Mildred Whitaker interview recording, 1993 June 26
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Sonya Ramsey | About the area where you grew up? | 0:01 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | At what age? I mean— | 0:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | When you were a child? | 0:05 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well, I mostly grew up here. I remember more from here than I did anywhere else. | 0:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | In— | 0:13 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yes, I remembers a little bit from Nash County, when we moved here, I think I was about nine years old and a lot of the other stuff, I do remember some things, but mostly I remember here because when we moved here, we moved into a woods. This was nothing but woods. | 0:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Did your father build his own house? | 0:40 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | No, the government had built these homes new and they came in with option as we told you the other day of buying. Because we had been sharecropping. We always would—excuse my feet. | 0:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh. That's fine. | 0:55 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I'm relaxing. | 0:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Could you talk to them about the resettlement project and how it affected your family, some more about that? | 0:57 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well, when we moved in, of course, we didn't have any electricity and we had a little chair that we didn't hardly know what a electric was because we always used wood and I remember the first person around here that got their electricity and you believe me, we were down on the ground peeping at the electric bulb. | 1:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh okay. | 1:31 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | They had that light bulb and we didn't have any, we had the thing for it, but we hadn't got ours. And they got a bulb in theirs and we were down on the ground looking at the electric lighting. They had lights in their house. | 1:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | How old were you when you moved into the settlement? | 1:47 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh, I was about 10. | 1:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | 10? | 1:50 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yeah, I was about nine or 10. | 1:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | And before that, your family— | 1:54 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Wait a minute, how old was I? I can tell you. I born in '29, we moved here in 39. | 1:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 2:00 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | So I was 10 years old when we moved here. | 2:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And do you remember your family was sharecroppers before that time? | 2:04 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | We were sharecroppers. | 2:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 2:08 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | We were told sharecroppers like going from one place to the other. They usually did. You don't make no money and you moved to another man, and I wasn't doing too much work before I moved up here. | 2:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your parents ever tell you the arrangements your parents made with the landowner for payment and things like that? | 2:22 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well—what you mean? | 2:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have your own tools? | 2:36 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | The sharecropping? | 2:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 2:38 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | They mostly had their own. The tenants used what you call the other men? | 2:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | The tools. | 2:48 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yeah. He didn't usually have his own tools. We would have our own mules sometime. We would have our own mules and sometime I think my daddy would have two because he was smart and he wouldn't let the man come in too much. He was trying to stay out of debt with him. So he would use a whole lot of his stuff because they always believed in a lot of gardening so he always prepared for that, stuff like that. | 2:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did people get around? I know the landowners made you stay in debt and stuff, if you were sharecropping, how did people get around and try to get some money on their own or try to work around that? | 3:18 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well like I said, my mama, she was an extremely smart person. My daddy was smart too, but she over-shadowed him with the smartness. He was a little slow but she was—guess who would never make the bargain? You wouldn't believe it. She would be the one do more talking. See, she was outgoing. If you got a person, even if you man and wife, I think it's best for that person that really can be outgoing and can stand and speak up. I don't care if it's the man or the woman. He would always go with her. But my mama would do the facing up to these people and then she would always tell them that her children were going to school. | 3:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, they didn't want the children to go to school? They wanted them to work? | 4:17 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh, of course they didn't. Of course they didn't. But when she would make a bargain with them, that's what she always put in. | 4:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, she had to put that in the bargain? | 4:28 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yeah. She would always put in that her children were going to school so she would keep us out some day, a couple of days out of the week. But we went enough to get that lesson. | 4:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your teachers try to help you because you couldn't come to school as often? | 4:37 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yes, they did. We had some real nice teachers, I must say that they did. I would go back and she would give me their lessons that was back and she would give me chance to catch up and we always caught up. | 4:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you remember how your life changed after your family moved onto their own farm? | 4:58 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well, yes, we felt a little more—we just felt different because when you were living with the sharecroppers, I mean you always—I don't know, and you feel like you were just, whatever he say, that's got to go. But then when we moved over here, we felt independent. We felt like we had really moved out of pressure. | 5:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you— | 5:32 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And we did a little bit of helping people to help out with what we had here. We did. I mean we worked ours and then we would go out and work for the money. All the money. | 5:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did your life change when you had a good—what happened when you had a good crop as compared to when you had a bad crop? | 5:48 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh, well, when we had a bad crop, my daddy would always tell us it wouldn't be anything for us for Christmas and we was going to have to make out. He would buy shoes and instead of all of us having so many shoes, my mama would take one this Sunday to church and the other one because it was 12 of us. And one would have to wear the shoes this Sunday and the other would wear them the next Sunday. | 5:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | With so many brothers and sisters, did your brothers and sisters have to take care of each other and things like that? | 6:30 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh yes. | 6:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | In what way? | 6:38 