Grace Wyche (primary interviewee) and Thomas Wyche interview recording, 1993 June 05
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| Karen Ferguson | I think I'll start with where you grew up, if you could tell me where you grew up and a little bit about your family? You can go ahead, yeah. | 0:02 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | All right. My mother died when I was a baby. There were three brothers and two sisters. We had a large family. At the age of six, I had an aunt who come down from Philadelphia who had no children—An aunt and uncle. The uncle was my mother's brother, so I went to live in West Philadelphia. I went to the Reeves Memorial Presbyterian Church there. I went to the Charles S. Dunlap public school and elementary school, then I went to Holmes Junior High. In the elementary school there, I had no prejudice. I ran into no prejudice. But when I got to Holmes Junior High, I guess it's a mixture. Children change when they get to junior high. | 0:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 1:16 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | And of course, someone got into trouble and they asked me—They asked everybody in the room, did they see it? Well, what had happened—And of course I said yes, and I said what it was. Well, it seems like the teacher didn't like it and so they said that I was the smart one. I had plenty of White friends. They were in and out of my house in West Philadelphia all the time. I enjoyed living there, but my father came to visit me one time, and he discovered that my aunt by marriage was sort of mean to me. He said he would send for me. So I wrote him a letter and asked him, was he going to send for me? My aunt saw the letter, and she sent me packing in November, with no clothes. | 1:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Hmm. | 2:24 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | I mean, you know November, you need sturdy clothes. So I went back South, came back South to Raleigh, North Carolina, where I was born. She tried to make it very hard for me. She went to—When you were absent in Philadelphia in the morning, they were at your house that afternoon to see why you were not at school. | 2:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 2:56 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | So she told them a whole lot of junk about me. But it just so happened that one of the early social workers in Raleigh lived across the street from us, and she called my daddy and told him everything that had been said about me. She disregarded it, because she had known our family all our lives. So I went to Washington Junior High and High School. I did very well. I won a scholarship to Saint Augustine's College. In the meantime, while I was in high school, my father died. I had no way to go to college except by scholarship. Now my cousin that I lived with, because my stepmother and I did not get along. I was a Northern child. I'd been reared there. Northern children were at that time—I don't know what they are now—Were more outspoken. | 2:57 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | So therefore, she couldn't take me so he led me over to a lady who was an old maid and a school teacher. I lived with her until I married Tom. She was friendly with Leland S. Cozart, who was president of Barber-Scotia College. He gave me a job working in the library, under National Youth Administration, which was started by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He's my favorite president. So I went there for two years, because it was for junior college. Then I went home and went to Shaw University. I worked in the library there, because they had it open from 12:00 to 2:00 for the non-campus students, and I worked there. That paid my tuition. | 4:06 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | In the meantime, my brothers were in the Army and they sent me money every month. But being the child that I was, I saved it for them, put the majority of it in the bank. Things were cheaper then, you know, and I didn't want for so much. Then when I got out of Shaw, it was very hard for me to find a job. One of my friends—Teaching, you know. One of my cousin's friends worked at St. Aug, and she got me a job being an assistant to the librarian. I kept that job until that February after I married Tom, and I came here. I married in—Yeah, '46. In '47, that September, I received a job at Biddleville Elementary School, which is right there—Which was right there where you pass the bridge, but it's been torn down. | 5:07 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | I stayed there, and when the lady hired me she said to me, "Oh, you're going to be my first librarian." I looked at her, because I thought she was wacky, because I didn't see librarians in a public school. In the meantime, I went to Johnson C. Smith, took the library teaching training course, and went to Temple University. And then, I went to Columbia University for five summers and got my master's degree in library science. Therefore, when the first nine librarians were hired in the city of Charlotte, I was one of them. I worked there until they tore the building down and we had integration. In 1968, I was removed from that position and I went to Barringer Elementary School. | 6:29 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | When I was at Barringer Elementary School, I looked at the book collection. They only had two books about Blacks, so I got busy and I added to that collection. I worked there until retirement in 1988, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Some of the Black teachers and some of the White teachers still call me, and they call me Mama Grace. That's how important I was in their lives. I had a daughter when I was 32, and she's the love of our life. She's getting ready—She has one child and is getting ready momentarily to have twins. They are both supposed to be girls, and that is really something for Tom, because he likes girls. | 7:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 8:30 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | It's nice that you all are girls. Do you want me to tell you some of the experiences that I experienced while I—Since I've been married to Tom? | 8:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Sure, if you'd like to. | 8:42 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | All right, well one was when my daughter was three years old, there was a lady up the street who worked at the Dobbs House restaurant. She kept telling us, "Now, Gwennie is having a birthday. You take her to the Dobbs House restaurant, and she will get a cake, and they will play on the organ and sing Happy Birthday to her." So when we went in, we dressed Gwen up beautifully. Another lady went with us, and we told it was Gwen's birthday, and she ignored us. Again, I told her it was Gwen's birthday, and she still ignored us. Then I called Mrs. Latham, and then she called them. And so the lady told us, "Don't call anybody us, because we're not going to serve you." | 8:44 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | So Tom was very upset, so he came home and he called Kelly Alexander, Sr. He called Hawkins, and all together they made write letters to the mayor. Who else, Tom? Oh, the Dobbs House owners and threatened—They were to get some federal money for the airport, and he threatened to help them not get it. And so the mayor called when I had gone to school. The people called from the airport. Everybody was very excited, so they called me at the school. My principal said, "Don't go today. Don't go today." They were apologetic. They did not want her to be marred for life because of segregation and everything. They said, "Come back today. We'll serve you anything you want." | 9:48 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | But something said, "Don't go today." I said, "Well, I have an appointment today but I will be there Sunday," because I knew that Sunday they would have a crowd. They would have a crowd, so we walked in that Sunday dressed fit to kill. Dr. Hawkins went with us, and when we entered they played Happy Birthday, Gwendolyn. They played it all during the time. They brought her a cake. They gave her another one to take home, and I tell you, it was something. But my daughter grew up like her father. When she would see Black water fountains she'd say, "Let me drink out of that anyhow." And then she said, "We ought to stay here at this theater door until they let us in," because the lady who took care of us said that you cannot go in there because you're Black. | 10:52 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | This worried her. Now, another time Tom was in Monroe defending some people. At two o'clock, he still had not gotten home. 2:30, he hadn't gotten home. We have some—Tom had a cousin here that came and got us at 2:30 that morning because they didn't know what had happened to Tom, so I went up and spent the rest of the night with them. Gwen was just a baby then. But Tom worked far into the night with Kelly, and Tom would call Kelly "Mr. NAACP," and my daughter offers—you know, Kelly and them have the funeral home. I still know the number of the funeral home. Gwen says, "Mama, you ought to forget that number," but I called it so much that I still know the number. | 11:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah [indistinct 00:12:57]. | 12:55 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Now, is there anything else? | 12:55 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah, well there are. There are lots of things that I'd like to ask both you and your husband. Maybe I'll start with you, and then we can move on to some of your experiences as well. You talked—Where were you born? | 12:57 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Raleigh, North Carolina. | 13:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | You were in Raleigh, okay. When you— | 13:12 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Mm-hmm, I had two uncles who were lawyers there. | 13:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 13:16 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | One uncle—You know, they were very prejudiced during those days. | 13:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 13:21 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | My uncle was a good-looking, tall, dark man, very handsome. They called him in court at that time a damn Black scarecrow, but they still practice. | 13:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. How about other people that you grew up with, other relatives? Do you remember your grandparents at all? | 13:36 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | No, I don't remember my grandparents. | 13:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Were there any older people that you [indistinct 00:13:49]? | 13:47 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Yes, I had an aunt who I loved very much. You could tell her anything, and she would listen to you. Then later on she would sit you down, and she would tell you what you should have done or what. Then there was one girl that we were all talking about, because she was pregnant. So my aunt listened to everything we had said, and after the gang left she told me, "Listen." I'll always remember this. "There but by the grace of God go I." I always thought about her. Tom loved her very much. She was like a sage. I had another aunt who was a nurse, Ivette, had four children. Her oldest daughter and I are very good friends. She was principal of a school in Raleigh, a magnet school, she and John Murphy, who is here now. I have another cousin there who is a dentist, that I love very much, who influenced my life. | 13:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | What kind of values did these people—? You talked a little bit about what your aunt said to you. What other kinds of values did they— | 15:05 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | To be somebody. | 15:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 15:13 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | To be somebody. | 15:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 15:14 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | That although I had no mother and father, that I could still be somebody, and that's what I was. I was active in the Sunday school and the church, and I read the announcements because I had come from up North. Now I was reading church announcements when I was 12 years old, and I could speak fluently and everything. That is how I met my husband. I used to go to the Sunday school conferences, and he just hung around me. You know, he was eating breakfast then but had never enjoyed breakfast in his life. So he decided that he was going to court this girl from Raleigh. | 15:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, and where was that? Where was the convention? | 15:55 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | That was in Oxford, North Carolina, at Mary Potter School. | 15:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | You talk a lot about the differences between North—When you were in Philadelphia and Raleigh. What was it like when you came back to Raleigh? What was the difference from Philadelphia? | 16:07 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Well, you know you had to—You went to an all-Black school, you know? | 16:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 16:22 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | You had no White teachers. | 16:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 16:24 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Uh-huh, and then one day I was in class and they had an assembly program. They called me to the stage, and I didn't know what in the world they wanted. They wanted to know all about our schools in Philadelphia, about the safety patrol and about the student council and all of these things. Because see, they hadn't started any such program as that. I had to tell them all of that, and I mean, you know I was just overwhelmed by the difference. | 16:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 16:59 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | And there were differences, because in Philadelphia, just like they have writing—No, they had a writing teacher who came by once a week. We had a standard test that we took. A little Jewish girl named Sylvia Bell and I always made the highest, because the highest—It's a standardized test—You could make was 19. I couldn't understand why we didn't have a writing teacher. You know, we had all—And when you were in the sixth grade, a lady came by and showed you how to make this apron and a pot holder. Because when you got to the seventh grade in Philadelphia, you had to take home economics. So we didn't have that in Raleigh. | 16:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, so it was the schools were poorer. They didn't have the same resources as the one— | 17:51 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | No, they didn't, no. But we had good teachers, and believe it or not, we did not have all those children who didn't know how to read, who did not know how to write or to articulate, or math. And even when I first taught at Biddleville School, we did not have any problems with children who did not read and write and do arithmetic, because they were drilled. But of course, I guess it's just a difference in—Our kids now are latchkey children. They are babies having babies. My husband used to take me to school, to Barringer. Maybe they wouldn't give the children any breakfast, and they would—We would see them coming out of the store up there on the corner with a soda pop, and they would be drinking that. (phone ringing) Also, let me see, they have free breakfast and free lunch. | 17:58 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Hello? | 19:08 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Those children who were getting the free breakfast— | 19:08 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | No, no. | 19:11 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Do you know what they would do? | 19:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | What? | 19:14 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | They would waste that food. | 19:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | Hmm. | 19:16 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | They would not want that food. They had waffles. They had bacon sometimes. They had pancakes. They had milk. They had cereal. But it's a wonder I wasn't fired, because when I was on cafeteria duty—Media specialists get to do a whole lot of extra work—I would say, "You go back there and you drink that milk, and you eat that food." I said, "Because children overseas are eating out of the garbage cans. They are eating out of the garbage cans." We have many programs that children could participate in, but they are ignored. I worked every summer in the library, to keep it open at my schools, so that they could read. | 19:17 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | But do you know children nowadays, both races—All races—Are lazy about reading. I had one little rich—Very rich White boy, whose father owns a knitting place here. Do you know what he told me? "Where's that book? I've got to do this. Let me look at it. Ms. Wyche, don't you know this book is too thick? Well, either my mother or father going to take me, and we're going to get a video on it because I'm not going to read it." I said, "Well son, your teacher will know that you have not read it, because videos are not the same as books." | 20:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why do you think that is? What was different back when you were a child that made the students harder working and— | 20:53 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Parents. | 21:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. | 21:05 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Parents, parents. See, these children are latchkey children. | 21:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. Do you remember any teachers of your own who were particularly important to you as role models? | 21:11 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Oh yes, I remember one who—I'm a Delta. I remember one whose sister was a founder of Delta Sigma Theta, Jimmie Middleton Bugg. She was one of the founders, and Miss Margaret Bugg was home—She lives in Raleigh. She was as ugly as homemade sin, but she was smart. She could teach Latin, English or anything. She was just brilliant, and I wanted to be everything that she was. I grew up wanting to be. I joined Delta. I joined the college women's club and all those things that she was. I joined all of them when I got out of college, mm-hmm. | 21:20 |
