Ernest Swain interview recording, 1993 July 16
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| Ernest Swain | I was very, very fond of my high school principal. He was a gentleman, and I wanted to be like him. | 0:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 0:09 |
| Ernest Swain | So at the very outset, I wanted to be a principal. | 0:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | You must have known that this was not necessarily the most lucrative. | 0:18 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, yes. I knew that. I was one time thinking about being a doctor, just how people say they're going to be this. Never realizing this scientific background you need. I soon found out that I couldn't be a doctor. I couldn't deal with those frogs and that formaldehyde or something. | 0:22 |
| Ernest Swain | I just wasn't suited to be a doctor, had no science background. So I had to give that up. I know you have to recognize your limitation, and this is what I ended up doing. I've been very happy with this. Haven't made any money that I would've earned in something else. | 0:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you first got your job in Brunswick County. Now, who got you this job? How did you get it? | 1:19 |
| Ernest Swain | I got it. I didn't have a job when school opened. When I finished college, I went up into the mountains. My last two or three years in college, I worked in the mountains up in Carlton, Georgia, at a resort. That's how I was able to stay in school. | 1:30 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, when I finished, I didn't have a job. So I went to the same place I'd been working all this time up in the mountains and started writing applications for jobs. And summer went by, I hadn't heard from any of them and didn't have a job. But the same hotel had a hotel in one of Daytona Beach, Florida. So I had signed up to go there to work at the hotel. I wasn't getting a job fast. I'm talking back in '38. | 1:53 |
| Ernest Swain | And between the time I left the hotel up in Carlton, Georgia to reporting in Daytona Beach, I had some time left. So I came home to see my mother. And while I was home, the principal of this little school, the first one took sick, and I was asked to substitute for him. And oh, a month or so, not only did the woman die, and they kept me right there. So that's how I got the job. | 2:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you were principal then right away? | 3:10 |
| Ernest Swain | Of a little school, yeah. Anybody could be a principal, three or four places. I guess I was in charge of the building. | 3:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. So you weren't— | 3:18 |
| Ernest Swain | The classes were self-contained. | 3:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Were you teaching at all? | 3:26 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, I taught fifth and sixth grade. | 3:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, how was that? Was that hard? | 3:26 |
| Ernest Swain | It wasn't hard. I just read ahead of them. I don't know. I made sure I read the chapters before I tried to teach them. It wasn't hard. It wasn't hard. | 3:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. And then, so you taught those couple of years, a few years, and then you were drafted? | 3:48 |
| Ernest Swain | Then I was drafted. | 3:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | And then you came back, and where did you work after you got back? | 3:53 |
| Ernest Swain | In the school system here, but as a truant officer. | 3:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | As a truant officer. | 3:58 |
| Ernest Swain | I worked for the city, yeah. Truant is delinquent. I worked with the school system manager and the fellows and the local government. | 3:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. | 4:15 |
| Ernest Swain | And they decided to open these two jobs, these jobs for assistant principal and coaches. The idea— | 4:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, right. Yeah, you told me about this. And what was it like being a truant officer? | 4:22 |
| Ernest Swain | Boy, it was—Now, that's when I needed my social service, my degree in sociology. It was interesting. And it was disturbing to see how some children had to live and how they got along. They would get, children get in all kinds of trouble in Wilmington and all cities. | 4:27 |
| Ernest Swain | It was my duty to check them out at night. Somebody in the street, authorities just pick some child up, have to go down, get them home, and that type of thing. Check on the kids out of the school, it was that type of work. | 4:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | And these were real, really poor children, most of them? | 5:09 |
| Ernest Swain | Many of them were poor children. But sometimes you'd get ones that weren't poor. They were just having problems with their family. | 5:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, how were they treated by the White authorities? You said that they were taken down to the police station? | 5:20 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, we had a place for them. We had a place for them out in the county here. We had a place that kept them. And we had a court for them. And I had to bring them in juvenile court if they were guilty of what they did, if they had any crimes, they had a training school for them. So I had to do all of this. | 5:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, were White delinquents and Black delinquents treated in the same way? | 5:52 |
| Ernest Swain | By me, they were. Yeah. | 6:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. So you were dealing with both White and Black? | 6:03 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. Well, it was a White woman who was in charge of it, and her job was to deal with the White children. But she didn't do it. I mean, she didn't want to. She was an elderly lady and she'd always send me. Whenever something happened, she'd send me. | 6:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | And were you respected by the White? | 6:24 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. | 6:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | They wouldn't— | 6:27 |
| Ernest Swain | I got along with them. Using some of the psychology that I knew, I'd get along with them. I'd get along. You taught them respect. But when I needed my training and experience is when they started integrating. See, I had to deal with White parents and PTAs and whatnot, and all kinds of situations. | 6:31 |
| Ernest Swain | I haven't had no real trouble with them either, until I did. I admit that, I say that all the time. Once they got to respect you, and to see that you were serious, and that you were producing, you have no trouble. | 6:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So you worked as a truant officer for a couple of years, is that right? | 7:09 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. | 7:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | And then where did you move to then? What job did you move to? | 7:13 |
| Ernest Swain | Into the school system. | 7:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | School system. And you were a teacher or a principal? | 7:19 |
| Ernest Swain | When I moved into this school system, I was hired as a coach. | 7:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | A coach. I'm sorry. As assistant principal? | 7:27 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. Okay. | 7:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | And what school was that at? | 7:32 |
| Ernest Swain | This was on the north side of town. It was Peabody School. | 7:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So how was that different than the country schools that you'd worked in? | 7:37 |
| Ernest Swain | It wasn't any different. Wasn't any different. It may have been better organized and equipped. We didn't have any equipment, materials, and things to work with. | 7:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, Peabody was an elementary school. | 7:58 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. | 8:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | And what challenges did you face as a principal, as a Black principal? Dealing with the school board and that kind of thing and trying to get equipment? | 8:02 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, I didn't get everything I asked for, but I did get some of the things. I challenged a whole lot. | 8:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, you did? | 8:28 |
| Ernest Swain | Things that went on. And I think that has something to do with my job assignments. | 8:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. In what way? | 8:40 |
| Ernest Swain | Not being promoted. | 8:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 8:40 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. There were many, many jobs open that I felt I should have gotten on the basis of my training. On the basis of the times I'd been the principal in the school system. It wasn't nothing to do about it. | 8:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | So other people who didn't challenge would be promoted? | 9:00 |
| Ernest Swain | Would be, yeah. I called it polishing apples. I haven't been polishing them apples. Don't believe in that. | 9:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 9:09 |
| Ernest Swain | And of course, I told you, everybody knew that these people were coming here and they were my friends. And they're the ones who were fighting for integration. | 9:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 9:25 |
| Ernest Swain | And I've never been accused of it, but I'm sure they felt like I was part of it. | 9:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So people like Dr. Eaton or? | 9:30 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, because he lived right across the street. | 9:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 9:36 |
| Ernest Swain | A good friend of mine. | 9:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | So they say, okay. Now, where do you think that your fighting spirit came from? | 9:39 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, I must've born with it. I told you the type of guy who was he. And Morehouse, many, many, many of the leaders in the integration movement never think a Morehouse man. We got outstanding lawyers and preachers, doctors who have been very successful. | 9:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | And why do you think that they fought for integration? What was it about their experience at Morehouse? | 10:12 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. Well, leadership, they were taught that way. | 10:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | To be leaders? | 10:20 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. Taught to be leaders. | 10:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now I'm interested in knowing something. This is sort of off the topic. When you went back to Southport after you became a principal, how did people treat you? | 10:27 |
| Ernest Swain | I never worked in Southport. | 10:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. But when you'd go home to visit, would you go back to visit? | 10:39 |
| Ernest Swain | I'd go back to visit. I'd visit my friends. | 10:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 10:44 |
| Ernest Swain | After that got along very fine. But I don't think I could have handled a job in Southport. I didn't try. I didn't try. I didn't try. | 10:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why not? But why wouldn't you? | 10:51 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, I hadn't been a perfect man in Southport. | 11:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 11:05 |
| Ernest Swain | I participated in some of the things I told you about it. | 11:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 11:08 |
| Ernest Swain | Okay. I didn't try, I don't know how well I would've been respected. | 11:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now by the White community there? The people there? | 11:15 |
| Ernest Swain | All of the community. | 11:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 11:19 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't know. I didn't try. I never have tried to get a job there. I've had an offer to work over in Leland, a big high school in Leland. I turned that down. But that wasn't south. I never tried to work in Southport. | 11:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | What makes a good principal? | 11:39 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, boy. Patience, understanding, a love for children, a love for organization. The ability to get the very best of what the teacher has to offer. The ability to get teachers to like you, to work with you. I consider myself a facilitator. I try to get the things for teachers to work with. And I tried to provide an atmosphere where they could do the best job. | 11:41 |
| Ernest Swain | I was never blowing down the backs of anybody. I felt the encouragement would do the job. Once you got them to realize that you were in their corner, I protected my teachers from parents or anybody else who were there to do anything to them. Those are the things that I believe would make a good, it did the job for me. | 12:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now through the project that I've been doing and through things I've read too, everybody remembers their teachers and really they were, and their principals. And these Black schools before desegregation were such important institutions in the Black community. | 13:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | What did you see? What were your goals for teaching values and so on to the children, the Black children that were in your schools? What was important to you for them to learn beyond the academic stuff? | 13:38 |
| Ernest Swain | I felt like I should be a role model for all of them, teachers, parents, everybody. So I tried to conduct myself that way. I was very careful about my dress. I wore a tie and a suit every day. I had worked long enough to have had several suits. I would change them and shoes and things. | 13:58 |
| Ernest Swain | Little boys, little children like to see you look like that. And teachers too, I guess. So I tried to set that kind of example. I tried to keep my voice low enough so nobody would be afraid of me. Everyone, I tried to make people at ease. | 14:27 |
| Ernest Swain | When a kids, he's already frightened half to death when the teacher sends him to the office. So I spent some time in getting him or her at ease. And then I don't start off fussing. Matter of fact, I didn't do much fussing. I did a whole lot of talking. | 14:48 |
| Ernest Swain | Those are kinds of things that I think that made me a good teacher and a good principal. And some people will tell you that I was pretty good. Ask somebody. | 15:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | I'm sure. I'm sure. | 15:17 |
| Ernest Swain | Ask somebody in your this. I'd be interesting to know. Have you interviewed some of my teachers? | 15:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | I've only just started now, but I know that other people have talked to teachers. But for the life of me right now, I can't remember. | 15:30 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, my biggest job was doing integration. | 15:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Yeah. | 15:42 |
| Ernest Swain | I felt like. I was in Atlanta when Dr. Bellman called me, they were sending me to get fired. I mean, as I said, I go to my grave believing they think I had something to do with some of the things that happened. | 15:44 |
| Ernest Swain | I was transferred from James B. Dudley School to William Hooper School. At William Hooper School, they sent children from the very affluent communities, from affluent community, Pine Valley, Bradford Beach. These children came from families that were leaders in this community. And they integrated them with kids from Dawson Street and all of the projects and things. Just a mixture that didn't know each other at all, didn't know each other at all. | 16:01 |
| Ernest Swain | I just figured that they were expecting an explosion over there. And I felt it was my job to create an atmosphere over there to dispel that thing. They started off with White parents there, all doing the school there. They would come in with excuses to be in school at the recess period. They were all over the grounds, all in the cafeterias. | 16:53 |
| Ernest Swain | I knew that couldn't continue. That just couldn't continue going that way. So I started concentrating on getting them to understand my philosophy, to know something about me. And what I would say six months time. And we'd have fights too. Every day somebody would fighting. Six months time, I think I had won them over. They were no longer over there. I had to use corporal punishment and on both races. | 17:28 |
| Ernest Swain | And at first they thought that was the worst thing in the world. But when I told them why I did and what I did, and they began to see their children changing, they began to accept what I was doing. And we ended up with, I think, a very, very good school. Very good school. I was there seven years and I thought I was going to get fired the first month. So I believe that's the best job I've ever done. | 18:06 |
| Ernest Swain | In that time, they almost made me angry. They almost made that school over. They sent carpeting and put all kinds of new things in there, bought me a new desk. Carpets on the floor in the library. They just made it into one of the best schools they could possibly do. I could have never got that done. | 18:36 |