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yes we did. Mom would always be going out because she did a lot of vegetables and when they'd go out—but they would always leave us what we were supposed to do and she would leave one of the older children in charge and they would whoop us. And when Mama come back, they would whoop us too, if we didn't do what she said. | 6:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | You talked earlier in an earlier interview about your mother selling vegetables. Did you ever have to go along with her? | 7:04 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh yes. | 7:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was that experience like? | 7:12 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well, I didn't like it too good because we were facing the White people. Mostly, they were the ones buying the vegetables. It was a few Blacks, we'd go in the Black neighborhood. But to make the money, we would have to go in the White areas of the people that really had the money. And I was a little ashamed. I mean I just felt—I don't know, I felt a little embarrassed. But we would have to do it. | 7:13 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | We had to go to those people doors, back doors and be standing out there and sometime the dog would be barking and they would come to the door and they would say, "go ahead, dog." But I remember this one time with my mama when she took me to the doctor down in Scotland Neck. I remember that one time we wasn't selling vegetables, we went to the doctor. Something had happened to me and she had to take me to the doctor and the man had a great old big screening porch, the doctor did. And we come up on the porch and he was wiped out. He told us, "Get back get back." And we had to come outside and he came outside and waited on us. Would you believe that? | 7:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | That's awful. Did he have many Black patients and did he treat all his Black patients like that? | 8:34 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yes, because he had a bad name. Then people would say, yeah, he'll do that. He was totally against. But still, a lot of time, we had to go to him. | 8:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | That's what I was going to ask you next. When you got sick, did most people go to the doctor? | 8:51 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yes. And then we finally got a Black doctor in Enfield. His name was Dr. Bryant. And he would come out to patients. He was pretty nice. We were glad when we got him and he finally left and went somewhere. | 8:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | I asked you about your mother. Did the White people ever try to cheat your mother when she was selling vegetables? And how did they treat her? | 9:15 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh, well, they tried. I remember they tried to cheat her but Mama was real strict. Like Earl said the other day, she was mother width. She could count her money and she had to weigh her stuff. She had this little scale thing and she would put this up on there and she would look at it and sometime, it wouldn't be exact. That's the way she saw, sometimes it wouldn't be exact but she would always go over a little bit. When she sold her vegetable, she would always say, "Oh well okay, that's all right. I let that go for that." | 9:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | So she sold them by the pound to people? | 10:05 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | She was selling them by the pound. Yeah, she sold a whole lot of stuff like potatoes, we made white potatoes. She would sell it by the pound. | 10:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did y'all travel from place to place? | 10:17 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | My dad had old car. | 10:19 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 10:23 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I remember she'd load up that old car. We didn't have a truck at that time. I can't even remember no truck. | 10:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you remember when your family— | 10:26 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | But we had a old car. | 10:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Got your first car or was that before you were born? | 10:31 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh that before I was born when my family got their first car. | 10:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | Where did y'all go to shop in the area? Buy your things that you had to buy? | 10:42 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Shop? | 10:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did y'all not? | 10:45 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | My mama usually did our shopping. | 10:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 10:52 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | We didn't shop. | 10:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | Children— | 10:55 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Sometimes she would take one of the children if she was going to get them a pair of shoes, she would say, "I'm going to take you today and get you some shoes fitted on." And that's the only thing. Other words, she would bring—a lot of times she would bring shoes. And let me tell you, she brought me a pair of tan—you remember, I don't guess you can remember, they had white and tanned shoes. I forget what you call them, but she bought me a pair. Oh, that was really the first pair of nice shoes I had because they were new because she always bought out of the secondhand store over Enfield. That's where she would shop. They had a secondhand store. She would buy the stuff, excuse me. | 10:56 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | She would take us over there and try on one shoe. And one day she bought me a pair of the white and tanned shoes. I'll never forget it, the longest day I live. And she said, how do they fit me? I say they feel good, but you know that they were just tight on my feet. Oh, I felt like I was on ton walkers but I wanted the shoes and I was afraid that if she took them back, she would get me a pair secondhand shoes and I got no shoes. And we put seeds in them and tried to stretch them and did everything. And I would almost cry when I take my foot out of those shoes because it's so crammed up. But every time I go off, I wear those shoes because I didn't want her to take them back. | 11:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have to wear—what position were you in the family? Was it youngest or near the oldest? | 12:20 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh, I was about middle way. | 12:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Middle way. Did you have to share clothes sometimes? | 12:28 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh my goodness, yes. Definitely shared clothes. We sure did. | 12:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was— | 12:35 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I mean we definitely shared shoes completely. | 12:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was doing chores around the house like with so many brothers and sisters? | 12:40 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | You always had yours to do. They always would, which I wish people would learn to do some of this stuff now. And I think they would have a nicer home. We had certain things we had to do. Scrub the floor, Mildred. They would be written down. Mildred, scrub the floor, clean out the toilet, put clean paper in there, which was newspaper or whatever we used. But you would have to take a mop and go out there and scrub it. That's what we had to do. And one girl would have to iron the clothes. She would have to iron the clothes and you iron every piece, put it on a chair, then you sort the clothes out. | 12:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Sort, what's that? | 13:26 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Sort. | 13:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, sort. Okay. | 13:26 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Okay. Sort them out. Well, sort them out. | 13:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 13:31 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | We had to put them in and our clothes was in boxes, up on the bed and every bit of clothes I had could go in one little box about this size. | 13:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you sew your own clothes too? | 13:45 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Huh? | 13:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you sew your own clothes too? | 13:49 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh my mama sewed them. She sewed the clothes. She did. She used to make these ducking bags like hog feed and stuff would come in. In some way or another, they would soak those things and try to get some of that out and whiten them. And that's what they would use for slips and things. That's what she made our slips out of. | 13:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I think you talked a little bit about this in general at the interview, did your parents teach you anything about how to act in front of White people and behave in front of them? | 14:17 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Of course, she did. She sure did. | 14:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of things did they tell you? | 14:29 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | What she taught us was, I don't know it in words what to say, but she always wanted us to respect them. But she didn't never want us to act like we were less than they were. But then she still would let us know that they were ahead of us, that they were over us. | 14:30 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And we always respected them. They always liked my mama for some reason. And they got along right good. But like the girl said the other day, she never did teach us to hate them. And it's just some families that they couldn't get along with White, but some way or another, we got along. But it was because the way we were brought up and the way we were taught. That we were taught that everybody's the same. And sometimes I think that people have it so much within themselves until it hurts when it go to working out, it comes effective when it go to working out. But if you still feel like you are somebody, I think when it comes out, it makes it better. But then if you get that deep hurt in you about them, nothing going to be right. | 14:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | It affects that whole person. | 15:51 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yes, it affects that whole person. And I think that's the way it was with us because we always made a good crop and we came out but didn't come out good all the time. That's why we would always have to move, if she didn't come out, the man he cheated us, we moved. | 15:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | That's what happened. If the landowner cheated you, y'all would move? | 16:05 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yes, we would move. | 16:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was it hard to find new places to work? | 16:11 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yeah, sometimes. | 16:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you go? | 16:15 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Felt like we would go from Nashville way down to Whitaker. | 16:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did they go about finding new places to work? | 16:20 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh, well somebody probably would recommend somebody to them and they would go talk to them. | 16:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were there any people, I guess you don't have to mention names, that were just really bad to work for and nobody wanted to work for them? | 16:29 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh, yes. It was some people over here to Whitaker, out from Enfield. They were White and he owned—I guess along that time, you call him one of the richer men. Oh I forget his name. Well, it's been a long time now. I can't think of him. But the way they treated you like they had these stalls, these bathrooms in the field and that roads were longest from here to halfway to Enfield almost. And they own all this crop and they didn't allow you to stop. | 16:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | And use the bathroom? | 17:11 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I mean you could use the bathroom but I mean they had about [indistinct 00:17:15] that meant you use it when you get there, but you kept that hoe in your hand. Nobody liked to work for that man. When you said they going to Mr. Winslow. Yeah, Winslow's farm and he was one of the bigger men, but they were just like people back—like we read about how they treated the slave. That's the way they were treating people just like that. Mama didn't like for us to work for him. | 17:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Could you talk some about how long the day took when you were farming and what exactly did you do? Describe how it was and what crops your family raised. | 17:44 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well, we have a variety. They always raise a variety. We would get up in the morning, they'd have us up about day. | 17:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | Daybreak? | 18:11 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | About daybreak, we would get up in the morning and get ready. She would keep one at the house, sometimes to do the cooking and she would go out because she could make us work more. And she would let one of the older girls stay at the house to do the cleaning and the cooking while we were out. And then she would take them off and then about 11 o'clock, she'd get off and go to the house to cook. And then she had to go out there and get her vegetables out the garden. | 18:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | She worked in the farm and cooked too? | 18:44 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh, sure. She most certainly did. And then she would tell us to come up in there about 12:30, we would eat, because 12 o'clock we had to come home and write quick and wash our hands and get ready for the table. And you never would sit down without blessing the table. Always, it was blessing the table. And she had salad and cornbread and the milk was out in the—I don't know that you know that they kept milk out in a dairy, they call it, wasn't no ice or anything. And they would skim this milk and she would make cakes and things out of that skim milk. | 18:47 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And then we would go back. It would be so hot. But we would have to go back at 1:30. We would go back and sometime my mom would let us stay home if we were smart and worked late in the evening till almost night. Then she'd say you all worked real late, then you could stay home until about three or four o'clock. Sometime we could stay there under the shade tree until about four and then we would do the rest of the chores from then until night. | 19:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 20:01 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And we would be back for that, of course. We would be. | 20:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | So when you went to school, you had to work after you got home from school? | 20:02 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh Lord, of course, honey, the minute we got home, you better get out those little rags you had on and put on something. And I mean she knew how long it take you to get to the field too. And you would have to come to that field and work. | 20:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | And your mother— | 20:20 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And I mean they would be eight, nine years old, you'd be working too. It wasn't nobody excuse from the job. | 20:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | And your mother raised the vegetables too. When did she find the time to plant the vegetables too? | 20:28 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well, we did it all the same time. When she'd catch up, she'd have Daddy to make up her little land