| Kara Miles | When did you join Delta? | 22:20 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | I joined Delta my last year at Shaw, because you had to be there a semester or something before you could join. | 22:22 |
| Kara Miles | Okay, so you joined that particular organization because you admired— | 22:32 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Miss Bugg. She was an old maid, by the way. But I joined that because she was a Delta, and I just worshiped her. | 22:37 |
| Kara Miles | What kind of things did Deltas do? What did you do as a Delta? | 22:49 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | They had parties and things, mostly. That's all they did in college. But when I got out and joined the graduate chapter, we put a bookmobile at the big hospital here, and furnished it with magazines and books. I was the chairman of that, and we gave to many organizations that were needy, mm-hmm. | 22:57 |
| Kara Miles | Did the different sororities have different reputations or different images? Did different types of women join Delta as opposed to AKA? | 23:24 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Yeah. Well yes, but that didn't bother me because most of my best friends were AKA. My very best friends, even right now in Charlotte, most of my best friends are Delta—But I mean, are AKA, but that didn't bother me. I don't know what you are, but you're not—Well anyway, they seemed a little bit snooty at Charlotte. They were a little more snooty than we were. But as I said, I grew up wanting to be a Delta, and that was why I became one, because of the influence of Miss Bugg. I was in the debating club at high school and just different things because of her. | 23:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | You talked a little bit about the National Youth Administration and Roosevelt. Why did you like Roosevelt so much? | 24:42 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Because that was the reason I could go to school. He made it—Made it. I got a check every month from the NYA, and I signed it, and I gave it to the secretary at Scotia. That was how I was able to go to school. I mean, you know you would just love somebody who was doing that. I worked more than anybody there, because I didn't know—I think the first year that I was there, the whole year was $193 a year to go to school. I only had to pay $58 of that out of my pocket. I earned $135. I worked every night in that library at Scotia. To my advantage, because if any books were on reserve and the kids did not come down to get them, I could get them. | 24:49 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Also, I had to clean up the librarians' room twice a week. It irritated me because—And I told my cousin this when I went back from the first Christmas, the first holiday. She would come after I would finish. She would give me an hour's work for each time, see? And she would do like this, and she'd go over every piece, and it was white furniture, and do like that. Do you know, that would irritate me most much? My aunt was living then, and you know what she told me? "Just say, Grace, to yourself, 'And this too shall pass.'" And that's the attitude I had. Now she left there, and the next year I had a younger person, Verdelle Vanderhorst, who was from Florida. She was busy getting married and doing that, so all that didn't bother her, the white furniture. | 25:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | You mentioned that you met your husband at a—What did you say it was? It was a— | 26:58 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Conference; Presbyterian conference. | 27:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, yeah. How long did you court each other before you got married? | 27:05 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | A year—A year. He worried me to death, so I had to marry him. He had just started practicing law in '45. So he had passed the bar, and he decided that he would come down there as an outlet, you know. | 27:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Can you—oh, go ahead. | 27:29 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | But I was a representative from my church, but I think he came on his own. | 27:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. How did you all court? What kind of things did you do? | 27:40 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Well, he would come to Raleigh. We would go out. He had some friends that he had known for a long time. We'd go to the movies and all like that. The next year, I came here to the conference and then that was the year he asked me to marry him. | 27:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember your wedding very—? Did you have a big wedding? | 28:04 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | No, we married in the church though, to get the church's blessings. | 28:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, mm-hmm. What other things did you do for fun when you were a young person? You said the movies. Were there other things that you remember doing? | 28:12 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | I belonged to the Girl Scouts. We went on hikes, and we went to—Oh, where's that Scout place down there near Raleigh? | 28:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, the— | 28:31 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Whispering Pines. | 28:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 28:33 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | We went to Whispering Pines, and we went on hikes. We would go over to Chavis Park, and there's a Hargett Street in Raleigh. Every Sunday on Hargett Street there would be lots of girls and boys. But I was not allowed to go on through Hargett Street on Sunday, because nice girls did not do that. All right, nice girls—When we had the phone put in, which was a long time before we had a phone—We did not call up boys, because nice girls do not call up boys. | 28:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right, huh. | 29:12 |
| Kara Miles | Were there other places? You said you weren't allowed on Hargett Street on Sunday. Were there other places you weren't allowed to go? | 29:15 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | No, mm-mmm. | 29:22 |
| Kara Miles | Just a couple questions— | 29:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, go ahead. | 29:29 |
| Kara Miles | When you were—I want to take you back to Philly a little bit. When you were in West Philly, you had both Black and White teachers, or—? | 29:30 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Mm-mmm, no. We had all White teachers. I never had a Black teacher until I came South. | 29:40 |
| Kara Miles | Okay, but there were Black and White students there? | 29:46 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Oh, yeah. They were lovely. | 29:50 |
| Kara Miles | How many? What percentage would you say of Black students as opposed to White were there? | 29:51 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | I don't know, because we lived in a mixed neighborhood so we had plenty of each. | 29:58 |
| Kara Miles | Okay, so you used to go to the White kids' houses, and they used to come to yours? | 30:04 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Yeah, mm-hmm. | 30:11 |
| Kara Miles | This is in either Philly or in Raleigh, did any of your teachers ever play favorites? Were there people who would be their pets? | 30:12 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Yes, because take the boys for example, more so with the boys. The boys could get the teachers' cars and things like that, and they could get passes for the games from the teachers, mm-hmm. | 30:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why don't we talk a little bit about church, your church now? You said you belonged to the Presbyterian church? | 30:43 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Yes. | 30:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Have you always? | 30:50 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | I've always been a Presbyterian. My grandfather founded the one in Raleigh. | 30:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, I see. Oh, let me see here. | 30:57 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | And you want to know the history of me at this church? | 31:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | Sure, sure. | 31:07 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | I've been a teacher. I've been assistant superintendent. I've been superintendent. I ran the Bible school, vacation Bible school one year, and that was the first year that they let them exchange classes. I had it like a regular school, where you would exchange classes. One group would be playing at a time, one group would be doing crafts, one group would be doing Bible study. To me, that was one of the best we ever had. But then I told you I've been superintendent, assistant superintendent. I've been a deacon at the church, and now I'm an older. The elder is the highest office, the ruling body of the church. I'm head of the librarian archives committee. | 31:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Hmm. What role did your church, or both you and the congregation and the minister play in community affairs here in Charlotte? | 32:02 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Well, we don't do as much as we should. We give—We're part of the downtown project. We give to Crisis Assistance Ministries and things like that. | 32:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was your church—How involved was your church in the kind of civil rights activities that you were talking about, like the desegregation of the restaurant? | 32:34 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Well, our minister was arrested—Reverend Raymond Worsley, Dr. Worsley—Was arrested in Washington, D.C., with the movement. He and my husband would go places together. He and my husband had the first cup of coffee together at Charlotte Medical. It was Memorial then, Charlotte Memorial Hospital, but they had their first cup of coffee there. | 32:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | And was this in the 1950s, or in the—? | 33:20 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | When we were trying to desegregate places. | 33:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. | 33:27 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Lunch counters and things like that. | 33:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember what—Did you have any contact? Did your church have any contact with White Presbyterians, or the White Presbyterian church at all? | 33:33 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Our church was founded out of the balcony of the First Presbyterian Church, and that was the outgrowth of many of the churches, Presbyterian here. We're really a Presbyterian center. We've got lots of Presbyterian churches. | 33:44 |
| Kara Miles | But after you broke away from that church, were there ever any times that the White Presbyterian and Black Presbyterian—Were there conferences maybe that both attended, that White and Black Presbyterians attended? | 34:05 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Yeah, we attend them now. I don't— | 34:21 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | [indistinct 00:34:25] Presbytery integrated, but the governing body of the Presbyterian church in the local parish integrated. | 34:24 |
| Kara Miles | Okay, now. | 34:30 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Now. | 34:30 |
| Kara Miles | When did they integrate? | 34:34 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | About five or six years ago. | 34:36 |
| Kara Miles | Oh, okay. | 34:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | I was going to ask you a little bit about your own—When integration came about with the schools. You said you lost your job at—Where you were. | 34:44 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | No, I didn't lose it. My school was torn down. | 34:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. Yeah, sorry. | 34:59 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | And I had—We had to go different places. Most of the people flocked to Black principals, but I did not flock to a Black principal. Seth Scott called me and told me he had a vacancy, and he had heard about me, and would I come and talk to him? So I talked to him. He was a free, easy-going person. He told me that if I wanted it, I had it, that same day. | 34:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. What was the biggest difference for you to move from Biddleville to an integrated school, or were there differences? | 35:34 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Well, there were differences because there were some things that I didn't like when I got there. One example; if a teacher had a behavior problem with a child, the child sat in the hallway. You see my point? They sat in the hallway for a few hours. | 35:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, and how was that different? How was that different? How would they discipline— | 36:09 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Because [indistinct 00:36:17] told us, "Don't bring me your discipline problems. You are teachers. You settle them yourselves." And one day I made the statement, "I'm glad that my Gwendolyn does not come to this school." The principal was standing in the hall. He said, "Why, Grace?" I said, "Because I would have one time to come here and catch her in the hallway." He didn't say anything. But about two weeks later, that stopped. But I did have one thing that really upset me. It didn't upset me as it upset the White teacher. | 36:17 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | We were talking and she said to me, "I don't know what I'm going to do with John." I said, "What do you mean, what you can't do with John?" "Oh, he just can't read." I said, "He can't?" "He's Black, you know." I said, "Well, what difference does that make? I'm sure that you have some White children who can't read." I said, "You get in there, and you teach them—Him on his level, the same way you're teaching those White children." | 36:58 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | She got bloody red and ran, but I meant that because you are supposed to teach. Having taught two years, I can tell them a lot. You're supposed to get on that level and teach. Get on their levels and teach. Now my first year out, I tutored two children. The little girl was failing in math and failing in social studies and English. Do you know that she was getting Fs and Ds and through my work, that girl got an A by the end of the year. But that was one on one, and that was what she needed at that time. But if you get there, get down—And I have [indistinct 00:38:33]. And if you get down there and you teach those children on their level, there's hope. I'll never believe that there is not hope. | 37:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm. Maybe we could go back a little bit to your growing up. I wanted to ask you a little bit about sort of the day-to-day experience of segregation. For example, when you traveled from Philadelphia back to North Carolina, or North Carolina to Philadelphia, how did you travel? Did you have to go on a Jim Crow car, or—? | 38:42 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Yeah, you had to be on a Jim Crow car. During that time, they called them the chicken bone specials because Black people couldn't eat. You know, they had that curtain up there and you could not eat. They called some of those trains the Chicken Bone Special and people would—You know, you'd be riding from Raleigh to Philadelphia or New York. What else would you have to do? You'd have to take something that would not spoil easily. That's the way you did. They had the Black waiting room and the White waiting room, so that's the way it was. | 39:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | How did— | 39:55 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | And that was just the way of being. | 39:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | How did your family, especially maybe when you came back from Philadelphia, how did your family—Or, well maybe you already knew. But how did your family—Did they have to tell you how to behave when you got down South, towards White people, or you knew how to? | 40:00 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | I knew how to adjust, yeah. See, because I went to a Black church. | 40:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Do you ever remember feeling like you were being treated like a second-class citizen? | 40:20 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Sure, we got that daily. Mm-hmm, we got that daily. Because if you'd go in the store, you'd see people stop to watch you, you know? | 40:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm, yeah. | 40:43 |
