Samuel Bryan (primary interviewee) and Dorothy Bryan interview recording, 1993 August 02
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Samuel Douglas Bryan | We learned about the incident and how we was treated, where we slept and what we were given to eat the next day and all. But what they did with it, I am unable to say, but we never heard anything from it. I'll put it that way. We never heard any more about it. | 0:02 |
Kara Miles | Was life different once you came back from the War? Was life here different after World War II? | 0:33 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, I don't know. I guess you had to be meeting the people head on to say whether or not they had changed much. My contact with the White people here in New Bern was pretty much the same as it had been before. I had not had direct contact with many White people and I didn't have it when I came back from the service, so I don't know much about the relationship there. I came back and went directly to school when I got out of the service. I got out on, it was in December, after Christmas, about two days after Christmas. And I came out of school two or three days after Christmas and by the 1st of January I was in school. So I didn't have much time out to have a relationship with the White people in the community. I was back in school. | 0:41 |
Kara Miles | What do you think, Ms. Bryan, do you, after World War II, did you see any changes in society, not necessarily with White, I mean, maybe with White people, differences in the way they acted to Black people, but maybe just society in general? Any changes that took place after World War II? | 2:17 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, I think people seemingly were not as tolerant and I could not put myself in the shoes of a serviceman. But I think a lot of them came back and resented the whole integration or segregation theory. They were more—I think in other words, they would not tolerate some of the things that they had. In general, I did not see that much change, especially in this community. | 2:38 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | The big change that I saw in relationships between White and Black came on the eve of the Civil Rights laws that were passed and this community, I could see changes in the closer we got to that, they would stop and hold a door open for you maybe, or smile or speak. Once some of the injustices were beginning to be pointed out to them, it seemed that some of them could realize that there was injustice. Some of them didn't ever seem to realize it, but even after the War, we were still doing the same things. We were still going to Black schools. We were still being called Dorothy or Sam by a large number of people. They were still doing the same things. You still could not drink from the same water fountains, but I could not see any big change. | 3:18 |
Kara Miles | Were there ever times before the Civil Rights Movement that you or people that you knew or might have heard of didn't obey the laws of segregation so that maybe someone did drink from the White water fountain instead of the Colored or wouldn't go to the back of the bus or anything like that? | 4:19 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I can't think—the most amusing thing I remember, and this person stood because I think—I can't remember if the bus had people on it, but we were standing near the front because the bus was crowded. It had to be crowded. We were going back to college and the most amusing thing, this fellow, and I was with him, he just stood up and held on and stood so that the tail of his coat was constantly flapping on the person that was—I think he could have done better, but I think he did it purposely. So those situations like that I can't myself ever remember going particularly to a White fountain to drink or sitting where I shouldn't sit. | 4:39 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I do remember twice telling someone about calling me Dorothy. I think the first instance I was paying a bill and there was a White male in front of me. And when she said something to him, she said, "Mr. So-and-so," and when I stepped up, it was, "Dorothy." And I just responded by saying, "Well, I don't think you know me well enough to call me Dorothy." You know, after a while you just get tired of it. So she did not respond at all. I think she did. She asked me what did I say and I repeated it, so then she didn't say anything. | 5:36 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | And another place that I went, this was at a dress shop that I enjoyed visiting because at that time I wore very small sizes and they carried the petite sizes, and I had stopped going to the store because the person in there that usually waited on me called me Dorothy. So when I decided this day that I was going in to look around just to see, and she's in the back of the store, and the minute I went in, she yelled from the back, "Hello, Dorothy, we haven't seen you in a long time." So then I repeated to her that I did not like being called Dorothy, and I let her know that was why I had stopped coming in that store, and I can't remember if she responded or how she responded. | 6:23 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | And then, of course, later we have gotten into the situation now where everybody is called by their first name. But interestingly enough, when I worked at New Bern High, very few people called me. I don't know of anybody unless it was the few Black teachers who referred to me as Dorothy. I don't mind being called Dorothy if you don't mind being called by your first name. But at that time I resented it because I knew what it meant. It was the idea, well, you're just a Black, so you're Dorothy, not Mrs. Bryan. Those are some vivid memories, but I can't, as I say, remember willfully just disobeying and I can't think of anybody else that willfully disobeyed the segregation laws that I can recall right now. | 7:18 |
Kara Miles | How about you, Dr. Bryan? | 8:23 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | No, to tell you the truth, I seldom drank water when I was out in the street. I didn't ever think about the bathroom or the drinking water fountain because they never occurred to me. I never had a chance to use them, and so I don't know about those things. But so far as people calling me Sam or whatever, I'm not even aware of that. I guess I didn't hear nothing but Sam so much I probably didn't pay any attention to that. | 8:25 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, it actually bothered me. And, of course one, of the other things that I experienced that I would sometimes have to speak up about is waiting on another person and you are there. This was a frequent thing. Or they might engage themselves in a conversation while you're standing there, to be with a friend, while you're standing there to be waited on. And I have noticed in the last maybe, I say, year or two, I had to call someone's attention that I was actually the next person in line. I don't know if we are reverting to some of those tactics or not. | 9:10 |
Kara Miles | Dr. Bryan, what dental school did you go to? | 9:56 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Meharry Medical College. | 10:00 |
Kara Miles | What made you want to be a dentist? | 10:04 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, I tell you, I first applied to medical school for medicine and my application was passed over the first year and the second year I said, well, I'll go to dental school. I figured that there were so many veterans coming back from the service and they were all going to school and there were so many applications, I said, I'll go to dental school. Maybe there'll be fewer applications. So I put my application in for dental school and it was accepted. So I just went on into dental school and went to Meharry. I prepared the application for Meharry and Howard and Meharry answered first. I heard from them first. The Howard University also accepted me, but I had already sent my money to Meharry, so I went to Meharry. | 10:07 |
Kara Miles | When you came out, were you able immediately to establish your own practice? | 11:33 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I took a year's, well, I'd say internship to General Hospital #2 in Kansas City. | 11:39 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | That— | 11:58 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Huh? | 11:59 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I hate to interrupt, but that's another example of segregation, right? | 11:59 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Oh, yeah. | 12:04 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Number one and two? | 12:04 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. Well, number one was White and number two was the Black. And they had a underground passageway that led to both hospitals and we'd go over there for lectures sometimes, and I didn't ever see them over there for lectures at ours. But we'd go over there for lectures sometimes. | 12:07 |
Kara Miles | So you did your internship there and then you came back here? | 12:37 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. | 12:40 |
Kara Miles | And started your own? | 12:41 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Started. I came back and took the exam in Chapel Hill and then set up my practice. | 12:42 |
Kara Miles | How did you have the money to—did you have the money or did you have to take out loans or stuff? | 12:59 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | No, no, I didn't have the money. I got a loan. I took out a loan at—what's the name? | 13:04 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Morris [indistinct 00:13:23]? | 13:22 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | No, New Bern Savings, New Bern Savings & Loan to fix up the office and order some dental equipment. | 13:24 |
Kara Miles | So when is this? When did you start your practice? | 13:34 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Let's see, it was September, wasn't it? | 13:40 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I think it was September. | 13:40 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | About— | 13:40 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | September of '53. | 13:40 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | '53 somewhere in September, October '53. | 13:50 |
Kara Miles | Okay. Were there other Black dentists here in New Bern? | 13:51 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | No— | 14:02 |
Kara Miles | At that time? | 14:02 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I was the only one. | 14:03 |
Kara Miles | Okay. So before you came, Black people were going to White dentists? | 14:06 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I suspect they were. Were y'all going to White dentists? | 14:08 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Unless you went out of town the one before he came was a Dr. Ira Dave's. | 14:16 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah, he died. | 14:25 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | He died, I think, the year you were during your internship? | 14:25 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. | 14:29 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | And there had been others before, but at the time he came he was the only one. | 14:32 |
