence, and they didn't want them to grow up looking at everybody as an enemy. | 32:08 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 32:28 |
Willie Otto Powell | They'd shield, those type of things, but I imagine back when my grandmothers and grandfathers came along, I imagine there was quite a bit of that going on. You know? | 32:29 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 32:38 |
Willie Otto Powell | They didn't talk about it too much. Here and there you'd get little things, but not enough you could put anything together. If they were living, they probably could tell you a lot of things there, I imagine. Yeah. | 32:39 |
Karen Ferguson | Could you describe the house in which you grew up? | 32:54 |
Willie Otto Powell | It was a four-room house. It was a weatherboard house. Yeah. It was tight, quite comfortable, warm. It was nice. It was a house. I guess it might've been above average. | 33:00 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 33:11 |
Willie Otto Powell | Right. I would say at that time it was a good house. Matter of fact, it's still standing out there. | 33:11 |
Karen Ferguson | Oh, it is? It is? | 33:12 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, it's still standing out there. Mm-hmm. | 33:16 |
Karen Ferguson | Well, that's nice to have. | 33:37 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, yes. Yes. Preserving it. | 33:38 |
Karen Ferguson | Is someone living in it? | 33:41 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, mm-hmm. Someone's living in it, yeah. I built my own home when I came home. | 33:41 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. Wait. Did your mother do any field work when you were growing up? | 33:47 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yes. | 33:53 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah? | 33:54 |
Willie Otto Powell | When we were small, growing up, she did a lot of field work, chopping cotton, whatever needed to be done. She did a lot of cooking. | 33:55 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 34:02 |
Willie Otto Powell | Then later on, she didn't do as much. When we grew up, she didn't do as much as she did before. | 34:02 |
Karen Ferguson | Did she do any other jobs off the farm or anything? | 34:14 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. | 34:17 |
Karen Ferguson | No. | 34:17 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. | 34:17 |
Karen Ferguson | No. | 34:18 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. The farm was sufficient to contain us. I mean, took care of us. | 34:19 |
Karen Ferguson | Who made decisions in your family? Who was the boss, your mother or your father, at home— | 34:28 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, I think it was a mutual thing. You know? | 34:33 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 34:35 |
Willie Otto Powell | Between the two of them, they—and anything they didn't know, they were young, I think they asked someone that was more experienced. That's [indistinct 00:34:47]. I want to say my father say people'd come over and ask him questions, like when to plant corn, when you do this and when you do that because they didn't know when the— | 34:36 |
Karen Ferguson | Why was he seen as an expert? | 35:02 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, I don't know. What do they say? Meeting of the minds, I guess. Getting their heads together, so to speak, on which is the best to do what. You know? | 35:05 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 35:14 |
Willie Otto Powell | Always ask. You're in doubt and you ask somebody. I was saying I do the same thing now. I go out and ask somebody something, I say, "That don't mean I'm going to use your advice. The final decision's up to me." You know? | 35:14 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 35:25 |
Willie Otto Powell | But, "I'd like to get your idea on such a thing." I asked my wife the other night, I said, "What do you think about such a thing?" Sometimes she don't answer. "Look," I said, "I don't have to take your advice, but I'd like you to tell me what you think." She would tell me what she'd think and I said, "I'm going to do what I'm supposed to do anyway." You know? | 35:26 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 35:43 |
Willie Otto Powell | "But you just tell me what you think." That's the way we do things. | 35:43 |
Karen Ferguson | Was that common, that people cooperated in that way, or shared information like that? | 35:50 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. It was just a normal thing, conversation. Sometimes conversation, I guess. Somebody sometimes maybe say a person makes a conversation with you, they ask you something. It seem innocent. Maybe they're seeking information. You know? | 35:56 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 36:09 |
Willie Otto Powell | Later on you're thinking about it, saying, "They were trying to ask me how to do certain things," or something like that. It might come back to you but during the time you're talking, you don't realize you're giving information. You know? | 36:10 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 36:23 |
Willie Otto Powell | You're making conversation. That's the way a lot of people acquire a lot of things, until you stop and be aware of they're asking you and everything. Sometimes people won't tell you anything because they think you're trying to—you know? | 36:23 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 36:31 |
Willie Otto Powell | I know people won't tell you a lot of things because—yeah. | 36:31 |
Karen Ferguson | Would farmers help each other out during the year in the field? Would— | 36:48 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yes. Yes, they would come over and help you harvest your peanuts or whatever. Mostly your cotton was picked from people from the town, brought in, but your peanuts, the farmer would come over. Sometimes they'd bring their wagons, their mules, and load up your peanuts on them and bring it over to what they call p-picker or a p-thresher, a thresher or whatever you call it, and they would help you like that. | 36:53 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 37:22 |
Willie Otto Powell | You bring your wagon, your mules or horse over today, and maybe I may need you for two days on my farm. Then I'll go back on your farm for two days. | 37:23 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 37:33 |
Willie Otto Powell | See? Or maybe I might not bring the mules, you see, but I don't need them. I have somebody else. You can help load the hay or help do some other thing like that. They helping each other. People got along swell, I think. The only way the system could damage you is if you let it. They didn't take time to dwell upon what the system was doing and all that kind of thing. You know? | 37:33 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. Would the tenant farmers help out on your farm, too? Would you help them and they helped you, or they'd stick to their own place? | 38:03 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, I don't know. If someone had a tenant on his farm and he had his crop was all in, maybe he said, "Look. You're free to go and do—" | 38:13 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. But they wouldn't do it on their own, the tenants themselves. | 38:22 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, they— | 38:25 |
Karen Ferguson | They didn't have the independence to do that? | 38:26 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. I don't think it was like that. If you were living on a person's farm, your first obligation is to that person. If you do that, you would make that kind of decision when you first move on. After all their crops [indistinct 00:38:47], he said, "Well, look, I don't have anything to do for today." If you were sitting around or wasn't doing anything, go out and look and try to find a day's work or something like that. | 38:30 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 38:54 |
Willie Otto Powell | I don't think it was that bad. I don't think that. | 38:56 |
Karen Ferguson | What values do you think your parents instilled in you? | 39:07 |
Willie Otto Powell | The highest, I think. The highest. | 39:09 |
Karen Ferguson | The eyes? | 39:10 |
Willie Otto Powell | H-I-G-H- | 39:10 |
Karen Ferguson | Oh, sorry. | 39:13 |
Willie Otto Powell | —E-S-T, highest. Yeah. I don't think they would've done any different, could have done a better job of what they did with the—how would you say it? With the equipment they had to do it with. They didn't go to college or anything like that, but they knew a lot of things that today college people don't know about. When I was living in New York, this fellow went to pharmacy school. He came and asked me, came and brought the prescription for me, and said, "Read this." He asked me to read his prescription for him. | 39:13 |
Willie Otto Powell | I put it like that. My mother and father didn't have the best education, but they knew how to do things, other things. They knew how to survive and they did it, and they had passed that on to me. By me living here, I guess, and the system and the way it was, I said, "I'm going to do even better. I'm going to do even better." | 40:13 |
Karen Ferguson | You think that will comes from your parents, to do better like that? | 40:45 |
Willie Otto Powell | Came to my parents and came from—I then made up my mind the system wasn't going to beat me down. | 40:49 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 40:53 |
Willie Otto Powell | I was reading something in the paper this morning. It said this fellow has some goats, and one thing about a goat, you catch them by their horn, you can't push his head down to the ground. He'll flip over, he'll do everything, but you will not put his head on the dirt. I say that they're like me. I just want to raise myself up just a little bit higher, then, and each time a door opens, I'll put my foot in. I won't let it close no more. You know? | 40:54 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 41:49 |
Willie Otto Powell | All I want is to get through. All I want to get to make it to this point, and when the door opens and I put my foot in, I'm going push it a little wider. You know? | 41:50 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Right, right, right. | 41:52 |
Willie Otto Powell | That's what— | 41:52 |
Karen Ferguson | Can you remember a time? Was there a point at which you decided that's what you were going to do, that you weren't going to let the system beat you down? | 41:59 |
Willie Otto Powell | It never bothered me. It never bothered me. I've heard names called and so forth, like that. | 42:08 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 42:13 |