| Kara Miles | Is this in Philly or here that you're talking about? | 40:44 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | I'm talking about here. | 40:48 |
| Kara Miles | Okay. Were there ever times in Philly that you felt that you were treated— | 40:50 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Mm-mmm, mm-mmm. | 40:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | There was one thing too that I should have maybe asked you at the beginning. What did your father do for a living? What— | 41:06 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | My mother was a housewife, when she lived. My father worked at the state capitol as one of the head gardeners for a long, long time. I had a brother who took over his job at the age of 15, because my stepmother needed money. He worked there for 45 years, my brother, in my father's place. | 41:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. When you were born in Raleigh, did your parents own their own home, or— | 41:39 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | No, they never owned a home. | 41:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you—What- | 41:49 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Their brothers and sisters owned a Manhattan rental property. My daddy never owned a home, but all of my brothers and sisters [indistinct 00:42:03]. | 41:50 |
| Karen Ferguson | Wow. The neighborhood that you grew up in Raleigh before you went to Philadelphia, can you talk a little bit about that, too? | 42:03 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | It was a nice neighborhood. It was like an extended family, because all my cousins and people lived around us; very nice neighborhood. | 42:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Did you have—Let me see. | 42:21 |
| Kara Miles | What was your house like? Can you describe the house you lived in here before you went to Philly? | 42:40 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Oh, yeah. It was a five-room house with one bath. | 42:47 |
| Kara Miles | And how many people lived in it? | 42:51 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Oh, my goodness. One, two, three, four, five; five people. Had a wood stove with a warmer, and that was fun because sweet potatoes would be going all the time. | 42:53 |
| Kara Miles | And what about your house in Philly? What was that like? | 43:11 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Two-story; mm-hmm, two stories. | 43:14 |
| Kara Miles | So that was a big house? | 43:18 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Oh, yes; basement, living room, dining room, kitchen, and a bedroom, and then there were two bedrooms and a bath upstairs, a real nice house. | 43:19 |
| Kara Miles | Did all your brothers and sisters live there with you? | 43:33 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | No, I was the only one who went. | 43:35 |
| Kara Miles | Okay, where did the rest of them go? | 43:37 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Different places. | 43:39 |
| Kara Miles | Different family members, or— | 43:40 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Mm-hmm, and then my two sisters finally went to New Jersey to live with a cousin. My brothers were here with my dad. | 43:42 |
| Kara Miles | What did your—You said you lived with your aunt and uncle? | 43:57 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Mm-hmm. | 44:00 |
| Kara Miles | What did they do for a living? | 44:01 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | My uncle worked for the postal service, so he had a good job. | 44:03 |
| Kara Miles | And your aunt stayed at home? | 44:10 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Mm-hmm. | 44:12 |
| Kara Miles | Did they have any children of their own? | 44:14 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | No, never. | 44:16 |
| Kara Miles | And then when you came back here, what was your house like? | 44:19 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Five rooms and a bath, because I moved with my cousin—Big front porch. | 44:24 |
| Kara Miles | Who else lived there with you, your cousin? Just you and your cousin? | 44:34 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Every now and then her mother, and sometimes her nieces would come to stay from New York. | 44:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember, could you tell—Do you remember some family celebrations, Christmas or- | 44:48 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Oh, Christmas and your birthday was a big thing. Everybody had a birthday cake, and Christmas. You gave each other something if it didn't cost but five cents. Well and Thanksgiving, you had everything to eat. We were poor, but we didn't know it. Because when I first started working, we made $96 a month. | 44:55 |
| Kara Miles | So were those times when family would come home from the North? | 45:21 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Yeah, but we ate and had a good time. In fact, we always had good food. My cousin Dorothy always—We'd have leg of lamb Sunday, then maybe lamb too Monday. And then my aunt would make a pie. She'd have carrots in it, and potatoes. They knew how to stretch food. We were poor, but we didn't know it. We were happy. | 45:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you remember, did the Depression have a—Did the Great Depression have an impact on your family, on their— | 46:00 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | No, I was living in Philadelphia then. I remember, there was a Jewish man who lost everything he had. I remember the police coming, and he hung himself in his basement. The police came, and the ambulance. They took him all away. That's the main thing I remember about it. I mean, that struck me more than anything. | 46:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you have any heroes when you were growing up? Either people in your neighborhood, or famous people that—You know, celebrities or somebody like Joe Lewis or someone? | 46:39 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Well, see I met Joe Lewis and I met a lot of people, because my cousin promoted productions. | 46:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh. | 47:03 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Uh-huh, so I got to meet a whole lot of stars. | 47:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, yeah? Like who else? | 47:05 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Joe Louis and any singers that came along during that time. | 47:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Where did they perform when they— | 47:11 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Raleigh Memorial Auditorium. | 47:14 |
| Kara Miles | So did you used to go to all the concerts? | 47:18 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Mm-hmm, and the people would be out of their house [indistinct 00:47:24]. I thought I was somebody. | 47:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah, can we talk to you, Mr. Wyche, a little bit? | 47:33 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. | 47:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | I'll start the same way, and I'll ask you where you grew up and— | 47:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 0:01 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I went to public school, none of which are in existence now. They tore them all down. I went to Johnson C. Smith down here, with my bachelor of art degree. After that, I went to Howard University for a law degree. That's in DC. My mother was a musician and she taught in public schools; father was a minister at a Presbyterian church in downtown. I was born in the church, but he had been there years before I was born. He was a fixture in the church. I went, of course, to that church. And he was Chairman of the Board, Johnson C. Smith and the Bible School co-chair, so I had it pretty good when he was chairman of both boards. | 0:02 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | My mother eventually retired. I heard in the school she fell, broke her hip. She retired because of that and eventually I married and just I stayed with—And they didn't moved out of that house. We had a big house over there. The community, at first, it was a—My father owned a few houses downtown. And surrounded by Whites, poor Whites at that. Most of them, not all of them. But the Blacks , they were service people, in the service, most of them. One or two of them were in the undertaking business, working as undertakers. One of my neighbors was a minister, Presbyterian minister. One of my neighbors who lived in one of the houses was a registered nurse. Practically everybody else was service types. | 1:01 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Fellows, all of them were my buddies. I think my best friend I ever had was [indistinct 00:02:43]. In fact, most of them didn't go to school, our school at least. And several of them finished high school. Didn't get to go to college, but they did finish high school. And we would run around together. We had good times and were buddies. When I went off to school, my mother was ill at the time and my buddies took care of my mother all that time, and I appreciated it of course. | 2:27 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Let's see, they looked after her in those periods. Mentioned the Depression, I remember that pretty well. I had gone to school, had to go through town to get to my school. Coming to school, everybody was standing around in front of the bank just wailing and crying and jumping off buildings and everything. And then when the banks went closed; they told us it's inflation because of the banks. And I said, "Well, I guess my daddy won't get hurt real bad." But—Want me to turn my [indistinct 00:03:56] off? | 3:07 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Yeah, I can't hear. | 3:49 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Okay, but I discovered that he didn't have but $50 in the bank so it was no worries. My uncle had quite a bit. I had an uncle who was a teacher at Smith at the same time. He was a professor of sociology and a musician too. Organist up there. Now, he lost quite a bit, but he must've saved something somewhere because he always had a Cadillac car, which I remember very well. Always dressed immaculately, expensive clothes. Went to Europe, everywhere. You name it, he went. And he played in the—Every summer he'd go to New York and play at the Riverside Church organ, and he'd played some organ in London, but I never got to see none of that. All I got was a ride to New York with him in his car. | 3:59 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | He would show me around the operas. I got a pretty good taste of stuff; the operas and all that kind of stuff. Philharmonics, symphony. I got real hip in that stuff then. Not now. But he had an impression on me for the finer things in life, that I learned to respect. Regarded as heroes—We didn't have such a thing as heroes in those days. Had people you liked, nobody particularly wanted to imitate, but a teacher. A couple of college professors who I thought were real great, had PhDs, degrees, and went to big schools. Yale, Harvard, all over the place. Spoke very good English. Were good, nice guys. Good teachers. They could teach what I liked, except one. | 5:03 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I had planned to be a doctor, wanted to be a doctor, but the first day in his class he shut me down right quickly. Told me that, "Look up there, see that frog? Cut it open." No, no. I'll go to law school. I really wanted to be a teacher, college professor, but I changed my mind after I had some experiences with the law. Changed my mind, I wanted to be a lawyer. | 6:01 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | My first real experience—Well, I had a lot of little experiences with being segregated downtown and can't drink the water out the fountain and all that. Usual stuff. I was on my way to law; that's the second incident. First incident, my mother had bought a car and it didn't do good and we called the people to bring the car back and let them work on it. I drove it back to this garage, this automobile dealership and the man told me, "Drive on in the building." As soon as I got in the building, he let the gate down. And I couldn't understand that, so all the helpers was standing around the car, looking real menacingly. And one of them had a tire thing, rim, a tire thing and he was drawing it back at me. | 6:34 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I thought there, "I ain't got anything to steal." I put that thing in reverse and backed out of there, but wheeled that car up in to something. I couldn't move no further. So they were standing around, menacing me and my mother started screaming. Anyway, they sent the police for some reason. I had broken the door down, but I saw the policeman and I got out the car. When I got out the car, they slapped me. Slapped me down. | 7:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | This is the police? | 8:05 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah, my mother was screaming her head off. They took me on downtown. Somebody got my mother and took her home. In the meantime, my mother called my uncle [indistinct 00:08:21], "Something had happened. They got him in jail." And he investigated right quick, found out what happened. Called some of his White friends, lawyer. An hour or two later, the lawyer called down there and they let me out like that. How? Let me out of jail. | 8:06 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | So, I didn't know what legal ramifications happened after that, but this lawyer, I didn't even talk to him. I ain't never talk to him, but he talking about they threatened—I had filed a lawsuit against them. All I know, they gave me a check for $500. That's big money in those days. I knew I'd been hit, but I ain't know how he got it. Direct mail, certified, or what. Anyway, I had $500 and that was my first run in with the police. | 8:38 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Well, actually had a trial. It was a little trial. They'd arrested me, destruction of property or something. And there's a flamboyant lawyer, he was an outstanding lawyer, going through theatrics. And my witnesses were people I'd never seen before. Mr. Belk from the Belk store; I didn't know him from Adam. Mr. Ivy from Ivy's Department Store, some big minister from around town. I didn't know not one of them. They were telling them I'm a family and all that stuff, to the judge, and the judge found me not guilty. And then they told me I got the $500. | 9:21 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | But I'm sitting there, if I can get these kind of people, or they can get these kind of people for me, who can get these kind of people for other people like me? My friends. Who would do that for them? Nobody. I said, "Well, only one solution." I'm not going to be a doctor, don't want to be a teacher. I'll be a lawyer. I see what lawyers do in the courtroom. | 10:05 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | My next experience with the law wasn't an arrest. I went away in law school. We lived two blocks up from the train station and I was sitting there. A midnight train came, going back to Washington. And I was walking up there with my luggage and the cops stopped me, wanted to know what I got in my luggage. I told them, "My clothes. I'm going back to school." Laid it down on the street and opened my luggage and inspect it. So, didn't bother me any more. I walked on to the bus, the train station. [indistinct 00:11:13] in my head. So that's the second incident directly with the policemen, but I had seen a lot of mistreatment around policemen among people. | 10:35 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Then I determined I had to do something. We had a thing called 2nd Street, so two block area of Black businesses. Restaurants and all that stuff. And I had to come through there, coming from