Kara Miles | So did pretty much all the Black people start coming to you or did some still stay at the White dentist? | 14:41 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I imagine some of them still stayed at the White dentists, the way they talk. They said they was going down there or I was too high or something. I imagine some of them still went to the White dentists. | 14:46 |
Kara Miles | Did you know the White dentists? | 15:06 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I knew—well, I knew them. Yeah, I knew the dentists, White dentists. Now the ones that I—let me see. Well, I said that I knew, I'll put it that way, I knew most of the dentists by name and I knew one dentist, Dr. Parker. He seemed to be pretty nice and he was the one that I contacted for information and things and that sort. | 15:08 |
Kara Miles | Did the White dentists, I mean, do you think they were maybe jealous or angry? I mean, you were taking their patients away from them. | 15:57 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | No, they didn't give—as far as I'm concerned they didn't give a hoot about me. They didn't care that much about me. They still had as much as they could do. | 16:07 |
Kara Miles | Did you ever have any White customers? | 16:22 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, I think I served maybe one, two or three, one or two or three. It was offhand in the course of my 12 or 13 years. | 16:25 |
Kara Miles | So would this have been in the '50s or this would've been the— | 17:17 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | It was from '53 to '62. | 17:17 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Wasn't this in the early part of—was this in the early part? | 17:17 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, it was throughout. | 17:17 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Okay, I don't have any idea when it came. | 17:17 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | No. I'd serve one and then I'd have one spaced about middle way. I saw about three. | 17:18 |
Kara Miles | Why do you think they came to you? Wasn't that a little strange for that time period? | 17:19 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I don't know why they came to me, I tell you the truth, and I really don't know the cause of all that myself, well, why they came to me. It could have been a drug thing. I don't know. They could have been checking me out or something. I don't know why they came, but now it was at night mostly so the White dental office might've been closed. Now there's one that came during the daytime was, it was a shop, right, and she's two doors from my office. There was a shop in there and some ladies, White ladies, were in there and one of the ladies came to my shop during the day, so that might've been why she was came, right, to my shop. | 17:23 |
Kara Miles | If people were very poor and really couldn't afford a dentist, was there a way—I mean, did you accept people who couldn't pay? Was there a way for them to make it up to you some other way or pay you on installment or something? What did poor people do? | 18:36 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | They could pay on installments. A lot of them paid and a lot of them didn't pay. My book was full of names right now that people owe me money and never have paid. Yeah, they paid by installments, something like that because the fees weren't anything like they are now. The fees were so small and then they weren't getting full service, they were getting taken care of what was giving them trouble at the time. It might have been an extraction or something, so it wasn't much money that they owed me. And some of them took care of it, some of them didn't. | 18:52 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | But didn't you accept fees even then from Social Services, the children's health or something? | 19:46 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, yeah, it eventually helped— | 19:52 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Okay. | 19:52 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | The school fund helped when I did work for the school children on the paper that they gave. | 20:02 |
Kara Miles | Ms. Bryan, when did you start teaching? | 20:14 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Oh, a long time ago I started teaching. The first year I finished, I went to New York. I just had to get into wartime activity. So I worked at a Bundles for Britain factory. We mended clothing that people brought in for bundles to be shipped to Britain. When I came home for the Christmas holidays, my mother persuaded me to remain, so I substituted in a one-room school with all of the grades for the remainder of that year or two. Not the remainder, well, maybe I'll say about two months. | 20:16 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | And then the next year I just went ahead and applied for work and I taught in Craven County when the school system was divided at Vanceboro. The biggest portion of my teaching career was in James City, 7th grade, 7th and 8th grade. And then with the closing of that school, I came to New Bern High. Actually a year or two before it closed, I moved over to New Bern High. So I would say I started teaching in 1946, '45, '46 was my first full year of teaching and I ended my teaching career in 1983. This year makes 10 years of retirement. | 21:04 |
Kara Miles | Wow. What kind of changes did you see in that time span? | 22:02 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | A whole lot of changes, because in the first place when you were dealing with Black children, you not only taught them, but you counseled them. You had a closer relationship with the parents. There was the PTA and those parents came. If they did not, you could send a note home and you would get some kind of response from that parent. There was a very close bond between home and school. | 22:07 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Then as we moved on into integration, of course, there was a wide difference. You could not counsel Negro boys and girls. They seemed to feel that you were against them if you spoke to them maybe out in the hall or something and try to give them some pointers. When you were in the segregated situation you could always counsel your whole class right there and say the things that you wanted to say the way you wanted to say them. It was not so once I got into an integrated system. And some of the things I would tell my daughter when she went into the integrated system I could not tell those students. There were cases where students would go back and report what you had said to another teacher of another race and you did not want this, so sometimes you did not bother to counsel them the way you had. | 22:45 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Of course, there was a change in also equipment. When I started out in the county, the city had more money, seemingly, but over a period of years, the county had more money, and I think that's one of the things that kept me. We had all kinds of equipment and supplies that the city did not have. And at the time I moved, I was giving up also a county supplement that the city did not have at the same time. So there were changes in materials to work with. And of course once you got it into an integrated system, you got more materials. Now the system was integrated in the county before I moved to the city. But before integration, even in the county, naturally we did not have those materials to work with. We got the rebound books. We did not usually get new desks. And it was just generally the way they said it was. | 24:00 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Not during my time of teaching, also the salaries were not equal when I first started, but before the civil rights legislation, North Carolina had equalized the salaries. We had teachers organizations were separate. Once we moved into an integrated system, there was less interest in the teachers organization even though it was set up so that we would have a Black president one year and the next year certain other officers would be Black. | 25:05 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | But there have been a lot of changes and I probably can't think of all of them, but these are some of the changes that I have seen over the years. Much more difficult to deal with the children. We did not have to be worried about the violence that we see in school now. I don't think I could have taught. There was a time when you went in your class, too, that I remember that you taught, but by the time I left, there was so much paperwork that was unrelated to teaching that also made it difficult to teach. So these are just some of the changes that I saw over the 30 some odd years that I taught. | 25:44 |
Kara Miles | Okay. Well, I'm out of questions. Is there anything I didn't ask about that you all think is important? | 26:28 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I can't think of anything at all because most of it as far as integration is concerned or segregation, whatever term you choose to use, it was pretty much the same over the entire South. North Carolina was never considered a hardcore state, and I think it's because we did not have a great deal of slavery. We were segregated, it's true, but I don't think you lived constantly in fear of being lynched, or fear for your life and violence the way they did in some of the hardcore Southern states. | 26:39 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 27:22 |
Kara Miles | Where were you two born? | 0:00 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | In New Bern. | 0:04 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 0:05 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Both of us were born in New Bern. | 0:06 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 0:09 |
Kara Miles | Were you born near each other? What neighborhoods did you live in? Where did you live when you were growing up? | 0:10 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I lived right in the heart of town over on the side of town, really. On Cedar Street. | 0:16 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 0:22 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I was born on William Street in an area known now as Duffy Town. | 0:27 |
Kara Miles | However, my parents moved away when I was about two. 2nd grade, I'm sorry. I was in 2nd grade and we lived in New Jersey for a period of about five and a half or six years, then we returned to New Bern. | 0:34 |
Kara Miles | Okay. So then you came back to New Bern— | 0:49 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Yes. | 0:53 |
Kara Miles | —after that period of time, and you spent the rest of your childhood here? | 0:54 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | The remainder of my childhood was spent in New Bern. I was in 7th grade, about halfway through 7th grade when we moved back, and so I finished high school here, which naturally was a segregated high school, and I attended North Carolina Central, which was at that time known as North Carolina College for Negroes, which gives you another sign of the times. | 0:58 |