| Ernest Swain | I could go to the end of the hall or something, there's big truck backed up there and they start taking things off. I said, "Look here. I have more than those. I have more than anything." They said, "Board told me, bring it over here." They start. Oh, they changed the whole atmosphere of the school. All the new equipment, all curtains at the windows. | 19:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | That must've been very frustrating to look back. | 19:27 |
| Ernest Swain | And I hadn't been used to getting any of that. I've been asking it from the schools over. Hadn't asked big new curtain in the stage. Boy, they just made the school over. Playground equipment, all kinds of new stuff. The time they made it into the school, that they felt their children needed. | 19:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Well— | 19:58 |
| Ernest Swain | But it was. | 19:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | I'm interested to know as well, for the Black community as a whole, for the children and the parents and the teachers and the principals and everyone else, what was the good side and the bad side of desegregation? | 19:59 |
| Ernest Swain | All right. That's a good question. The good side was the exposure of Black children to a situation where everything was provided for. And well, I had all the good teachers. I had good teachers. To tell you about that all the top teachers were transferred along with them. | 20:15 |
| Ernest Swain | Black children lost the individual attention that Black teachers were able to give them. One example was probably tell you something about it. Black athletes used to love to play on the football and basketball, one of them teams. And for a while, they weren't used at all. They weren't used. | 20:50 |
| Ernest Swain | In the glee club, Negroes are supposed to be able to sing. No Black people in the glee clubs. That kind of thing. It's obvious it was wrong. That's the kind of thing we lost. We lost the care that Black teachers gave to Black children and that's hurt us. Many, many of our Black children dropped out of school because of that. | 21:25 |
| Ernest Swain | It didn't happen in my school, I promise you. And I was always on it, that kind of situation. And it crops up. You're going to have some strong people. There's no doubt about it. That is the difference. I think that's the difference. Children got to feel warmth. They got to feel like their teachers are interested in them. Many children weren't treated that way, just weren't. | 22:00 |
| Ernest Swain | Now that's the difference. That's the difference I saw. Maybe that's the difference. I came from a school that had practically nothing, to one that was packed with materials that I didn't even have to ask for. Now you could see the difference. You could see the difference. | 22:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Were there any other Black principals? How many other Black principals? | 23:06 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, there were four or five of us. Yeah. | 23:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. But did others lose their jobs with integration? | 23:11 |
| Ernest Swain | No. No principal lost their job. They moved around, but not— | 23:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did any of them get fired like you feared? | 23:23 |
| Ernest Swain | No. | 23:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | For yourself? So everybody— | 23:27 |
| Ernest Swain | I can't think of any principal getting fired. They got moved, was transferred to various schools. No, not Wilmington, but they did in plenty places in North Carolina. They had a tendency to bring principals into the board and superintendent's office. | 23:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. | 23:46 |
| Ernest Swain | Call him second superintendent. Some kind of superintendent, some kind of title. | 23:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | But that didn't happen in Wilmington? | 23:51 |
| Ernest Swain | That didn't happen in Wilmington. I don't recall that. Talking about a long time now. That didn't happen in Wilmington, I don't think. | 23:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now maybe we could move back a little bit again so I'm not moving. Do you have a little more time to talk? | 24:03 |
| Ernest Swain | I have a little bit more. | 24:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. I was wondering about when you met your wife? | 24:13 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh boy. I met my wife in college. | 24:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | In college. Where was she going? Where was she? | 24:18 |
| Ernest Swain | She was at Myers Brown. | 24:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And what was your courtship like? | 24:26 |
| Ernest Swain | Very good. | 24:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | It was good? | 24:26 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, we were both in college and got along fine. | 24:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 24:36 |
| Ernest Swain | That's all I can tell you. | 24:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | And was she from here? | 24:39 |
| Ernest Swain | No, she's from Atlanta. | 24:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, from Atlanta. Okay. Where did you get married? | 24:41 |
| Ernest Swain | In Atlanta. | 24:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | In Atlanta? | 24:51 |
| Ernest Swain | On a furlough. | 24:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh right, that's what you said. So what was your marriage like? What your wedding? | 24:53 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh no, it was a very small wedding with just families and her family and friends at her aunt's house. | 24:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you have any children? | 25:12 |
| Ernest Swain | No. | 25:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | No, you have no children? | 25:13 |
| Ernest Swain | No. | 25:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now I thought maybe we could just talk a little bit about church and about, these are just things I forgot to skim through before. Church and some other organizations to which you belong. | 25:17 |
| Ernest Swain | I belong to St. Luke AME Zion Church here. | 25:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | And you went to an AME Zion church in Southport as well? | 25:38 |
| Ernest Swain | Yes. | 25:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now what role did your church play in civic affairs and in community affairs? | 25:46 |
| Ernest Swain | As a church, I don't know at all. They supported organizations like NAACP. Some members of the church might've been on some boards or something like that. But as the church, as a church sponsoring something, I can't think of anything. | 25:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Was your minister vocal? Hopefully in support of Civil Rights? Was he preaching? | 26:15 |
| Ernest Swain | You talking about it? The best they could. The ministers, the last two or three ministers, had they been our minister during the Civil Rights time, they would've been very vocal. The men we had weren't very strong people. Not during the integration period. | 26:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kind of pressure would they be facing not to— | 26:42 |
| Ernest Swain | They wouldn't have been faced with it. They thought they would, but I can't think of any pressure they would. Preachers did it in other places. | 26:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. So you don't think the church was a very strong supporter? | 26:54 |
| Ernest Swain | Not like the church is now. | 26:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Or not like any— | 27:01 |
| Ernest Swain | Some people think politics and religion won't mix and that type of thing. They were very conservative during that time. We thought the churches should have done more than they did and many churches did in big cities. | 27:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Was there ever any pressure within the congregation to get the ministers to be more vocal? | 27:19 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't know that. | 27:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 27:30 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't think so. Not my church. | 27:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 27:32 |
| Ernest Swain | The churches are interested now. | 27:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Yeah. No— | 27:36 |
| Ernest Swain | I mean they're very vocal now. | 27:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | What were the main voluntary associations for African-Americans in Wilmington? | 27:45 |
| Ernest Swain | The NAACP. What? | 27:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | The Masons? | 27:52 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh yeah. All the largest fraternities. Yeah. They have, I don't know if anything the churches are doing. So I'm not out much now. | 28:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | No. But then back in the '50s, say? | 28:19 |
| Ernest Swain | NAACP was a major organization that they fought for. | 28:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | And was the NAACP very strong in the '50s before the '60s? Was it? | 28:30 |
| Ernest Swain | Yes, everywhere. Even in Southport. I told you the experience we had over there. Yeah, they're strong now too. | 28:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kinds of things did they do before the Civil Rights Movement started in the '60s? The militant Civil Rights Movement. | 28:44 |
| Ernest Swain | Sometimes somebody would get in trouble, go to court, and if we would think they was treated unfairly in legal battles of things and something. | 28:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Locally. So this was locally too? | 29:04 |
| Ernest Swain | Hmm? | 29:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Locally. This was? | 29:10 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. They'd contribute money. At least the members would. I don't know whether give it the name of the church or not, but they contributed to all, just about everything. | 29:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were the teachers, was there ever any pressure not to join? I know in some places teachers were fired if they— | 29:25 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't think so. I can't think of any. Teachers themselves may have felt uneasy doing it when you can lose your job. That caused them to be conservative, reserved about what they did and what they said. I don't know if I would've been, could have been as vocal as I am now back then. | 29:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you had to learn to be very diplomatic? | 29:58 |
| Ernest Swain | You certainly did. | 30:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kinds of things would you have to do to be? What kinds of diplomacy? | 30:06 |
| Ernest Swain | You wouldn't do anything to rock the boat, so to speak. You had to go along with the leadership regardless of how you felt about it. Openly, if you did that, they'd find some way to get you. Some way to put some obstacle in the path. You wouldn't know who did it, why it was done, but all of a sudden you'd find yourself eased out of your position. | 30:10 |
| Ernest Swain | It's a fact too. I'm not just thinking that, that's what happened. Or either get caught in a small place and they'd freeze you out, that kind thing. When you actually didn't do anything wrong, they'd find some way to get you. | 30:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. What kinds of things would people do to be frozen out? Or to be— | 30:56 |
| Ernest Swain | They'd lead some kind of cause. | 31:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did Black people ever mobilize before the '60s to try to get some political power here? Or to do anything like that? | 31:13 |
| Ernest Swain | No. We'd have one or two people who'd call themselves politicians. To be frank with that, what they got was for themselves, for their families. | 31:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now there were people who were elected Black politicians? | 31:26 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. | 31:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. But they were not— | 31:41 |
| Ernest Swain | They weren't— | 31:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Race leaders? | 31:48 |
| Ernest Swain | They weren't leaders. They didn't rock the boat. They didn't start any projects that would be of any benefit for Black people. | 31:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | So they were basically dependent on White support? | 31:59 |
| Ernest Swain | Most of them were weak, Black preachers. They may have gotten something for that churches or a street run by their church or something like that. They weren't strong at all. | 32:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did that kind of leadership, did that affect how Black people thought about Black politicians? Do you think? | 32:22 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. Didn't trust them. | 32:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. And when did that change? Or does it still exist, do you think? | 32:34 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't think it still exists now. It changed when the leadership, when the people who ran for leadership positions, began to be aggressive. When they weren't afraid to speak their minds and say what they wanted. I think the leadership now is getting stronger and stronger. And more prepared with getting people more prepared in leadership positions. | 32:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were you always able to vote when you lived in Wilmington? | 33:12 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh yes. | 33:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. That was a real change then from Brunswick County? | 33:16 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. People here have been voting all the while, I think. | 33:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why wouldn't you be able to do the Brunswick County? | 33:25 |
| Ernest Swain | That was raw prejudice. I can't think of no other one. | 33:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Rural prejudice? | 33:31 |
| Ernest Swain | Raw. I don't know why they did that. But people been voting in Wilmington a long time before we did in Brunswick County. | 33:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | What do you know? How does the Wilmington Riot live on in people's minds? | 33:45 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't know. It must have been an awful time around here. | 33:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | How did you learn about it first? | 33:52 |
| Ernest Swain | Through books and people talking about it. | 33:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | And even in Southport, people would talk about it? | 33:55 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't recall anybody talking about in Southport. I never heard much about it until I came up here. | 34:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | But people talked about it then? | 34:05 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, people talked about it. That's why we're afraid to do things. That's been always an issue to consider in here, in Wilmington. | 34:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Afraid that it would happen again. | 34:21 |
| Ernest Swain | Afraid it would happen again. It must have been an awful that. | 34:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So how did people overcome that fear in the '60s? Like with the Civil Rights Movement and the Wilmington 10? | 34:26 |
| Ernest Swain | Probably it was a slow process. And more and more leaders with education step forward with positions that were independent, doctors and lawyers and ministers. They did not have to depend on civic jobs, municipal jobs, and that type of thing. | 34:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you think the leadership came from old Wilmington families? Or from people like you, who came from outside? | 35:05 |
| Ernest Swain | I think the leadership came from outside. | 35:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Why do you think that is? | 35:13 |
| Ernest Swain | Because they don't have the fear of the Wilmington thing. | 35:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Of the riot? | 35:13 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. And they don't know anything about the background of that. And don't, even if they did, there's a whole new generation of people, Negroes now at leadership. Some of them would take that on. But challenge, it would be a challenge too. See some, we have doctors and lawyers who don't depend on anybody for their income but their work. People in jobs, teachers, and I think we could do more than we do. But the fear of, they put the fear of things like that in your mind. It's almost as well as putting a law against it. | 35:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. I just have one more question. | 36:11 |
| Ernest Swain | Okay. | 36:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | I usually ask people, and it's kind of a sensitive question so you don't have to answer it if you don't want to. But I wanted to know if you could tell me how segregation, how the system in the south affected your life? How would your life been different if it hadn't existed? Has it held you in any way? | 36:13 |
| Ernest Swain | Has it? | 36:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Has it kept you back, do you think? Or is it— | 36:35 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, there's no doubt about it, it kept me back. No doubt about that. That's a question that I have often thought about. The major thing, or one of the things that I think segregation did, especially to men, it caused them to be looked down on, even among their own women. | 36:43 |