and everything and we just picked the garden peas, go out there and pick those things and she would sell them and we would can, we did a lot of canning. That's what we had to do. Get that stuff ready for canning. | 20:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | When you— | 20:59 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | We had 250 quarts because we had a smoker house and we would it have lining up in there. But in the 12 o'clock, a lot of time we had to do this stuff, extra in the 12 o'clock, while we were taking a break, shuck the corn or something like that and then she'd stay home and she would cut it off the cob. Shell the bean and then when peanut time come, we would have to share the bags of peanuts. She would allot a bag for us to shell overnight. And a bag of peanuts was about that tall. | 21:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh okay. | 21:33 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | It's a hundred pound bag of peanuts. | 21:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, goodness. | 21:36 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And we had big pan-fuls and we would sit there and we would shell peanuts till 12 o'clock trying to get that bag. She said better shell those thing because they got to have them because they used to shell all their peanuts. Sometimes we have 15 bags peanuts to shell. And then we had to shell them. We had cup pan throwing them and my fingers would be so sore from popping those peanuts and shelling them. | 21:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | But did you and your brothers and sisters have any time for fun or playing? | 22:03 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh well, on Saturday afternoon. | 22:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. What kind of games did you play? | 22:08 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | On Saturday afternoon, honey, I'll tell you, we had more fun. They would have us riding stuff in the field and we would play baptizing. | 22:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 22:20 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | We would play—I never forget, we would play baptizing and we would play hopscotch. You know what hopscotch is? You throw the little—we had glass, believe me, piece of glass. | 22:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Y'all didn't got hurt? | 22:32 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I don't know what they play it with now, but we had glass and we would throw that piece of glass and we would make the hopscotch and we would play ring around the roses and we would play this game like pretty bird. You have some water in a cup and you have a little rag in there and everybody be sitting around on the porch and we say, "Pretty bird, pretty bird, in this cup." And you would name the bird that this person had in mind, if it was a bluebird and and then go to you and say, "Pretty bird, pretty bird." And if you say bluebird and that was the bird, she slapped this water in your face. And that was fun. That was a lot of fun. And then we played hide and go seek, of course. | 22:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | You mentioned your mother and your family always bless the table. Did your family attend church? | 23:21 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yeah, my mother was a total believer in attending church. | 23:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | What church did she attend? | 23:37 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well see she was a member of a church in Nash County. | 23:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 23:39 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | But when we moved here, we joined this church where you passed right out here out here. But she never did move her membership. She would always still go up there every first Sunday. Every first Sunday, she'd take—never take us all at one time, except it was on the Children Day, she would take so many. And believe me, when we planned to go to Nashville and then Nashville is not too far away. I would say it's about 40, 35 miles. But we would plan that trip as if we were planning to go to Washington, D.C. | 23:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh right. Because it took so much— | 24:17 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | It took so long to get there because the car didn't ride fast. | 24:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did y'all— | 24:25 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And then we would load them. | 24:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did y'all fit in the car? | 24:26 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yeah, we got in the car. We got in the car and some had to stand up on the outside. | 24:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh okay. | 24:32 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And hold to this rim. They had a rim and they would stand. They had this boat-like thing, you remember that old cars got a stand where you could stand on? And they would stand. The board, some of them would stand out on that side. Dad would drive all long and slow. | 24:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do y'all— | 24:50 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And when we went to school, rainy days, we would go to school five miles away from here and we walked every day. But when it would rain, he would pick us up with the wagon and he'd have a whole load of children. A wagon load of children coming from school. It was fun in the wagon. | 24:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | You talked about your teachers in school. And were most of your classmates also sharecroppers or were you only one family? | 25:16 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | You meet a variety at school. | 25:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did they treat each other there? The children of the people that owned land and the sharecropper? | 25:28 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well, we over here in this area, it was almost like a separation. You wouldn't believe it. Every evening we would have fights. Every evening we would drag them back this way and they would drag us. Girl, I just can't explain it. Every evening it would take us sometime an hour and a half to get home. And then we would have to go to school the next day and some of them would report it and sometimes they would report it and the principal would have us in the office the next day because we would fight. | 25:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | What happened? Did you get punished? | 26:09 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | They would—yeah, well, we didn't get punished physically. Something about the school businesses, some way or another, I remember. They would do us with the work and all. | 26:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did the teachers ever play favorites to the different students? | 26:25 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yes they did. You wouldn't believe that. | 26:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | In what ways did they? | 26:32 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well, they called me the teacher's pet. | 26:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh okay. | 26:34 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | But I'm going to say this, I always remember I probably was the teacher's pet, but it was because she would ask me to do all these different things for her. And I was just one of the head of the class, smart. I was the smart one. And they always teased me and picked at me and said I was a teacher's pet. But really and truly, I don't know really if I was a teacher's pet or not. I was one of the smaller ones. At my age, I was small. And then we had to have this—at school, we had this little food, where they would let the children eat and I would ask and she would always let me go and help serve the food. | 26:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your teachers ever play favorites on people based on their skin shade and things like that? | 27:26 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh yes