Kara Miles | Yes. What do you remember about Jersey, about growing up, about spending those years there? | 1:26 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, there was nothing spectacular about it. One of the main things that I can remember as a 4th grade student, I was the only Black in the class. And for some reason that teacher, a Mrs. Leonard, stands out in my mind as one of the nicest teachers, teachers that I recall. The other thing that I remember was that I skipped a grade the first year we were there. I skipped. And to me, as I look back on it now, that is a reflection of the good teaching I was getting as I left New Bern in the 2nd grade. Other than that, there was nothing spectacular about my schooling there. | 1:32 |
Kara Miles | Do you remember what differences there might have been between, I mean, the South and the North there, between New Bern and New Jersey? | 2:19 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, at the 2nd grade, I don't think you would've been that much aware of it, but when I returned to New Bern, I was keenly aware of the inadequacies in the school that I attended. At the time, I think one of the classrooms that I was in had a potbellied stove. The students were all Black and you noticed these things, all of the teachers were Black, and you noticed that also. There was also inadequate books, desks. The desks were usually marked and not in very good condition. But as far as being, I'd say feeling a difference with all Black students, I don't think I felt that too much. I felt comfortable in the environment in New Jersey, and I still felt comfortable as far as being with all Black students once we returned. | 2:28 |
Kara Miles | How about in areas other than school? How about transportation? I mean— | 3:41 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, this is one of the things now, when we lived in New Jersey, they had school districts and I walked maybe about three or four blocks to school. There was only one Black school when I returned to New Bern, and that was on West Street, which was I guess about a mile or better from my home. And this was one of the things, they did not furnish transportation at that time for students that lived within the city limits. So it didn't matter how far you were from the school, you either walked unless your parents owned transportation and could carry you. Another thing of course, too, that I can remember, the books were furnished and all materials in the school in New Jersey, but once I returned, my parents had to buy books and supplies, they did not furnish them. And I think this was characteristic, I guess, of both systems, both the White and the Black. | 3:47 |
Kara Miles | Do you, I mean, how about things like when you were coming back, because you would've been old enough when you came back here to be aware of these things, I guess. Differences like in race relations, did you have Jim Crow in Jersey? I mean, what was it like coming back? | 4:56 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, as I said before, you could go in most places if you could afford to go. Did not mean that you would not be snubbed there though. But once you returned, once I returned, it did not take me long to realize that there were places that I could not go, places that I could not drink and this type of thing, the water fountains and all. There was a difference and it did not, you just fell into the groove. I would say as a child, it probably was more easy for me to adjust than had I lived there until an adult. | 5:12 |
Kara Miles | What kind of places couldn't you go to here? Either one of you. | 5:54 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. Oh, you couldn't go to restaurants, theaters, places like that. | 6:02 |
Kara Miles | Was there a Black theater? | 6:11 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yes. One Black theater. | 6:12 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | In fact, the Black theater was sort of in the heart of the Black business section, which has decayed since integration. They don't have that. | 6:17 |
Kara Miles | Where was the Black business section? | 6:28 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | This section was in what was called Five Points on Broad Street. Broad and Queen come together there at a junction, and all of them were located, not all, but a large number of them were located; vegetable stands, restaurants, barber shops and what have you. | 6:31 |
Kara Miles | Dr. Bryan, you were a dentist, right? | 6:59 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yes. | 7:01 |
Kara Miles | Was your office located in that district? | 7:02 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yes, it was. It across the street from that district. | 7:05 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Broad Street, actually. | 7:12 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | But it was a different district when my office was there, it was a long time after the theater was in the district. | 7:13 |
Kara Miles | Okay, but was that still considered the Black business section when you were — | 7:28 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah, it was still there, [indistinct 00:07:37] Black section, but they had some White businesses up in there too. | 7:36 |
Kara Miles | Okay. White businesses that Black people could go to or? | 7:37 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah, a service station and a food market was up there, the motel was up there, things that so. | 7:49 |
Kara Miles | Okay. Was there a Black motel? | 8:02 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | No, this was not a Black motel. This was a Ramada Inn at that time, I believe was located there. We did have a Black motel in New Bern at one time, but it was not located in the Five Points area. It was all the way down at the foot of Queen Street. That was years ago, and I think even as I came along, were they still taking people? | 8:08 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | When you came? | 8:32 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Yes. I can't recall. This hotel belonged to the Rhone family. The Rhone sisters are very old family in New Bern. | 8:33 |
Kara Miles | Okay. Mrs. Bryan, do you know why your parents moved to Jersey and then why they moved back? | 8:47 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Okay they moved. My father was a carpenter, and during the Depression years, people were not building that much, so we moved to New Jersey. In fact, he left before we left, the family moved. And when we moved back, I think it was during the period of the New Deal, so we came back and started over. They never really wanted to be away, but they could get work, so they moved. | 8:51 |
Kara Miles | So he was able to do carpentry in Jersey? | 9:23 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | No. [crosstalk 00:09:27] He did other types of work that were not unavailable here, because there, again, you found discrimination on the job. I did not realize it at the time as a young child, but having heard them speak about it, they would always say you were the last hired and the first fired. And again, while he did other types of work, he did not do carpentry, that I recall. And then the work was not always steady. When he returned, and as I said, with the New Deal program, then there was more money in circulation and he was able to get back into this field of work. | 9:26 |
Kara Miles | What did your mother do? | 10:12 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | My mother was a housewife, something that I did not experience until after retirement. | 10:14 |
Kara Miles | What did you do? What was your job? | 10:23 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I've taught for 30 some odd years, elementary school level, junior high, I'll say. And then later on after integration, I moved over to the high school, New Bern High School, where I taught history, United States history and African-American studies, which was terminated upon my retirement. | 10:26 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | The school was integrated. | 10:52 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Yes, it was, but I happened to teach that. And that really is after the'60s too, isn't it? | 10:57 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | It's after the '60s. | 11:03 |
Kara Miles | Did your father have his own carpentry business or did he work for someone? | 11:06 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | He did both. He actually did both sometimes. If a contractor had a job, then he was called to do that job. And then there were times when he just worked on his own. I don't think it was so highly departmentalized at that time that you did one thing or the other. And I can realize some of the places where he worked as a Black carpenter, some of the buildings. | 11:14 |
Kara Miles | Did he ever talk about his, I mean, I would imagine he had to work for Whites. I mean doing carpenter — | 11:50 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Yes, he did. | 11:57 |
Kara Miles | —things for Whites. Did he ever talk about that? His relationships with them, how they treated him. | 11:59 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I can remember him referring to only one person, and that person later on built the first home that we lived in. His name was Jack [indistinct 00:12:21]. He had worked for the father, and he remembered the child when he was very young. But the father, I think he had a good relationship with. But the young man. I think he never ever got along with him at all. Even as a youngster, he said he referred to him as ornery and mean. | 12:06 |
Kara Miles | Okay. Dr. Bryan, what did your parents do? | 12:51 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, my father was a painter when he could get painting work. And when he couldn't get paint work, he did odd job, what he could get to do. My mother was a domestic and she worked in downtown for different families, domestic work. | 12:55 |
Kara Miles | Did either one of your parents ever talk about how the White people they worked for treated them? | 13:25 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, as far as I can remember, they treated him all right. I don't remember any harsh or— | 13:32 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | In fact, I have heard her mention some of the families. This is at a later period, and I imagine they had a very good relationship because that relationship continued even in her later years. Even though she was not working for them, they would converse in this type of thing. So I would imagine she had a very good relationship. | 13:43 |
Kara Miles | Could both of you tell me, describe the house that you grew up in for me? | 14:13 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, the house that I grew up in is still standing on the corner of [indistinct 00:14:25] Avenue and Cedar Street. It was there when the fire came. It was the only house in the area that was left, and all around it was burned down. We use it now, it's been separated into apartments, upper and lower, and we rent it out there. | 14:20 |
Kara Miles | So it was a two story house. How many rooms did it have? | 14:21 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Eight rooms. And yeah, eight rooms. | 14:25 |
Kara Miles | And how many of you lived in it? | 14:27 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Oh, there were three or four families lived in there. When the fire came, there were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I can think of five families that lived in there. And [indistinct 00:15:38] after the fire, just we lived there: my mother and father and brother and sister. | 14:28 |