Willie Otto Powell | Someone said one time, "It's not what you're called, it's what you answer to," and I never answered to these particular things. You know? | 42:16 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 42:19 |
Willie Otto Powell | I never answered to them. If you sit there and dwell upon it, you can let anything beat you down. You know? | 42:29 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 42:34 |
Willie Otto Powell | It's just what I said, water on the duck's back. | 42:34 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 42:40 |
Willie Otto Powell | One day some people asked me in New York. Said, "How do you put up with people?" I told my wife this. I said, "I have a wife. She talk all the time. It goes in this ear and out that." So when someone say it to me, I had good training. It goes in this ear and out that ear. You know? | 42:40 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 42:56 |
Willie Otto Powell | It's true. | 42:56 |
Karen Ferguson | What kind of contact did you have with White people when you were growing up? | 43:08 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, no business. No business dealing. I never had to, any business dealings there. My family well-respected. They were well-respected and I think that's one of the reasons they survived as well as they did. They had good contact with good White people. | 43:11 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 43:40 |
Willie Otto Powell | But I say, I don't like this word but I'll use it. They said there are some good White people, there were some good White people. Now, that's what they said back then. All of them was good if you just act good. See? There's some good in everyone. It's the way you present it. You present it in a good light or a bad light, but there's some good in everyone. That's the way I always look at it. You know? | 43:40 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right, right. | 44:07 |
Willie Otto Powell | If a person choose to take the wrong direction—I didn't go to church very much when I was working in New York, but when I came home, became the deacon of the First Baptist Church, and I had a chance to think. A lot of people might not think this way, but I believe that you reap what you sow. You sow bad, you're going to reap it. I see so many people today that was prejudice and today I see them walking. They're limped over, got a curve in their back. | 44:08 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 44:46 |
Willie Otto Powell | I see them sitting on the front porch and they can't get off, and I wonder. I say, "Are they paying for something that they did?" | 44:51 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 44:58 |
Willie Otto Powell | I try to just wonder. Do you really get back what you sow, and maybe get it back threefold, whatever. I haven't completely convinced myself, but I do believe that if you do bad, sooner or later it's going to catch up with you. | 44:58 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 45:29 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. It can go on so long. There's God up there watching us all, and He didn't put no person here on Earth to—it's His job to judge us, and I think He's doing a pretty good job of it. You know? | 45:29 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. These White people with whom your parents were friendly, what was the nature of their relationship? Were they— | 45:46 |
Willie Otto Powell | A business. | 45:56 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 45:57 |
Willie Otto Powell | Mostly business. | 45:57 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 45:58 |
Willie Otto Powell | It wasn't much social. Yeah, not social. There was a few things that they went to, like the farm gave a barbecue. The farm markets and the government or whatever. They'd meet there, but just on a social basis. They used to go to each other's houses. They didn't sit down to dinner and all that kind of thing, but there was contact. You know? | 45:58 |
Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 46:26 |
Willie Otto Powell | That was the only thing, just the law and a few real prejudice Whites. | 46:29 |
Karen Ferguson | Did you ever play with White children when you were growing up? | 46:39 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. I didn't live that close, really. | 46:42 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 46:49 |
Willie Otto Powell | I always had my own little thing of friends there. | 46:49 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 46:50 |
Willie Otto Powell | They had problem, used to meet them along the road, walking, talking White children. Yeah, no problem. When I left and went to New York, everything was just open and I was prepared. I was prepared to just go in and talk to anyone and go on a normal life, which I did. It didn't do any damage to me really. Might have enlightened me some to know there are good and not so good people. Made me more aware. Because I would've went out in a dream world, everything is honey and whatever. They woke me out to know there are good and there are not so good. | 0:00 |
Karen Ferguson | Can you remember your parents ever telling you how you had to act in front of White people in order to stay out of trouble? | 1:01 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. No. Not White people, but any person. | 1:10 |
Karen Ferguson | Adult of— | 1:15 |
Willie Otto Powell | Any adult, yeah. Regardless. My mother, she never pointed out and said, "You are White, I'm Black. You are this. You are green, and you are purple." Never that kind of thing. No, not in that house you didn't. You never point out nobody and said—unless you was making a statement that require you to say this person is such or that person [indistinct 00:01:43]. But otherwise, no way. I couldn't have walked in and say anything about a White person. No way. No, she would never tolerate that. No. And no other person. No human—put it that way—without a good reason. I never had any reason to do it. She would never tolerate that. It got it me because she didn't like that kind of thing. | 1:16 |
Karen Ferguson | Who taught you how to be a man and what a man should be? | 2:17 |
Willie Otto Powell | Watching other people, I guess. I was always around good people, and they set good examples. My uncle and—just watching them. | 2:22 |
Karen Ferguson | What was it be to be a man? How did you become a man, generally, first? | 2:44 |
Willie Otto Powell | I don't know. It was like one day at a time. It was nothing was set out to become—it was just doing normal everyday things, just going through the process of a child playing and then, all of a sudden, you figure you want to get out on your own. Maybe you might see somebody with a car, see somebody with a bike or something that you want and you say, "Well, if I get a job, a good job, I could work and get these things for myself," and graduate a little bit at a time. You're just in school. I guess school did a lot, because we had some good teachers. | 2:52 |
Willie Otto Powell | We had some beautiful teacher in Bricks all day. I'm telling you, they were superb. They didn't come any better. They were real ladies and real gentlemen, so had a lot of people to look to. Nothing they told me, but just looking, just observing what goes on around you. Sometimes you might say, "I would like to be like that person when I grow up." Maybe I just want to grow up and be a grown person, and maybe somebody want to be like me. You know what I mean? | 3:34 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Was there any man in particular or someone that you came in contact who you admired like that? | 4:21 |
Willie Otto Powell | I don't know. | 4:31 |
Karen Ferguson | A teacher? | 4:31 |
Willie Otto Powell | No, I didn't have no particular person that—it was just everyone I came in contact with. Because, back then, you weren't in contact with them daily, on a daily basis. You just maybe see them now and next week, and probably then you'll see someone else. Just back then, everyone that I saw would be gentleman, lady, the church, school teachers or whatever. If any of them then would've done anything weren't supposed to, it would've been like—I don't know—they had to leave the neighborhood, I guess, because they live it down. You just didn't bring no—you didn't want to bring anything on yourself that would be detrimental or whatever. Everybody just, I think they acted like ladies and gentlemen, like they were supposed to. | 4:31 |
Karen Ferguson | What did it mean to be a gentleman? What made a person a gentleman? | 5:45 |
Willie Otto Powell | I put it this way. I don't like to be around anybody loud, anybody that would drink and can't handle their alcohol, anybody that's abusive or anybody that's out of the ordinary. You can still have fun. What they say? You can be seen and not be heard. You know what I mean? You don't have to go out there and stand on the rooftop and holler to get somebody to notice you. I learned, as I come along, somebody's always watching you anyway. Someone come and tell you. I had a fellow come to me one day. Says, "I noticed you." He said, "You be standing over there talking and somebody looked around and said, 'Where's Powell?'" He's gone. If you have a job do at work, if I had a job to do, I'm gone. I'd talk and all of a sudden I'm—so it's the way you carry yourself. Like I said, you don't have to bring a lot of notice to yourself to be seen, because you're going to be seen. That's for sure, especially if you're doing something you shouldn't do. | 6:00 |
Karen Ferguson | Do you remember anybody doing something that they weren't supposed to do and suffering for it in the community? | 7:24 |
Willie Otto Powell | I guess people had done things, but, like I say, they would know how far to go or what to do. They might call each other name or they get in a fight or something like that maybe, but it wasn't all that—a few scrapes and bruises, nobody got really, really hurt. So things like that. That's normal, I guess, in—really, it shouldn't be, but these things happen. You have to expect them. You have to live with them. | 7:37 |
Karen Ferguson | Did you always go to school at the Bricks school or was there another school you went to? | 8:18 |
Willie Otto Powell | I went to Eastman for a while. I don't know how long, to tell you the truth. I can't remember what year it was. Now, being small and not putting a date on everything I did, some things you don't think that you're going to ever come back to it, because you're still moving ahead. But it seems like history now is —I don't know—is started repeating itself. For what? You just never think that a person going to look back. If you had a horse and a buggy and you move to a car, you are in the car. You are moving ahead. You never think about looking back at the horse and buggy. But now it seems like all these things become of interest. People want to know about them, what happened back long then and so forth. It's amazing. | 8:23 |