they do. I was just telling a girl about that the other day. If they were light and had good hair— | 27:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Straight hair? | 27:40 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I remember when I was going to high school, I say it like this back there, even when I was in high school, I would work hard to get my work. I made good grades. But believe me, some of those girls from the city and the city made a difference too. If you lived there in the town, I was going to Welland up here. Welland High School. And those girls, they would come in and they would be dressed better than I was and they could do half their work and get just as good a grade as I got. And when they get that report card, child, I got a B. And I wonder how in the world did they get it? | 27:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did they treat the other students? Did they separate themselves from the other students? | 28:21 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Who, the— | 28:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | The city girls or the light-skinned girls. | 28:28 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh yeah. | 28:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | They did? | 28:33 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | They did. You wouldn't believe that. But they thought they were better than me. They did. They thought they was better. | 28:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did any of them ever try to not be like that? Or were they all— | 28:42 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | There were some. It was a few. Yeah there was some that didn't act like that, but it was a lot of them that felt like they had advantage over us. | 28:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | What about the light-skinned boys, did they act like that too? Or was it just the girls? | 28:56 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well, the boys, they were the sweet ones, that the girls were always crazy about. | 29:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | Conceited? | 29:10 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh yes. They knew it. They knew. If they had good hair, curly hair, whatnot. It sure was. | 29:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did the teachers ever try to bridge the gaps and try to—were there some teachers who try to treat everybody equally or was it usually— | 29:21 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I say it was some that was tight. The tight ones seemed like they did better. Really believing you getting your work. It really didn't matter with them. I mean they were one that you would say, well that's a tough teacher. But she was a teacher that you could learn under because some of the teachers you could not learn anything because they were too slack. And they just believe in the little play stuff like I'm saying. I mean if you pretty, you make it and if you not you, just have to go the hard way. But you didn't learn as much under that teacher as you did the other one. But say we get our work. | 29:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | You liked school, did most of your other friends like school too? Or did they not like it? | 30:08 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well, yeah, I liked school but there was some that always tried to duck it. Duck school, I never did try to duck school. | 30:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | You went to Welland High School. What did you do after high school? | 30:25 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | After high school? | 30:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | Mm-hmm. | 30:25 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I got married. | 30:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 30:32 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | That's as far as I got. | 30:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | And how did you meet your husband? | 30:35 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | How did I meet my husband? I met my husband. We were living right down next door. | 30:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 30:41 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | We were living next door down there and they moved in a house right up here. And he had just come out of service. | 30:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 30:49 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And I met him and seemed like I fell for him when I saw him. He was cute and he was intelligent and everything. And my mama said, "Well, I thought you was the one I had picked out to go to school," because I was so smart. But then the love thing overtook me. | 30:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | And back then, did people go to school and get married? They used to make the choice between either marrying or going off to school. | 31:13 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yes. And I chose to marry so she didn't say anything because she had a lot more. But she said she had picked me out really. But I just elected. And she liked him too though. She liked him too because he was growner, much growner than I was. He was more mature than I was. But then I guess she felt like, well, she needs somebody mature. He's going to be a man to help take care of her. | 31:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said he was just out of the military? | 31:48 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Uh-huh and I wasn't 18 years old. | 31:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | What war? Did he serve in a war? | 31:52 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | World War II. | 31:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | Does he ever talk about any experiences he had in World War II? | 31:59 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh yes. I mean he told me about how he used to be down in the foxhole and I used to feel sorry for him because it was terrible over there. It was bad. | 32:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did he ever talk about how the White soldiers treated the Black soldiers? | 32:11 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh yes, honey. But then a lot of time, a lot of them went right along together and they learned to be friends. They learned a lot over there about them, that when they got in that position over there, they turned different because it wasn't any different. If they were down in a foxhole, they would've been glad for the Black men to help them. So that's the way that went. | 32:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was the experience a positive experience for him? Or negative experience? | 32:47 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh it was positive. | 32:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | In what ways was it positive? | 32:53 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well I think, seem he had been on the White man. When they moved over here, they had just moved. For four years his people were still working on the White man's farm. And when he came over here, then it really made him know about White people. | 32:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | In what ways? | 33:14 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | In what ways? That White people wasn't probably what he thought when he left them over there on that White man's phone. And when he went in service, I mean he got some of the same treatments that they got. He was treated the same. And when he came here, then he felt more independent when he got back home. | 33:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Now did he return back here? Did he help his family grow the farm? Did he farm? | 33:35 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yes. Yes we did. See, we bought farms. It was two of the boys and they bought a great big farm. I guess it was somewhat on account of them having a little money, coming out of service. And they bought their farm right next to ours here. | 33:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | So did you just move next door? | 33:55 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | See, I