school. And I would see the policemen come down that street and the Black folks would just run. What are they running for? One day, I saw them stop a man and beat him down. For what? I don't know. And ain't nobody stopped them, but couldn't stop them. Man, they would shoot you. They would do anything. | 11:30 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | But I got angry with the police. Still somewhat angry. Then my next experience was on my way back—No, I was on my way to New York for a conference, NAACP. Bringing Kelly Alexander with me. And we got on the train here and I said, "Kelly, I am not feeling the Jim Crow car today. I'm going to sit back there." Said, "But they'll arrest us." | 12:07 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | "I don't care." We went on back there and sat down. After a while, the people, "You guys can't sit back there. Get back up front." I said, "No." And, "We get to Greensboro, I'm going to have the police take you off." | 12:38 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | "Okay with me." Got to Greensboro, no policemen showed up. Got to the next town; no police. So then the guy came back there, the conductor. Said, "How many these White people here don't want these Black folks sitting in here, raise your hand." Nobody raised their hand. "You mind them sitting back here with y'all?" Nobody said nothing. So we done kept our seat and when he got out of there, them folks, "We wasn't going to let him put you out." White people, "We don't care if Blacks sit here. We were not going to let them put you out. Just stay in here. Nobody going to bother you." So we went on, got to Washington, got off and get the Freedom Train. That's the train that rides from Washington to New York, anywhere you want. Sit where you want to then. Free. Got to DC, got it made. So we went on, that went by. | 12:57 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Had one more time, I was coming south during the war. This happened in North Carolina. The conductor did the same thing again and I did the same thing again. By myself this time. I wasn't going in the Jim Crow car. Just happened that some soldiers was in there, Black soldiers, who had their guns with them. And they said, "Ain't nobody coming in here and do nothing." Pull their guns up, thought, "Ooh, what have I started?" And it went through, ain't nobody bothered, but they were ready. Had their guns out, White and Black soldiers. I don't know if they would shoot each other or shoot who. | 14:10 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Anyway, got on back home. Told the guys goodbye and they told me safely home. And that was the last trip. That other trip I had back to DC was a trip I went, but most the time I drove. And it was hard driving into DC. Wasn't never sure where you were able to stop and get gas. You know where you couldn't eat. Had a station where you get it through the window. I wasn't getting it through the window like in Richmond. | 15:01 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | So, I get to DC. I was home then in Washington. I could eat wherever I want. Go on back to the campus, do what I want to do. But I had to do that for a couple of years and finally I made it. Finished school. Went back to North Carolina, take the bar. Took the bar too soon the first time. That time I took it, got out in June and took the bar in July. I didn't know nothing about North Carolina law. Back then, required to study the bar North Carolina law, I didn't know that. They didn't teach North Carolina. They teach general law in law school, not where you're going. But general law. And if you didn't have a proprietary course, head wasn't here, but I didn't know it. The White students, White graduates, could go and get that rip course. But I didn't know a thing about it. | 15:41 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | The next year, I was still in [indistinct 00:16:41] but I passed anyway. Then came back to Charlotte, opened up a practice. Opened up by myself and had some other lawyers, two other older lawyers here. And I had my first case. Somebody came in, gave me a case. And they'd buy [indistinct 00:17:10]. Go in the courtroom, can't sit up to the table til they call the case. We have to sit behind this thing, where the crowd sits, til they call your case. Then you come up to the table and bench. Well, I will not. I'm going to sit at that table like any other lawyer. I went up there and sat at that table and them folks fitting to die. All the Black people thought I committed a sin. I said, "I am not." Nobody asked me to move, but I said, "I am not moving." | 16:38 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | The next embarrassing experience with the law, I had a case at the Supreme Court I wanted to see in Washington. I wrote, they sent me a form I had to fill out. It had to be signed by the president of your local bar association. I was at the local bar, I know them people. I went down there to this lawyer's office, the president. He said, "I'm sorry, I can't sign it." | 17:51 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | "Why can't you sign this thing here? President of the bar." He said, "Our rules say that it's only for the White lawyers." Ooh, I got so mad. I wrote back to the North Carolina Supreme Court and told the judge, chief judge, what had happened. And he wrote back and told the local bar, "Remove that clause from your constitution, whatever, and don't you ever deny another Black in this bar." Then I didn't want to go to Washington. I didn't go. Not that way. I could've gotten it then, but I had opened the door for the rest of the Black lawyers. That was all I wanted. I wasn't going to Washington. I wasn't particular to try a case before the Supreme Court anyway. | 18:30 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | But then I got some cases. I was with NAACP, which I know they kept me busy because something was always happening. I was defending one humorous case. Black fellow was walking down the street and a White woman was walking on the other side of the street. And she looked back and saw him and she thought he wanted her. And he dipped, walking fast because he was going downhill, and she suddenly called the police that he was attacking her. So, we set a trial and I was the lawyer. You see then, had some courts on Saturday. Well, on Saturday I dressed informal, wear anything. I didn't, polo shirts everywhere else. During the week, you wear a shirt and tie. | 19:25 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | So, he came dressed up, little suit and Black tie. He looked like the lawyer. Got the woman on the stand and asked her to point out the man who chased her. Pointed to me. Pointed to me. I just sat there for a few minutes. The judge said, "You know who that man is?" | 20:31 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | "He's the one." The judge went, "Esteemed members of the bar, you're wrong." Then said, "Going to have some fun then." Brought me up to the stand, explained who I was. And I was a member of the bar. And that's all I had to say, I was a member of the bar. And the judge said not guilty and cussed the lady out. Man was set free, but just because he had dressed like a lawyer and I wasn't, he was guilty. Messed up. | 20:59 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Then I got into the serious matter of courts, cases. I was the attorney NAACP, leading the [indistinct 00:21:57] area from Greensboro to Shelby, over to Statesville. Didn't go into South Carolina. You know, to Shelby, and I had to represent any situation that the NAACP would take. The case. I had to go there, day and night. The one that hurt me the most, I guess, was the sit ins that went on in Statesville, North Carolina. Where they had arrested 100 Blacks, kids mostly. Arrested them for trespass. | 21:41 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | The judge, I got there at the time, to the court that morning and started the cases. Right around 1:00, 2:00, wrote down to let me go eat dinner, lunch. I had a place for me there, to eat lunch in the whole Statesville. For one, I didn't know where I was. All I could do is get a soda cracker and a Coca Cola. Court started back at 2:00. Already tried about 25 cases. The judge had said, "Guilty, guilty, guilty." And I got desperate because I knew the rest of them were going to be guilty except one man. He was a minister, "I did all this stuff." Reverend Lee, never forget him. Now, everybody else guilty but him and he did the same thing the rest of them had done and they found him not guilty. You know, if he'd have found him guilty, might've been a riot down there. Let him go. | 22:41 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | So I tried the rest of the cases til about 1:00 in the morning. Court opened again at 9:00 in the morning; I couldn't make it. Drive back from Statesville at night, at 1:00 in the morning, all by myself. I got back to Shelby, I was whipped. So I called Floyd McKissick in Durham. He was the co-counselor of that area, and he had to come down here and finish up the rest of the 50 cases. So we had a business. | 23:50 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | So, he went on down there and tried the rest of them, all of them guilty too. Meantime, we had put a notice of appeal on all of them. 100 cases on appeal, and we were not going to consolidate them. That meant a whole lot of work for a whole lot of people. They had three lawyers on their side; a man named Howard Johnson, the county attorney and somebody else, and some other out there. And I'm given them those appeals. One of the lawyers was from Charlotte, and we got along all right, but he was still up there. | 24:24 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | So, meantime, [indistinct 00:25:15] had received something from a friend of his in West Virginia. A letter or statement or something, that in the West Virginia Turnpike, Howard Johnson had always left the doors open for Blacks and they never lost a cent. So I called this lawyer up, "Here I'm going to bring you something to read." So I let him read it. He said, "I declare, that's not right. Listen, I tell you what I'm going to do. Consider withdrawing your appeals on it, and we'll talk about opening the place up." I said, "Let's open the place up, then we'll talk about it." | 25:09 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | So, he called me and said, "You take a friend to any Howard Johnson in town. You go with anybody you want, as many as you want. Nothing going to happen, they'll serve you right." I call this little buddy of mine, said, "Let's go over here in the Howard Johnson's and we'll have lunch." | 26:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | This is here in Charlotte, is it? | 26:20 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. [indistinct 00:26:21] there ain't no Howard Johnson in the state. So I went over there and boy, they'd take me coffee every time my cup got down a little bit. Somebody poured me more coffee. No, and then we had a good time. Breakfast, lunch, whatever it was. Then afternoon paper came out that Howard Johnson had withdrawn all their objections to Blacks at places all over here. That guy, he knew I had the work cut out, but he had to try 100 cases at the Supreme Court. No way. | 26:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | What year? Around what year was this? | 27:03 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | That was '60, what? In the middle '60s. Whenever they had the sit downs. | 27:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, okay. Mm-hmm. | 27:10 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | They had sit downs too here, I reckon. One time here. I had one case, like I said, I had one sit down. A bus came through here from somewhere with a bunch of people from the other group—Not NAACP. | 27:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | SNCC? | 27:35 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Whatever Farmer was head of. | 27:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, CORE. Yeah. | 27:39 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | They got to the bus station and let them out, then they went and ate. One fellow in there wanted a shoe shine. He went in the barber shop where the shoe shop was at, and they wouldn't let the man shine his shoes. So he just stayed in there. So they finally arrested him for trespassing, all that stuff. They put him in jail. I went down there to see him, and then they offered to let him out on bond. Said no. "How about a $10 bond?" I said, "No." | 27:40 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | "How about they let him out period?" | 28:15 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | "No, we going to trial." So, stayed in there two nights while they were trying to get him out of jail. They offered everything but the sun to let him go. And I ain't never seen a man with such stern eyes in my life. He was just determined. I didn't try to convince him out of there. Then we went to court. It was fortunate that day, the newspapers had stories, a story. The Supreme Court had ruled that segregation was unconstitutional. The judge hadn't read it, so I went to court and I handed him the paper. He couldn't believe it. He had to send another lawyer out to call somebody, to see if it was true. | 28:18 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | They came back in and let the guy go. Made a speech about what the Supreme Court had ruled and didn't say no more. Let them all out. Well, then they went through horrible experiences. Those were years of savings. | 29:09 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I was representing a fellow up in Shelby, another guy and I was representing a fellow up in Shelby. Killed and raped a White woman. We had been at the preliminary hearing. Then they set the case the very next day and for a trial. Meantime, I had a case in federal court. I couldn't get up there and meet like Thursday morning until he called me up and said if we didn't get up there by a certain time that afternoon, he's going to throw us both in jail. | 29:28 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Anyways, we got back up there and judge was very hostile, mean. And tried the case, the woman had been going with this Black guy and the day of the so-called rape, she had been with the boyfriend and some of them paired. And the Black witness, Black and White. But the jury wouldn't take it. Jury found him guilty and Blacks was all excited, in an uproar. The Whites were threatening. And while we were trying the case, the jury came back. Sheriff went in and told the judge—Well, no maybe it was after the jury. After the decision. Told the judge they better send the highway patrolman back to Charlotte with us because there's guys in the mountains down here, surrounding the courthouse. Thought, "Oh my God. We're going to get killed." | 30:04 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Anyway, he had police protection heading to our cars. So we decided we wasn't going to come back straight to Charlotte. They might get on the highway and overtake us. We went down in the Black area of town until the day died and then went out real late at night to go back to Charlotte. But we were threatened in court, outdoors of the court. Judge didn't do a thing about it. | 31:06 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Now, when was this? | 31:31 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | In the same time. In the 60s. | 31:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | In the 60s? Yeah. Were there other experiences that you had earlier on where you were threatened in that way? | 31:36 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. Had a rape case down in Hambley. It was a peculiar case. Black man accused of raping this White girl, but she wasn't White . We took her to be an Indian, wasn't too sure. Anyway, we tried this case. Threatened all through the case that she was a minor, they'd say. They never prove it, but they say that she was underage. And they had a brown baby. That's what brought the case to the attention of everybody. The baby was born, it was brown. Well, now come to find a brown man that'd been searching for this girl because he was the daddy. | 31:42 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | They found him guilty, but I had read the point. Read the constitutional point, the constitution says, under the law of the constitution of North Carolina, if they were married, there would be no case of rape. But they two had agreed to marry, wouldn't have mattered or not. And I brought it to the court that it says, reading the constitution, if he'd have been White and she'd have married him, okay, if he Black, the law says Black couldn't marry a White. So, it got the jury all excited and everything, but found him guilty anyway. | 32:26 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | But disturbed the people so that they put that man and that girl on the train that night, sent them to New York. We went down there the next morning to see about our client and our case. They phoned, two of them had gone to New York. Sheriff put them on the train. | 33:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Mm-hmm, yeah. Were