| Ernest Swain | There were so many things that Black people were afraid to do. There's so many embarrassing situations where we had to accept riding in the backseat of a bus, going up in a balcony, being segregated in restaurants. Just the whole picture. Isn't easy to take, especially before your wife or your sweetheart, or somebody. This business of calling you boy and you are older than the person. Much more intelligent, intelligence than they have. | 37:34 |
| Ernest Swain | Those kinds of things hurt more than any other. To be prepared for a job in all respect, all angles, all areas. And your looked over to get somebody that just came into the system. Can you imagine how you feel? A man come up and insult your wife, and you right there, and listen to it. Go in a hotel, been traveling all day, to get a place to stay, and they turn you down. You got the money to pay for it. | 38:24 |
| Ernest Swain | Those are just a few of the things. When you know can do a better job than somebody else. And just because somebody else has a White face and you're turned down. Those things are not easily forgotten. When your image is destroyed. When you can do things and you're afraid to do them because you're going to be realizing they may get embarrassed or they may hurt you in the long run. Because you said something about it. | 39:08 |
| Ernest Swain | Some of the things I said today, somebody not going to like it. They're not going like it. But they couldn't find me. I'm already retired. I probably said something today I wanted to say a long time ago. | 39:54 |
| Ernest Swain | I've been very forward with things. My wife has kept me from doing and saying anything that I would've done and would've been fired too, you better believe me, would've been fired. There's some of us born with the spirit in, and especially if you go to school like Morehouse, you don't want take nothing. You don't want to be given anything. You don't want to be denied anything. | 40:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 40:38 |
| Ernest Swain | Does that answer your question? | 40:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | No, that's wonderful. Thank you. That means to be so honest with me. | 40:41 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, I'm honest with you. No doubt about it. | 40:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now one thing that, just to follow up on that a little bit, is how do you deal with that? How do you— | 40:49 |
| Ernest Swain | You have to internalize it and don't do anything. | 40:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | But it seems to me that if you internal, bottle up, I mean, how do you release some of that frustration and anger? | 41:01 |
| Ernest Swain | You see it sometime and some of these things, this frustration have been boiling for a long time. You read about them in the paper. That's what it's coming from. That's what it's coming from. You see people do things, it's just do them now. Can't take it no longer. | 41:07 |
| Ernest Swain | If you weren't able to internalize it and think through it, it'd be more than going on what it is. And of course White folks have changed a whole lot. They don't push it like this. They can see too. Young folks won't take anything. They just will not. They've heard their parents talking about it. They see it for themselves. They go off and get trained. And they're vocal. They're vocal. | 41:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were there people who couldn't handle it? | 41:58 |
| Ernest Swain | Plenty of people couldn't handle it. Yeah. It's something to handle. | 42:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | And what would happen to them? | 42:07 |
| Ernest Swain | They'd quit. Grow up in a shell say, "It's too much for me to take. The hell with it." Just there you go and live to themselves. People who would have developed into very good leaders and were turned down, weren't given the opportunity. And that's what it was intended to do. Once you get a man to feel like he's less than a man, that was the idea. That's why it was done that way. | 42:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Beat you into submission. | 42:48 |
| Ernest Swain | Into submission, that's exactly. Now a person who's high-strung, who feels it very much, it's hard to take. You have to think about getting some security for yourself and your families and your children. So you have to sacrifice the manhood. | 42:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, well thank you for telling me that. People need to know. | 43:15 |
| Ernest Swain | You didn't know that? | 43:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Well, I knew it. Of course I knew it, but I just feel when people tell— | 43:23 |
| Ernest Swain | You never had anybody tell you that. | 43:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Well, that's right. I mean, in a lot of ways I haven't. I mean, I can't even imagine. | 43:36 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, I've had it more, but I've been through it. Driving from Chicago trying to stop and get a place to eat, place to sleep. And him, oh, my wife has helped me so much. So much. She just grabbed my arm and grabbed my pants or something. "Don't do it. Don't do that." Because I'm ready to fight. Really ready. | 43:42 |
| Ernest Swain | Of course, I'd have gotten beaten. I would've gotten beaten up. And what good would it done? That's the only way you do what you have to do. I really swallowed a whole lot of things. | 44:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 44:23 |
| Ernest Swain | All right. | 44:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | I think I'm done with my questions. | 44:38 |
| Ernest Swain | All right. That's fine. | 44:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | Unless there's some other things you'd like to talk. | 44:42 |
| Ernest Swain | No, no. Would you like something cold? | 44:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | I think I'm all right actually. | 44:46 |
| Ernest Swain | Okay. | 44:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | I just have a few forms that I have to fill out here. | 44:51 |
| Ernest Swain | Okay. | 44:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Would that be all right? We've got some biographical information that we'd like to include with the tapes. Just so people— | 44:54 |
| Ernest Swain | This is going to be a book? | 45:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | No, what's going to happen to it, I should have told you this at the beginning. This is a three-year project. This is the first year and we've been traveling around North Carolina. We were in Charlotte, Halifax County, now in Wilmington. And then we're going to New Bern in a couple weeks. | 45:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | And then over the next two years, we're going to be going to a variety of different states in the South doing the same thing, interviewing people. | 45:20 |
| Ernest Swain | Could you tell me this? If you don't, I'm interested to know who are you interviewing? | 45:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, interviewing here? | 45:34 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. The Black people. | 45:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Well, Karen El Chestnut, we interviewed her. | 45:38 |
| Ernest Swain | Good. I know her. | 45:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | I interviewed a man, Hartford Boykin. | 45:42 |
| Ernest Swain | I know him. He told you like it was. | 45:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 45:49 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. | 45:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Bertha Todd. | 45:53 |
| Ernest Swain | I know her. | 45:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Her sister. I can't remember. | 45:57 |
| Ernest Swain | Ida Cooper. | 46:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Ida Cooper. The people we got the names from are Dorothy Woods at the Public Library. We are also trying to get a very broad cross section of people. People like yourself, professionals, but then also people who were not professional people. Domestic workers, people who worked for the railroad companies. A good cross section of the Black community. | 46:03 |
| Ernest Swain | I believe that's going to be a good job. | 46:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 46:39 |
| Ernest Swain | I know the people you, and I'm sure they told you like it is, like it was. I know everyone knows. | 46:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | So I think— | 46:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 0:01 |
| Ernest Swain | As I said, I made no preparation at all. | 0:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Well, Mr. Swain, maybe we could begin by you talking a little bit about the place in which you grew up, talk about the community in which you grew up. | 0:05 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, yes, yes. Well, as I said a few minutes ago, I'm Ernest Swain and I grew up in a little town by the name of Southport, North Carolina. This town is located at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, the river that runs up here to Wilmington. I was some born there and raised there. I went through elementary school and high school in that town. I have no brothers or sisters. | 0:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Who did you grow up with? | 0:56 |
| Ernest Swain | I grew up with my family. | 0:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | [indistinct 00:01:00] | 0:57 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. I guess I should explain it. I said I have no brothers and sisters. I have a brother that I call a brother at least. My mother's sister reared her son and he came to live with us when I was a little boy, and he was even younger than I was. | 1:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did your mother take care of any other children? | 1:21 |
| Ernest Swain | No. | 1:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | No? Okay. | 1:23 |
| Ernest Swain | No, no, she didn't take care of any other children. | 1:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember, were there many other relations and kinfolk living around where you were living? | 1:32 |
| Ernest Swain | Yes, yes, at one time I had many, many cousins. As a matter of fact, at one time in my life, my grandparents on both sides were living. Of course I was in between them. I lived with my mother's mother and her husband. | 1:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you lived with your grandparents? | 1:58 |
| Ernest Swain | At one time, very early in my life. | 2:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 2:05 |
| Ernest Swain | We lived in the home of my mother's people. Maybe that clears it up a little. | 2:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, sorry. Okay. So that was your full family, the family— | 2:13 |
| Ernest Swain | That was my full family, but I had another family on my father's side that was living at the same time. | 2:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Could you talk a little bit about your grandparents and what you remember about them? | 2:23 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, on my mother's side, I remember my grandmother was very religious and she insisted on my going to church and Sunday school. She was a Sunday school teacher and she was very strict about that. I attended church regularly, grew up in the church. I grew up in St. James AME Zion Church. I was just clearing my voice. It was a small church. As a matter of fact, this was a small town that I'm talking about. There weren't too many members of the church, but they were very closely bonded together and they were able to do many things. It was one of the places where we went and do all kind of activities through that church. Weren't sophisticated activities, but playing on the playground and eating at the church some Sundays and that type of thing. Much of the social activities in that town then were centered around the churches. | 2:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | How about your other grandparents? | 3:53 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, I spent a great deal of time with them. They were both in the same city about, oh, not far, I would say half a mile. But I'd say about three or four blocks from where my mother, where I lived. As a matter of fact, she used to call me sometimes when I'm up to my grandparents. And I could hear her. I could hear her. And I'd tell my other grand people that I had to leave, that my mother was calling me. And of course the two families were very close together. I enjoyed being with my people on my father's side. One of my uncles was young enough to let me hang around him, and I learned to do many things with him. Learned to fish and to hunt, learned to swim and that type of thing. | 3:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | What did your grandparents do for a living? | 4:53 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't remember too much about the men on my mother's side. They'd all died. I don't remember my grandfather on my mother's side. But my grandparents, my great-grandmother and my grandmother, worked in the home. They took in what they called washings from people. And it was my job and my uncle's job to go get those clothes and to bring them to them and they would to wash them and we'd take them back. But there was a fort, Fort Fisher, and I don't remember too much about it. There was a fort down there at my home and some of the men worked at Fort Fisher. I don't remember much of that work that they did, but we got by some kind of way. I wasn't old enough to realize the sacrifices that I'm sure they had to make. I wasn't aware. | 4:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | What did your parents do for a living? | 6:03 |
| Ernest Swain | My daddy worked on a fish boat. Southport is right at the end of the Cape Fear River and at the mouth of the Atlantic Ocean. And he worked on the fish boats. They'd go out and catch fish. Not the fish that you eat, the fish that they use in manufacturing, fish meal and fish oil. He did that in the summertime, in the spring and early winter. But when it got too cold there was nothing for him to do really unless he caught some jobs at various—Any kind of job he could get. We were very poor people down in— | 6:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Very poor? | 6:45 |
| Ernest Swain | Yes, yes. | 6:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | In relation to other Black people? | 6:49 |
| Ernest Swain | No, no, we got along about as well as any of them were getting along. My grandfather now on my father's side had a pretty good job. He worked for the government, the federal government. He was what they call a fireman on a government boat. I don't remember the name of it, but I remember him going away and spending days before he came back. | 6:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Now, I don't know anything about fishing. | 7:22 |
| Ernest Swain | I know. | 7:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | So could you tell me a little bit about what he would do on the— | 7:28 |
| Ernest Swain | Now, I'm talking about my father? | 7:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 7:33 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, they'd go out into the ocean and they had a way of finding the fish. The big boat that they were on had what they called a mask on it and it extended high up so they can let it down in the water. And this particular man would go there and see the fish in schools, see them jumping in fish schools, and then of course he'd find out where they were. He would determine where they were, the direction, come back, tell the captain about it, and he'd come to get as close as he could get to the fish. Then they got into what they call purse boats, smaller boats. Smaller boats and men in each one of those and had what they called a purse seine, and they'd maneuver that net in such a way that the fish would be driven into that seine. Then they'd pull them up and put them on the big boat. Holes were very deep and that's the way they caught— And they brought them in to this factory in Southport. | 7:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, who owned the boats? Was— | 8:42 |
| Ernest Swain | Some company, I suppose. No, we didn't own the boat. No one in Southport owned the boats. They were boats that came there from other places. | 8:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. But there was a factory there? | 8:53 |
| Ernest Swain | There was a factory there, yeah. | 8:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, did Black people work in the factory? | 8:55 |
| Ernest Swain | There weren't too many jobs for Black people in the factory. I would say some of them worked around the premises, cleaning or something like that. Yeah, there weren't many jobs. | 8:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, how were most Black men employed when you were growing up? | 9:11 |
| Ernest Swain | They did this. | 9:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Fishing? | 9:14 |
| Ernest Swain | They did this. Some of them may have some menial jobs around some White folks' home, mowing the lawns or doing something like that. But for the most part, this was their stable work. | 9:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Was it dangerous? | 9:33 |
| Ernest Swain | The fishing? | 9:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 9:35 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh yes, very dangerous. | 9:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did people— | 9:38 |
| Ernest Swain | Very hard work too. They still do that, but they have engines now to do what those men did with their hands. Very, very dangerous. | 9:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did people get hurt or [indistinct 00:09:47] | 9:46 |
| Ernest Swain | Get hurt, yeah. And get drowned, yeah, yeah. | 9:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | So was that just in storms or was the work itself— | 9:54 |