was living right over there. And when they bought the farm, see, that's when I went on and got married. And then they divided the farm out. His brother had some, he had some and his daddy. | 33:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | So you moved nearby? | 34:10 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | That's what I was telling you the other day about we sold our land. I moved from my mama's house when I got married and we went right next door there. | 34:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | But you went close by so you could— | 34:20 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well, I was close by both of them. Because mom-in-law was living here and my daddy was living right here. This house wasn't here then. This a house I built after we sold our land. But see, our daddy left us this land and he left us this property. So I built a house on mine. | 34:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | Could you talk about your wedding? What was your wedding like? | 34:40 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I got married right down next door. | 34:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 34:45 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | On the porch. | 34:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh okay. | 34:48 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | On the porch. I'll never forget it. And it was small, but to me, I thought it was great. And guess what? My sister was getting married. She got married in November. And I was afraid my mama wasn't going to let me go. We slipped and got her married. We went to Nashville up there. Because all you had to get somebody to sign because she was a good age of signing. And I was scared I wouldn't be getting married, so we wouldn't tell them until the day that he asked for me that night. And her and her husband were laughing and she said, "What's up?" And said we remember because we had told my mama and we dressed up that day and my sister put on her dress in Nashville, where she was going to get married in. And we said we were going to a veteran's party that they was giving for the veterans. | 34:49 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And when we got on the car that day, she said, "You all remind me of the same day I got married." And we just didn't know what to say because we were going to go and get her married then. And two months later then that's when I got married. So she lost two daughters. | 35:47 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | But I think mama was always pretty satisfied going along with it because her girls wasn't getting pregnant. And well, I guess she was saying, well I got rid of those. And her husband was a veteran too. They were brothers. We married brothers. | 36:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 36:22 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | We married brothers. See. | 36:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh okay. | 36:25 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And we lived together. | 36:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 36:27 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | The two brothers lived together and the two sisters. | 36:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh. | 36:32 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | For several years. | 36:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 36:34 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And then after—no, it wasn't seven years. Several. It was about a couple of years. And then she got pregnant. And I got pregnant. | 36:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 36:42 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And so when we started having the children, he bought him. He moved down Terry, he bought him a home down Terry and that's where his home is now down there. | 36:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I guess, after you're starting your married life, how did your work life change after that? | 36:54 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well, I was working for myself directly for myself. I was under my daddy then. And then I had my children. They were coming on every year. | 36:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | How many children did you have? | 37:11 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Five children. And we were working, but we enjoyed it. I mean it was nice. We could handle it. We handled it pretty good with the children. | 37:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Let me ask, did you have your children in the hospital? | 37:25 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | No, of course. No. All of them would be at home. | 37:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have a midwife? | 37:31 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | My mama was my midwife for three times. | 37:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Wow. | 37:35 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | For three of my children. Then she died, then another lady came and midwifed. | 37:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | When your mom was helping you, were there other— | 37:42 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I was doing tobacco one day when I was going to have a baby. And my water broke and I said, "Well, go to the house," and had the baby. | 37:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh my goodness. | 37:51 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And I went to the house and we called the midwife. And by the time—no, he went and picked her up because she didn't have a car, he went and picked her up and by the time she got there, she said, "Yeah, you about ready to have this baby." And the baby was born. | 37:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did they give you any anesthesia? | 38:08 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | No. The only thing they gave when I had my first ones I had were twins. I lost out by six. At six months, both of them died. They were born before time. And the doctor came out then because he said I had jumping and done probably had hurt myself because one of them legs were real bruised up when it was born. And he gave me something and he went on to sleep and he didn't even know I was having the second one. And then I said, "Oh, here's something else," and came and it was another baby and they put them in the shoe boxes and buried them behind the smokehouse. That's the way things would happen then. But I got along okay. | 38:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your family help you with that and support you through that? | 38:58 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Mm-hmm. And the doctor stayed here. He would sit, he stayed, that was the Black doctor, Bryant. | 39:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 39:08 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | He would sit there and see how I was going to get along and he about stayed. He would almost go to sleep until I had those twins. | 39:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did they ever have a Black hospital here? | 39:18 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | No. | 39:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | They did have a Black doctor? | 39:19 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | No, just had some Black doctors. That's all. | 39:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did he do surgery, things like that, the Black doctor that was here? | 39:26 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Did he do surgery? I don't remember him doing any surgery. I don't even remember him at the hospital doing surgery. He was just a medical doctor. | 39:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | To go work in the hospital. | 39:39 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yeah. But I don't know if he worked in the hospital because we didn't know anything about doctor too much at that time. | 39:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | When people got sick but not sick enough to go to the doctor, did they have cold remedies and things like that? | 39:48 