Willie Otto Powell | I'm learning things, too, that happened. But I hear people talk. I'm still in learning process of what went on. I didn't know things happened at Bricks that happened. I know we had a Post Office, but I never knew the rail line ran in the back there. I almost went away and came back, riding one day, and looked in the back, and they were out there. Then they started talking about it in different meetings, about the railway and the Post—I knew there was a Post Office down there. When I was small, I see a Post Office. It must be a two by four hole in the wall or something. I never actually walked down to that Post Office. They had another building down there. I forgot what that building was. I'd get off the bus, go in there for school, come out of the school, get back on the bus, and back— | 9:22 |
Karen Ferguson | Back home? | 10:17 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. Never took a tour. Because— | 10:19 |
Karen Ferguson | What grade did you come here? Was it just high school? | 10:23 |
Willie Otto Powell | 8th. I think it was 8th. 7th grade was in Borden, which we used to be in for grade school. We came here, starting at 8th. | 10:26 |
Karen Ferguson | Bricks school was a public school when you went to it? | 10:41 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, it was a public school then. No longer a college. I never knew it was a college until I came back. I never knew it was a college. Came in there the 8th grade and continued on through. | 10:44 |
Karen Ferguson | Now, were all the schools that you went to, were they open a full school term? Was it a split term ever? | 11:03 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. No, it was from—how did it start? June. It ends in June, and it starts in—was it August? I think August or something like that they start and go around until June of the next year. | 11:10 |
Karen Ferguson | Did all children attend regularly or were any of them kept out to work in the fields? | 11:31 |
Willie Otto Powell | Now and then, I believe, but most parents wanted us children here, so it had to be something that kept them out beyond their control, I guess. I'll put that way. But most of them stayed in school, most of them I knew. Sure. | 11:35 |
Karen Ferguson | How involved were your parents in your schooling? | 11:55 |
Willie Otto Powell | They would help us with our lessons as much as they could. They weren't all that—I will just say they didn't have that much schooling, but they did what they could. If you asked them a question, they could give you an answer. Put it that way. | 12:02 |
Karen Ferguson | Was education important to them? | 12:26 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yes. Sure. They wanted us to go to school. They instill in us, "You must go to school." Sure. Like kids are sometimes, we would be a little slow in the morning, and she would tell you, "You're going to miss the bus. You better get going." She would get up. She would make us breakfast and push us on out of the house. It was cold out there sometimes. You go someplace. | 12:28 |
Karen Ferguson | Could everybody go to high school if they wanted to? | 13:02 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yes. | 13:02 |
Karen Ferguson | Or was there an—okay. | 13:02 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, if they were economically—what do you call it? If they had the means to get there and the means to protect themselves, if they didn't have to drop out and go to work because of something, yeah, they could go. Sure. | 13:03 |
Karen Ferguson | But the people that you went to elementary school, did most of them go on to high school or did a lot of them have to stop? | 13:25 |
Willie Otto Powell | Back then, I think most of them continue on through high school. Yeah, you didn't have a lot of dropout like you have now. Like I said, it had to be an extreme emergency, something beyond their control. Most of them [indistinct 00:13:43] with continuance. Some of them really, really went. I don't know where they are now, but they did well. | 13:30 |
Karen Ferguson | What did you like and dislike about school? | 13:56 |
Willie Otto Powell | I don't think I disliked anything. I never knew a bad moment in school. My problem was trying to get there, getting up and get out in the morning, early in the morning. You know how it is getting up early in the morning and half asleep maybe. If I get there, I enjoyed it. | 14:03 |
Karen Ferguson | Did the teachers in your school ever play favorites with students? | 14:25 |
Willie Otto Powell | I don't think so. | 14:29 |
Karen Ferguson | No? | 14:31 |
Willie Otto Powell | I don't think they had any favorites. No. They may have had favorites, but it didn't show. Didn't show that much anyway. I think they treated everybody equally, and they would give everybody equal time. If someone needed more time, they would—if you didn't know something, you could ask questions. You could go to them after school and whatever. There were no favorites that I know. I never knew about it. There could have been now, but I never saw it. It never affected me anyway, because I got what I always wanted. | 14:32 |
Karen Ferguson | Were you ever disciplined by your teachers? | 15:20 |
Willie Otto Powell | This was when I was really small. I think a couple times maybe for talking. Sometimes you catch yourself. You be talking to someone there and you think you'll sneak a little talk, and she'll be watching you. We got paddled on the hand with a ruler or something. Yeah, it wasn't nothing all that serious, but you took it serious back then. They thought maybe your talking, you're going be a juvenile delinquent or something. So they're going to cut it off, let's say, before it started. It wasn't all that serious back then, but I guess they had to discipline someone so they picked whatever they wanted to discipline you for. | 15:28 |
Karen Ferguson | Now, you said you went to church when you were growing up. Did your whole family go to church? | 16:12 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yes. | 16:20 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah? | 16:21 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. Mother would go and take us here. Sure. Right. Absolutely. | 16:21 |
Karen Ferguson | What role do you think the church played in the community? | 16:27 |
Willie Otto Powell | One thing, it was the meeting place. I think what was said there had some effect on the people that went and may have been the way they survived. They go to church and pray a lot. I think the church—I don't know exactly how to explain this, but people prayed a lot and God had a lot to do with their survival. | 16:38 |
Karen Ferguson | So it helped them? | 17:17 |
Willie Otto Powell | It helped them, sure. It helped them. It helped them over the bad times. Sure. People, they looked forward to going to church. Have revival. Oh, people would work all day and get ready at night. They had some good speakers back then. They were looking forward to it. Like I say, I think that was a pillar of the community. Sure. | 17:25 |
Karen Ferguson | What church did you go to when you were growing up? | 17:55 |
Willie Otto Powell | I went to church in a few, in First Baptist, New Bethel, down in Chapel, Wayman, White Oak, all those churches. | 17:58 |
Karen Ferguson | You weren't a member of one of them? You were— | 18:12 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, I was a member of First Baptist, but we used to go to different churches. | 18:15 |
Karen Ferguson | Churches, yeah. | 18:15 |
Willie Otto Powell | Sure. Yeah. Enjoyed it, going to different churches. Some of them I had, when I came home, I had to go back and find out what road they were on, because I [indistinct 00:18:27] and came back and couldn't find it. I used to ride all the way through the country looking, so we found them all. | 18:18 |
Karen Ferguson | Do you remember your baptism? | 18:42 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yes. | 18:46 |
Karen Ferguson | Could you describe that? | 18:46 |
Willie Otto Powell | It's still in Enfield. I don't know if you know where Enfield is. | 18:50 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hm. | 18:51 |
Willie Otto Powell | Along 301. | 18:51 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 18:51 |
Willie Otto Powell | If you go through Enfield, on the other side you see a little pond. It's on the right side as you pass through Enfield going this way. I used to ride by there every day. Matter of fact, I rode past there today and looked over. Were baptized out there. The water turned green now out there. That's where I was first baptized out there. I remember going underneath the water. That was some experience out there. You go down underneath the water, and he really put— | 18:55 |
Karen Ferguson | Put you under? | 19:29 |
Willie Otto Powell | He really put you underwater. You talk about baptized. When that pastor baptized, you were baptized. You were drenched. | 19:29 |
Karen Ferguson | How old were you when that happened? | 19:41 |
Willie Otto Powell | I don't know. Five or six maybe. | 19:44 |
Karen Ferguson | Oh, really? | 19:45 |
Willie Otto Powell | Six, seven or something like that. I don't know. | 19:46 |
Karen Ferguson | Were you frightened when— | 19:50 |
Willie Otto Powell | Pardon? | 19:51 |
Karen Ferguson | Were you frightened when he put you under the water? | 19:51 |
Willie Otto Powell | Momentarily. Yeah, just for going under and coming up. But walking down in there, you feel that water up to your waist. I'd never been in water that deep. You feel that water coming up on you, around you. Then all of a sudden, he dunked you underneath that. You come up and all that water drained off of you. Yeah, he really washed my sins away that day. | 19:54 |
Karen Ferguson | Was it a big celebration when you were baptized? | 20:17 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. About the only thing I remember about it is going there and going down into the water, and baptized and you come out. I don't remember coming out the water, changing clothes or anything like that. After that, I don't know what happened. Being a child, the things of the moment was important. After it was over, it was gone. I'm looking to go home and ride my bike or something. That was it. | 20:21 |
Karen Ferguson | Did your church have a homecoming? | 20:51 |