| Ernest Swain | It was just dangerous. It was just dangerous. If they weren't careful, they'd get caught into the net or get caught—I can remember many of them getting hurt, several getting drowned while I was growing up. | 9:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | When I always think of fishermen—Was that an expected thing? Was it almost the— | 10:11 |
| Ernest Swain | That was what the men expected, yeah, and that's what they did. During the time that they went fishing, very difficult to get along. Now, we're talking a long time ago. We're talking when I was a boy. I'm 78 and, you see, we're talking a long time. Conditions have changed so much since then. That basic work was working on those boats. Some few maybe may have worked in lumber mills. Or there were factories, fish factories, up this way, up to Navassa, that hired men to work in making fertilizer, fertilizer plants. And my daddy worked there some. They'd go away and stay a week. They had little places for him to stay and on weekends he'd come back home. | 10:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So that was always when he was on the boat or he was— | 11:29 |
| Ernest Swain | That was during the winter time when the boats were stopped. Yeah, when they could no longer It would be too cold for them, yeah. | 11:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Could you talk to me a little bit about the neighborhood you grew up in? Was it a close knit neighborhood? | 11:45 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, very close. Very, very. I wish it could be that way now. You'd know everybody. For instance, anybody could chastise you. If you were doing something somewhere and someone saw you, they'd stop you and if necessary they would punish you. But the word would get to my parents that I'd been fighting down the street or something. They would look after each other when they were sick. They would share things with food, anything else. It was, and it still is, it still is a very close knit community. | 11:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were most people related by blood or were they— | 12:30 |
| Ernest Swain | No. | 12:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | No? | 12:33 |
| Ernest Swain | They weren't. They were just in a situation where they almost were forced to live like this, to cooperate like this. | 12:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Can you remember any really hard times when things got really rough and money was very tight? | 12:44 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, yes, but I think because one of my grandfathers that worked with the government that had a steady salary, monthly salary, and I think our situation was a little better than many of them. I can recall going to the store where my granddaddy had opened an account and we'd get anything. They knew us. See, you knew everybody else, White and Colored knew each other, and we would get food by the week or by the month or that type of thing until you'd get paid. But now what those other people did was suffer, but they didn't die from it. But they got money somehow, working in kitchens, White folks' kitchens, doing anything they could do to get money. I really don't recall how they got along, but they did. I'm sure of that. But it was pretty tight. | 12:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, you were talking about your great-grandmother and your grandmother taking in washing. | 13:56 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, yeah. | 14:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, did that—I just want to know a little bit about sort of the—I know a lot of women did domestic work and that kind of thing. | 14:06 |
| Ernest Swain | Yes, domestic. Yes, some of them. | 14:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | But what would people prefer to be? Would they prefer to take in laundry like this in their home, or would they prefer to go work in a White person's home or what, do you think? | 14:17 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, some people, some Black people worked in White peoples' home, but they all didn't. I don't know how they got the work, but somebody would tell somebody somebody needs something washed and of course we'd go get them, get the laundry. This was no big job, but it was something coming in and many people were doing it. Many people were doing it. | 14:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | So there were a lot of other laundresses? | 14:54 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, yes. Yes, practically everyone around there took in clothes. It's called taking in clothes. | 15:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Taking in clothes. | 15:05 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, washing them and ironing them. There were no laundromats, as I can remember. That's the only way they'd do it unless the people did the same thing to them that the Black people were doing. And some people could afford to have their clothing washed and ironed this way. | 15:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did your mother work? | 15:26 |
| Ernest Swain | My mother did work. My mother was one of the fortunate ones that was sent to school. They sent her to school up here to a little school called Gregory. You'll probably hear somebody talking about that. | 15:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 15:40 |
| Ernest Swain | She came up here she tells me until she went blind. She had some trouble with her eyes one time. I don't know how far she went in the grades before she had to stop. But then when her sight came back, she did what they call—She went to small schools. What did they call them? Where they taught her to be a teacher. Normal schools, I believe they're— | 15:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | That's right. That's right. And where did she go to normal school? | 16:10 |
| Ernest Swain | Somewhere close around, up to Whiteville. I believe there was the one there and may have been one here. But she stayed in there long enough to have a certificate. It allowed her to teach in lower grades and she did that. She did that when I grew up through elementary school and in early high school she was still doing that. Wasn't making much money. So our life, the whole lifestyle, changed a little when she started working. | 16:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Now, was she your teacher? | 16:54 |
| Ernest Swain | She was a teacher. | 16:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was she your teacher? | 16:56 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, no. | 16:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | No? | 16:58 |
| Ernest Swain | In the home. In the home. | 16:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, in the home. Okay. | 16:59 |
| Ernest Swain | I had a tendency not to want anybody to teach me. I wanted to be like my daddy. She teases me about that. He's the one who was doing this hard work on these boats. I admired him, so I wanted to do it too. But most young people wanted to do that. There's something about that kind of work that was attractive to young boys. Many boys who finished high school stayed there and did that kind of work. | 17:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why do you think that is? Why was it appealing? | 17:25 |
| Ernest Swain | I think it was appealing because the people who did it, they admired. They were models for the young fellas. | 17:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was it their strength? | 17:39 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, they were strong and rough and had what little bit of money they made. And they were thought of as being important to the community because they contributed to the community. | 17:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, were there any independent Black fishermen who owned boats? | 18:00 |
| Ernest Swain | No, not then. Not then. Well, there weren't any Black owners of boats, I don't think, even now. But the men worked themselves into important jobs. They called them—They had a mate on the boat and he would be the one really that did the work, that found the fish. Most of the cooks were Black and most of the mates were Black. To tell the truth, most of the hard work Blacks did, the real hard work. Of course, they didn't mind that. They were rough. I'm talking about a whole class of people who grew up doing it and thought that it was a good thing to do. And they were respected. They were looked upon as the leaders of the community. | 18:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. [indistinct 00:19:02] Oh yeah, when your father went out on the boat fishing, would they go out for a week at a time or [indistinct 00:19:07] | 19:02 |
| Ernest Swain | Sometimes they'd go out for not a week. | 19:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | But they'd go out overnight? | 19:10 |
| Ernest Swain | They'd go out overnight. Yeah, they'd go out overnight. They'd leave in the night and come back the next evening. They'd leave at night so as to be down where they think the fish would be. They had a way of anticipating the fish, I suppose. They knew where the fish would be at a certain time. They knew certain times a year, after doing it all their lives, they knew when the fish were running, so to speak. And they were right about it. They'd be there waiting on them and that's how they did it. Some fellas got expert at it. They made good money, many of them did, for the times that we're talking about. | 19:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. So you could make a good living maybe? | 19:53 |
| Ernest Swain | You could make a good living if you can find the fish. Now, those fish, it's a big ocean out there and they couldn't always find them. | 19:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | How were they paid? Were they paid— | 20:05 |
| Ernest Swain | They paid by the thousands. I don't know. Something like a hundred— | 20:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. So how many fish? By how many fish? | 20:11 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, by how many fish. | 20:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 20:14 |
| Ernest Swain | Not individual fish, how many thousand pounds or something. | 20:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 20:18 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, that's the way they were paid. | 20:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | So would they work on crews? Would there be crews that would work together? | 20:21 |
| Ernest Swain | Crews of men. Crews of men for ships, yeah. Each boat had its own crew. | 20:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So your father would work with the same crew all season? | 20:29 |
| Ernest Swain | With the same and every season, see. Not only that, if you become a part of a crew of a particular boat, you remained. They learned to work together and learned to get along together. So he was with the same crew. | 20:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, how was that determined? How were they hired onto crews, through the captain? | 20:54 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, through the captain. The captain would hire a mate who was a member of the town, who lived in the town. And he would pick the people he knew that would work for him and with him. Yeah, mm-hmm. But you had a choice. Men had a choice because there several boats doing the same thing. And some of the captains were better than others. So they had a choice to work the way they wanted to work with the men that they wanted. | 21:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, this might seem like a silly question. | 21:34 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, no. | 21:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | I've read about shrimp boats where men sang on the boats. Did they do that on— | 21:36 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, this is the one we're talking about, they were shanty boats. That's how they did that hard work on these big boats. | 21:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. So they did sing? | 21:48 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, sure they sang. They're what they call shanties. And they could sing them too. They could sing them. And they had it down pat. When they get to a certain place, all pull together, that's the way they did it. And they did that the whole time until they got the fish close enough or surrounded enough for them to take a big net to bail them into the boat. But all the time they had to hold them up. | 21:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember any of these songs? | 22:18 |
| Ernest Swain | No, I don't remember any of them. But I was fortunate. I never did do it. I never did do any of that. But my daddy did, and I've heard him sing them. | 22:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, did they sing them when they were on shore? Did they all— | 22:31 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, yes. They enjoyed them. Yeah. | 22:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Where would they sing them? | 22:36 |
| Ernest Swain | In every little town, in this little town, there was a place they called the Hall Corner. It was a Masonic Hall. It had steps and things. And the men would come there in the evenings. | 22:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And they would just sing? | 22:51 |
| Ernest Swain | They'd sing something. They'd just come there and talk gossip and that was the way they'd socialize. Drank whiskey. | 22:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | [indistinct 00:23:00] | 22:59 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, yeah, that's the way they— | 22:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | So this was called Hall Corner? | 22:59 |
| Ernest Swain | They sang at the Hall Corner, at a Hall Corner. That was called a Hall Corner. | 23:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, would women go down there or was it mainly men? | 23:05 |
| Ernest Swain | No, there was men. Women weren't there. | 23:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | And would people listen? Would the people— | 23:08 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, they were beautiful songs. The men got them down and could sing them in parts. And they'd pass by. You had to walk by the Corner to get most places, at this particular corner I'm telling you, and they'd be singing. You could hear them at night singing in the summertime. When they weren't working they'd sing these songs. | 23:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | What other things did people do for a good time back then? | 23:32 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't know what they did. They had some of those clubs and make up— | 23:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Piccolos and things? | 23:41 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, that came later from the time I'm talking about. They had little sewing clubs. | 23:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, sewing clubs? | 23:48 |
| Ernest Swain | And some things surrounding the church. | 23:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Did men and women do things together or was it mainly— | 23:55 |
| Ernest Swain | Go to church, yeah. | 24:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. But these clubs and those things usually were women only or men only? | 24:01 |
| Ernest Swain | Some of them. I don't—It's hazy. | 24:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Okay. | 24:10 |
| Ernest Swain | It really is. I don't know what my mother did other than stay home. She could sew and she did a whole lot of sewing for us and for herself and for other people. I think she did spend her time—They were members of lodges that they attended to go every—I don't recall any dancing, anything, piccolos and things you're talking about now. It came after the time we're talking. | 24:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were there any kind of burial societies or group— | 24:43 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, yeah. | 24:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah? | 24:49 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, Masonic Lodge. That's the one I'm talking about. | 24:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And they had a burial society? | 24:52 |
| Ernest Swain | They had a burial society. Yeah, they'd turn out and go through their rituals and things like that. | 24:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were there any other of these groups where Black folks helped each other out, organizations, insurance maybe? | 25:00 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, yes, there was the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company out of Durham. They had a branch, had agents in our hometown. They'd go around and have policies to help, yes. Help with burial expenses. Yes, they did. | 25:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | What adults were you closest to outside of your mother and father, your immediate family? | 25:30 |
| Ernest Swain | My immediate family? My school teachers, school principal and men teachers, minister. That's about—There weren't too many people to be associated with. | 25:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, what did they teach you about being a man when you were growing up, about how to be— | 25:51 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, we'd do the things that we heard them talking— | 25:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 26:01 |
| Ernest Swain | We'd sit there listening. | 26:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. Okay. | 26:06 |
| Ernest Swain | They'd talk about the things they did and, of course, we'd sit as close as they'd let us come. As close as they— | 26:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | This would be at the Hall Corner? | 26:15 |