people, do you remember there being lynchings? | 33:18 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Not an actual lynching while I was there. | 33:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. How about, did people know that you were the NAACP legal counsel? | 33:27 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah, they had one case down in east—Was a terrible place in town. Rumor got out that Thurgood Marshall was coming to town. And I walked in the courtroom, "That's Thurgood Marshall. Oh, we got this case. That's Thurgood Marshall." Thurgood never came; the real Thurgood. | 33:35 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Tried a case in Monroe, the Robert Williams case. | 34:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh, you did? | 34:05 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah, one of them where he was arrested for, because he was eating too. Going in the place and they arrested him. We had the case won almost, but they re-arrested him on another count. What messed that case up, CORE had sent a lawyer down here too, that got that part of the case. And they had told me that he was [indistinct 00:34:51] and I knew he was. The judge knew he was, everybody knew he was [indistinct 00:34:56]. So I called New York and said, "Well, how you want me to handle this thing? Should I appeal with this guy? I know how y'all feel about him." | 34:06 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | They said, "No, you have to get out the case. You introduce him to the court and you let it go at that." So I introduced him to the court so he could practice, which he did. And of course, he lost the case too. Shortly after that, he left and went to Detroit somewhere, to avoid prosecution. But he got charged with kidnapping some people, but they never could prove it. | 35:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. How is he viewed by other people in the NAACP? Robert Williams? Because I know that at least I've read that people, they didn't like his tactics. | 35:42 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Oh, he was outspoken. Really, very much so. People didn't like him because he was so outspoken. He was similar to Jackson Brown, but on a different scale. | 35:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Did people talk about him at all? Did people know about him, say in Charlotte? Did Black people know about Robert Williams? | 36:20 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Not too much, except the natives that lived down there in Charlotte. | 36:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. Was there anyone else like him? | 36:29 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Not in this area. | 36:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 36:36 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Well, there's some that's not quite as regular as he was. In fact, Kelly Alexander and Hawkins, Reginald Hawkins were very outspoken, but they were in a big city. Get away with it. Small town, you wouldn't do that very well. We brought a suit against the Parks and Recreation Commission because they wouldn't let Blacks play on the city golf course. We were surprised that we could get clients. We ended up with 12 plaintiffs. | 36:39 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I had a scary experience with that case. Kelly and I had to go to New York, or I had to go. Had a round table discuss the case. Thurgood Marshall, Bob Greenberg, all the big boys. And they wanted to take the case into federal court, and I wanted to take it into state court, which sounded kind of silly. So they agreed, "Well, I guess you know what you're talking about. We'll take it in the state court." I said, "You got a better chance, a good chance, quicker chance in the state court. If you lose, we can go right to the Supreme Court and we'll get decisions quicker. Then you go on to federal court if you want." | 37:22 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Went on to state court here and they made some errors in the case. Then we appealed it, not to Raleigh, and Raleigh ruled in our favor and they had to let Blacks play in all the city golf courses and everything else the city, parks and recreation owned. Everything. Just a blanket. And I was so glad because I didn't want them to go to state court. Thought, "Oh, boy. If we lose this one, that's something." So that happened. Then, had a lot of rape cases which all of them ended mostly alike. Guilty. | 38:06 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | One thing almost turned me against—In fact, did turn me against jury system. I'm still against it. Had a case up there in Concord; Black man was charged with killing a White woman, I believe it was. Assaulting a White woman. And selected the jury, made the jury question up there and had to put Blacks—Opened the thing up for Blacks to get on the jury. Three got on. First time Blacks ever sat on a jury up there. And one of them was a storekeeper, one was a high school principal, and one was a mailman or something. | 38:54 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | So we tried the case. If anything, it ought to have been manslaughter, not murder 1st, 2nd, something like that. And we approached them after the case, the jury came in and said guilty. I said, "Why did you guys—You knew that wasn't no murder. You know that was, this guy wasn't even there." They said, "Man, you don't know what happens. We live up here. You live down there in Charlotte." I said, "You could've found him not guilty. Don't care where people are." | 39:45 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | "Huh uh." Said, "We live here. We had to find him guilty of something, so we took the middle ground of manslaughter instead of first degree or second degree. So, we have to stay here because you got to go back to Charlotte. They'll kill us, burn us down, everything." And from this point on, I don't care if there's Black people on the jury and I don't like juries because they're too subjective with their personal feelings, like what happened to me. | 40:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Do you think that same thing would've happened in Charlotte? | 40:49 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Well, we had— | 40:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Or in a bigger city? | 40:54 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Well, you're safer in a bigger city. Dangerous in a small town like Monroe. Monroe was a bad place, Statesville was bad. | 40:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Why is it bad? What kind of things? How were— | 41:10 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | The people themselves, and the courts, and the law. The law is, if you're Black, you're wrong. The only enlightened towns, wherever there was one; I never found one. But Charlotte, maybe, comparatively speaking. I thought Concord would've been better, but I didn't get to try the case all the way through because that was that Howard Johnson thing. They found them all guilty. What made me angry, students from Barber-Scotia. All the preacher's daughters got out on bail, bond. And I thought they should've stuck with the crowd of girls, but they didn't. The preachers just got to their daughters and got them out of there. | 41:14 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 42:06 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Anyway, because they may have a record. Come to think about it, that case went—It never went to trial, but it's still on the books. My cases went to trial. And when we reached that agreement, all those cases dismissed, I guess it included them. I don't know. Or else [indistinct 00:42:30]. | 42:08 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | One thing that I never forgave people for, the bonds when he had all those 57 kids she had bond free. All those 100 cases at Statesville were free. There was 35 or 40 in Concord, free. Nobody ever gave them a dime, never mentioned his name, never thanked him or nothing. And I thought that was wrong. I thank him when I see him now. He hurt and I don't blame him. I'd be hurt, too. | 42:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Were there other people too, who supported? When there were these actions, you know, you mentioned the bondman. How did the community support the protestors in other ways? | 43:03 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | They was protesting along with them. They would always be in court with the crowd. They'd stand in the court with a whole bunch. You'd have crowds of them. You know, of course they would speak at rallies and things, in the paper. But out of all that, a few of them got paid. Few of them got paid. Most of them didn't even get travel fare. Didn't have any money. And if these people were running out of money, they want to know why they're sending me $100 or something. Well, I needed it. I couldn't stop. I really didn't stop until they sent Julius Chambers from the National Law Government office up to Charlotte and gave him a full library, paid his rent, all kinds of assistants, associates and stuff. I just got out what I had to get out. I'm thinking, no more free work. He had a whole staff down there could do it. I just got out of it. | 43:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Where do you think your bravery and your persistence in doing this, came from? Was this instilled in you as a child, or was there somebody who influenced you? Where do you think? Because many people wouldn't have done what you did. | 44:48 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | They might think it's crazy. That's the first thing, people think I'm nuts. But people didn't talk about that very much in those days. Like, when I went to law school, there was a doctor at my church advised me not to go, not to take law. Take anything else in the world. I said, "No, I'm going." My uncle was influencing me to go. Most the factory people said no. The two lawyers that were here lukewarm supported me. Said, "If you ever get out of school, come back to Charlotte and we'll see what we can do with you, for you." Which they did, but they wasn't as revel as I was. | 45:08 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I always admired Thurgood Marshall and the lawyers I had with me in NAACP. I had one, a couple in law school, outstanding. They really influenced me a lot. I don't think nobody locally much. Pretty much they were in law school. | 45:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did your parents or your, you know, the people around you when you were growing up, did they—I mean, you say you've got some revel in you. Did you see that in other people? Maybe not legally. They maybe didn't fight legally, but they— | 46:21 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | My mother was a fighter. | 46:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 46:38 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | She wouldn't take nothing off of nobody. She'd go to town, and that's the people that'd mistreat us at the store. She wouldn't stand for it. My daddy was a minister, of course, and he was real polished and meek. I call him meek, but I think he was strong. The fact that he preached made him strong. My mother was strong. She would fight her principal to the end. Any principal she had, that was it. I think I got most of mine from that. When I went to law school, that just made it much deeper. | 46:39 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Well, I was in a sit in, in Washington DC before they even had them down this way. | 47:17 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | —right on the corner, on the corner in the corner in mid— whatever they called Washington downtown, Black folks. | 0:01 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 0:07 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | On 14th Street, [indistinct 00:00:11] Street. | 0:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 0:12 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Right there on that corner. And a group of us law students decided we were going to break this thing up. We went down there as a group, went on in there, sat down. Man got all excited and he had this man wash the floor with steaming hot water. We all had slipped like this. So we stayed there until 10:00 that night and we went back next day. Stayed there about five days doing that. | 0:12 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | So we closed him up. Don't know whether he opened back up, I don't recall when they opened back up, if they did or they didn't. He opened back up, Blacks wouldn't patronize. They boycotted. Many White people boycotted. He went out of business. He went broke. But we just wouldn't —not going to have it down in the middle. We'd go to the theater, we couldn't get a sandwich [indistinct 00:01:13] idiot's place. [indistinct 00:01:14] was right next door to Black theater. So we went and the hot water didn't run us away. Burnt but it didn't run us away. | 0:49 |
| Karen Ferguson | You said though that when you were in Washington that you felt like you were free or that you had—Now, Washington was segregated in the 40s or? | 1:28 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | No, it wasn't. | 1:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | No? | 1:39 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Segregation, I'm talking about the citizens, was open. | 1:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 1:45 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Whether they were the segregating the citizens. The main place where the Blacks ate was the Union Station. You'd get off the train go down there and eat. Got the right kind of money, you get a hotel room, which was expensive then. More expensive for us than it was anybody else, I know they overcharged us. | 1:46 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | (whispering) Howard Johnson, it was Howard Johnson— | 2:02 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Hm? What? | 2:03 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Howard Johnson's— | 2:11 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Howard Johnson? [indistinct 00:02:18]. | 2:15 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | When we were traveling, Howard Johnson was above the Mason Dixon— | 2:19 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | [indistinct 00:02:23] traveling. | 2:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | They would serve you there? | 2:19 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. Up the New York—Jersey turnpike, anything from Washington to anywhere. Charlotte all the way up. Well, not in North Carolina. But Virginia, up Virginia, Washington on up, that's the only place you could eat, Howard Johnson's. Come in the South after you left work, you better load up. | 2:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah, yeah. I was going to ask you something. I can't [indistinct 00:02:58]. I wanted to go back to some of the things that you were talking about there. You talked about the court case that you had, the original experience with the law that you had where you— | 2:49 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | [indistinct 00:03:18] I ain't get til you taught me. | 3:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Sorry. The experience at the garage where you were taken to court, were any of your friends put into jail for those kinds of incidents because they didn't have the kind of— | 3:18 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Any Black who got arrested didn't have that. I was an unusual case. Just didn't get it. I hope I got it. Because of the influence of my dad and my uncle. But any other Black was out of luck. | 3:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah, yeah. How old were you at that time? | 3:53 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | About 18. | 3:56 |
| Karen Ferguson | How many Black lawyers were there in Charlotte when you were growing up and then when you came back here? Were there many? | 4:02 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. There was one. I never met him, he's an old man. He didn't practice but he was a lawyer. He finished Harvard, but they didn't let him practice in the courtroom. But they would call. Lawyers would ask him to write briefs for them. Colonel Sanders. They called him Colonel Sanders. I remember we talked about him. The other two lawyers were [indistinct 00:04:41] and Harris, I eventually associated with one of them. They would've been here several years before me. But they were more interested in fraternal things, the Masons, Elks, Shriners all that stuff. They do very well with it. Came in, I didn't see any future in that. I joined everything. You name it, I joined it. That didn't matter. | 4:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. Now the lawyers then, did the lawyers before the NAACP came around and the legal strategy, did lawyers try —Did they take on cases that tried to test some of these laws at all, or do you remember that ever happening? | 5:09 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | No, it didn't happen. | 5:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | So they would have clients who were charged with criminal offenses by the police— | 5:36 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | If they got the client. People [indistinct 00:05:44] they get a White lawyer. | 5:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So who hired Black lawyers then? | 5:45 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | You'd hire them for real estate stuff, deeds and all that kind of stuff. | 5:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. | 5:55 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | When Kelly was president of the NAACP locally, but he had to be—might have been spokesman, and that got us all—People accepted us as lawyers. We could anything any other lawyer could do. But there was no movement before then. But since then, it's been a savior for this area. | 6:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, right. Do you have anything you'd like to ask? | 6:29 |