Willie Otto Powell | [indistinct 00:20:58] | 20:52 |
Karen Ferguson | Was there a homecoming celebration when people came back from other places, came back to the church every year? | 20:59 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yes. We had a homecoming. Yeah, sure. We are supposed to have it at First Baptist in a few Sundays from now. Yeah, they have it in August, I think it is. | 21:06 |
Karen Ferguson | Did they have that when you were growing up as well? | 21:13 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yes. People come back from different places. Not only that, they'll come back and visit all through the year, especially during their vacation time. I didn't know about vacation back then. Everybody would come home during the summer mostly and visit, and you're glad to see them. Most of them just come home and then leave. Some of them are gone now from here that I haven't seen. Every now and then you see someone would come around that I used to know. Back then, a lot of people looking for a better way to make a living. They just left home, look for a better job or better whatever. | 21:15 |
Karen Ferguson | Is that what you did? | 22:01 |
Willie Otto Powell | Sure did. Yeah, I— | 22:02 |
Karen Ferguson | You left, did you leave by yourself? | 22:05 |
Willie Otto Powell | I left by myself. I had $20 in my pocket. | 22:07 |
Karen Ferguson | At 16? | 22:11 |
Willie Otto Powell | At 16. $20 in my pocket. I spent—I don't know—$3 or $4 for a ticket to Washington D.C, and I stayed with my cousin. I worked there for a couple of years, came back, and then left again and went to New York. That's where I stayed until I went in the Army in 1952—1950. Came out in 1952, Korean War, and went back to work and stayed there until I retired. Then I got out and came back home. | 22:12 |
Karen Ferguson | Now, had you graduated from high school when you left? | 22:50 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, I graduated and I went to New York. I went to technical—what is it? Technical trade school. Six years. Went on G.I. Bill, night. Worked during the day and went to night school. Graduated from that. When I Washington D.C, I went to Cardozo High School in Washington. | 22:53 |
Karen Ferguson | Oh, you did? | 23:11 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, I took a course in French before I left there and went to New York. Then I went to trade school, graduated from that, and just worked until I was retired and came back home. | 23:11 |
Karen Ferguson | Now, when you said you went to Cardozo High School, had you graduated from high school here already? | 23:34 |
Willie Otto Powell | Mm-hm. | 23:42 |
Karen Ferguson | So you just took the— | 23:42 |
Willie Otto Powell | Just took the course, night course, after work. Some fellow there says, "Yeah, come on." They were going. So I went in, and I took French. Good thing I did, because when I went in the Army, I went to France and I could speak French. I know French words now, but I have to get around someone that's speaking French to make it come back to me. Pick it up again. | 23:43 |
Karen Ferguson | Why did you leave here? Your family had a big farm and everything. Why did you decide to leave? | 24:11 |
Willie Otto Powell | To get out on your own, to do things. I never figured out what my mother or father owned belonged to me. What it said? God bless the child his own. That's what it says? | 24:19 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 24:28 |
Willie Otto Powell | I had no control over what they had. I never bragged. Definitely, I never bragged about what they had. I never told anybody in New York that my mother owned a farm here. I did later on when I retired, "I'm going back to the farm," but I never used that as something to brag about. I wanted my own. I wanted like the kids say. What is it? Do my own thing. See what I could do. I guess it was so much into me that nothing was going to stop me. I don't guess there was any particular reason why. It was just normal. | 24:30 |
Willie Otto Powell | I just wanted my own thing, my own things and my own—you go borrow your parents' car and they tell you, "Look, don't drive on the dusty road. Don't do this. Don't do that." I wanted my own thing. Not that I would tear up anything, because I have toys now that my mother gave me when I was small. I never broke them or anything like that. I just like to build thing, not tear up thing, just to build thing. So I think that's part of what I wanted to do when I left here. | 25:19 |
Karen Ferguson | Were your parents—did they support you or was there a bit of conflict about you leaving? | 25:54 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. No, they wanted me to go out and do what I could. They were always there. They were very supportive. When I got out there, I said, "Well, I have to make it on my own," because I would never go home for money or anything like that. But they were always there if I needed something. If I needed to come home or I could make it, I know they would welcome me with open arms. They wouldn't have thrown me back out. So it's a good thing I them as parents. | 25:59 |
Willie Otto Powell | But I felt bad. I would've felt bad if I would ever have to send home for money or, look, I said, "Look." I remember this story all in the back of my mind. I used to get paid on a Friday. I put my money in my wallet. Then I used to smoke before I learned better. I would go out and I'd break up maybe a $10 bill, buy a pack of cigarettes. I would go to the movie. So it last one day. It was like a Wednesday. I looked in my wallet and I had $3. I said, "Now, I'm—", cigarettes wasn't naturally just one of the things to do. But I had to eat from Wednesday to Friday to get paid again. I said, "This $3 is going to have to make it. It has to do." I made it to Friday and I got paid. I don't remember if I had any money left, but I said right then, "Mama and Daddy is not here. If I get run out of money, I have nobody to look to. I'm going to have to organize myself better." | 26:34 |
Willie Otto Powell | Next time I got paid, the first thing I did, went to the bank, opened up a savings account, and I put $20 in. Ever since then, I just go to the bank and put in a certain amount. I said, "This amount is left for me to spend. If I spend this before the end of the week," I said to myself, "You going to suffer." That's one of the things that started me to look toward the future. | 27:57 |
Willie Otto Powell | Now, I hear fellows say, "I'm not going to save all that money and leave it." I said, "Look, you're better off having it and leaving it than need it and not have it." That was my thing. I always tell everybody, I say, "Look, if I save it and if I go on, enjoy yourself." I wouldn't need it anyway. But if I do live long enough, I will need a couple extra dollars. I have a couple extra dollars to go out that I can get. That's one little thing like that. People wouldn't think that that would influence you, but you get down to a couple dollars and you got a lot of the week left, you'll either suffer or organized yourself a lot better. That's one of the things that started me on my way. And I— | 28:27 |
Karen Ferguson | What did you do when you got to Washington? What job did you do? | 29:13 |
Willie Otto Powell | I think I got a job in a—what did I do? A job behind a soda counter. | 29:20 |
Karen Ferguson | Oh, yeah? | 29:22 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. Dipping ice cream, pouring coffee, that was first job. | 29:22 |
Karen Ferguson | Did it serve Blacks, this place? | 29:27 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. | 29:29 |
Karen Ferguson | No? | 29:29 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. I don't think so. No, they didn't. No. | 29:30 |
Karen Ferguson | But they would hire Blacks? | 29:32 |
Willie Otto Powell | They would hire you to work. Yeah, always. That's what they always said. White people hired them to cook the kitchen, but you couldn't eat at the table, which was silly to me, when they were cooking the food and all that. | 29:33 |
Karen Ferguson | Why did you come back here after a couple years in Washington? | 29:49 |
Willie Otto Powell | I don't know. I guess I came back—one thing, maybe I thought I could see where I could do something here. Came back and take a look, I guess. After I looked around and didn't like what I saw, I left again. | 29:57 |
Karen Ferguson | There weren't any opportunities? | 30:17 |
Willie Otto Powell | No, not that much. I always heard that in New York, that the unions were pretty strong, which they were. You get in the union, you got equal pay and equal representation or whatever. That was true. So when I went back to Washington, my next step was to go to New York. My cousin there, he left and he went to New York. His wife, she was a supervisor for the telephone company. I went up there and looked around, and I got myself a job. Gradually, I got into the union, and that's where I wanted to be. That was it. Everything was beautiful. No problem. I never thought about what was going on back down here, because I didn't come into daily contact with it. The restaurants, go sit and whatever. I just come back down here for two vacations and go back again. | 30:19 |
Karen Ferguson | Did you ever think of farming? | 31:21 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. | 31:21 |
Karen Ferguson | No? Why not? | 31:21 |
Willie Otto Powell | I just don't know. It just never appealed to me. Just one of those things. I probably could have done it if I had stayed here, but it wasn't one of the things that I was looking forward to. I just didn't know what I could do. I wanted to get into something and see if I liked it, and then make that my life job or what it was. | 31:31 |
Karen Ferguson | Did your parents ever encourage you to farm, that you should farm? | 32:04 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. Matter of fact, I told my father one time. He repeated to me, he told me, he said, "You said you weren't going to farm." It truly worked out that way. I never had to farm. | 32:08 |
Karen Ferguson | Did either of your brothers take over the farm? | 32:21 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. | 32:22 |
Karen Ferguson | No? | 32:22 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. | 32:24 |
Karen Ferguson | Does your family still own the land? | 32:25 |