| Ernest Swain | This was down at the Hall Corner. That's where all this went on. And they'd get to telling—As I said, they drank whiskey and stuff. It was a rough life. And they'd get their heads bad and start talking about all kind of things that little boys shouldn't have been listening to. | 26:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. What did you do with your friends for fun when you were a little boy to play? | 26:30 |
| Ernest Swain | We played ball, baseball and basketball, and played football. We didn't have an organized football team, but we loved to play basketball and baseball. And anything was a game. We'd see who could jump the farthest, things like that. Wasn't much to do. Wasn't much to do. We had a school, Rosemore School, that was large enough to have two nets, basketball nets. We spent a whole lot of time there. And if the weather was good we played outside. I had a basketball hoop in my backyard. It was long enough and big enough for that. In the evenings it'd be crowded with a little ball club. | 26:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | That's funny. Because the other places that we've gone, we were in Halifax County and then in Charlotte, and no one really of your generation has talked about basketball very much. | 27:31 |
| Ernest Swain | We could play. | 27:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah, so you played that. It was popular. | 27:40 |
| Ernest Swain | We were fortunate. Yeah, we were fortunate enough to have our principal who was a good athlete. Yeah, we would really play. I got pretty good at it. As a matter of fact, I went to college on a basketball scholarship. | 27:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, you did? Okay. | 27:53 |
| Ernest Swain | Pretty good. That's what we did. We really did. And that was all you had to do. So as I said, I had a basketball court, a big wire in there. It wasn't anything that was official. | 27:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | So this was when you were very young? | 28:10 |
| Ernest Swain | I'm talking about as a little boy. | 28:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Eight, nine? | 28:12 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, yeah. As we got a little older as we got in high school, the times got better. I'm talking about—I thought we were talking about real early. | 28:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, yeah. No, that is what we're—Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that I had the right— | 28:23 |
| Ernest Swain | Yes, yeah. | 28:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Could you describe the house in which you grew up? | 28:28 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, I could describe the house. It was a two story house. The stairs, if you go up in the second floor through some stairway it came down into the living room, it came into the house. There was a small room with the stairway on the side that goes up into the bedrooms. In back of that was the living room and there were three bedrooms on the other side. There were two bedrooms up in that attic up there. | 28:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you had your own bedroom? | 29:07 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, no. | 29:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | No? | 29:08 |
| Ernest Swain | No, I didn't have my own bedroom. I always slept with my uncles, one of the uncles. The time you're talking about now? | 29:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 29:16 |
| Ernest Swain | Okay. | 29:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | And this was the uncle you were very close to? | 29:18 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, I was very close to him. No, this isn't the uncle that I—This is the uncle on my mother's side that paid some attention to me, was young enough to be with me. I never did stay with the grandparents on my daddy's side unless my mother and father went someplace and stayed overnight. I spent some time with them. I enjoyed doing that because I enjoyed hearing them talk. My granddaddy and there's another guy I stayed up there with, we called him Mose, and they'd keep you laughing all the time. | 29:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kinds of things, what kinds of stories did they tell you? | 30:05 |
| Ernest Swain | They'd talk about old—I don't know what they were saying. Let's see now, they talked about all kind of old stories. I guess some they made up or something. I don't recall a single one, but I know it was a happy time up there. They had me laughing all the time. I don't recall a story. | 30:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, who were your childhood heroes or idols when you were growing up, either in your neighborhood or like Joe Lewis or someone— | 30:28 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, yes, Joe Lewis. I started to mention Joe Lewis. The fellas on baseball teams, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Joe Lewis and all those guys. The guys who were popular as far as the news media is concerned. We'd read about the people playing basketball and the Harlem Globetrotters. You've heard that name? | 30:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah, mm-hmm. | 31:27 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. Hank Aaron and fellas like that. | 31:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Now, do you remember Negro League baseball? | 31:34 |
| Ernest Swain | Yes. | 31:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | How did you learn about the Negro League scores and that kind of thing? | 31:41 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, you'd get them once a week. And they had Black papers, like National Pittsburgh Courier. | 31:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | So your family subscribed to those? | 31:58 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't recall subscribing to them. We'd probably buy one. It was once a week, only once a week. Yeah, somebody had the route come, and I guess—go around selling the papers. We didn't subscribe to any papers. | 31:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was there a Negro League team around here? | 32:13 |
| Ernest Swain | At the time you're talking about? | 32:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 32:18 |
| Ernest Swain | Later on. | 32:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 32:18 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't if—I didn't—See, it was a long time. I was a teenager before I ever came to Wilmington. | 32:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 32:30 |
| Ernest Swain | So yeah. | 32:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | So there was one in Wilmington. There was a— | 32:32 |
| Ernest Swain | There may have been. | 32:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 32:35 |
| Ernest Swain | Wilmington has always been ahead in the city. I was born down in the country. | 32:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Okay. | 32:42 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, I was born down in Southport, I told you, at the opening of the river, at the Cape Fear River and the ocean, right? It's a unique place. It's a pretty place now. | 32:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Sounds like it. | 32:56 |
| Ernest Swain | It is. You ought to go down there. | 32:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Now, could you describe the way that Southport was set up? Where did Black people live in Southport? | 32:59 |
| Ernest Swain | We were segregated. | 33:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. In one area? Concentrated in one area? | 33:08 |
| Ernest Swain | Concentrated in one area. But we had no problem with this. I've said this many, many times. We were segregated, but there was no problem getting along with it. That's one of the good things I remember about our little place. We had some conflicts but yeah—but not any serious ones. We were segregated. White folks lived down near the water around the waterfront. So then we lived four or five blocks away from there. | 33:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was there a street or a railroad or something dividing— | 33:45 |
| Ernest Swain | A railroad used to come, yeah, but that didn't—There's the place called Howe Street but I don't know—It was a section. It was more of a section than a street. | 33:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | What was it again, How Street? | 33:59 |
| Ernest Swain | H-O-W-E, Howe Street. That runs right down the center of Southport. But St. George Street maybe was the dividing part. Southport, as far as the living conditions, are just about like now like about then as far as the area in which they lived. Of course they've upgraded to new buildings and things. I don't recall. Even then, the only thing that I know that I detested then as I do now, but you don't have it, in a cinema, you'd go to the little theater down there, we had to go up in the balcony. But I went up in the balcony. But there were no other pictures to—But I never did like it. I never was in the position to do anything about it. | 34:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember anybody ever, even for a prank, trying to get down into the bottom or sitting in the White area? | 35:07 |
| Ernest Swain | No, we got to come from this street as we'd go along, we tested some of their rules. | 35:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | How would you do that? What would you do? | 35:26 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, I'll tell you now. I'm skipping some time, but I'll tell you of one experience that I had as a young man. In 1941 or 2, during World War II, Negroes weren't allowed to vote. I had gone to college and had finished and was working in the county. I was the principal of a little school that was down there. A boy named Albert Gore had gone to college. And many people had gone to college during this time. Now, I'm not going say that we were the only ones that gone— | 35:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | What was his name? Albert— | 36:10 |
| Ernest Swain | Albert Gore. | 36:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | How do you spell his last name? | 36:12 |
| Ernest Swain | G-O-R-E. | 36:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 36:14 |
| Ernest Swain | We decided one weekend that it was time for us to vote. The war was going on and they were drafting people. So we decided to go in, go down to register to vote one day. We got there, it was a long line of people, White people, going in to register to vote. We got there and we got in the back of the line and worked our way up, stated our way up. By the time we were getting up there, it was unusual. They just didn't expect to see any Black people in there and there were— | 36:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Where was this? I'm sorry. | 36:56 |
| Ernest Swain | This is in Southport. | 36:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 36:56 |
| Ernest Swain | This was in Southport. And the people, there was curiosity. Everybody come and see what was going to happen. Of course—Let me back up a little bit. When I decided to go, my daddy didn't want me to go. He felt like I was going to get in trouble and that was going to get him into trouble. He told me when I went, he says, "Man—" The chief of police they called Ed Leonard down there. He thought he was rough. He said, "Ed Leonard is going to hit you in the head if you go down there. You're going to get hurt and you're going to make me have to go down there and get in trouble." So he said, "I wish you wouldn't do that." I said, "Well, Daddy, it's time somebody did it." Mother was concerned about it, but she felt it was the right thing to do. | 37:02 |
| Ernest Swain | She wasn't as much against it as my dad was. But we went and we worked our way up to the place where the man was registering. And he was a friend of ours. Honestly, he knew us well. He didn't want to do what he had to do. So I was ahead of Albert and I got there and he said, they called me Bookie, I don't know how I got down that name, "Bookie, what are you boys down here for?" And I called him Boobie. I said, "Boobie, we came to vote, register to vote." He said, "You know you boys can't vote." I said, "Well, I know we haven't been voting, but we plan to vote today." And I told him my qualifications and stayed there, stood up. Ed kept telling me I couldn't vote and the line was held up. People wanted to see what's going to happen. | 37:43 |
| Ernest Swain | So I won't say I wasn't nervous, but I was determined not to leave. So he went back in the back of the courthouse and came back with some books. I know now he went back to the lawyer, Ed Leonard. He brought a couple of books back and one of them had the Constitution of North Carolina in it and he asked me to read it. I looked at him, "Read it?" He said, "Yeah, you've got to read it." So I read it over. It was nothing to read and he got through it. He said, "I'm sorry, that's not satisfactory." I said, "Why isn't it satisfactory?" He said, "You've got to satisfy me and that does not satisfy me." | 38:35 |
| Ernest Swain | So Albert said, "Let me read it." And he read it over twice and he told him the same thing. And he finally said that the lawyer said that we had to satisfy the registrar. Unless we did, we couldn't vote. And they said, "You don't satisfy me. And if you don't leave, I'm going to call the sheriff." So we left then and we came back and of course told the school principal and everybody about it. And they organized, they called a meeting, a countywide meeting, and organized what was a county civic club and kept following it up. And of course they didn't do it. But that was the beginning of NAACP down in Southport. That was about '41— | 39:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | And in Brunswick County? | 40:13 |
| Ernest Swain | In Brunswick. Yeah, all over Brunswick County. Oh, I guess a year after that, two years after that, I was inducted into the Army when my mother wrote me in the Army and said, "Son, you did do some good. Not only can we vote now, but they're coming around the community taking us to vote." You know how the cars go around, take you to vote? | 40:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, mm-hmm. | 40:35 |
| Ernest Swain | That was an unusual thing for that place and that time. | 40:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, what prompted you to do this, to try to register to vote? | 40:43 |
| Ernest Swain | I'm just a man and my daddy was paying taxes and I was working in the county. And I knew the law was saying—I knew I had a right to vote. | 40:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. You said something about people being drafted and that that made you feel too—Did that make you feel— | 41:01 |
| Ernest Swain | People, I said— | 41:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | People were being drafted and— | 41:08 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, well, people were being drafted into the Army. | 41:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. And there was a connection there that you should be able— | 41:12 |
| Ernest Swain | There was a connection there. If you're going to have to fight for the country, you ought to have the right to the vote for the officials who were going to run the country. | 41:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Had you heard of other Black people around the south who had tried to— | 41:24 |
| Ernest Swain | Who were doing that? Yes, yes, they were doing that all over the south. | 41:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. And how did you find out about [indistinct 00:41:42] | 41:41 |
| Ernest Swain | Read it in the paper. | 41:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | In the paper. | 41:41 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, they were doing that all over the south. | 41:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | So it was just you and Mr. Gore, just the— | 41:41 |
| Ernest Swain | Just the two of us decided to do it, yeah. Yeah, they were doing it. It was nothing original because they were doing it all over. And of course people were expecting, people were asking them to do this, to challenge these kind of laws. And they would challenge them. They were being put in jail too. | 41:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | But when you were younger, do you remember people drinking out of the White water fountains or things like doing [indistinct 00:42:10] | 42:02 |
| Ernest Swain | I remember the water fountains, yes, yes. | 42:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | But did Black people, like kids, ever try to drink out of the White fountain or do anything like that? | 42:12 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't know of any kids, but I sure remember having to do it. Or riding the bus, backseat in the bus. As a matter of fact, I rode from Wilmington to Georgia, to Atlanta, Georgia, in the backseat of the bus once and when I got to stop in one city, I went to get a hot dog. I had to go around to the side window to get it. I've seen all those kinds of things. See, as I told you, I've lived through that. | 42:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were you ever faced with any danger when you stopped in these places or anything like that? | 42:50 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, there'd be big signs there and people sitting around. If I had caused any kind of disturbance there were plenty of people there who would have probably punished me in some way. See, I knew I wasn't going to get in trouble way down in South Carolina somewhere. | 42:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 43:10 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, probably getting jailed down there. | 43:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. I was talking to someone this morning who had been put in jail in South Carolina. | 43:11 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, they were real— | 43:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | So it's much worse down there? | 43:26 |