Kara Miles | Okay. So your family owned the house? | 15:50 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. | 15:51 |
Kara Miles | And then the other families rented from your—? | 15:52 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | They didn't rent, they just stayed there. | 15:54 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 15:59 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | That was, I think, what everybody who had a house offer to people who were left without homes. | 16:00 |
Kara Miles | Okay. After the fire? | 16:08 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Yes. Was so many people. | 16:09 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | [crosstalk 00:16:12] stay there until they could get straightened out, they were there for months. | 16:12 |
Kara Miles | Okay. Okay. So before the fire, it was your family home, and then after the fire, then they let people stay there? | 16:18 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. | 16:23 |
Kara Miles | Until—okay. Do you all remember the fire? Were you all— | 16:23 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, I remember a little about the fire. I was four years old when the fire happened, and I remember the people living in the house. In fact, various people lived there from time to time for a year or two after the fire. So I remember that. | 16:23 |
Kara Miles | And when was this big fire? | 16:23 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | In 1922. December the first, 1922. | 16:24 |
Kara Miles | Does anyone know what caused it? How did it start? | 17:12 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | It started at my grandmother's house. | 17:15 |
Kara Miles | Did it? | 17:18 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, one fire did. Chimney caught a fire, and it was a very windy day and the fire just spread. They had shingles on their homes, shingles, and the fire just spread from one house to the next and just burned up half the town, just about. | 17:19 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | But as she said, there were actually two fires. One started at a mill downtown and they were busy fighting that before they ever got up. When they got up to the Black area, that fire had started spreading, I guess I was about two weeks old, so I don't recall anything except what I've read or what people have told me about the fire. As I said, I lived in the Duffy Town area of New Bern. We were not harmed by the fire at all. The house had originally belonged to my father and his mother. So when he married my mother, he took her there. And at the time, it was a one story house. And my sister was just telling me this year that the kitchen was not attached to the house. You had to go through a little breezeway to get to the kitchen. However, he enlarged it to a two-story and brought the kitchen inside the main house. | 17:46 |
Kara Miles | Okay. You said you lived in Duffy Town. | 18:58 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Right. | 19:01 |
Kara Miles | What were the other Black neighborhoods in New Bern? | 19:03 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Okay. There was Pavey Town, there was— | 19:06 |
Kara Miles | Where? Like what streets that was and everything. | 19:12 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Coming from the downtown area, you probably got into the Black neighborhood around Queen, George, Bern Street, coming from the downtown area, if you know where that is. Cedar Street was not considered a part of Duffy Town. Once you crossed Cedar Street and came up Main, you reached a section there that was called Pavey Town. A little further out coming on around Main and Garden, you reached what was called Duffy Field, they called it at that time. And then coming back out toward this way, if you were coming through that Black neighborhood, was an area called [indistinct 00:20:04]. And I think you may have interviewed Mrs. Arabelle Bryant. I think you mentioned that name, because—did you call me? | 19:18 |
Kara Miles | No, I wasn't the one who called you. | 20:13 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Okay. Well, whoever it was had been given almost the same directions as I gave. But at her house you had reached all of New Bern. This area west of Clark Avenue and on back has been built up. It was just a vacant field over in this area. So those were the three main ones that I can think of. Of course, there were other surrounding areas like Pembroke, and wasn't there another one? Pembroke, and of course James City, that's another story. So I won't get into that. | 20:15 |
Kara Miles | The different neighborhoods, did different neighborhoods have different reputations or different — | 20:58 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Yes. | 21:07 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yes, they can. | 21:07 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I'll let him talk about that. | 21:07 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | No. Well, they had reputation, it was usually Pavey Town. They started kind of rough getting over in that direction. They had night spots and so forth. And the Duffy, the Cedar Street section, a lot of those boys would come over. They started a ruckus every time they come over. And just the other way around. It wasn't a vicious thing, it was how children were playing, more or less. But they had that. And well— | 21:12 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | It's hard also to really say, because I was about to say down in the other area, maybe West Street, Bern Street, the few that were left on George Street after the fire, I was about to say some of them were professionals. But then when I look back at Duffy Town, the area I lived in, you found a few professionals. And then the school was located just down the corner from me. This was a private, normal school that later collapsed. It was a Methodist school, and so many of those people who were over there, I don't know how to describe the differences in the neighborhood really. Neighborhoods. | 22:03 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, it was mostly the children playing and carrying on, but it was pretty much the same. You have some professionals all over. | 22:57 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, this is true. | 23:06 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Both [indistinct 00:23:09]. | 23:08 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | And then— | 23:09 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | By professionals, you had teachers. | 23:10 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | That was it. | 23:12 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | [indistinct 00:23:14], mostly. | 23:12 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | A few doctors and a few lawyers. Now they have just about included all of the Black neighborhood in the paper. When they refer to Duffy Town, they are including all of the Black neighborhood. And this is not really what was called Duffy Town original, the whole Black neighborhood. | 23:15 |
Kara Miles | Okay. Now these neighborhoods were strictly Black. I mean, did any White people live in those areas? | 23:37 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Not any, that I know of. | 23:42 |
Kara Miles | Okay. Were there other sections of town that were integrated, that had Blacks and Whites living together? | 23:44 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Yes, I would say so. Far as I can remember, George Street. | 23:51 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, that was the main thing. Main Street, that's where the Black and the White neighborhood met. There would be some Whites and some Black living on that street, and that's about the only thing. | 23:57 |
Kara Miles | Okay, so it would be like Whites living on this half and then Blacks on this half, or would it be a Black house, a White house. | 24:17 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | It was mixed up. | 24:23 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | It was mixed up. Wasn't Black, Black, because— | 24:25 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. Blacks living on one side and Whites on the other side, Black and White. | 24:27 |
Kara Miles | Okay. Okay. What kind of contact did you all have with White children, say, or any White people growing up? | 24:40 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, it was cordial in a way, and then it was belligerent in a way. I mean, as a child growing up, every time we had a chance to [indistinct 00:25:09] them or run them, we were running. If we catch them in a area of the Black neighborhood and the fewer number, we would chase them, and they'd catch us in the neighborhood few in number, they'd chase us. So it was one of those things. | 24:46 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I remember one Sunday we were going down George Street and we happened to see a White boy riding the bicycle and we just ran in, drove him off the bicycle, just no reason, just put him off the bicycle. And the same time we were out at our church, down at St. Cyprian's Church, on the fringe of what would be the Black and White neighborhood, standing out there one night talking, waiting for [indistinct 00:00:26:21], and all of a sudden, heard something crashing through the trees and the White boys walking down the street on the other side picked up a milk bottle and threw it over there and ran. And we didn't know what it was until it hit the ground and broke up. So it's just one of those things, just children messing with each other. | 25:32 |
Kara Miles | I mean, was it that you all were doing this because, I mean, you all were Black and they were White, or was it just children being children? | 26:48 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, it was more or less because you're White and Black. White and Black. And I don't remember the adults, because most of our dealings were with the children. I guess they got it from the adult, but the adults went on about their business and we went about ours, but the children were at odds against each other. | 26:58 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I can't remember any relationship that I had particularly with Whites as a child when I returned. And of course as a child growing up, we lived on a fringe neighborhood also. So there were playmates that were White. And then at school, naturally you socialized with Whites, and I think you did it more freely there because you were starting out, so to speak. I don't think this was the case when the schools integrated, I don't think they mixed us freely. But once I returned, I didn't have any need except those I met in the stores. Now my husband, I think, worked as a young person with Whites. | 27:28 |