Willie Otto Powell | I own it, part of it. My younger brother owns part of it. We rent it out. You need a lot of equipment, tractors and planters and whatever. Farming is a big business, and you need a lot of equipment. Now, a small farmer, you wouldn't be profitable. Like I said, if I had stayed here, I do believe that my thing would have been to expand. I think I would have moved right along with the thing like it happened, like people with a lot of tractors and whatever. But it just wasn't in me. I had the drive, but the drive wasn't in the direction of farming. Sure, I wanted progress. When I went to work, being young, it was fascinating to see a weekly paycheck come in, my own. Get paid. Sure. It was something. You put a little in the bank and see it accumulate. | 32:29 |
Willie Otto Powell | Like one fellow told me in Rocky Mount over here, said—I said, "A lot of people don't realize it. When they work, they have a little money. That little money, they should put it in the bank, if they have it left." They think four or $5, they don't think it's much. They say, "Oh, I ain't put no $5 in the bank." But if you put it in, gradually it grows, and it draw you interest, and it work 24 hours a day. See, while you are sleeping, that money is still working. But if you don't have any money to put in the bank or if you don't put it in there, you don't have anything to work for you. | 33:46 |
Willie Otto Powell | That's about the only thing you have, unless you try to go into business for yourself. This is one way to go into business. Put that money and let that work to accumulate enough to put some down payment on something, a factory or whatever you want. That was my outlook. Actually, I think was to accumulate enough money. I like automotive mechanics. I like that. I like working with cars. Not now. Not now. Later on, I found out I didn't want to get my hand greasy. But I'm fascinated with cars. One of the things was to get together enough money to open up a mechanic shop of some type. | 34:26 |
Karen Ferguson | That was your dream? | 35:15 |
Willie Otto Powell | That was my dream. But I probably wouldn't have done much work in it. I probably would hired mechanics or something like that. But I did take a course in manager for a shop. Sure. But now I'm retired. I just work on my car a little bit or something like that. I'm not interested in it anymore, no. You have to have a younger mind. I think you suffer a certain amount of burnout. You just don't have it anymore like you used to, that drive. But if I was, say, 24, 25 years old and know what I know now, I don't know. It would be unlimited what I could do, because I think I could have the right answers now. | 35:19 |
Karen Ferguson | Now, what did you say you did when you got to New York City? You started working the telephone? | 36:12 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. I said my cousin was— | 36:18 |
Karen Ferguson | Oh, right. | 36:18 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. I went to New York with the same company that was in Washington. | 36:19 |
Karen Ferguson | What were you doing there? | 36:25 |
Willie Otto Powell | Soda fountain. | 36:26 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay, so same soda fountain. | 36:27 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, like coffee, just long soda fountain. Started in there. They were helpful to me, because I ate. See? One thing about it, if you get a room or something, you can survive if you get food. That was one of the things that I started out in, behind the soda fountain, and I ate my meals. Got paid, my meals, and I could save money. You see? That was one of the reason, that type thing. | 36:28 |
Karen Ferguson | Where did you stay when you got to New York City? | 37:05 |
Willie Otto Powell | I stayed with my cousin when I first got there, until— | 37:09 |
Karen Ferguson | Where did he live? | 37:10 |
Willie Otto Powell | He rented an apartment. Then I gradually, when I got—what do you call it? Self —that I look around and I find out I could—you first get to New York, you got to know how to ride a subway. When I got myself— | 37:13 |
Karen Ferguson | Oriented? | 37:34 |
Willie Otto Powell | —adjusted, confidence, then I went out and got my own place. | 37:35 |
Karen Ferguson | Where was this in New York City? | 37:41 |
Willie Otto Powell | Brooklyn. | 37:43 |
Karen Ferguson | In Brooklyn? | 37:43 |
Willie Otto Powell | Mm-hm. Is there another place? I didn't know there was another place but Brooklyn. | 37:43 |
Karen Ferguson | Well, there are other boroughs. | 37:48 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. Brooklyn is God's country. Brooklyn, I love Brooklyn. Got a little rough up there. I like it right now. I like Brooklyn. It's beautiful. Back in the '40s, Brooklyn was beautiful. Lovely place. You go out and ride. Sunday, go to the beach. There was none of this up there. You go there. Get on the bus. You go on down to the beach. There's not a second thought. See? It was— | 37:52 |
Karen Ferguson | Did you ever miss country life? | 38:18 |
Willie Otto Powell | I missed the open space, but like I always say, when you walk in New York, you're down between the buildings like you're walking in a tunnel. You miss the trees and the grass. You see a few trees, but not like you do here, that wide open space. Because I used come here and come on vacation. I'd go walk back in the woods all by myself. I hear the trees and the wind in the trees. Sort of quiet, tranquil. What do you call it? Beautiful. That's one thing I like about the city and the country life. I had both. I'm rich. I'm rich. I have what money cannot buy, the country life and the city life. I can go back to New York today and fit right in. I would come down here and I would fit in. I know what to do, where to go. I had the best of the two worlds. | 38:21 |
Willie Otto Powell | I go back to New York today and go right back to work, no problem, because I know what to do. I'm going to go around, and I'm blessed. I'm blessed that I don't have to. That's the main thing. My wife said the other day, said I get up when I get ready and I go to bed when I get ready. What more could I want? I tell you. People are jealous. I said, "Look, you worked hard for what you got. So don't pay that no mind." You know? They're going to be jealous anyway. Going to be jealous. That's their hangup. It's not mine. | 39:20 |
Willie Otto Powell | If they're going to be jealous instead of going out and looking for some of their own, that's not my problem. I do enjoy giving back some of the things that I did get, because I truly been blessed. Sometimes, you're sitting on a training and you're moving, and you get there. You're still sitting in the same place. You move from here to there. That's the way my life has been, I think. I'm sitting here. I moved from here to there, and the ride was smooth, wasn't too bumpy, wasn't too troublesome. It was a pleasure. It was a pleasure. I would do it all over again. | 39:56 |
Karen Ferguson | You were working in the soda fountain, and then did you go into the Army before you got another job? | 40:57 |
Willie Otto Powell | No, I went into the Army and came back before I finally got a— | 41:05 |
Karen Ferguson | Were you drafted? | 41:08 |
Willie Otto Powell | I drafted. You don't look [indistinct 00:41:12]. | 41:09 |
Karen Ferguson | What? | 41:09 |
Willie Otto Powell | I said I don't look like it. | 41:09 |
Karen Ferguson | You never know. | 41:09 |
Willie Otto Powell | You don't look like a fellow to walk in and say, "Here I am." No way. I remember New York. You go down in the subway. I don't know whether you ever seen the poster on this thing on the subway. Have these little frame things in there. Uncle Sam— | 41:20 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. "Wants you"? | 41:34 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, "I want you." Then one day, I remember—this was before the Korean War —I looked at that. The Second War was over. I said, "You don't want me, and I'm glad you don't. I'm glad. I'm glad." I said, 'You don't want me. You don't need me. And I'm glad you don't want me," or something, in the back of my mind, "You can't get me," or something like that. Because there's no draft. And here come Korean War. That Sunday morning—was it Sunday morning? I believe it was. President Truman ordered the troops in. But I thought that the troops he had there could have handled it. I said, "Well, it's not going to be a draft." Matter of fact, the thing never occurred to me, because it is a skirmish. It wasn't a big war like Second World War. Got the letter. It says, "Your neighbors have drafted you." | 41:34 |
Willie Otto Powell | I called my mother. I said, "Got the letter. I got me inducted." She came up and brought my clothes back, my possessions back down here. I remember, in Washington, they said the bus would be such-and-such place. You take the bus over to Baltimore and they examine you. The bus take you and bring you back. So I went over and went in. They examined. A fellow opened my mouth, looked and said, "You have a nice set of teeth." Said, "that's what you want to hear, huh?" I looked at him. So went into the psychiatrist. I guess, the psychiatrist. | 42:29 |
Karen Ferguson | What did he say? He said— | 43:15 |
Willie Otto Powell | He said, "You have a nice set of teeth." That's what the fellow, the dentist—he said, "That's what you want to hear, right?" We laughed and went on. So went into the psychiatrist. Their little rubber hammer—you've seen the little rubber thing? | 43:16 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 43:30 |
Willie Otto Powell | Hit there on the knee to test your reflex. When he hit me on the knee, my leg jumped up, so he— | 43:32 |
Karen Ferguson | You're too healthy. | 43:36 |
Willie Otto Powell | Huh? | 43:36 |
Karen Ferguson | Too healthy. | 43:36 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. He said to me—I always thought about this. I said maybe I wouldn't have gone in the Army. He said, "You like girls?" Thinking [indistinct 00:43:48] answer one question, I said, "Yeah." I don't know. He asked me a couple more questions. But I thought about it. I told him, "No, I don't like girls," maybe they would have thrown me out right then. | 43:38 |
Karen Ferguson | That's right. That's right. That's right. | 43:56 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. I wouldn't have went in. I would not have went in. I wasn't thinking. I would have stayed out. But I would not have done that. I think about it a lot of times. I said, "What would they have done if I said no?" With all this controversy going on now? Yeah, it's comical. You think back. I don't know which way I would have went if I would have said no. | 43:58 |