| Kara Miles | I have a couple of things. This is going to take you back in someway. When you were talking about the neighborhood where you grew up, you mentioned that there were poor Whites that lived around you. Did you have any relation? Was there any contact between them and the Blacks? | 6:33 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Well, we were little kids. But when we got up to high school, they would have given incident—there was a field in front of my home, that we used to play ball with the White kids, all that stuff. White girls and boys. And there was a man up the street that owned the livery stable. | 6:52 |
| Kara Miles | Greer. | 7:15 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. Big time for [indistinct 00:07:19]. Anyway, upstairs over this livery, he had apartments for White folks, and those kids would play. One day he came down there, ran all the White kids out the field. "Don't come down here and play with the children anymore." And we couldn't. They never came back. We never sent for them. But I remember them. | 7:15 |
| Kara Miles | Why did he run them away? | 7:45 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Well, the little girls were playing too. | 7:46 |
| Kara Miles | Was this a White man, Greer? | 7:51 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. | 7:53 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | [indistinct 00:07:56]. | 7:53 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | The little girls were playing right on with the Black boys and Black girls but that was enough. Couldn't take it no more. He had control of them because they rented his apartment. He could put them out. | 7:56 |
| Kara Miles | So how old were you when this happened? | 8:09 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | About 11, 12, maybe. | 8:12 |
| Karen Ferguson | So would you say that the White and Black children could play together until a certain age? | 8:17 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah, what it seemed like. | 8:22 |
| Kara Miles | Did your parents or anyone in the Black community ever tell you how to act? Were there certain ways you had to act around Whites? | 8:25 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | No. They didn't tell you that. You kind of melted into that. Nobody had to tell you. You'd just see it and feel it. You could get angry, like on the buses or they had trolleys then. You wonder why you had to sit in the back on most lines. The lines that ran the Black community, you sit where you want to. But nobody would really tell you. You'd see it, and you could get angry a bit when you had to pass the White school on your way to the Black school, like the walking man. See some of them riding in buses and we had to walk all the whole distance. Make you kind of touchy. Make you want to beat up on the White kids really. | 8:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did that ever happen? | 9:27 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. | 9:29 |
| Kara Miles | Tell us about that. | 9:36 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Hm? | 9:38 |
| Kara Miles | Tell us about that. | 9:38 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Well you'd just meet them on the street in the neighborhood. You'd beat them up and run them out the neighborhood. Run them away from where you are. | 9:38 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Tell them about North Charlotte where Blacks couldn't go. | 9:47 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | We didn't go there. | 9:47 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | I know you didn't but Blacks could not put their feet in North Charlotte. | 9:52 |
| Karen Ferguson | What would happen if you did? | 9:56 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | That was a mill community. | 9:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | It was what? Sorry. | 9:57 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Mill. Mill, yeah. You just didn't go over there. But they'd rock you up, do anything to you, Blacks. And certain areas of Charlotte, in the rich places, exclusive areas, you couldn't be over there after dark. | 10:05 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Well, may I tell them this. My nextdoor neighbor moved and she lives out on Sharon Lane. Her father moved out there with her, this has been in recent years. And of course, he was walking down the street because he was —He lived up here and his wife died, and that was their stepmom, so Gwen took her daddy to her huge house, on an acre and a half of land. So Dan was walking up and down the street, and the police stopped him and asked him what was he doing in the neighborhood. He said, "Well, I live over there." Now, this has been in very recent years. I was saying that to show you that, you know how people think? It's still in existence, in a subtle way. Very subtle. | 10:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | Maybe actually, I was thinking of asking you this, I didn't really ask you before. When you moved to Charlotte, I guess that was in the 40s or so when you came back here— | 11:35 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | '47. | 11:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Where did you do your shopping and that kind of thing? | 11:47 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Big Star. I lived on the corner of 6th and Pine, in a 12 room house, one block from the post office. It's a government building now. Okay, I wasn't working. They have a lady to come in and fix breakfast, and she'd come back and fix dinner. So I decided that I would learn how to cook because I could cook. I would learn how. So I went and bought some cookbooks, because the lady that I lived with, you cleaned up. You made little things like chocolate pudding and things like that, but you didn't cook, you know? So I really didn't know how to cook. | 11:51 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | And I went up here to a very exclusive store named Marsh and Bonds on Trade Street, West Trade, across from that big presbyterian church. That's where I bought my meats. Then after my daughter was born, the lady that was here would order from there. They would deliver twice a day. People felt that, "Oh, she thinks she's more than she is." But their prices were no higher than Big Star or A&P or anywhere else. And we would go to Big Star mostly, wouldn't we, Tom? And for dress shopping, I would go to Belk's or Ivey's. | 12:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. So was there a Black business district though too, where you— | 13:30 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Not for clothes. | 13:33 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Black business, mostly it was eating places, things like that. | 13:34 |
| Karen Ferguson | Barber shops. | 13:42 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. Beauty shops. Now it's different. If you're on the strip, everything, clothes, everything else, up and down, all over town really, Blacks operating. | 13:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. That was another thing I wanted to ask both of you was, maybe to talk about the differences in this community, the Black community in which you live from the 1940s or when you were a young boy and now. What are the biggest differences that you see? | 13:59 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | It's day and night really. I lived in a little enclave surrounded by Whites, about 3000 families. Not that that many. We had the big house. I wasn't afraid of White people down in there. I never thought about it really. | 14:20 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | No, because I'll tell you one thing, we would leave our front door open and one time, my mother-in-law was waiting for Tom's brother to come in, and she heard this walking in the house. And she went in the bedroom to call us to come down and eat breakfast, and there was this White man in the bed. In her bed. | 14:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | In her bed? | 15:09 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Oh yes. He thought "okay, it's a White house," on the next street over was a house. He was so drunk, he thought he was at home. You think I'm joking. He was actually— | 15:10 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Now this area here, because most of the parents and people in this area retired. Mostly retired now, in this area. Didn't know what retirement was, back then. You didn't hear nothing about being retired.You just died or got fired. Except my dad, he didn't retire. He retired of age. We went in, Greek—see my father could speak Greek and Hebrew. And he would, people would come down, they're Greek, and they would have conversations right on the porch. See, the Greeks lived a block or two up, and they would have conversations All the way up, and he'd go uptown, to the Greeks yard, and the Hebrew places, and conversations with him. Not a word, I didn't know nothing they were talking about. That's the difference. | 15:37 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Around here, I'm friendly with everybody in this neighborhood, I don't know them all. Even though I know, I don't know them all. But they would color this area, I guess, almost say, upper class Black. But everybody back in then, usually teachers, or retired teachers—I don't know what that say. Everybody back here, most everybody back then, teachers or retired teachers or professionals of some sort back in there. We were the first people on this street, this was a desert [indistinct 00:17:30] when we moved out here. Now we was the first, second house—house next door, that's the first house in this area to be built. [indistinct 00:17:41] built up a fence. | 16:40 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Nothing was behind us. | 17:26 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Nothing was back there. [indistinct 00:17:46] back there. Whereas where they was born, [indistinct 00:17:58] an undertaker back then. [indistinct 00:18:06] undertaker. He lived next door. And the minister down the street, and on and on and on. Shotguns to the next block. He was [indistinct 00:18:22] minister. | 17:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was there a place, because your father also, it sounded like he was a very well educated, very successful person, were there areas in Charlotte where Black people of his station in life would live in a single neighborhood or was it all mixed like you're talking about? | 18:27 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | No. There was a couple of streets in those days that were, that's on the other side of town a bit. Let's see, there was Myers Street where the bishops built their homes, big things. And Boundary Street where the bishops had—AME Zion bishops and other bishops had their homes. [indistinct 00:19:11] is on 9th Street, big homes. They would come visit in my home. And other people that were there they would own similar, big homes, nice homes. We lived in an enclave where very few who lived there had owned their own homes but us and the minister down the street. Nobody else owned anything in that neighborhood. | 18:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | You and your family, would they be friendly with, say somebody who lived in a shotgun house who cleaned houses or something like that? | 19:42 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | We had a few of our own. Yeah. They was the best people in the world, better than here. | 19:54 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | I'll tell you one thing, if we went out, when we got back, they would patrol our house and tell us, "So and so, with that blue car, they were at your house." They could tell everybody who had been to our house. Now one day I was sitting on the porch and a man came and sat on the ledge on Pine Street. The man who worked at Shope's Florist came down and told him, "My Miss Gracie is sitting on the porch. You leave right now. Leave. I don't want you sitting on this ledge." | 20:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | So people really looked out for— | 20:42 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | And protected. | 20:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 20:46 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | That was a (coughs)—another community like that one. | 20:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Even then? | 20:57 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | What? | 20:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Even then? | 20:58 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Nothing like that then, I don't think not any like that now because people live all over town. Now my daughter visit. Up there living so far from here, she live—I call it the country but it's way out 11 miles from here. I think it's foolish to live so far from Papa (all laugh). She didn't mind moving way out there, but that's—do what you want to do. | 20:58 |
| Karen Ferguson | Could you tell us a little bit about your schools you went to as well? Where did you first go to school? | 21:23 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Fairview Elementary School. | 21:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Fairview Elementary. | 21:30 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | That was over here in [indistinct 00:21:36]. It's gone now, but over here where —What's over there now? | 21:32 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Houses. | 21:39 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Houses. That was low income, very low income surroundings. I had to come from 6th Street, all the way over there, to the elementary school. | 21:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | How far is that? | 21:48 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Under two miles. | 21:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | And you walked to school? | 22:02 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. Only way to get there. | 22:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 22:02 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | The other day I went to Second Ward High School. That's a mile or two. It's about a mile from my home. Had to walk there. Finished high school there. I went to Smith and I could ride the bus or the trolley or something, anything I could ride that once I went to college. Eventually I had a car and I could drive. I went to law school out there, had a car. Second year, I took the car, went back to the school. I think it was my senior year. Everything else was walking. | 22:02 |
| Karen Ferguson | What did you like and dislike about school? Did you have a favorite subject? | 22:48 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | In public school? | 22:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Any of these. Maybe your public school and the high school that you went to. | 22:55 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I don't know what they call it now, but we called it —But I liked geography. I liked— | 23:06 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Social studies. | 23:10 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Social studies now. We called it something else. I kind of liked mathematics up until a point. I liked a little bit, I liked chemistry. I didn't get biology too much, I liked it. And went to college, I loved history, social studies, social science, whatever that thing [indistinct 00:23:40] taught. Ah, sociology. That's what I liked the most over there. I liked the English. I liked the English professor, he was a whiz. I liked the German. That [indistinct 00:24:00] was good. I liked to go and talk that. I liked that. Didn't get much use out of it though, but glad I got it. In law school, I studied criminal law. I just loved that. And that's what I liked the most about law school, criminal law. | 23:11 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you learn any Black history when you were going to public school? | 24:25 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | No. | 24:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | No? None at all? | 24:30 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | That's where she get to— | 24:31 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Nothing like that. Black history, you got it through your mama, your daddy, and maybe your sermon or something. | 24:31 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, and what kind of things did they tell you about Black history? | 24:38 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I knew all the outstanding people of the day, they'd tell me about those. And when someone would come to town, they'd go to hear them, see them, whatever. | 24:43 |