Kara Miles | Tell me about that. | 28:29 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | [indistinct 00:28:30]. | 28:29 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I've heard you tell about someplace that you worked downtown, didn't you? | 28:30 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Oh yeah. | 28:32 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | As a high school student at several places. | 28:39 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. I worked in the drugstore. Oh yeah. I worked in drugstore [indistinct 00:28:42]. | 28:39 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Excuse me. | 28:39 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | It's little incidents there, sitting out at the front of the store at night and the store was closed about 10 o'clock. And guys coming along the street, White fellows, and just playing, jostling each other. And they come up there and then they see you and they want to start some stuff. Now, the thing of it is that the boy, one of the boys were the family that my mother raised, and he was all right. He was nice. But the other fellow was, he was a big boy, played football, and he was rowdy. And so he come down and wanted to push the boy over on me. I was sitting on the car. But nothing came of it. We'd settle it. And there were various incidents, I mean, down the street and around the corner and all of, but I can't even get it all together or not if I try to get it. | 28:50 |
Kara Miles | Just various incidents of the Black boys and White boys getting into it? | 30:25 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think about it except now occasionally I see incidents. I remember that I was at a place at a certain time, but for the most part it didn't bother me. | 30:31 |
Kara Miles | So this job, you were working at a White drugstore? | 30:54 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yes. | 30:57 |
Kara Miles | What were you doing there? | 30:57 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I was delivering. Delivery boy. | 30:58 |
Kara Miles | Okay. And how did they treat you there? | 31:01 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Treat me fine. | 31:06 |
Kara Miles | Yeah? | 31:06 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Mm-hmm (affirmative). Let's see, the druggist was Mr. Woods and well, his store was kind of on decline at the time. And he was the one druggist then, and I was the delivery boy. That was it. Fix up the orders and I'm going to deliver it. | 31:07 |
Kara Miles | Okay. Do you all remember your grandparents? | 31:49 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I certainly do. | 31:51 |
Kara Miles | Tell me about them. What do you remember? | 31:54 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | My grandfather used to deliver milk and vegetables. Everybody knew him as Kit [indistinct 00:32:10]. His name was Christopher. My grandmother was a housewife. She had, I guess, about eight or nine children. And she was always sickly from the time I remember her. She was sickly, but yet she lived to be about 88 or 89. My grandfather expired before she did. They lived on Chapman Street also in a two-story home. They too had lived in [indistinct 00:32:52], New York for a while, and I don't ever really know why they did unless they also were looking for work. But they returned to New Bern. But when I knew them, they were living in New Bern. | 31:56 |
Kara Miles | Dr. Bryan? | 33:04 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yes. I remember my grandfather [indistinct 00:33:13] parent. My grandfather, when I knew him, he was a itinerant barber. He would walk the streets. But he had worked earlier in the barber shop. And my grandmother was a housewife. She had about nine or ten children, I guess. And some of them died early, I don't know. About two of them died at an early age, I didn't know them. And the others I knew. And about, let's see, Raymond and Leon, I knew about seven of them. And they worked at different jobs. My uncle, one uncle was a physician and one was a general contractor, painter [indistinct 00:34:36]. My aunt, and both aunts and her grandmother sewed, they were seamstresses. That's about it. | 33:10 |
Kara Miles | Okay. You said your grandfather was an itinerant barber when you met him, what exactly does that mean? | 34:50 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, he walked the street and he would go to people's homes and cut their hair. He cut the White people's hair. He would go downtown and round and cut their hair and walk from one place to the other. | 34:56 |
Kara Miles | Now, does that mean he would knock on someone's door and ask if they needed or? | 35:06 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | No, he wouldn't. Uh-uh(negative). No. These are people that he worked in the barbershops beforehand. And he cut hair and people will say, "Well, can you come and cut my hair tomorrow." And so on and so on. and he had them lined up like that. | 35:20 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | But now, did he own that barbershop? | 35:39 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I don't know. | 35:43 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Because that's the way I always heard it. I know the barbershop was downtown. I remember that. | 35:44 |
Kara Miles | Had your grandfather gone to a school to learn to cut hair or he just picked it up on his own? Do you know? | 35:55 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | That's the truth, I don't know. I'll tell you the truth. I don't know whether he went to school. More than likely he picked it up on his own. From when I think back that far, I don't know about school. | 36:00 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Would they have had school? | 36:17 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | That's just it. I don't know. | 36:20 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I don't know. But I know they probably—I don't know. I'm wondering too. | 36:21 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I don't know. See, I don't know where he would've gone to school. | 36:25 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | About how old was your grandfather when he died? Do you know? | 36:32 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Gosh, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. He died about 1932. I don't know how old he was. My grandmother, but they had to be pretty old, even in as much as they had children—well, my father was next to the oldest. So I don't know how old he was. I tell you the truth, not offhand at all. | 36:38 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Have to stop and figure it out. | 37:12 |
Kara Miles | Do either of you remember stories your grandparents might have told you, or even things your parents might have told you about their childhood, about when they grew up? | 37:18 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I have two that come to me, and one involved my mother. She got a doll for Christmas. This is a little story. And she kept complaining about it. And my grandmother told her if she continued that Santa Claus might come and take the doll. Well, she continued and my mother said that she went out to play, and when she came back, she never saw that doll again. | 37:29 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | The other one I think is interesting, my grandmother used to talk about the days that she was courting my grandfather. And she said she would see him in the field plowing with this long, stringy black hair, and they would make fun of him. And then she wound up marrying him. And I think they lived almost adjacent from what the way she described it. About seven or eight years ago, my daughter was doing some family research and she found down at the courthouse in the records, the lot numbers, the names of the households and the families. | 38:09 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | She did my grandfather's side first. And then she came back and found the [indistinct 00:39:08] and she said she remembered what I had told her about this story. And she said, "Well, that's got to be the set of [indistinct 00:39:18]." And I think she did finally find my grandmother's name. But in the other household, she found the [indistinct 00:39:28] family and all of the children that were listed that they had there. And again, I say that this was an interesting story that I had even told her. So when she started during that little bit of research, it sort of fitted together like a puzzle. And those are two stories. There are others there, I'm sure, that I cannot think of now, but those are two that readily came to mind when you ask the question. | 39:01 |
Kara Miles | Okay. How about you Dr. Bryan? | 39:57 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I remember one in particular, my father said that when he was a young boy, I guess not so young, about 15, 16, 17 year old, they used to be a fire where you would ring the fire bell for the fire. And out there in the fire points, they stayed about a block or two from the fire points. And they would go out there and ring the bell, ring the bell, and then take off running and hiding up under the house. And the fire truck, they fire horses [indistinct 00:40:51], because they had horses, and they come chasing out and down the street. They were up under the house hiding, and they never did catch them hiding. | 39:58 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, the other story you told about your mother, I thought was interesting too, how she—was it her mother that lost her? | 41:04 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | [indistinct 00:41:14]. | 41:12 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | The story of, I think it was her mother and her mother's sister that she lost during the Civil War? They were separated. I thought that was an interesting story. | 41:14 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. They were down to, somehow, [indistinct 00:41:32], they were down near the palace. Some affair was going on that night. And the ships came in out there and started bombarding the play. And they were running every which way, the women and children were running. And so somebody said, I think my grandmother, something told her to to "get down, get down." And she got down on the ground and a shell sailed right over her head. And that night they lost the connection with the one of the children. And years later, oh, I mean it was way late. They were talking with a fellow that was from, we were there, from— | 41:25 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Tarboro. | 42:49 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Tarboro. And come to find out that this girl that they missed, that they lost in that wreckage, they think that she was the one, think that the girl that he was talking about in the up in Tarboro was the one. And this was—see, the transportation was so bad at that time. I mean, it took forever to go little distance. And there was an itinerant preacher that went from one place to the other, just preaching. And he said he had met her and she was nursing for some families, some White family there. And she had grown old and they had put her in the cottage out back. She was staying there at the back, but they never did get up with her. | 42:53 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | And this was during the Civil War, right? | 44:18 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. | 44:20 |
Kara Miles | Wow. So had your grandmother been a slave? | 44:21 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | My great-grandmother was a slave. Now I don't know whether my—yeah, yes. My grandmother was as a child, because when we moved, we built that house around there on Cedar Street around two years before the fire. And she had lost, well, the connections, so to speak. I mean, she would go off, she would go off walking and saying she had to feed the chickens, feed the chickens. And she would go out to run to feed the chicken. And so she was a child as a slave, and that was one of her job to go feed the chickens. And so she went off to that extent that she would go out to feed this chicken. | 44:27 |