Willie Otto Powell | But anyway, I went in. I went to Fort Devens, Massachusetts, back down to Fort Eustis in Virginia, training. Shipped back to Camp Kilmer? Camp Kilmer. They shipped us from there. Put us on a ship, and we went to France. Then went from France—no, went to Germany, and from Germany went to France. That's where we stayed until I was discharged. I was on the PACOM list, Pacific Command, and they took me off. I don't know how that happened. But anyway, I went to Europe and it was like a vacation. We worked hard over there, but it was like a vacation, because it building up then. The Second War, they let down, and then the threat came. Hauling ammunition and—I don't know—one thing and another. But I would do it all over again. I'd go through it all over again. I enjoyed every moment. I can't say I had a bad moment, no way. | 44:22 |
Karen Ferguson | Did you experience any prejudice in the Army? | 45:31 |
Willie Otto Powell | Only one incident. We met this fellow and his wife. They owned—I don't know what they call it in France. They call it guest house in—they serve wine. My friend and I, we got such big friend, he would let us sit out in the cafe or whatever it was. We would come back to the dining room table and we would sit and talk, because he was interested in America, talking and whatever. He's telling us about France and so forth. This White fellow came in and opened the door. Now, why he opened that door and looked in the man's place, I'll never know. I don't care who it was, he should not have opened that man's door and looked. You know what I mean? I never would have done it. Somehow, the fellow went out. When he went out, he said the White soldier told him that we were "pas bon", no good, no good. He said, "What?" He said, "Why did he say that?" We went like this. We said— | 45:36 |
Karen Ferguson | —soldier Black as well? | 0:01 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. | 0:02 |
Karen Ferguson | No? | 0:02 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, they were [indistinct 00:00:04] Black. Yeah. Very good friend of mine. I don't know where he is today. I'd like to find him. We were good buddies. | 0:02 |
Karen Ferguson | Did you find Europe much different than the U.S in terms of how Black people were treated? | 0:09 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. I had an incident. I had trouble in my back. So, to ship me from France to Munich, Germany. And I stayed there 21 days on observation. And this particular night there was another soldier, I think he was Spanish. We would been shipped back the same time and they took us into town and we checked our bags. So he said to me, "Come on," because evidently he had been to this club. So, I went to this club and I sat down. He and I, he sitting there and I'm sitting here. And we had a beer, something, I don't know. We were waiting for the train. | 0:16 |
Willie Otto Powell | And I saw these White soldiers standing there. Two White ladies of the night, I put it. Yeah. Because they don't want to patronize those clubs. And one White girl was—one German girl, I should say, one of the German girls were—they both were German was beating up on the other one. And of course, she had gone out with a Black soldier or something. | 1:02 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. Oh, I see. | 1:33 |
Willie Otto Powell | And she—"Black soldier." I heard that. And she was pounding on that girl so hard. I almost got up and got involved because I ain't [indistinct 00:01:44]. I said, "None of my business. I better stay out of it." | 1:36 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. | 1:46 |
Willie Otto Powell | So, I just sat there and it didn't bother me, what she said, because things didn't bother me. Just never bother me. Names never hurt me. Sexist tone, maybe, but not names. And that was the only incident that I—except for in France, the only incident—I was sitting there and we got up and finally left and caught the train and we went on back. But otherwise, nothing personal or nothing. Just being in the area of certain thing was said or something like that. It didn't bother me because I was constantly alert and I know how to survive. I know how to take care of myself. So, it didn't bother me. But I did hate her, see her slap—she was slapping the girl around. I mean she was pounding the girl. I said, "This is ridiculous." Yeah. So, that is the only thing. But you remember a thing like that, that's life. | 1:47 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 2:52 |
Willie Otto Powell | It's all part of life. It's a long road. It doesn't have a bump in it somewhere. So, you can expect these things. | 2:52 |
Karen Ferguson | What did you do when you got back from France or from Europe— | 3:00 |
Willie Otto Powell | Oh, I went— | 3:06 |
Karen Ferguson | —discharged? | 3:06 |
Willie Otto Powell | Oh, I went in transit in New York. Started working for transit. | 3:06 |
Karen Ferguson | What's that? | 3:11 |
Willie Otto Powell | Huh? | 3:11 |
Karen Ferguson | What is that? | 3:12 |
Willie Otto Powell | New York City Transit. | 3:12 |
Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. Okay. | 3:13 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 3:13 |
Karen Ferguson | What did you do there? | 3:13 |
Willie Otto Powell | Bus driver. | 3:13 |
Karen Ferguson | Oh, yeah. | 3:13 |
Willie Otto Powell | Drove what? | 3:13 |
Karen Ferguson | And is that what you did for the rest of your— | 3:18 |
Willie Otto Powell | That's what I did for the rest, because there's the most money. And my thing was money. I didn't look for prestige, a job. So you could take exams, supervisors, whatever. But supervisors, if they work extra day, they didn't get paid. They got a day off. If I worked extra day, I got the money. So, you'd have to decide whether you want the name or the prestige or the gold badge or whatever. | 3:19 |
Karen Ferguson | Or the money. | 3:43 |
Willie Otto Powell | Or your money. And my thing was to come back. See, I wasn't going to make no long thing out of it. I wanted to just get through, retire, and— | 3:43 |
Karen Ferguson | So, you were always thinking of coming back here, huh? | 3:56 |
Willie Otto Powell | Right. | 3:58 |
Karen Ferguson | Why was that? Why did you—did you ever think of New York as your home? | 3:59 |
Willie Otto Powell | I could have survived in New York. I knew my way around in New York. Bad things started to deteriorate, but I knew how to survive there. I had a nice apartment and a nice job, made good money. So, when you're surviving, I guess, I know I was living above normal, well above. And things around you don't bother you too much. And two, excuse me, I used to go to Poconos on the weekend. Wife called me and said—sometime I work Saturday. She said, "I made a reservation up in the Poconos in Pennsylvania." And I come home and take a shower and we jump in the car and in a hour will be up in the mountain. And this stuff that went on down didn't bother me because I was out and in and out. I made my own life, like I do now. People said, "You come back down, ain't nothing to do." I'm so busy now. I can't find time to do nothing else. Somebody always call me to do something. | 4:07 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. This morning I went up and took my dog to be shampooed. Came back and delivered the meals. I rushed home and I got a haircut. I rush over here now. Now I'm going back to pick the dog up. I go home, I'm going to look to stretch out somewhere. It's been a full day already. See? | 5:23 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 5:39 |
Willie Otto Powell | So, tomorrow hasn't even started yet. But there'll be something. There'll be something. And there's so many little things I want to do, I can't get to, like I have a riding motor I want to work on. It's sitting there. And I'm into jazz tapes. I want to make myself, that have a lot of tapes with one song on it. I mean, one song that I want off this big tape and I'm trying to make myself a—what is the—customized tape recorder. | 5:40 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. My own song. And I haven't had a chance to do it. All my stuff is all over the place I was in riding along the road the other day. And they was in one of these things that you said, I was sliding door in front with two shelves. I said that's the idea for my videotapes and my cassette tapes, put down in there and on it I put some stuff on top. And I bought it. I'm trying to—I have the brush, I have the stains. I'm trying to stain it. It's in the living room. And pretty soon I had to get it out of there. And I can't start that thing. If I go out in the yard to work, I get sweaty, right? | 6:11 |
Karen Ferguson | Uh-huh. | 6:48 |
Willie Otto Powell | A lot of things I don't do because I have something else coming up. I can't do that because I'm running in the shower and then run back out again. So, I just don't even bother getting myself like that. But I'm going to have a full day. See? And do what I have to do and then maybe next day do something for someone else. I'm going to start doing that. | 6:48 |
Karen Ferguson | So, you always came down here for your vacations when you're working? | 7:12 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, most time. I think one summer went to Canada. | 7:17 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 7:21 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, one summer went to Canada. I've been up there 15 times already. But I think one summer I took—on this job you can always put days together, take days off. If I was off Saturday, Sunday, I could put Thursday or Friday, Monday and a Tuesday or something like that. And remember I said four days. And that's what I liked about it. You always put in for them 30 days ahead, and you have four days and make your own vacation. In the middle of the year before your vacation come, you always take extra days off. Beautiful. | 7:21 |
Karen Ferguson | Where did you meet your wife? | 7:58 |
Willie Otto Powell | In New York. | 7:59 |
Karen Ferguson | Oh, yeah. | 7:59 |
Willie Otto Powell | In Brooklyn, at Coney Island. Yeah. Yep. | 8:01 |
Karen Ferguson | And she's from Trinidad, you were telling me? | 8:04 |
Willie Otto Powell | From Trinidad, yes. | 8:07 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 8:08 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. I went down there three times already. Beautiful down there. | 8:08 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 8:10 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 8:10 |
Karen Ferguson | Now did you notice that she had a different ideas about race than you did or racism? | 8:14 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. No. Same like I do. She had no attitude. The only thing, she has an attitude about good people and bad people. Yeah, it's the same people that know her. But race is not a thing that she, I think she part French anyway. You know? Her family. Yeah, French before they get down there. Her father was French. So, no trouble with race. I— | 8:18 |