| Karen Ferguson | Like who? | 24:55 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Well, we'd get Marian Anderson. Some of them speakers [indistinct 00:25:07] now, but some of them people [indistinct 00:25:10] but all of them, came to town, we had to go. Wasn't no whether you go. You're going. We had to go. Whether you liked it or not, you were going. And we had some friends who made their children go too so we all would have to. And it was nice, it was alright. Didn't learn too much to be hateful about, except when you start talking about slavery now, it would get very hateful. Think we still got some [indistinct 00:25:49]. | 24:57 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did your teachers ever discipline you? Did you ever have to— | 25:55 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | [indistinct 00:26:00] I was a good boy. | 25:59 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. How about the bad boys? What happened to them? | 26:04 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | The principal had to do most of the handling of them, except one guy would hit you. One teacher, they didn't do anything about hitting in those days. Teachers would hit you. Tell your mama, you get another one. But they don't do that now. | 26:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah, yeah. | 26:22 |
| Kara Miles | Where did your father learn to speak Greek and another language? | 26:31 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Well, he traveled all over the world. He had been in London, Rome. | 26:35 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Africa. | 26:45 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Africa [indistinct 00:26:47] Egypt. That was before I was born. And he went to Copenhagen, presbyterian conference, church conference or something. He learned it in school too. They had stuff when he was in school, in the North, all nationalities, they would teach all the students all this stuff. He went to Smith too, Biddle in those days. My mother went to Biddle, got her degree back then. Bachelor's degree, she had got from Winston-Salem for music. She had attended Boston Conservatory for music. I had a brother who went to Smith too. We were Smith people. He went to the [indistinct 00:27:43] army. Came back, stayed right in New York, and finally [indistinct 00:27:49] came home. But he could play a piano. I can't do none of those things. Sing. I didn't get none of that. | 26:46 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | But tell why you didn't want to—you had opportunity. | 27:56 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | My mother was a piano teacher at the college, but I looked at some of the people coming and taking music, especially the men, and all of them were—(laughs). I said "no way." (laughs) I said no way, and I wouldn't learn it. I said I'm never learning to be like them. So I didn't, I regret that thing to this day. | 28:17 |
| Kara Miles | So you knew men that were like that? | 28:28 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah, yeah. They were the only ones taking it. Real men wasn't taking music. | 28:30 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | [indistinct 00:28:37]. | 28:36 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | And I didn't. My brother didn't take it. He just picked it up. He didn't have to sit down and study music. Just picked it up. He was brilliant. | 28:37 |
| Kara Miles | How were men like that looked at in the community? | 28:50 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Those gays? | 28:51 |
| Kara Miles | Mm-hmm. | 28:51 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | We didn't think of it much like that. You'd know them by the way they act, all of that walking and the way they talk and swishing and stuff. But it never was a concern because there wasn't that many, at least you didn't detect that many. It really wasn't a concern. | 28:57 |
| Kara Miles | Did they live alone or they lived with another man? | 29:15 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Those that I know, one of them lived with his mama, forever looks like, until he finally got out on his own and died. Another and some others I know stayed at home mostly with parents. | 29:19 |
| Kara Miles | Did you know, were there any gay women? | 29:39 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | We didn't know much about that, except one girl in high school, said she was a lesbian. Don't know why they said that about her but the rumor around the school was she was a lesbian. That was in high school. We didn't know what that meant. | 29:41 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | You didn't know it for sure. | 29:46 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | No. We had an idea something was wrong with her sexually, leave her alone. One of those things. But other than that, there was no problems. | 29:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | I wanted to ask a little bit more in detail about your family. Do you know anything about your grandparents and who they were? | 30:10 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Only my grandfather, my mother's grandparents on my mother's side, he was an undertaker and a furniture builder. Grandma was a housekeeper. | 30:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | And was this here in Charlotte? | 30:31 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | No, that was in Franklinton, North Carolina. | 30:32 |
| Karen Ferguson | Franklinton. | 30:33 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | And my mother had three brothers. One of them was a dentist in Boston. One was a railroad bag carrier, a porter. The other one was a bricklayer. That was my mother's family. I didn't know her grandpeople—other than that, her grandmother, what did I tell you her name was? After that Indian? | 30:38 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Timberlake. | 31:14 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | She was a Timberlake. And we're assuming, never got to talk to her about, had to be related because they all came to the general area to where she came down in there. Timberlake was Indian, and she had long straight hair. That's all I know about the great grandparents. Know nothing about my mother's grandparents other than that one. My father, I didn't know his people, his father. I knew he had a brother who was a cigar manufacturer in Philadelphia. The others seemed to have been farmers, and he went [indistinct 00:32:06]. | 31:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | Is that where your father grew up as well? | 32:08 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. | 32:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Both your parents came to Charlotte to go to school or? | 32:12 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. They had came here to go to school. And from that, he stayed here and got everything he wanted from that. He never lived anywhere else. Take him from churches, and finally got to be pastor of that church over there [indistinct 00:32:34]. Blacks had moved from the White church down there, built their own church, and so he was a Black man pastor, the first one. My dad was the first Black pastor. [indistinct 00:32:52] but did his traveling, work traveling. My uncle, I mentioned, he was one of them too, and they used to go together [indistinct 00:33:03]. | 32:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | But were your parents, did their brothers and sisters go to college as well? | 33:09 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | [indistinct 00:33:15]. | 33:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Both but let's start with your parents' sisters and brothers. | 33:17 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | My mother must have, but one buddy had to be going because he was [indistinct 00:33:36]. I don't know whether [indistinct 00:33:36] went to college. [indistinct 00:33:36] I think. I don't know about the other ones. | 33:22 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was there enough money to send people —Did their families have enough money to send them? | 33:46 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | [indistinct 00:33:52]. | 33:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | Scholarships? | 33:51 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Scholarships. [indistinct 00:33:56] send money down and get these kids in school [indistinct 00:34:01]. And they were lucky enough to catch them up to go to school. | 33:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right, and same for your father as well. | 34:03 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. In his day, he was —But he had to work some too. He never mentioned it but I'm sure he had to. | 34:05 |
| Kara Miles | When you were talking about your civil rights stuff, did you know Thurgood Marshall? | 34:26 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. | 34:32 |
| Kara Miles | Did you know him well? Did he teach you? | 34:33 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | He taught some classes but [indistinct 00:34:41] as such. | 34:36 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Jim Neighbor taught you. | 34:43 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. Jim Neighbor, he was out there in the civil rights time. All those guys, they taught me some things. | 34:44 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Have you heard of Jack Greenburg? | 34:52 |
| Kara Miles | Yes, yes. | 34:53 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Jack Greenburg used to come here and stay with me all the time. | 34:54 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Those guys lived in a hotel, you know? | 34:58 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | So all of them stayed here. | 35:07 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | They stayed here in my home. All those guys [indistinct 00:35:08] would stay here. | 35:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | So there was no Black hotel in Charlotte? | 35:08 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Not at that time. | 35:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | When you were at Howard law school, were you trained? Was it emphasized that you were to go back and work in civil rights law? | 35:15 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | You get trained to go back and be a lawyer. Other than the criminal part, criminal law, you were taught to stress that a bit. There's the criminal stuff, and now they're teaching, as I understand it better, real stuff to integrate and do anything. Not just integrate but the whole bit like the —We couldn't even write a thing that that woman wrote, publishing—that attorney general? In my day, I don't believe there was a Black graduate of law school could've written anything like that. We wasn't instructed in that direction at all. In fact, my school didn't even have a moot court. Many schools just got to do with what the professor tell you, let you go downtown and listen to the courts. But now the kids got everything on there, moot court, get all kind of experience, confidence they can go through, get the whole bit. | 35:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | But you were, it sounds like with the sit in that you were involved in, in Washington, that you were involved. You'd started to work in this area little bit. | 36:32 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. There was a group of us did it. We just got tired of—went to the movies. Go down there and couldn't eat. We just had to break them up. But he caught on after that, and that was before they did in Greensboro, Charlotte. That was long before that. But they didn't call the police on us, that's the difference. If they'd have locked us up, it'd have been a big mistake, but they didn't. | 36:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | How did you get involved with the NAACP? | 37:17 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Through Kelly Alexander, mostly seems. But I knew about it because we used to, some of the guys in the NAACP would come down to lecture to us. And I knew they were NAACP lawyers or something. | 37:20 |
| Karen Ferguson | And this was at Howard? | 37:31 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. Out at Smith, I shouldn't talk about no school like that. That was the difference. In a school like Smith, they really trained you to be a teacher or preacher, a doctor. The school at Virginia Union, they were training you in all those things, including lawyers. When I went to law school and I ran into all those guys from Virginia Union and Macon University, I had no idea what they were talking about the first month or two in law calls. Those guys, they were there [indistinct 00:38:14] nothing like that. [indistinct 00:38:22]. Those boys really knew it. They had been well trained. | 37:36 |
| Karen Ferguson | What other kinds of organizations did you belong to, after you came back from Howard, or before? Maybe in high school, what kind of activities were you involved in at school? | 38:37 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Well, it's a high school, there's nothing there to get involved in. It would be more of a social. We found a little club back there in whatever year that was [indistinct 00:39:12] still exists today. | 38:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | What's it's name? | 39:18 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Swank. | 39:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Swank. | 39:18 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | It still exists. Of course there's new people in it now, but I was one of the founders of that thing. There's three of us who are living now. The rest of them are dead. There was about eight or nine of us started it. It evolved into a social civic club now. And when I was in college I joined a fraternity. | 39:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | Which one was that? | 39:47 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Omega. Omega Psi Phi. I joined everything seems like. The Masons, the Shriners, the— | 39:48 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Elk. | 39:59 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | —Elk. I headed the Elks there for awhile. I did a lot of stuff. To try to get known, I didn't particularly like what they were doing. But I did that to try to get known. | 40:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | I see. | 40:12 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I got pretty well known doing that stuff. And in the church, I was quite—I was the youngest elder they ever had up there. I was an elder for—it was a lot of years, I got sick of it. I got tired of it. I refuse to be an elder anymore, but they'll carry on. My daughter went as high as a deacon. That is enough, we put enough into church. [indistinct 00:40:57] wives, she carried on the elder work. My daughter, when she gets back on the board, she can start up deaconessing again, after those kids grew up a little bit. So that's all that I've ever accomplished, if anything. | 40:18 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Here's something they gave him recently. I had to accept it for him. | 41:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Oh boy. Congratulations. This is wonderful. | 41:21 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I got several little things from different groups [indistinct 00:41:39]. Because my son-in-law, I don't know, he's manic about those things. He doesn't have two or three of them of his own, but he takes mine and hangs it on his wall. | 41:35 |