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | My mama always made up medicine for them. | 39:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did she do that? | 39:57 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And gave them. She would get the hoofs and thing from the hogs and boil them and get her some salve and stuff and mix up and make. My sister would grind. We were grinding sausage one day and I was putting the sausage in the grinder and my sister popped my finger. That finger right there. She popped it right off. I heard, "Pop," and I said, "Girl, you have broke my finger." And my mama got her some two little splint things and put it up there and banded it up. I never did go to the doctor. She didn't take us to the doctor. | 39:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did your mother learn though, how to make those remedies and things? | 40:39 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | She read and believe me, my mama could read. I don't know how they—because I don't think she never got no fun by the 3rd or 4th grade. But that's funny how they could read. They read and she had a medical book. | 40:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. It told you how to do those things? | 41:06 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Because she saved my husband one time. | 41:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, could you talk about that? | 41:08 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | He had been rabbit hunting and when he came back, he cleaned the rabbit. We ate the rabbit. So that day he threw peanuts in the peanut picker all day with the fork. So when he came in that night, his head was bursting over. And I said, "Go to the doctor." So we took him to the doctor, so the doctor gave him some, coming on back from the doctor, he mentioned about this rabbit he cleaned and a little teeny bone had stuck in his finger. She said, "Well boy, why didn't you tell me that when I was at the doctor?" | 41:11 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | See. My mama had a book and honey, she went back to the doctor and the doctor told him that he had the Tularemia. And honey, up under his arm, had come a big plate thing up under there about that big. And it was full of puss. And that's what was killing him. And he went back there and he gave him shots. They took him to the hospital, straight to the hospital right then, when he heard about the bone, because Tularemia is something that kill you within 24 hours. | 41:51 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | He said the only thing that saved him was him throwing those peanuts with that arm all day. And the poison gathered in that bag up under his arm because it was weak. It was weak. And he said that's the only thing saved him. When they went down there and they drew that poison, a great big tooth out of his arm. But he said if he'd have just ordinary walked around, it would've killed him. And my mama knew about that. She knew about that rabbit bone. | 42:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Wow, that's great. | 42:54 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | She sure did. | 42:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | After you had— | 42:54 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And then she saved another man too, that the doctor had given up. | 42:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, could you talk about that? | 43:02 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Lived right over there. They lived up there and I was living with my mama. This was a elderly man, not too old. And the doctor had given up, said he had the double pneumonia, said that he had did all he could do. And she took her medicine, went up there and told this man, said, "Now look, you throw your shame-ness away. Pull your clothes off." So he went and pulled all his clothes off. And she took her medicine and rubbed him all over and wrapped him up. And then honey, he started sweating and he sweated it out. | 43:03 |
Sonya Ramsey | How long did it take? | 43:39 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And the man got okay. The next day the man could sit up. The man was doing fine. Now, that's true. She saved that man. The doctor said he just didn't understand him. Told her she was a smart woman. | 43:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did she help other people? | 43:54 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Yes, they would call for her. She was like a doctor woman. Doctor, doctor. | 43:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask, do you have any remembrances of your grandparents? | 44:02 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well, my grandmother. I remember my grandmother. I don't even remember my grandfather. Because she stayed with us. | 44:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was she like? | 44:12 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | My grandmother stayed with us. She was very slow though. She had this Indian hair because she was Indian, we got some Indian in us. Her hair would come along here and she would plait it right over here. She'd plait it and come on up like that. And she had an Anna Norths. She had these things sticking out like that, I don't know, you ever heard tell of it? But you call Anna North, people have them taken out. | 44:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, I know about that. | 44:38 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Okay. Well hers was stuck out like this and she never could breathe with her mouth closed. She always—she breathed like that. | 44:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you remember any stories that she told you or your brothers and sisters? | 44:52 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Well, she didn't—I don't know, my grandmother was kind of mean in a way, but she was pretty good though. My daddy used to tell all them stories though. My daddy could tell stories, ready, steady. | 44:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of stories would he tell? | 45:14 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And then wouldn't make like they were true. | 45:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 45:20 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I mean, I don't understand it. He told us his sister died and when his sister died, she came back. The two little girls came back to his house one night, so he was laying in the bed. He was laying in the bed and said they came up to the door, they got killed on the railroad track. | 45:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, his two sisters? | 45:38 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | No, his sister and the two little children. | 45:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 45:39 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Which was his little nieces. | 45:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 45:45 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | And said they came up there and said he saw them at the door and said they knocked on the door and called. Now you just imagine. Jeddy, my daddy was named Jeddy, and told him to come there and come to the door and he got up and went to the door and opened the door and they were standing there and said she told him what she wanted him to do and everything. And then they disappeared. I mean, he would tell things like that as if—yes. And it sounded just like it was true. My daddy would do that all the time. And he declared it out. | 45:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did your parents do when they had some time off to themselves? What did they do for fun? I asked you what you and your friends— | 46:26 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | It seemed like than it is now, because we always were doing things, we would help other people too. | 0:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | In what ways? | 0:08 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Some people wasn't as smart as we were, so my mama would always find somebody that we had to go and help do something for. That's the way she was. She was just a giving person. "Go there and help that man get up his sweet potatoes." And we would have to go there and help dig those sweet potatoes and help pick those beans for them. | 0:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did y'all get paid for that or just did it to be nice? | 0:35 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Mostly to be nice. We didn't get paid. If you got 25 cents on Saturday, that was big. That was big. You all fixing to leave? | 0:40 |