Kara Miles | Do you remember, did she ever talk about that period? Or did she ever talk about things her mother had told her about slavery? | 45:45 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I don't know. I didn't talk with her that much. I was young myself. a very small child. And she, I don't know at what age I was—let me see, I must have been, it must have been before the fire because she stayed in the room that they stored my grandmother's— | 46:04 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I was about two or three years old when she died. And she couldn't have been any later than that, any older than that, because in the house—my grandmother's house burned down. They stored her things in the room that my grandmother stayed in. | 0:01 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | With your other grandmother. | 0:22 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah, my other grandmother stayed in. Yeah. | 0:27 |
Kara Miles | How about on your side? Were your grandparents or great grandparents slaves, do you know? | 0:30 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I'm sure my grandparents must have been. I'm trying to remember. I think my grandmother was born free, and I think my grandfather was just a child when —and I'm trying to remember just how old he was, but my grandmother I think was born free, if I can recall. Because they would talk about it. But never any experiences, I can't remember any experiences that they mentioned at all. | 0:37 |
Kara Miles | What would they say about it when they talked about it? | 1:11 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, for one thing, I guess it goes back to she thought she was better than he was, because she was born free. That's the thing that I used to hear most of all. And as I said, his mother had to have been a slave. She had about— | 1:13 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | [indistinct 00:01:35]. | 1:33 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | She had to be a slave. Now, I don't know anything about his brothers or sisters, just where they were because he was the youngest child in his family. But that was the main thing that I heard that she thought maybe she was a little better than he because she was born free. As the song goes. | 1:36 |
Kara Miles | What kind of values do you think your parents or your grandparents, that your family imparted on you? | 2:00 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, I can remember my grandmother always telling me that, and this was her saying, "work will not hurt you," or anybody else that she talked to, "but trouble will kill you." And I always remember that when I get tired that as long as I can rest, and get back to work then it's better than having other problems. And I don't know, I guess my mother, one of her things was, and I can remember this comment from her, that whenever we would go out, she would always say, "Leave your room in case somebody has to bring you back to it." In other words, leave your house neat, so that you won't be embarrassed if somebody has to bring you back to it. | 2:10 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | And of course there were other values, like cleanliness, and the general values that you try to instill in children. But whenever I was tempted to go out and leave things in turmoil as a young, growing up, and especially as an adult, then I would sort of come back to that principle. They're the two main things that I can remember. Another thing she would always say is, my mother, was that people judge you by the company you keep. And this was especially true after I got to be a teenager. I could not always do the things that other teenagers were doing. And this was one of her things. My mother was a very strict person. My father was more lenient. And it was never one of those things where she said, "Ask your father." If we really wanted anything, a lot of times we would go to him first, especially if it involved money. | 3:12 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, I didn't remember any particular things that she said, but just [indistinct 00:04:41] always tell that, what she did, how she did it. And that's about it. | 4:26 |
Kara Miles | Okay. What were some of those things, Mrs. Bryan, that the other kids could do and you couldn't? | 4:51 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, a lot of them were having dates before we did. A lot of them could go to the parties and stay out later than I could stay. And as I reflect—and then there were people sometimes that she would say that she didn't think it was wise for me to become too involved with. One of the things, my older sister, I had an older sister, nine years older than my twin sister and me. There were two brothers, well maybe about two or three years older than she. And we always felt that she got to do things earlier than we did. But then when she went out, a lot of times her brothers were with her. They would go out to parties, and so they would just take her. And I guess my mother felt satisfied that since her brothers were there, she would not do. But those were the main things that we could not do. | 5:00 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | And of course, as I say, she always instilled that work ethic too, because when we were growing up, we had chores to do when we came from school. And the thing about it, she was always there to see that they were done. And if they weren't done to her expectations, then you had to do that over. And I could not do this with my daughter because I worked, and I could see the difference. And sometimes she would ask to go visit a playmate. And I can remember one day vividly that she had asked. And when I walked through the door, I was so tired. I said, "Yes, go ahead." But then I walked in the house and realized that there was something she had not done that I had asked her to do. | 6:09 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | And see my mother being there all the time, she was prepared to see that you did it and that if you didn't do it then you did it over. But we definitely had little chores to do after school every day. And one was to go over to my grandmother's once we moved back. We alternated days, going over there to do the dishes for her, because as I said, as far back as I could remember, she was ill. Half-ill. | 6:59 |
Kara Miles | How old were you when you could finally start dating? And how old were your friends when they started? | 7:35 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, a lot of my friends at 12 and 13, and I don't remember. I guess I must have been late in high school, very late. Now my daughter started earlier than that. Well see, the trend differs. But even at 13, I had friends that were going out 13 and 14, but I know I must have been in late high school. Junior, senior, somewhere along there. | 7:40 |
Kara Miles | When did you start dating Dr. Bryan? | 8:11 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, I don't know that I dated as such. Dating, I tell you. I started going out, well they say going out with girls but we were bashful. At least I was bashful, and I didn't consider it going out with girls. I played football and the football team would go away, and they would have the dances. And the boys would be in there dancing. I'd be sitting around. I'd be sitting around looking. And I guess that's about the size of my dating. | 8:13 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, when I say dating, I'm not talking about the formal, but just going out, having a boy pick you up at the house and take you out to the school dances and this type of thing. | 8:56 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. | 9:06 |
Kara Miles | When did you two start seeing each other? | 9:11 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, that's a funny thing because I did not know him before I went to college. He's four years ahead of me. And somewhere along the line, when you get in college, Christmas time, you always get together with friends, people that you know. And this is pretty much how it started. All of the friends, even after we got out and started working, that same group. | 9:13 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | College friends. | 9:48 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | College friends. When you come home then we usually, instead of going to a bar or something, we always met at the various homes. And maybe by the time one person had you over, then the next person had you, you were pretty much filled up. The group just moved from house to house and we happened to be in that same group. Now you had been to the service and was, I guess, in dental school about that time. Although we had maybe met, gone to parties, but we did not—he was in dental school when we really started — | 9:49 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | She was a freshman in college. See I was slow. And she was a freshman, and I was a senior in college. And I knew them. I knew because she was a good friend of a friend of mine, Gwendolyn Howard. I knew Gwendolyn Howard very good because I grew up with the people in her family there. And so I saw her, and Gwendolyn, and Marie and I knew them all. And I graduated and came out. And so I wrote them. I sent them a card, just— | 10:42 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Yeah. You did write when you were in the service. | 11:23 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. But I knew before I went to the service. I just sent a card. | 11:28 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Just friendly correspondence, that's all it was. | 11:34 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. Just a friendly card, and correspondence. And I came back from the service. I was a little more outgoing, but I was still shy and reserved. So we just took it up from there. I went back to school, and this one thing led to another, to dental school and all. Then I just picked up there from that point on, I just started going with her. | 11:35 |
Kara Miles | And they lived happily ever after. | 12:12 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Story ended. There ends the story. | 12:18 |
Kara Miles | Did you all both go to North Carolina College? | 12:20 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. | 12:23 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Certainly did. | 12:23 |