Karen Ferguson | But does she notice that the system was different in Trinidad to what it was in the United States in terms of— | 8:55 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. | 9:03 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 9:03 |
Willie Otto Powell | No difference, same right here. They—what you call it? A democracy, U.S gov? | 9:03 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 9:09 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, same thing. No, I went down there and no difference. A lot of people like to go there for that reason. They sort of, can relax. You could really relax there, no problem whatsoever. Restaurant, the only thing, the restaurants down there, I guess like our restaurants here, you had to go to—what do you call? A high-class restaurant? | 9:10 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 9:37 |
Willie Otto Powell | And they have the fish they put on a platter. And everybody take what they want. See, here they fry the fish and put it on the plate, right? | 9:39 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 9:46 |
Willie Otto Powell | But this, they put on a platter in Chinese restaurant. And down there they make Chinese food like they make in China. Here you get, they call it the, "American taste." You don't get Chinese food. You get something that they think the American would want it. | 9:47 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 10:06 |
Willie Otto Powell | But you go down there, you get that real Chinese food. Delicious too. Yeah. They make it a little bit different. | 10:07 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 10:13 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 10:13 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. Well, I think I'm very— | 10:13 |
Willie Otto Powell | Okay. | 10:15 |
Karen Ferguson | Could I just take a couple more minutes of your time here and we just want to fill out some biographical information, so that when people are listening to the tape, they have a better idea of who you are. | 10:19 |
Willie Otto Powell | Maybe they should know who I am. | 10:32 |
Karen Ferguson | Well, it's nothing. It's nothing that personal, I don't think. What's your full name? | 10:36 |
Willie Otto Powell | Willie. | 10:41 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. Powell? | 10:41 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 10:41 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And you have a middle name? | 10:45 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. Otto, O-T-T-O. I never knew where I got that name from, believe me. | 10:47 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And what's your zip code? | 10:49 |
Willie Otto Powell | 27823. | 10:54 |
Karen Ferguson | 27823? | 10:54 |
Willie Otto Powell | Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, you can make a tape and then send it back to me and let me hear what I said? | 10:54 |
Karen Ferguson | Well, we can't really do that because we're doing over like 2,500 tapes over— | 11:02 |
Willie Otto Powell | Oh. | 11:11 |
Karen Ferguson | —we're not able to. But the tapes will come back here to someplace around here, so people can listen to them. | 11:11 |
Willie Otto Powell | Okay. | 11:17 |
Karen Ferguson | People who participate will be contacted. What's your date of birth, Mr. Powell? | 11:17 |
Willie Otto Powell | Do I got to give my date of birth? | 11:24 |
Karen Ferguson | You don't have to if you don't want to. It's fine. It's fine. We can leave it. | 11:24 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 11:28 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. So, you were born in Halifax County? | 11:29 |
Willie Otto Powell | Mm-hmm. | 11:33 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. Okay. And your wife's name? | 11:34 |
Willie Otto Powell | Dorothea, D-O-R-O-T-H-E-A. | 11:40 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And does she have a middle name? Doesn't matter. | 11:44 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, it Debutante, but I don't know how to spell it. | 11:45 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. And what's—okay. | 11:51 |
Willie Otto Powell | It's D. Put a "D" there. | 11:51 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And where was she born? | 11:51 |
Willie Otto Powell | Trinidad, as far as I know. | 11:57 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And her occupation, when she was working? | 12:03 |
Willie Otto Powell | She was a bookkeeper. | 12:06 |
Karen Ferguson | Bookkeeper? | 12:07 |
Willie Otto Powell | Mm-hmm. | 12:07 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And your mother's name? | 12:15 |
Willie Otto Powell | Ida. She's a, she's— | 12:17 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And what was her maiden name? | 12:24 |
Willie Otto Powell | Ward, W-A-R-D. | 12:25 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. Do you remember when she was born? | 12:27 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. At the turn of the century though. | 12:30 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 12:34 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, that's when she was born. | 12:34 |
Karen Ferguson | And when did she pass? | 12:36 |
Willie Otto Powell | '87, I think it was. | 12:40 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And was she born in Halifax County? | 12:41 |
Willie Otto Powell | Halifax County. | 12:44 |
Karen Ferguson | And what should I put as her occupation? Farm? Farming? | 12:49 |
Willie Otto Powell | Farm and labor. It's about what it is. | 12:53 |
Karen Ferguson | And your father's name? | 12:56 |
Willie Otto Powell | May, M-A-Y. | 12:58 |
Karen Ferguson | M-A-Y? | 12:59 |
Willie Otto Powell | Mm-hmm. | 13:00 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And do you remember when he was born? | 13:00 |
Willie Otto Powell | It's on this side of the— | 13:07 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 13:08 |
Willie Otto Powell | In 1900, I know that. | 13:08 |
Karen Ferguson | And when did he pass? | 13:12 |
Willie Otto Powell | '78, I think. I believe. | 13:14 |
Karen Ferguson | And he's born in Halifax County? | 13:18 |
Willie Otto Powell | Halifax County, mm-hmm. | 13:19 |
Karen Ferguson | And your brothers' names? | 13:27 |
Willie Otto Powell | The one that's living? | 13:31 |
Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. Sure. | 13:32 |
Willie Otto Powell | Waldo, W-A-L-D-O. | 13:33 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And the one who's passed? | 13:34 |
Willie Otto Powell | Mayo, M-A-Y-O. | 13:34 |
Karen Ferguson | M-A-Y? | 13:34 |
Willie Otto Powell | M-A-Y-O. He the oldest. | 13:34 |
Karen Ferguson | So, he's May? | 13:34 |
Willie Otto Powell | O. With an "O" in there. | 13:34 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 13:34 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 13:34 |
Karen Ferguson | M-A-Y-O? | 13:34 |
Willie Otto Powell | Uh-huh. | 13:34 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay, sorry. All right. And he was the oldest, right? | 13:52 |
Willie Otto Powell | He was the oldest, yeah. One. | 13:54 |
Karen Ferguson | And you were the second or the third? | 13:57 |
Willie Otto Powell | I'm second. | 13:59 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. Do you have any children? | 14:00 |
Willie Otto Powell | No. | 14:02 |
Karen Ferguson | No? Okay. So, you lived in Halifax County, and when did you enlist? You left when you were 16? | 14:03 |
Willie Otto Powell | Mm-hmm. | 14:16 |
Karen Ferguson | And then you went to Washington? | 14:26 |
Willie Otto Powell | Right. | 14:27 |
Karen Ferguson | And when did you come back from Washington? Do you know what year you came back? | 14:28 |
Willie Otto Powell | I think it was 1940, I think. 1944. | 14:30 |
Karen Ferguson | 1944? How long had you been there? Just a couple years? | 14:40 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 14:41 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 14:42 |
Willie Otto Powell | I think I— | 14:43 |
Karen Ferguson | 1942? | 14:43 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 14:43 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 14:43 |
Willie Otto Powell | I think I received that three years, I think. Give or take. | 14:45 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 14:50 |
Willie Otto Powell | It probably wasn't three years just within the part of the first year and part of the second year, something like that. I know about one full year. | 14:50 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. | 14:58 |
Willie Otto Powell | So, whatever. | 14:58 |
Karen Ferguson | And then you came back here for a couple years? | 15:01 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. What? Six months. | 15:09 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 15:09 |
Willie Otto Powell | But wait, I came back here twice because I came back in the Army too. | 15:09 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 15:09 |
Willie Otto Powell | Stayed there. | 15:09 |
Karen Ferguson | Well, that's all right. We don't have to be—okay. And then you went to New York City? | 15:15 |
Willie Otto Powell | New York City. | 15:16 |
Karen Ferguson | And then you were basically there except for the Army until—when did you come back here? | 15:17 |
Willie Otto Powell | '52. '52—wait a minute. Yeah, I got out of Army '52. I left here September '52. January, February, March of '53, around there. | 15:24 |
Karen Ferguson | And then you came, and then you went back to New York City and then you came back here? When did you come back here to retire? | 15:38 |
Willie Otto Powell | Oh, '80—what was it? '83. | 15:46 |
Karen Ferguson | '83? | 15:51 |
Willie Otto Powell | Mm-hmm. I think, if I got my dates covered. | 15:56 |
Karen Ferguson | All right. What was the elementary school that you said you went to? | 16:01 |
Willie Otto Powell | Where? | 16:07 |
Karen Ferguson | Here, what was the first school you went to? | 16:10 |
Willie Otto Powell | Was it Ward? It was called Ward School. Ward Crossroad. | 16:12 |
Karen Ferguson | And where was that was? It was in Halifax County? | 16:18 |
Willie Otto Powell | Halifax County. | 16:21 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 16:22 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. Not too far from my home. There's another school. I walked, what? Two and a half miles to every day. | 16:23 |
Karen Ferguson | You went there too? | 16:29 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. Ward— | 16:29 |
Karen Ferguson | What school? | 16:29 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 16:29 |
Karen Ferguson | Oh, that was the Ward School? | 16:31 |
Willie Otto Powell | Ward School, yeah. That's when I first started down here. | 16:32 |