| Ernest Swain | Much worse down there. | 43:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | In what way other than the— | 43:29 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, they were just outright prejudiced. They didn't want you to do anything and didn't want you to go anywhere. They were real—And these are, most of the time, small, ignorant people. Small, ignorant people. | 43:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | So what things exactly could you do? How exactly was it different than Southport, some of these towns in South Carolina? | 43:45 |
| Ernest Swain | The most embarrassing thing here in Southport that I know of was the theater that was open for the public and it was recreation and young people wanted to be—But they had their churches and we had ours. We could have lived like that forever. But something the public had, something that was supported by the public, those were the things where we were seeing it for the most part. I had no desire to go into a White church in Southport. I loved the little church that we went to. But I did think we ought to be able to go to the theater. I had no desire with drinking water because I didn't drink any of it. I drank my water at home. Anything I could avoid, I did. | 43:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Something I've always wondered about these segregated movie theaters, did people ever throw things down onto the— | 44:43 |
| Ernest Swain | Yes, they threw things. | 44:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | They did? | 44:49 |
| Ernest Swain | Yep, sure did. | 44:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | So onto the White people on— | 44:49 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. | 44:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | So what kinds of things would they do? | 44:53 |
| Ernest Swain | Sure did. Sure did. They did that. | 44:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | What would they throw? | 44:57 |
| Ernest Swain | Anything they had, popcorn boxes or something like that. I never did that. | 44:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 45:04 |
| Ernest Swain | I never did that. What did you ask me? Did people ever do it? | 45:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 45:09 |
| Ernest Swain | I know that people did it. | 45:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Would they get in trouble for that? | 45:09 |
| Ernest Swain | I'd have to go and find out who did it. | 45:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Were there other things that people did like that, trying to get back at White people but they knew they couldn't be caught? Sort of a similar way to that, throwing that popcorn? | 45:16 |
| Ernest Swain | I'm sure they did. I don't know. I don't know of any, but I'm sure they did. I'm sure they did. I didn't do that. You're talking about these children—from that, these young people now. Black people now, you could rest assured that they do. But see, we were—I'm talking about 30 years ago, a long time ago. | 45:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Did your parents ever have to teach you about segregation? Did they ever sit you down and say, "This is how you have to behave to stay out trouble," or anything like that? | 45:55 |
| Ernest Swain | No, no. Well, I guess they thought that we would emulate them. They didn't challenge anything. They were conservative. They didn't want to get in trouble. They didn't want to get in trouble. They didn't like it, but they had no way of getting around it. If we had had a whole lot of money— | 46:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | I think we were talking about your parents and their not wanting to get in trouble. | 0:01 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, they were very conservative. They didn't get in any trouble. They didn't rock any boat too. | 0:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were there people in the community who did rock the boat? | 0:14 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, there were some fellas who did it, was devilish enough to do it. | 0:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | And what would they do? | 0:22 |
| Ernest Swain | They'd get into trouble. They was just being arrested. See, somebody just drive around there singing, somebody tried to stop them from singing. Somebody in the crowd curse them or something like that. They'd come around and try to find out who it was and nobody would tell them. They'd just punish everybody. That kind of thing. | 0:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kind of trouble would they get into for doing that? | 0:43 |
| Ernest Swain | God, anything they wanted to tell them. Nuisance. Nuisance. Making a nuisance of themselves or something like that. | 0:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was there any racial violence in your— | 0:54 |
| Ernest Swain | Not serious, but occasionally there'd be a fight, occasionally, over somebody drunk or something like that. But even then there were some people that you could get along. I'm talking about playing ball. Many times, we'd play ball, Black boys against White boys. We'd go in the same creek, swimming in it type of thing. There were a whole lot of socializing between people, that kind kind of thing at home. | 0:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Would you ever go to these boys' houses? | 1:32 |
| Ernest Swain | No. No, I never. I used to work, cut these boys' lawns. I would cut the lawns. But you mean socially with these boys? | 1:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. | 1:42 |
| Ernest Swain | No, I never did. They'd come to our house though. | 1:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, they would? | 1:46 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. Yeah, they would. | 1:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | And what was that like, you cutting their lawn? I mean, their lawn— | 1:50 |
| Ernest Swain | I cut—Getting money. See, that was a hustle. We call that a hustle. We'd go around pushing a lawnmower and going in and asking if they want their lawns cut. Yeah. | 1:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was there a certain point, a certain age where Black and White boys stopped playing together, stopped playing ball, or— | 2:04 |
| Ernest Swain | Stopped playing ball? Well, they were always—This is sandlot ball. | 2:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 2:17 |
| Ernest Swain | We played on the same park, on the same—No, they just stopped because everybody stopped playing ball. It wasn't because of any racial conflict. | 2:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 2:33 |
| Ernest Swain | Wasn't because of any racial conflict. Southport's been a good place to live, even during segregation period. | 2:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember people being put into jail for things that they didn't necessarily do, or for minor things that weren't very serious? | 2:49 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't. I don't remember. I don't know of anybody that was put in, let's put it that way. I don't know of anybody. | 2:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Can you remember any particularly happy times in your childhood? [indistinct 00:03:19] | 3:14 |
| Ernest Swain | I was happy all the time. | 3:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | All the time? | 3:19 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. I was happy. As I said, one of my uncles liked to fish and hunt and things of that sort. Yeah. I thought I had a good life. I thought I was—And to be perfectly frank with you, I was able to do pretty much what I wanted to do. I didn't feel any pressure, I guess. I don't know why, but I'm just that way. I probably went many places I wasn't welcomed just, but nobody told me. | 3:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. | 3:56 |
| Ernest Swain | My mother was always on me for doing things like that. I just went. Never been put in jail. My daddy told them not to hit me with that club. One time we were sitting on the front porch, my daddy was drinking, and the officers came driving by. He called them. And the man backed up and came on the bench. He was sitting on the bench. His name was Ed Leonard. He said, "Ed, I want to show you my two boys." We said, "I don't know what he was saying." He said, "If you ever beat on their head, you going to have problems with me." | 3:59 |
| Ernest Swain | He said, "Go on now. You're drunk." | 4:47 |
| Ernest Swain | He said, "No, I'm not. I'm telling you the truth." Said, "If I ever hear you beating these boys like you're doing, you're going to have a problem with me." So I never shall forget. I was so happy he told him. | 4:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | So he had beaten other— | 5:03 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, yes. Yes. He's noted for that. The crowd of boys, I tell you, on the corner, the same thing. He just come and make them all run and scatter. | 5:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. | 5:16 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. Well, they'd say, "There's Ed. Here comes Ed." And they'd get out the way. This man was way out, way out there. There's ever been a redneck, he was one. He was one. He was looking for trouble. Looking for somewhere to get somebody into trouble. He was, no doubt about it. What's that? In the Heat of the Night. Have you ever seen that? He was like some of those people. I'm telling you the truth. | 5:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 5:40 |
| Ernest Swain | Yes. He had law and order too. Many, many people afraid of him. And I guess that's what was his aim, to get people afraid of him. | 5:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were there White people with whom your father had good relations? | 5:53 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. | 5:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | And who were they? | 5:59 |
| Ernest Swain | At work, he was one of the hard workers. And he knew many of them. I imagine he was considered a leader. | 6:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Oh, okay. | 6:12 |
| Ernest Swain | He knew many of them. Well, my family, because of my granddaddies that had the job with the boat, got along pretty good. Not good, but pretty good. | 6:13 |
| Ernest Swain | And many of my family, many of the men were church workers, and community leaders and things. Something to be done, the whole town to be involved in it, they'd seek out many of the men. And I don't want to talk about my family, but many of the people. They were among the ones, let's put it like that. They were among the ones. | 6:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | So they were recognized by the White people as well? | 6:55 |
| Ernest Swain | Yes, yes. They were among the people there. There were many others, but we were among the ones that tried to keep things going. | 6:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. Do you remember who was the boss at home? Your mother or your father? | 7:10 |
| Ernest Swain | My mother was the boss. | 7:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 7:22 |
| Ernest Swain | No doubt about it. My daddy was gone working and things. And of course I wanted to go somewhere, he was more lenient. I'd go to him and he'd say, "Ask your mother. If she said you can go, it's all right with me." That's just about the way he handled his responsibility. | 7:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | So she is in charge of disciplining you? | 7:43 |
| Ernest Swain | Yes, yes. Oh, yes. My daddy was very fond of me, and he'd fuss while she was around, or whatnot, but he wouldn't do much. He would bark a whole lot. | 7:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. You think he was typical of other fathers with sons? | 8:04 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. Yeah. | 8:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | The mother was the one who— | 8:07 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. Yeah. Like I told you, he'd go off there, stay these weeks at the time, my mother would have a whole list of things to report that I had done. Me and my brother, Joe. You know, torturing him. He was easier than I was. But my daddy wouldn't do nothing but fuss loud so she could hear him. | 8:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, how about money? Who took care of the money at home? | 8:36 |
| Ernest Swain | My mother. What little we had. My mother took care of the money. | 8:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Would she go to the store? Would she do the marketing? | 8:43 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, or send me, and Joe, to the market. But as far as that, my mother took care of all the business. All of the business. | 8:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | You said a little bit earlier that if you'd had more money, you would've come to Wilmington to do your shopping. | 8:55 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, yeah, buy wholesale. | 9:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 9:01 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. Yeah. They had a boat they called the Wilmington. See, the Wilmington to run to Southport and back. They'd bring people down there, passengers. People come down and stayed at a little hotel we had down there, travel, business people. So the boat ran twice a day, I believe. And people came up and bought bags of rice, lard and stuff like that. | 9:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Would anybody ever go pick things up for you and bring them back? | 9:26 |
| Ernest Swain | You could do it, yeah. Many people did that. Children send by it and get them to get things for them. | 9:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kind of values do you think your parents instilled in you? | 9:48 |
| Ernest Swain | Honesty, I think. My mother was interested in education. My daddy wasn't. I mean, he wasn't educated himself. Cleanliness. They wanted to keep clean. She tried to keep me clean. I'd dirty up just as fast as she could wash. | 9:54 |
| Ernest Swain | My mother was very religious. My father, in later years, became a Christian, so I grew up in a church. | 10:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | But he didn't go to church. | 10:30 |
| Ernest Swain | Not early. Many years, about 10 or 15 years before his death. | 10:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 10:36 |
| Ernest Swain | But as I said, my daddy was a rough guy with them fish boats and singing. There was shanties and drinking whiskey and stuff. They did that. | 10:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, what was the relationship between your mother and father in that case? Was it good? Did they have a good relationship? | 10:49 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, yes, they had a good relationship. Had a good relationship. I'm thinking he was considered a good provider. Yeah. They had a good relationship. I can see where he got a whole lot done. He at least brought the money home. And he was proud of us, proud of the two boys and his wife, and that's all he worked for. He'd work hard and keep very little of the money. And give it to my mother. | 10:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 11:24 |
| Ernest Swain | He'd work hard all the week. He's going to celebrate a little bit on Saturday night. | 11:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | But that was something that was expected? | 11:33 |
| Ernest Swain | That was what everybody was doing. Really. That's what everybody's doing. They had to have some relaxation, some relief. | 11:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | So a good husband was a good provider first and foremost. | 11:42 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. | 11:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 11:47 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. He felt like he was doing his duty then, and he felt like he was entitled to what he did on Saturday afternoon. It was relaxing time. He didn't get in any trouble doing that. Just part of what they did. | 11:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, were there many men at church when you went? | 12:05 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. | 12:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | There were. Okay. | 12:07 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. Many men, many leaders. The churches, I'd say, was a focal point in the community. Mm-hmm. | 12:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember the point in your life at which people stopped treating you like a child, when you were a man? | 12:22 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, at times my mother tried to make me a boy all of a man. I wanted to be like my uncles, as I told you, and my daddy. She wanted me to be just the opposite. She had had just enough education to see where there's some advantage in it. And she knew how hard the work is. I have tender hands still, and she knew my hands and things couldn't take it. So she was determined for me not to work on those boats. And that's how I want to get started. Then I was fortunate to have good teachers and a good principal in that small town. I don't know how they got them to go down there, but we had a good school. Good school. | 12:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you started changing your— | 13:27 |
| Ernest Swain | I started, yeah. | 13:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | You started changing. | 13:30 |
| Ernest Swain | I started getting polished a little bit. Yeah. That's when I started, in high school. | 13:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | In high school, so you changed? You changed. | 13:36 |