Kara Miles | Why did both of you choose to go there? | 12:25 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, I went because I received a little scholarship. There was an alumni organization here and they awarded me a scholarship. So that was my choice. But it seems to me that was the school of my choice at that time because I felt, for Blacks, that was the strongest school. And it was a liberal arts college too. So that was my reason for going. | 12:28 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, my first year was delayed a year. I didn't go to school the year after I finished high school. And most of my friends that went to school, James White and Joe Morris, Clarence [indistinct 00:13:19], they went to State. And they were there that year, and I was home working. So I went the next year. So I went to State too. And at that time, State was a very popular school and it stood out among the schools. And that was my reason. | 12:58 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | And at that time, State had a rating that only four other schools had, and that was Fisk-Howard, and was it North—I don't remember if it was Virginia State or what, but North Carolina Central was one of the four. As he said it was probably maybe the stronger schools, or the strongest one in this state for Blacks. | 13:48 |
Kara Miles | You said you waited a year before you went to school. What did you do with that year? | 14:18 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I worked at the drugstore. | 14:22 |
Kara Miles | Okay. Was that to save money for school? Or why didn't you go straight to college? | 14:23 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, the truth of the matter is I wasn't able to go to college. I didn't have the money. And it was no such thing as working to save the money to go, because I didn't save anything. But I guess it was just a matter of making up your mind to go. And I didn't save any money. I couldn't save any money. I was making a few dollars a week, $8 and $10 a week, and you couldn't save any money off that much. Because I gave my mother part of that, and there wasn't much more to be saved. But I was just backward, that's all. I was shy and backward, and I just didn't go that year. | 14:29 |
Kara Miles | Had your parents encouraged you to go to college? | 15:30 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | No. | 15:34 |
Kara Miles | No? It was just something you decided you wanted to do? | 15:35 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. | 15:38 |
Kara Miles | How about your— | 15:40 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | See my parents, they didn't go very far in school. My mother went about 4th grade or somewhere along there, about the 4th grade. And my father, I don't know where he came out, but it was down there, the grade. They didn't have any education, so their minds were not set on school. But the values that they taught me, my mother particularly, doing, and being in church, and that type of thing, was a good standing. She wasn't a housekeeper. Well, at least at home, the home. She didn't pay much attention about keeping the home clean. Well, I don't mean clean, I mean curtains up, [indistinct 00:17:00], and things of that sort around. She didn't have too much time for that. | 15:41 |
Kara Miles | Did she? | 17:05 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | She was working. And we, the children, and my sister and I, and my brother, we were busy playing in the street. So we didn't think too much about that. But the things that she did, she was a mild person, weak person, do anything for you. And that took on me. | 17:05 |
Kara Miles | So was there anyone, maybe a teacher or someone who had inspired you to go to college? How did you decide that you wanted to go to college? | 17:40 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, I just wanted to go, tell you truth. All my teachers were good. They inspired me, but not particularly to go to college. They were good teachers and all. But I just wanted to go. | 17:54 |
Kara Miles | Okay. How about you Mrs. Bryan? | 18:01 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, I wanted to go too. And my mother just encouraged me, and especially after I got the scholarship, she was behind it 100%. But as I said, just as in his case, they were not college graduates, even high school graduates. I don't know how far they went in school. But she was all for it. She supported me 100% in my desire to go. For one thing, at the time, I wanted to be a teacher anyway. And I just enjoyed studying. I enjoyed doing homework at the high school level. | 18:14 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. The people at the time that my mother and father were in school, college was not the main thing. They didn't think much about college, and they didn't think much about the schooling except that they had—unless they didn't have to work, they'd go to school. But these people were, well, they had to work, and they put their emphasis on working. And so they did that instead of going to school. And there wasn't too much said about it. | 18:57 |
Kara Miles | So tell me about college. What was college like? | 19:51 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | College was all right with me. I had no problem in college. I majored in Mathematics and minored in Chemistry. And I got along okay. I made the Dean's List first year. | 19:54 |
Kara Miles | Yeah. | 20:31 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Then no more after that. No more after that. But I had no problems at college. And it was a breeze to me like that. | 20:32 |
Kara Miles | What was the social life like? | 20:46 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah, well, social life except for going to games, and football games, and basketball games, that was about it as far as I was concerned. The other kids went out to the parties in town, the city. But I stayed in school. I didn't go out to the party. I had my fun as much, enough fun for me, in the school, in the building. | 20:48 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | In my case, as I look back, I think I could have done a better job scholastically. I came out an average student. And I think part of that was because I had not had the privilege of being on my own. But I did not really apply myself. The best thing I can say for myself is being exempted from the French test my first year. But I never made the Dean's List, or the Honor Roll for that matter. And it's not that I don't think that I could have, but I think I was sort of busy doing other things, and exploring my freedom, as far as the social life was concerned. Of course, by the end of my sophomore year, many of the young men left school to go to—some volunteered, and others were drafted. And I think by the time I graduated, we had maybe four or five males in our class. | 21:22 |
Kara Miles | Down from how many? | 22:26 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, I never knew the exact count, but it was a school of girls almost the whole campus. And to give you an example, they took the senior dorm at what was North Carolina College for Negroes at that time, they took the senior dorm for women, which was one of the smaller dorms, they took that for males, and put us over in McLean Hall. So we were mixed over there. But they put us over in the men's dorm, which had before housed, I guess, all of the males. That was the only male dorm. | 22:28 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah, except Chidley Hall. | 23:13 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Chidley Hall. Well that was the large—and that was perhaps the largest building on campus. So that gives you some idea of the percentage of men. And then they still had the freshman dorm, the sophomore dorm, I think it was sophomore and junior combined. But by the time I finished, there wasn't too much social life. We would have the Saturday afternoon matinee dances sometimes that you would attend socially. | 23:14 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | And as I said, academically I think I could have done a better job. I came out on time, Cs, some Bs, and a few As. But I never made the Honor Roll. I left high school as an honor student. I finished second in my class. But there again, the class was only 37 members. Well, I actually had a double major History and Social Studies, and I was minoring in Physical-Ed. But then I got sick my sophomore year. Sophomore or junior year. And I had to give that up because I wasn't even sure I was going back to school. | 23:48 |
Kara Miles | Did you all join any social clubs any organizations? | 24:35 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I did not join any social clubs. I belonged to the Women's Athletic Association, and I belonged to the Social Studies club. And what else? I think, must have been my junior year, that I pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha. But then I was never made—I was not made until I was a graduate. | 24:39 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I pledged Kappa fraternity, and went over in the main chapter while I was there. In about my sophomore year, I think it was. Sophomore or junior year. And that was the only—well, no it wasn't. I sang in the choir. I sang in the Glee Club at the choir. Glee Club. Well, I participated in Glee Club, put it that way. I participated in the glee club, because my singing was to boot. The boys from Indiana came, McCullum and— | 25:07 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Whitmore was one, I remember. | 26:10 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. Whitmore. And the other boys could sing. They came from that state and they started the Glee Club that year. And so I joined in with them. And I sang in the Glee Club until they put me out. And everybody, my senior year, they put me out of the club. | 26:13 |
Kara Miles | Because your voice? | 26:43 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. | 26:45 |
Kara Miles | Why'd they put you out? | 26:45 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. I didn't know what I was singing. | 26:45 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, for one thing, I don't know, when I first went there, you could join. Just join, period. I never joined. But then they started giving you the, I would call it a test. | 26:45 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Audition. | 27:07 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Audition. That's the word I was looking for. And I know I had some friends once they were auditioned, dropped out. But before, if you volunteered and signed up, then you were accepted. But I guess they were getting too many of that kind. | 27:08 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah, they were getting— | 27:24 |
Kara Miles | Why did you choose to join Kappa, as opposed to the other fraternities on campus? | 27:27 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, I tell you truth, to be frank, when I went to State, I didn't know a blessed thing about fraternities. I didn't know fraternities were men, and sororities were women. I remember when sitting on the church porch down there, and Pokey, you know the girl. | 27:33 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Pokey Scott. | 27:59 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Pokey Scott, she had been to school before I went. And she was talking about the sororities, and what they did. And I jumped up and said I wouldn't be a member of that sorority. And they all laughed. I was going to be a member of a sorority. I didn't know what they meant. And so the Kappa just appealed to me and did, most of the fellows that I've been around with were joining Kappa. And so I joined the Kappa too. But I didn't know anything about a fraternity, about choices of that sort. I didn't know it. | 28:00 |