Karen Ferguson | And what grade did you complete there? Do you know? | 16:33 |
Willie Otto Powell | What grade was that? 1st to the 6th, I believe was. | 16:45 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 16:47 |
Willie Otto Powell | Because 7th grade was high school. | 16:47 |
Karen Ferguson | So you went to Bricks School after that? | 16:47 |
Willie Otto Powell | Right. Mm-hmm. | 16:49 |
Karen Ferguson | Is it Brick or Bricks? | 16:51 |
Willie Otto Powell | B-R-I-C-K—well, Bricks. Put Bricks. B-R-I-C-K-S. Would be all right. | 16:52 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. I'm never quite sure which one it is. | 16:57 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah— | 16:58 |
Karen Ferguson | So, that was 6th to 11th grade? | 16:58 |
Willie Otto Powell | That was— | 16:58 |
Karen Ferguson | 7th? | 16:58 |
Willie Otto Powell | No, I went to 7th—what was it? 7th to the 8th in Inborden. | 17:03 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 17:09 |
Willie Otto Powell | In Enfield. That's in Enfield. I-N-B-O—yeah. 7th and 8th. | 17:12 |
Karen Ferguson | You like that school? | 17:21 |
Willie Otto Powell | Like that school? | 17:21 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 17:21 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 17:21 |
Karen Ferguson | And that was Enfield? | 17:22 |
Willie Otto Powell | That was Enfield. Then Eastman. | 17:23 |
Karen Ferguson | And then you went to what? You went to— | 17:28 |
Willie Otto Powell | I mean to— | 17:29 |
Karen Ferguson | Bricks? | 17:29 |
Willie Otto Powell | Bricks. Yeah. I did go to Eastman, but I think I pulled out of there and came to Bricks instead. | 17:32 |
Karen Ferguson | So you went to 11th grade there? | 17:37 |
Willie Otto Powell | Uh-huh. | 17:39 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 17:39 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. Bricks 11th. | 17:39 |
Karen Ferguson | And then you did some other training in New York City? | 17:42 |
Willie Otto Powell | I went to New York City through Technical Roberts—Technical— | 17:45 |
Karen Ferguson | Robertson? | 17:50 |
Willie Otto Powell | R-O-B-E-R-T-S. | 17:51 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. Technical School? | 17:53 |
Willie Otto Powell | Technical and Trade School. | 17:54 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And did you get some kind of certificate or something from there? | 18:00 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 18:02 |
Karen Ferguson | What in? | 18:03 |
Willie Otto Powell | I have several. I went for diesel, auto mechanic, what do you call it? Paint. I don't know now. I haven't seen them in so long. I got them at the house there. About four or five of them, different courses. | 18:05 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 18:19 |
Willie Otto Powell | In there. Yeah. | 18:19 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 18:20 |
Willie Otto Powell | Because they train you for shop manager and that was what I was training for, but which I never went into. But I was doing that toward my own business. And I got a job where I would get a pension, so I just went on and stayed with that. I didn't have get my hand greasy after all. | 18:21 |
Karen Ferguson | Have you received any awards or honors or held any offices that you'd like me to put down here? You said you were deacon at your church? | 18:51 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 18:58 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 18:58 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, I have a couple awards there. | 19:01 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. What were those? | 19:03 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, they gave me a meal—I don't know what, the Meal on Wheels Award. | 19:06 |
Karen Ferguson | Meals on Wheels Award? | 19:08 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. But what else I have there? I have couple there. I know what the other one for? Something. I got two—I have two [indistinct 00:19:17], but I can't remember. Old crowded mind is what. Can't get anymore in there. Yeah. What is it for? I'm trying to think of what—don't think I got a letter of accommodation from the Transit, a couple letters from that. I don't know what the other plaques are for. Something, ones for the deacon. | 19:09 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. So— | 19:48 |
Willie Otto Powell | Oh, Man of the Year. | 19:49 |
Karen Ferguson | Man of the— | 19:50 |
Willie Otto Powell | —from the church. | 19:50 |
Karen Ferguson | Oh, Man of the Year at church? | 19:51 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 19:52 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 19:52 |
Willie Otto Powell | I don't know what the other one is. | 19:52 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. So, you're Baptist, and you attend First Baptist in Enfield? And that's the church you belonged to when you were— | 20:13 |
Willie Otto Powell | Same church. | 20:20 |
Karen Ferguson | —coming up? | 20:21 |
Willie Otto Powell | Same church. | 20:21 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. And did you belong to a church in New York City? | 20:21 |
Willie Otto Powell | No, nothing. I would, I used to attend Catholic church with my wife, but never —just go in and come out. Then knowing that I wasn't going to—at least I didn't think I was going to stay there then I wasn't sure. But I never joined, transferred in the church. | 20:24 |
Karen Ferguson | Could you tell me some organizations to which you belonged or belonged to now? | 20:46 |
Willie Otto Powell | I belong to Meals on Wheels Committee and—there's one other thing—belong to church organization. | 20:52 |
Karen Ferguson | Which one? Which ones? | 21:02 |
Willie Otto Powell | What do I belong to there? I don't know. But— | 21:04 |
Karen Ferguson | The committees at church? | 21:05 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, let's put it away, because there's a lot of them. | 21:05 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 21:12 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 21:12 |
Karen Ferguson | Anything else? | 21:12 |
Willie Otto Powell | Let me think. No, I don't think there's anything else. Not that I have time for anything else. I don't have time for that. Some other thing want me to join, like the Give [indistinct 00:21:38]. I'm supposed to join that, but I didn't do it yet. Several times I attempted to do it, but I'm going to go through with it. | 21:27 |
Karen Ferguson | Any fraternal organizations that you belonged to in New York City or the union? | 21:43 |
Willie Otto Powell | No, I never went into anything there. I almost got into the fellowship, but never joined that. I never joined the Mason or anything like that. I didn't have time to tell you the truth. So, just lived all the time. | 21:47 |
Karen Ferguson | Did you belong to a union when you were working? | 22:00 |
Willie Otto Powell | Uh-huh. | 22:02 |
Karen Ferguson | Which union was that? | 22:02 |
Willie Otto Powell | Local 100. | 22:04 |
Karen Ferguson | Of what union? | 22:05 |
Willie Otto Powell | Of New York. Where the [indistinct 00:22:12], I think. Yeah, that is the union. | 22:06 |
Karen Ferguson | So, that was the New York Employees Union? | 22:16 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, employee. How you know the employee union? | 22:21 |
Karen Ferguson | What? | 22:21 |
Willie Otto Powell | You must be familiar with them, huh? | 22:21 |
Karen Ferguson | No, no. I just know a little bit about unions, so I thought that was probably—so, city employee's union? | 22:23 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, part of New York City. | 22:27 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 22:27 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 22:27 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. Do you have any kind of—do you have a favorite saying or phrase or quote that you'd like me to put down here for the record? | 22:32 |
Willie Otto Powell | Give me an example of what that mean? | 22:48 |
Karen Ferguson | Well, you said for example, "You reap what you sow." | 22:49 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 22:51 |
Karen Ferguson | Is that the—or something like that. | 22:51 |
Willie Otto Powell | Well, "Do unto others that you would have them done to you." | 22:58 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. So, if I put the—okay. | 22:58 |
Willie Otto Powell | That's my motto. I think that's a golden rule, isn't it? | 23:01 |
Karen Ferguson | Yep. | 23:13 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah. | 23:14 |
Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. Now the final thing that I have to get you to do is to sign a release agreement like you did with the other one before. You have two options, you can—so, the interviews are going to be going to the archives at Duke University and then they'll also be coming back here to this community. You can sign a interview, the one that you signed before, or you can sign one on which you put some restrictions in terms of who can use it and so on. People will use it mainly for scholarly work, students and so on. You can take a look. | 23:24 |
Willie Otto Powell | I know— | 24:06 |
Karen Ferguson | This and if you want to put some, or place some restrictions on it, you may. Right there on a different form. | 24:06 |
Willie Otto Powell | Is this going into a book form? | 24:28 |
Karen Ferguson | It's not going to be a book. Well, the tapes are going to be available in a library for people to listen to. So, it could possibly be used in a book at some point, but nothing is specific right now. | 24:30 |
Willie Otto Powell | Is this going to be edited? | 24:47 |
Karen Ferguson | The tape will be in a—will be—some tapes will be transcribed, other will not, but the transcription will be verbatim. So, there will be no editing of your words that will be— | 24:49 |
Willie Otto Powell | These would be free, right? Not for sale. | 25:33 |
Karen Ferguson | Oh, no, no. Not for sale at all. This will be—and they're available to everyone. Anyone that wants— | 25:37 |
Willie Otto Powell | That's what I mean, anybody can check them out? | 25:43 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 25:44 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, I don't see, no— | 25:47 |
Karen Ferguson | If you could just sign where it— | 25:51 |
Willie Otto Powell | Yeah, I don't see where it should be a restriction on. | 25:52 |
Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. Okay. | 25:54 |
Willie Otto Powell | I think it's done. | 25:54 |
Item Info
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