| Ernest Swain | That's when I started changing, in high school. And I was fortunate enough to go to college. I told you. I was pretty good at basketball. And then that is really when I changed. I went to a very good school. And I saw other boys, teachers, and whatnot. A whole different lifestyle from what I was accustomed to. | 13:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | So a change in role models. | 14:08 |
| Ernest Swain | Change in role models. Really a complete change in role model. I can remember so many things. I hadn't ever been away. I told you, it was a long time before I even came to Wilmington, but to be in Atlanta, I went to school in Atlanta. You probably have heard of Morehouse College. You have heard about it? | 14:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 14:33 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, I thought you might have. It's a very good school. It's for men only, just men. And I began to see what a man could do, how we act and that kind of thing. That changed my whole way of thinking. | 14:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | When did you decide to go to college? When did you start thinking about that? | 14:52 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, I started thinking about that in high school. See, I began to know that you couldn't get in college or places like that. Oh, I've come a long ways. I began to change then. I began to study. The other fellas—I kept on with the gang, but I'd go home study late at night. They didn't understand it. I kept on doing the things that the gang was doing. | 14:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | In Southport? | 15:22 |
| Ernest Swain | In Southport. No change there. No change there. But I began to really study at night, late at night. And at Morehouse, oh boy, I was so far behind most of them that I had to study all the time and get a whole lot of help, individual help. I was surprised to find young men that knew as much as they did. | 15:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, when you were in Southport, and you started, what was the attitude of boys towards education? Was it seen as a girls' thing? | 15:52 |
| Ernest Swain | A girls' thing. | 16:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, okay. | 16:01 |
| Ernest Swain | Most of the boys were thinking about getting a job on that boat. | 16:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 16:04 |
| Ernest Swain | This boat. | 16:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | So what was their feeling about education and how about male teachers and that kind of thing? | 16:06 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, as I told you, the guys just didn't—They had to go to school to a certain age. Some of them whose parents were on their backs studied and did pretty well. The others were waiting to get a job on those boats. See, during that time, they had no outlet. They hadn't never been anywhere, hadn't never seen anybody. It was years—I imagine some people from this county who hadn't been to Wilmington yet. Lived their whole life down there. They don't know what's going on on the other side of the world. So that's what started me to thinking different. | 16:14 |
| Ernest Swain | And afterwards having gone to that trouble, I got drafted, and then I began to really see what you could do. I was in a field hospital. We went down to New Guinea and the Philippine Islands and around, and there were a whole lot of White men, White young men. Of course there was no segregation then there. I used to hear them talking about what they're going to do. They were thinking about what they're going to do when they get out, and how they're going to use their GI Bill. You've heard of GI? | 17:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Mm-hmm. | 17:40 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, they were talking about going to Yale and Harvard, Princeton, and places like—And most of them from up in that section, the New England section. I don't know how in the world I got connected with them, but I did. Of course, they were highly intelligent people. Highly intelligent people. Many of them were talking about not using their GI Bill until they finished college and then going to Princeton or going to Harvard or going to Yale, places like that. I began to listen, and I began to read. | 17:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you'd already been to Morehouse? | 18:21 |
| Ernest Swain | Wait a minute, wait a minute. Let's see, had I? I'd already been to Morehouse then. See, I'd already was teaching school. | 18:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, so you'd gotten your degree there. | 18:28 |
| Ernest Swain | I got my degree there. But they were talking about graduate school. We were talking about graduate school. And they got me motivated, got me decide to do that. I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't know if I was going to come back and work in that little school in the county or just what I was going to do. But I decided as I was going into social work. I got interested in that. And that's what I planned to do. | 18:34 |
| Ernest Swain | But this idea of how to use the money, let me tell you what happened. I got back and I got married while I was on furlough. I got back and went to Atlanta. I was going to go to school at Atlanta University. But coming through here, there was a job opening in the juvenile court and a fraternity brother told me about it. I went down and applied for it and went on to Atlanta. And several days after I was there, the people called me and asked me was I still interested? If I did, to come, I could get the job. | 18:58 |
| Ernest Swain | So I came back here to work. I worked in the juvenile court system. I thought that that would help me in social work. And I worked two years there and I got introduced to the superintendent. I was doing truant work. I was looking after students who were in problems, and problem children. But I was in and out of the superintendent's office. So a job was open. They wanted some young men to work in the schools. The job title was coach and assistant principal, and I got one of the jobs. I coached basketball, girls' basketball. | 19:37 |
| Ernest Swain | But that led to my needing to go to school again and I began to think about what those fellas were saying. You see, the GI Bill would pay the tuition anywhere. So I said, instead of going to some of these little schools here, I'm going to try to go, take advantage of the money. You'll never guess what happened. I tried to get in at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wouldn't take me. They would not let me go there. | 20:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, was this before they had—They'd had some suits already to get people. | 21:01 |
| Ernest Swain | That was just before the suit. | 21:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 21:06 |
| Ernest Swain | That was just before the suits. Wasn't long before the suits though. But they wouldn't let me in. They wanted to pay my tuition anywhere else I went. Wanted to pay my tuition. So I fooled around. I knew some fellas from Morehouse that had gone to University of Chicago, so I applied there and they took me. | 21:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | This was in education? | 21:29 |
| Ernest Swain | This was in education. | 21:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 21:32 |
| Ernest Swain | They took me. This was throwing a rabbit in a briar patch. They took me there, so I spent five summers up there. That's another case of segregation. | 21:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 21:44 |
| Ernest Swain | The irony of it, once I got back, not only could I go to University of North Carolina, but I did. I went up there several summers. I got a professional certificate from them. | 21:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, was this before they desegregated? | 22:01 |
| Ernest Swain | I think it was. I think they were integrated then. | 22:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 22:09 |
| Ernest Swain | '50s. It was in the '50s. | 22:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. Well, let's roll back a little bit to—Because I want to talk about your schooling in Southport, then at Morehouse a little bit. | 22:19 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, you do? | 22:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Is that all right? | 22:25 |
| Ernest Swain | It's all right. | 22:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, you went to a Rosenwald school, is that right? For your— | 22:30 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, Rosenwald, for elementary schools. Yeah. | 22:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 22:34 |
| Ernest Swain | Rosenwald had schools all over the South. | 22:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 22:38 |
| Ernest Swain | I went to one of them. | 22:38 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember when the school was built? Was it built before you came around? | 22:39 |
| Ernest Swain | It was built—I finished there in '38. Wait a minute. I finished there in '33. It was built then. It was probably built around '30, in the '30s. | 22:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So you you remember it being built? | 22:52 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't remember it being built. I may have. I was old enough, understand. But that's the kind of school I went to. I finished one of those schools in 1933. Rosenwald school. | 22:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | How many rooms did it have? | 23:06 |
| Ernest Swain | About eight. | 23:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 23:12 |
| Ernest Swain | Eight or—One, two, three, four—just about eight. | 23:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So each grade had its own— | 23:16 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. In the middle it was made like a T, like an H, I mean, with the administrative part and the auditorium in the center of it. Yeah. | 23:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Looking back, do you think the teachers were good? | 23:27 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, yeah. | 23:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 23:27 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. Yeah. That's when I began to get into good teachers. They're from a school called Fisk University for the most part. They were good schools. Why they went to Morehouse, I don't know. I mean, why they came to Southport. I never remember. Of course, the principal had finished Fisk and he wrote up there and got some of his classmates, I guess. But they had good teachers. | 23:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, had you had teachers before? | 23:57 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, that's my year. They had teachers before, but for the most part they had finished normal schools. | 24:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you had always had good teachers, college— | 24:05 |
| Ernest Swain | They always had good teachers. I think I've always had excellent teachers. | 24:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, your mother, she taught in— | 24:13 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, my mother. I was a little boy when she was teaching. | 24:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, okay. But she was teaching in school. | 24:18 |
| Ernest Swain | I was three or four years old. | 24:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 24:21 |
| Ernest Swain | Some kind of grammar school certificate she had. | 24:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | And she taught in school? | 24:26 |
| Ernest Swain | She taught in school. She taught in some little schools in Brunswick County. | 24:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | What did you like and dislike about school when you were in elementary school? | 24:31 |
| Ernest Swain | I was happy in all those schools. I didn't dislike anything with any of them, any of the schools. I'm not hard to get along with. They had trouble with me, but I didn't have any trouble with them. | 24:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now that brings me to my next question. Were you ever disciplined by your teachers? | 24:51 |
| Ernest Swain | Yes, all the time. | 24:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | How so? | 24:55 |
| Ernest Swain | All the time. | 24:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Would they whip you or would they— | 24:58 |
| Ernest Swain | They'd whip me and keep me after school. Yeah. | 25:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | What happened then when you got home? | 25:03 |
| Ernest Swain | My mother would fuss at me. My mother would fuss. I guess it will be on there, but I want you to take this off. One time, I was kept after school by a teacher for something. Anyway, she wanted me to apologize, say I wouldn't do it again or something. Anyway, I wouldn't do it. And she said, "Well, I got to do my work after school. I just as soon do it here as do it after school or home. I've got to do it." So she sat there and she was determined for me to apologize for whatever it was, and I was determined not to. | 25:11 |
| Ernest Swain | Stayed so long my mother sent my daddy out there to see what was going on. He went in and talked to the teacher. She said, "I'm glad to see you, Mr. Swain." Said, "I've been trying to get Ernest to apologize for something he's done and he won't do it." And while he was there, she began to tell him all the things, all the things that I was doing or I did. It embarrassed him so, he took his belt off, he gave me a good lashing. | 25:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you apologize then? | 26:28 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, you better believe me, I did. I embarrassed him so bad. Then he began to really get serious with me. Embarrassed the whole family. Yeah, he burned me up right in front of her. | 26:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | So teachers were pretty respected? | 26:47 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, yes. Yes. Very. Teachers and preachers are respected in small communities even today. Yeah. | 26:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Do you remember the teachers ever playing favorites? | 26:58 |
| Ernest Swain | I can't. I've never seen any favorites. | 27:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you think there was any favoritism based on skin color at all? [indistinct 00:27:13] | 27:07 |
| Ernest Swain | I've never noticed that. I never seen that. Experienced it. | 27:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you learn any African-American history when you were in school? | 27:17 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, I probably did, but I've forgotten it. | 27:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 27:24 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, we had African-American history in college. | 27:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. But not in high school? | 27:28 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't recall it as such. No. | 27:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Where did you go to high school? | 27:34 |
| Ernest Swain | There, in Southport. | 27:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So it was Southport High School? | 27:36 |
| Ernest Swain | It was it called Southport, Brunswick County Training School. | 27:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Brunswick County. | 27:37 |
| Ernest Swain | Brunswick County Training School. | 27:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | It sounds like you really had some great teachers there. | 27:48 |
| Ernest Swain | I did have some good teachers there. Didn't have much equipment and didn't have anything to experiment with. But what was in the book was taught. | 27:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was there one teacher who really was a role model who encouraged you to go to college? Or was there one particular? | 28:07 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. | 28:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Who was that? | 28:14 |
| Ernest Swain | She just died about two years ago. Her name was Beatrice, Beatrice Morris. Well, her name—Wait a minute. It's been so long. Bea, Bea, Miss Morris. And she married—Bea Morris is all right. She married. I can't think of it. And she was from Atlanta and she knew about Morehouse. | 28:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So she'd gone to Spelman or something? | 28:42 |
| Ernest Swain | She finished Atlanta University. | 28:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 28:45 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. My high school principal finished Johnson C. Smith in Charlotte, and he wanted me to go there. I guess I would've done all right there, but I'm glad I selected the school I selected. I had those scholarships I could have gotten from boy's school, but I had to work. I had to really work. But that's the way I got started. | 28:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were you involved in any extracurricular activities when you were high school? | 29:20 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, plenty in high school. Baseball and basketball. I played on the varsity team at Morehouse. | 29:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. In high school— | 29:37 |
| Ernest Swain | And played intermural at Morehouse. In Southport, we played with the city team. I played with the city team. Had little fellas who had been around, them fellas that didn't go to college and whatnot. We had a good city team. In the summer, I used to play with them. | 29:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. So this was another Black team? | 29:53 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, another Black team. And while I was here, I first came out the army, they had a good Black team here. We used to play every Sunday. I played Sunday there. | 29:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | So that baseball, that was baseball? | 30:08 |