Kara Miles | You said that Kappa appealed to you. What about it appealed to you? | 28:52 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | No, I was saying that Kappa did not appeal to me. | 28:55 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 29:01 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | It wasn't a matter of it appealing, because I knew what it was about. I didn't know. It didn't what the fraternities or sororities were when I first went there. And then they started rushing. They'd rush us and all. So the guys that I was around with mostly went to Kappa. Now, they might've known, or they might've been just as dumb as I was, but they went Kappa, and I went Kappa with them. | 29:01 |
Kara Miles | Okay. How about you Mrs. Bryan? Why did you choose? | 29:37 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Well, I think for the same reason. One, there was a person from here, and it was Dolores Skinner, that approached me when I first arrived. But I still did not pledge or anything. But then a lot of times you follow the people that you are friendly with. I had some Delta friends, but the ones that I was closest with were Alpha Kappa Alpha. And so that was the reason I finally pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha. And of course, as I said, I was not made until several years ago, right here in New Bern. | 29:45 |
Kara Miles | So you didn't actually finish, you didn't become one while you were still at college? | 30:31 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | No, I did not. | 30:35 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | You pledged. | 30:35 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | I just pledged. They had the Ivy Leaf Pledge Club, and that was what I was a part of. And I really didn't attend those meetings. I did not attend the meetings really, even after I pledged. | 30:37 |
Kara Miles | Dr. Bryan, you went into the service? | 30:58 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yes. | 31:01 |
Kara Miles | Were you drafted or you went voluntarily? | 31:02 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | I was drafted. I was in Maryland, and working at a boy's school, they had a reformatory school, when the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor. And they was a big uproar about it, and I could see myself going right then. I put the school down, I said, "I'm going home because I don't want to be drafted from up here in Maryland, or around." Simply I'm going home because I know you're going to be drafting people. And I came back home and took a job at a, what's the name of that? Smart Shop, downtown. And I worked there a while just to have something to do, because I knew it wasn't going to be long before they called me. They did call me. They called me after I stopped, and went down to Cherry Point, they started building Cherry Point. I went down there and they called me. And so I went on in the service. | 31:04 |
Kara Miles | Did you go in the Army? | 32:22 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | In the Army. In the Army. In the Army. | 32:30 |
Kara Miles | Did you go overseas? | 32:36 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah, I went overseas. I went in the Army, Fort Bragg, and stayed a few weeks. And left from Fort Bragg and went to— | 32:37 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Oklahoma? | 32:51 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | No. | 32:51 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | You were in California, up at [indistinct 00:33:07]. | 33:03 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah. I meant before I got to California. | 33:07 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | Was somewhere in the Midwest, right? | 33:07 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Idaho. One of those places out there. Oh, where the Mormon Temple? | 33:09 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | That's in Utah. | 33:19 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Utah. Yeah. Salt Lake City, Utah. That's where I was at. Went to Salt Lake City, Utah. And we were there until started turning to cold, and we was shipped out of there to California. California back to Kansas City, and over to Europe. And I stayed overseas about three and a half years. | 33:19 |
Kara Miles | Where in Europe were you? | 33:51 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | See if I can remember the name. I remember the main place we were, Reims. I was at Reims. And most of the places were fields, just fields. Just go out and pitch your tents, and be in a field someplace. But I was in Reims. And I remember we went from Reims to some place. I don't know the name of the place. Another friend of mine named Kearney, boy named Kearney and I was assigned to detached service. And we went out to this place, I don't know where it was, way out someplace. We went out there and it was only all White out there. And this is a good chance that we experienced this integration, as segregation and all, pretty good. We went out to it. | 34:00 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | The guy came in to get the mail. And so we went back with him in the truck. And he drove, and drove, and drove. And it was dark night when we got out there. And they were through eating and all. And so we went over to the mess hall to get something to eat, and they didn't feed us. So we went out and saw to see the captain in charge, and he was in town. We saw the sergeant. So we stated our case to the sergeant, and he came over to the mess hall and they fed us then. | 35:24 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | There were a lot of prisoners in there cleaning up after the meal. German prisoners. They got a good look at how that integration worked. They saw firsthand that they refused to feed us, and when we went back, they gave us something to eat. And we ate, then we went out there to stay in the place, house, that we were going to stay in. They'd already found a empty barrack that had the windows all out and so forth. And that was too open, we couldn't stay in there. We went to find another one, and we had to break up wood. The axe was dull. I'm telling you, I have never seen an axe that was so dull. To split the wood, and whatnot, to make a fire. And we settled down in there and got pretty comfortable, and was sleeping. We woke up the next morning, the building was full of German. | 36:11 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | And then a whole lot of burning and all of that, woke us up. Man, and I woke up, the building full of German. I didn't know what. So they were prisoners. And so we got on up. And they couldn't speak English, but part the way speak English. And so they didn't feed us in the mess hall anymore. They brought a big bag of German provisions, cheese and bologna, and stuff, and whatnot, and stuff that the Germans would eat. Brought a big bag of it for us. So we gave that to the Germans, them that was working in the building, and we gave that to them. They were glad to get it. And we packed up our stuff, and made the trip back with the guy when he went in that evening. We headed back with him. We stayed that one night. They sent us back. | 37:25 |
Kara Miles | How did the Europeans that you met, how did they act to you? | 38:45 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, they were okay. The British, I don't know that they seemed a little—well, I don't want to say the wrong thing, but I guess we didn't—well they were hospitable. And they just weren't openly, to go out and [indistinct 00:39:33]. They were hospitable. And we went to dancing. Well, we were in the countryside, and these people are small town people. And they were kind of close. Pardon me. We went to a dance, and we danced around the hall, and it was pretty good. But I found the French more jovial and open than the British, and that's about it. | 38:51 |
Kara Miles | Okay. Did you like the people over there? | 40:18 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Yeah, I liked them all. Yeah. The relationship was good with them. I met some friends in France, and we'd go to the house every day, just about every day. And I started taking violin lessons from one of the young lady. And so happened that she happened to come to the United States after the war. And when I came home, I wrote them all. I wrote the music teacher, and I wrote the other family that we visited. And we had a regular correspondence going, and so they knew how to get in touch with me. When she came over, she contacted me. She's been down here, she's been to this house. | 40:27 |
Dorothy Hawkins Bryan | She's been here twice. | 41:34 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Been here twice to see me. And we went back up there and had dinner with them in New York and all. So they were very nice. | 41:38 |
Kara Miles | Do you feel that the people overseas weren't so racist? Or treated Black people better than here? | 41:55 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, the ones that I met did, I can't say how they all are, but the ones that I met treated them more on a par. Because, you see, they were—I don't know how to put it. But you have, say, people like myself meet a group of French people and become acquainted, and be all with them. And another group of White Americans would meet another group of French people, and they would be the bigots. | 42:04 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | And so then they would want to start something with us. Now, I'm not saying the French people, but the White people, the American White. Because one night we were walking along the street there, going the way back to the barrack, and a group of them come by in a car, and wanted to start hollering, and some shouting or something. I don't know what they were talking about, but just going to show you I don't know any of the French that they were with might've been that way. I don't know. So I can't say. | 43:00 |
Kara Miles | You talked a little bit about this, but maybe you can tell me some more about how Black soldiers got along with White soldiers, and the White officers. | 43:45 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Well, the White officers and all in our outfit were kind of—well, we knew how to take them, in the first place. We knew how to take them. And they were not particularly pleased being officers of a Black unit. And we knew how to take them, and we kept our ground. The White, the French people, the ones that we met and all, were very friendly. I guess they must have had dances about every night, or every other night, or something. There was so many outfits in the area. And each outfit giving a dance here this week and all. So you were just dancing and dancing yourself away. | 43:58 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | The war was over. Then [indistinct 00:45:16] the war. And so you were just dancing, ready to come back. And so we knew how to take the White people. This incident that I was telling you about that where we went on detached service out in the place there, we came back and we reported it to our officers, what kind of treatment we got and all. And so they told us to write it up. Write it up. And so we wrote it up. We both went in the office and Kearney wrote his piece on it, and I wrote my piece on it. But that's end of it. We wrote it, and put it in there, and that's the end of it. Whether or not anything ever was said about it, I don't know. You see. | 45:09 |
Kara Miles | Right. | 46:15 |
Samuel Douglas Bryan | Now, they probably— | 46:15 |
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