Speaker 1 | [indistinct 00:00:53]. | 0:50 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | But I liked a few things that went on back there, so far as check tires and children. | 0:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Can you talk some about what do you mean by that? | 1:05 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | To what people believe in now. When we came in the house, if there were seats, I mean the older ones had to have a seat first, and not the older ones like grownups. If you had company, the company always had to sit and they always had to have their food first. But now, it is exactly opposite. Children come in and take the seat and they don't even ask if you would like to sit. I even have some grandchildren that does that, and their mama don't say a thing. I be standing up, don't have a seat. | 1:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | What do you think about that time that made children behave more and things like that? | 1:49 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Boy, well I know time's are a little fast going now, but I think maybe it's the way children get so much now, and everything is so open to them now. Everything is so open to them, so I know it would make a big difference. But see, we didn't know anything about nothing but maybe a bicycle. One girl got a bicycle and we would ride it almost as long as we could, and Mama would let us up and down that road. And it was dirt road out there, believe me. But she had that bicycle and we loved it, because that's all we had. We didn't have nothing else. And she got a bicycle. And boy, we would try to ride that wheel. | 1:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask you, with your children, what kind of values did you try to teach your children and stuff? | 2:37 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I try to teach them to always try to respect themselves and other people would respect them. That's one thing I learned from my parents. But it's not all the way. In this day right now, because I've had boys and things saying disrespectful things when I wasn't doing a thing but being respectful. I don't know what to say about that little part of it. Because right now, sometimes you don't get the respect that you deserve. They go over top of that. But I say on the average. | 2:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Your children grew up in this area too. How did they- | 3:26 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | It wasn't nothing but children in this area. See, each family had a big family. | 3:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did their school experience differ from your school experience? | 3:36 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Which one? These children now? | 3:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | [indistinct 00:03:44] your children. | 3:43 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Oh my goodness. | 3:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you think it was better or different or worse? | 3:43 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I think it was better. I think it was actually better, because take my children, they didn't know nothing about the stuff like we had eaten herring fish and stuff like that. They didn't have to have that food like that. When I came along, I couldn't give them preserved biscuits, but they didn't have to carry herring to school and stuff like that, and cornbread. But we had sausage. We had gotten to the place that I could buy a little sausage for them and little stuff like that. | 3:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do they still have to bring their lunch to school? | 4:23 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | My children had to bring their lunch. They had to take their lunch every day. | 4:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you think the schools got any better for Black people? | 4:28 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | They got a little better. I do. I think they got better. I'm not going to say nothing, because we were drinking this Carnation milk and this milk like that. That's what we started at school drinking. They gave us that. That's the kind of type of milk we got. But I was glad to get that milk. | 4:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said Carnation. Is that not good milk? | 4:52 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | [indistinct 00:04:55] Milk and Carnation is what we were drinking. They gave that to this from this county system. That's the type of milk they were getting then, we were getting. I remember because I would work in the kitchen. That's when it first started. I remember it first started, I think I was in about the sixth grade when they started that, giving out a little lunch for the children, and we would have a glass of milk. To me, it was good. | 4:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you think the relationship between the races has gotten any better or changed anything? | 5:20 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I would say yes. I know a lot of people I hear down there the other day were saying they thought it was practically the same. But for me and the way I see things, it's much better because I say, for instance, I wouldn't have known a time back there like my daughter right now. She is one of the head working people in Greenville, North Carolina. She has a job. She's the director of finance for the whole city, and she's heading about 20 people. And when you do things like that, it's got to be better movement, which I know sometime is segregated a lot. She tells me a lot of things that go on in her system, but still just look where she's still staying. It's got to be better. Even though I know there are people that that's anxious to do this, but if we stand up, they cannot ever get back where we used to get. They would never do it. | 5:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | I was going to ask you, some people talk about, a lot of people talk about the bad things about segregation. Do you think there were any good things about segregation? | 6:38 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Do I think there's a good thing about segregation? I don't know. To me, I always like my color being around. I felt more, I guess because of the way White people are, but I felt more, I don't know. | 6:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Comfortable? | 7:07 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | I felt more comfortable around my people. Even my daughter right now, she's in a big position. She come home and she'll tell me things that, "Well, I got rid of those people. Now I feel like something." She'd treat them nice and they treat her nice, but then it's a comfortable thing. She'd have had parties at her house, certain little things, and she'd have to invite them. And they come, they come and it's still a difference. They'll come and they'll stay a while. And when you know anything, every one of them be gone, and then they say, "We can turn her loose now, y'all. They all gone." That's the way it is. I think it forever be that way. | 7:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you think Black people were closer during that time to each other than they are now? | 7:53 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Do you think they were closer? | 7:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you think the Black people were more, I'm trying to think of the word, united then than they are now? | 7:58 |
Mildred Hedgepeth Whitaker | Basically, I think they were. But see, it's so many things that's happening now that we got some people that is Black now, but when they get to doing a little job, then they turn White, and I don't like that. | 8:13 |
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