| Ernest Swain | That was baseball. I played basketball in Southport and Atlanta. Mm-hmm. | 30:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you had basically never been anyplace but— | 30:14 |
| Ernest Swain | I basically had never been in any city. | 30:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So what was it like to go to Atlanta? | 30:21 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, boy. It was something else. It was absolutely—I never expected it to be like that. The very first night I was so homesick and afraid, I didn't know what to do. And here are all these sirens blowing around, passing the building in the big city. I just didn't—It frightened me. | 30:22 |
| Ernest Swain | One day during the early part , something like that, there, first, second, or third day, I met some fellas from Atlanta, fellas. I walked by this place and a woman stopped me. I must've looked scared or something. She stopped me and she said, "Young man, I have some boys here. I believe you—Would you like? Why don't you stop by and talk with them some." But they were about my age. I was glad to do that. So while I was there, she wanted a boy to take some dinner to her husband. He had several barber shops. And we had to go through town. Do you know Atlanta? | 30:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | A little bit. | 31:22 |
| Ernest Swain | A little bit. On Spring Street, we were going across Spring Street, and we got caught in a line of traffic, and we got caught and stayed there a long time. And finally the ambulance got through the traffic and got there to them. And somebody had run over a man and killed him, and all this blood was on—We had to drive through it. It almost made me sick. I'd never seen anything like that. I had never seen anything like that. It took me at least two weeks to get adjusted. It was fantastic. But in a month's time, I was Atlantan. I knew how to go. I knew how to get around, and did get—I did go many places by myself. | 31:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, I know that a lot of—Were your classmates in Morehouse, did they see you as country or did they—How did they— | 32:12 |
| Ernest Swain | They called me a Geechee. | 32:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | A what? | 32:23 |
| Ernest Swain | Geechee. People from South Carolina, they have a brogue, and I don't have it, but they just figured—got me connected with those, so they used to call me Geech, Geech Swain. | 32:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | How do you spell that, Geech? | 32:38 |
| Ernest Swain | Gee—I don't know. | 32:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | G-E-E-C-H? | 32:39 |
| Ernest Swain | I guess so. That's about close enough to it. They called me a Geechee. It's some kind—You never talked to anybody from South Carolina? | 32:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Well, I— | 32:48 |
| Ernest Swain | They got a South Carolina brogue. | 32:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. | 32:48 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, I don't have it. I don't know why. There were some fellas there who had that brogue, but they just lopped me right in with them, I suppose. I tried to tell them, when I was in Southport, they had never heard of that. They had never heard of that. | 32:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, were you dressed right? Did you have the right clothes? | 33:09 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, I—Yeah. I didn't have many clothes. | 33:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Well now, did you have to learn how to dress differently when you got to the city? | 33:14 |
| Ernest Swain | We dressed alike, but I didn't have any good clothes. See, it wasn't any difference in what we dressed, how I dressed. I just didn't have enough of it. | 33:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 33:27 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. | 33:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you played basketball. And what was your major? | 33:27 |
| Ernest Swain | I majored in history. | 33:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 33:34 |
| Ernest Swain | I majored in history. My school principal in Southport was a historian. He was a good one. But I shouldn't have. I should've majored in sociology. | 33:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Right. Now, did you live in the dormitory? | 33:47 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, yeah, I lived in the dormitory, and worked. As I told you, I worked in the dormitories. | 33:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, you worked in— | 33:56 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. I worked with the matron who was in charge of the dormitory, and she was an old lady, so she turned the keys over to me. Everything that had to be done, especially when someone came at night, late at night. I did that early. I mean, that was my first job. And students were coming in all the time of night, and they'd come to her, she'd holler for me to find the rooms and that type of thing. | 33:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, I've heard a lot of women talking about how strict the university was with them. They had to be escorted if they went off campus. And was that the same for young men? | 34:28 |
| Ernest Swain | No, no, no. No, no. You're pretty much on your own. | 34:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. Were there the same number of men as women on campus? Or I guess Morehouse was all men. | 34:44 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. | 34:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Of course. I'm sorry. | 34:52 |
| Ernest Swain | They were no—But there right across the street was Spelman, but now in front of Morehouse dormitories is Clark. Down the street is Atlanta University. | 34:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you had a whole bunch— | 35:02 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, Black people. Yes, it's very metropolitan. | 35:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, when you were in your classes, do you remember, were there any professors who were very vocal on the race problem or on civil rights or that kind of thing when you were there, talking about how things should change for Black people? | 35:09 |
| Ernest Swain | No, we didn't have it. No, we didn't have that. I'm talking about a long time ago. They have it now, I'm sure. See, I'm talking about from '33 to '38. That was our school year. That was wonderful too. I spent a year out of school following a girl. | 35:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | A year out of school following a girl? | 35:40 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, she lived from New York. I went home and told my parents that I had a job in New York, but I didn't have any job, so I lived with—went to an uncle there, one of the uncles. I told—And didn't get a job that whole summer. | 35:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | You just followed her. | 36:00 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. The time to come to go back to school, I didn't have money. And my uncle kept telling her that I was wasting my money. And I told her that I was sending it to Morehouse, sending it straight to the school. I didn't. And so when school opened that next year, I couldn't go back. I didn't have the money. Then she came back to Spelman. And then I really had to get a job. I started realizing that I had to save money. So that was good for me. I needed that kind of experience. I needed that. | 36:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you had to work in order to have enough money to go back? | 36:37 |
| Ernest Swain | Go back the second year. | 36:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | But then after that you were able to go without interruption? | 36:43 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. Yeah. I owed some money when I finished, but I paid it back. | 36:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | What was the ambition of most of your classmates at Morehouse? What did they want to become? | 36:53 |
| Ernest Swain | They wanted to be everything: doctors, lawyers, ministers. That was the three major fields they went into. There were all kind of scientists. That's about the major field, law. Major field, law. | 36:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were most of them successful in what they wanted to do? | 37:13 |
| Ernest Swain | They've been very successful. If you follow the school, they have been very successful. I think I'm the worst. But they have been very successful. Really and truly. | 37:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, you said you joined a fraternity? | 37:31 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. | 37:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Which one? | 37:33 |
| Ernest Swain | Omega. Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. Ever heard of that? | 37:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 37:37 |
| Ernest Swain | Have you? | 37:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | We've heard a lot about fraternities and sororities. | 37:37 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, through other people. Oh, you've been doing this a long time. | 37:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, what are the Omegas? What's an Omega, the ideal Omega man? | 37:45 |
| Ernest Swain | Ideal Omega man is one who is conscious of the social situation. See. Who, what? Who's a leader of whatever it's to be led. Who respect women. That's the type of man. Those kind of ideals. | 37:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, how did you come to join the Omegas? Did they ask you to join? | 38:17 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah, they rushed the freshman class. They pick out the ones they want. And if they can make the grade, boys, the second year you're there you join the fraternity. We had Alphas, Omegas, Kappas, Sigmas. | 38:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. How would the Omegas fit in among these other groups? How are they different from Alphas or [indistinct 00:38:48]? | 38:43 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, the rivalry is Alphas and Omegas. And I think we're the best. | 38:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Now, what are the Alphas known for? | 38:54 |
| Ernest Swain | They're known for the high ideals too. I have to give it to them. And their brothers are very successful too. | 38:57 |
| Ernest Swain | You mentioned something there. I think it's just fair to say their skin, the most light-skinned people for the most part. Not all. Not all anything. | 39:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was there a lot of that kind of color consciousness at college? | 39:20 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't know. I don't know. | 39:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | How about among the women? Was it more among the women? | 39:32 |
| Ernest Swain | I think they tend to be together. I don't know this to be true, but— | 39:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, I know this is a touchy subject and everything, but I'm interested in knowing whether—Was there more color consciousness in a place like Atlanta in that college group as—Was there the same kind of color consciousness in Southport as in— | 39:45 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, in Southport? No. No. No. No. | 40:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | So it was different when you got to college. | 40:06 |
| Ernest Swain | What I think happens with this whole thing is, is your personality. I actually don't think it's color conscious. I think they tend to lean towards people with the same goals and personality. The same thing is true about Omegas. I don't think any of this is true, but many people make a whole lot over it. I really don't think it's true. And I told you, I shouldn't have said it, because I couldn't prove it. You tend to lean towards the people that you can converse with. | 40:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Identify. | 40:56 |
| Ernest Swain | You can identify with. That's what they do. That's what everybody seems to do. You watch people that when they come together, they come together because they have like, same, like interest in him. They can converse with each other. | 40:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Have you continued to be active in your fraternity? | 41:17 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh yes, I'm active in fraternity. I thought you were talking about schoolwork now, but of course I haven't done anything there. | 41:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | What has membership in your fraternity meant in your life? | 41:27 |
| Ernest Swain | A great deal. | 41:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Can you talk a little bit about that? | 41:32 |
| Ernest Swain | Yes, yes. They are very friendly. Our motto is friendship is essential to the soul. The year I was out of school, the two year I didn't work thing, an Omega man got me a job that next day. And an Omega man was responsible for my getting to work here. We sort of—What do you call it? We sort of look out for each other. | 41:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So it created a network. | 42:13 |
| Ernest Swain | That's the word I was looking for. There is a network between us. | 42:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, do you think that compared with the situation that Black people were in, that these kinds of connections were more important to Blacks than to White fraternities and Black fraternities? | 42:24 |
| Ernest Swain | I don't know what White fraternity brothers—I don't know what they do, but this is what I'm sure of has worked in the Black community. | 42:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Okay. | 42:44 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. | 42:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | And you think those are important that— | 42:45 |
| Ernest Swain | I sure do. I sure do. If I went somewhere, New York, Detroit, or someplace, not knowing a single person, I would go to church and I would try to find somebody who was a fraternity brother of mine, and he would immediately connect me into something. | 42:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 43:08 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. Immediately. I've done this. I mean, I've had this experience any number of times. And strange people come here. They either contact me through experiences at Morehouse or through my fraternity. That's the first thing you look for. | 43:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, what do you think that Black people who didn't go to college or who don't belong to fraternities, what did they do to create those same kinds of connections? | 43:30 |
| Ernest Swain | They have clubs. They have clubs. Much of it's done in the church, through the church. A good minister will organize a thing in his church. And people, they have all kinds of social clubs with agendas that encompass all kinds of clubs, all kinds of service. They're organized. I don't think there's any jealousy among them either. | 43:40 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, was your fraternity involved in the civil rights movement? | 44:13 |
| Ernest Swain | Oh, you better believe me. | 44:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 44:19 |
| Ernest Swain | Yeah. | 44:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | In what way? In Wilmington in particular. | 44:20 |
| Ernest Swain | Well, most of our work in Wilmington, to be perfectly frank with you, were advisory capacity. As a Morehouse man and as an Omega man, many of the people who came to Wilmington who was engaged in the civil rights would looked me up. I did what I could do, but I didn't or couldn't get out and offer any leadership or anything. | 44:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | So this was sort of back room sort of thing? | 45:00 |
| Ernest Swain | That's true. That's true. | 45:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Now, you were a teacher and then a school principal, or you were a principal? | 45:09 |
| Ernest Swain | I was a teacher first. | 45:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. And where did you first teach? | 45:13 |
| Ernest Swain | Over in Brunswick County, in Bolivia. | 45:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. In Bolivia? | 45:19 |
| Ernest Swain | Bolivia, North Carolina. Small Rosenwald school. I was there for two years. Then I was sent to what they called Cedar Grove. That's in Supply. This was a junior memorial school. It had six or seven teachers there. | 45:19 |
| Ernest Swain | Then I got caught up in this, the whole atmosphere of having to go to the army. And I was transferred from there to a smaller school up in Navassa. All these time—Each time I was getting transferred because I was in a job they felt was necessary. And I was the head of my household. My daddy had long died, and that was taken advantage, taken under consideration. And I was deferred to that from Navassa school. I was put in the shipyard. I worked in the clinic department at the shipyard for nine months, and then they couldn't get any more deferments. | 45:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were you better paid—What was better paying, the shipyards or the teaching? | 46:23 |
| Ernest Swain | Shipyard. | 46:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Shipyards? | 46:26 |
| Ernest Swain | Yes. By a long shot. | 46:26 |
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