| Karen Ferguson | He's just proud of you. I think we'll finish up now. We have to fill out a few forms, if that's all right. It takes a little while. | 41:55 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Let me tell you one more experience. | 42:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. All right. Do that. | 42:11 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | About the lady folks. When I started, there were no women lawyers, except one that I knew of, the woman in Winston-Salem. She's a judge now. I don't know all the lawyers in Charlotte now. Once upon, I knew the first 10 or 12, wasn't no more then, but now I guess it's 25 or 35 lawyers down here now. Most of them, a lot of them are in Duke Power, the banks and all that stuff. Come down to the actual practice of real law, not many of them in it. They've gone into corporate law and all that stuff. | 42:12 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | We are losing—don't have nobody interested in the nitty gritty of the law. I call that other stuff easy. I know the corporate stuff is not easy. It's lucrative. They're taking a risk. But what we do, did, was risk. Remember when a Black would mess 'em up, them White folks will get you for trying a case. That's some tough luck. But I'm retired now [indistinct 00:43:30]. But think about it, I didn't get no money out of this thing. I wish I had gotten rich like some of 'em. | 42:31 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I look at the Bar Association, Black Bar. A few lawyers from around there in Durham and Winston-Salem and Raleigh decided to form an organization of lawyers, which we did. We met for about five years, until the younger group came in. The younger group of lawyers came in, all they wanted to do was drink. We had the worst meetings [indistinct 00:44:23] for the longest time until now, [indistinct 00:44:29] they have a big meeting. I haven't been to one. I think at the beach or some big place, cost a whole lot of money. They can afford it now. When we went to those, we had to stay at the lawyer's homes and the hotel to stay in. The boys now got it made. [indistinct 00:44:49]. | 43:45 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | See what I'm disgusted with, with the Charlotte lawyers, they're not participating much in civic affairs. I don't know, but since Chambers was here, while he was [indistinct 00:45:10], got that boy who made representative, he wasn't too hot at participating. [indistinct 00:45:15] some criminal things. Most of the big [indistinct 00:45:27] civic stuff. But you would expect lawyers to be leading in this town, but they're not. You don't know them, but a few of them. They know bail, and bail [indistinct 00:45:41]. | 44:45 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | [indistinct 00:45:47]. | 45:40 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | [indistinct 00:45:49] Ferguson. Several of them, but the boys, they could do a lot for this city. They don't. Bill and I ran for state —I ran for state school board one time, way back then. And he ran for —We were on a ticket together. He was running as city council [indistinct 00:46:18] Black folks was getting elected. | 46:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | When was this? | 46:17 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Back in the 40s. | 46:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | In the 40s? | 46:17 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. | 46:17 |
| Karen Ferguson | Huh. | 46:17 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | And something happened that day. It was actually, I'll never forget it. | 46:17 |
| Kara Miles | You were winning. | 46:17 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. I was winning— | 46:17 |
| Kara Miles | And something happened. | 46:17 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I had a team working with me, of a lot of people, and something happened that afternoon. | 46:31 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | We don't know. [indistinct 00:46:49]. | 46:45 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | All my workers quit. [indistinct 00:46:54] see what they were doing, and we got all them not to do anymore. | 46:48 |
| Karen Ferguson | By who? | 46:58 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | We never had found out. | 46:58 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I know who it was, a Black person, who was quite an influential man at the time. We barely missed the election, because they pulled all our people [indistinct 00:47:16] all my workers. We had about five left for this whole city, and they were breaking their necks, running around town, trying to get people to vote. Nobody voted [indistinct 00:47:31] didn't get nobody. | 47:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | —man, to tell them not to quit. | 0:01 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Because they wanted to be the first elected in Charlotte. They wanted to be on the edge of it, being the first. And they succeeded. | 0:04 |
| Karen Ferguson | So people were—Black people were voting in Charlotte in the '40s? | 0:18 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Mm-hmm. | 0:21 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Oh, yes. | 0:21 |
| Karen Ferguson | For all elections? | 0:23 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. | 0:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | I mean, federal— | 0:24 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Mm-hmm. | 0:26 |
| Karen Ferguson | —state? | 0:26 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I was registered to vote when I was 21 years old. I was registered to vote. But a few in my neighborhood, they had the Navy walk them down the street to the White place, to get them registered. | 0:28 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 0:40 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Because my daddy was with them. | 0:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 0:41 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | That made a difference. | 0:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 0:41 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | And my brother and them went down there because I thought they were registered. | 0:41 |
| Karen Ferguson | But how about your neighbors in that neighborhood, would they— | 0:49 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | A few of them did. | 0:51 |
| Karen Ferguson | But would they be—I mean, would they be intimidated at the registrar or— | 0:56 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Well, there was intimidation. Yeah. | 1:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 1:01 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | But it wasn't bad as—For us at least, it wasn't as bad as it was some places. | 1:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 1:09 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | You could if wanted to, right? But they didn't want to register, none of them. | 1:09 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 1:19 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | But I registered. I was voting way back then. | 1:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | So what was the first election that you voted in? Can you remember? | 1:21 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Must have been for Nixon, maybe. But then—But was that— | 1:27 |
| Kara Miles | This man who sabotaged your election, because he wanted to be the first Black man to be elected, did he ever get elected? | 1:41 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. | 2:04 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Mm-hmm. | 2:04 |
| Kara Miles | He did? | 2:04 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Eventually. | 2:04 |
| Kara Miles | When? When did he get elected? | 2:04 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I don't know that. | 2:04 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | I don't know, but he got elected. | 2:04 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | He got elected, I know that, I'd have—done with politicking, though. | 2:04 |
| Kara Miles | Like, was that that same decade, or— | 2:06 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. | 2:07 |
| Kara Miles | —next in— | 2:07 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | It was that decade. | 2:07 |
| Kara Miles | Okay. | 2:17 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | But they— | 2:17 |
| Kara Miles | So in the '40s, he—there was a— | 2:17 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | No, in the '50s. | 2:18 |
| Kara Miles | The '50s. Okay. | 2:19 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | In the '50s. | 2:19 |
| Kara Miles | Okay. | 2:19 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | It would have been in the '50s. | 2:20 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | But I think he got elected though, in the '50s though. Wasn't it? | 2:21 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Oh, yeah. | 2:27 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | It couldn't have been that long ago. But now somebody get elected, every time, it's a Black getting elected. So you— | 2:27 |
| Karen Ferguson | So you almost won in the '40s, but then the first Black elected official in Charlotte wasn't until the 1970s. | 2:40 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | It must have been the '70s or even later. | 2:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | How were you able to do that? Were you—I mean, did White people, were they—Say the powers that be in Charlotte, the White powers that be, were they—Did they try to sabotage your campaign at all? | 2:52 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | No. | 3:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Or anything like that? | 3:08 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | We had a conversation. Like I said, we weren't the first to run. | 3:08 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 3:15 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | A couple more had run, I couldn't tell you who did, but we had this big meeting, all us politicians. And we were trying to organize to get somebody to run, so everybody was refusing to run, that, that, that. Finally, they asked Charlie and I to run. And I said, "Okay, I suppose I'd better run." And we had then signed up, and our name [indistinct 00:03:53], until that fatal day. And the folks walked off the field [indistinct 00:04:01] until I could get through. | 3:19 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | And when I walked out there, they said, "You know what's happening to y'all? You don't see anybody out here. [indistinct 00:04:12]." We were told, "Get off the field. Stop. Put your car in the garage. Don't move," because we can't win. | 4:00 |
| Karen Ferguson | Did you—So this would be after the Second World War, that you ran? | 4:25 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. | 4:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was there a change in the way that Black people—Was there more resistance after the war? Did people come back feeling— | 4:31 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | No. Not really. | 4:44 |
| Karen Ferguson | No. | 4:45 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Mostly for then, they had pretty good war jobs. | 4:45 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 4:47 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | They were making money. They never made so much. | 4:48 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Some of them had two jobs. | 4:49 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. They were making good money. | 4:52 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | They could either work teaching, and go to the shell plant. | 4:54 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Shell plant. Big money. They got real complacent. They had the money. They didn't want to stir nothing. It wasn't until the war was really over and they stopped making those shells, all that stuff, the bottom fell out of the Black community then. Everybody went back to service jobs, and hard. Couldn't get it going again, I guess. | 4:57 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | When I was getting back from the Army, some of them were quite bitter. But the conversation wasn't the same. Still no difference. No difference. This time in life, most—a lot of times, I guess, you don't have—The thing with leadership here, it's people we don't know. It's newcomers to town. I don't even know these fellows. They work downtown and over yonder somewhere. So they try to be the leaders, but they don't have none. You've got to follow them, among that group. They don't touch us. We ignore them. | 5:27 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | They always in the papers for something. | 6:24 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 6:26 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Read about something, it's a funeral down at that funeral home, they don't come out here. | 6:29 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was there ever a time when there were leaders who truly represented the community? | 6:32 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. | 6:37 |
| Karen Ferguson | What would they do? What was their—What was the difference between them and this new generation of leaders? | 6:39 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Well that's because White folks ran the city. | 6:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 6:46 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Certain Blacks influenced, because Blacks were influenced because Blacks were influential with those Whites working at the city. But as individual they had nothing themselves, but they had—They could touch somebody. | 6:53 |
| Karen Ferguson | Uh-huh. | 7:05 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Nowadays, they so greedy and selfish that they—That turkey doesn't need that much. | 7:05 |
| Karen Ferguson | What do you mean by touching? What, the— | 7:12 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | You'd call downtown to—In any situation, you could call downtown and say certain areas doesn't have a street light. | 7:16 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 7:24 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Don't have sidewalks. But certain people could call down to certain people downtown and they'd come out and—So you got a sidewalk and a light. Now that that sidewalk is right, they think all over town, they don't have to call me no more. | 7:25 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 7:38 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | And you'd get so many just—well, for a long time—Kelly Alexander was the outspoken person. Then Hawkins came around, he was quite right. And everybody knew him. When he got out the field, it was Camp Lejeune. Now this—he outspoken and not influential like his father. | 7:39 |
| Karen Ferguson | Uh-huh. | 8:03 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | We don't have any. These ministers don't have stuff like they used to have. | 8:07 |
| Karen Ferguson | Right. | 8:12 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | It was a group of ministers, go downtown and get anything you wanted. Now, they won't even pay them any attention. I don't know what's happening. No leadership. No decent leadership. Everybody does his own little thing, running around, can't get together. | 8:13 |
| Karen Ferguson | Is there something that you'd like to tell us that you haven't yet, or that you thought we maybe should know about? | 8:42 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | We haven't had a Black person in this town forever, you know? The first time they hired three Black policemen to work the Black area, over there on 2nd Street. The first time I know, and Black ministers know other folks, got together. They get together and got those two. | 8:54 |
| Karen Ferguson | Uh-huh. When was this? | 9:16 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | That was back in the early '40s, I think. [indistinct 00:09:27] too. Maybe the '30s or the '40s. Since that time, got a bunch of them. Thirty or 40% of the police were Black. But they didn't have Black mayor candidates. They had mail clerks in the post office, and Ruth raised a lot of stink about that, so finally got [indistinct 00:09:50] that'd carry us. | 9:18 |
| Karen Ferguson | Uh-huh. | 10:02 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | After our threats and stuff, they finally got him. It's kind of been a hard struggle to get anything. What else we got? Nothing. The mail thing. I think that Blacks in all the departments is mandatory now. | 10:05 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Firemen. | 10:12 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. But that and everything. Didn't none of us want to be a fireman or policeman. I'll tell you, I had heard a bit of engine school. I like the way that sound. [indistinct 00:10:30] train. I thought engineer was running a train, because you call them engineers. I found out that's not so. That is because I went to school. I was at school for engineering, up there at Howard. It was crazy. They were doing everything. They can't build or nothing. They ain't going to get jobs or nothing. But they came through. Experienced school. If I would have known what it really was, I would have never had no contact with engineering school or engineering, as far as that go. I might have wanted to be an engineer because [indistinct 00:11:08]— | 10:13 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Mm-hmm. That money. | 11:10 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yep. I would have been an engineer, because—until they slapped me. They slapped that out of me. | 11:10 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 11:16 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | But— | 11:21 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | When you spoke of recreation, what do we do for recreation— | 11:23 |
| Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 11:28 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | —when we first married? Well, we would go up to Monroe, sit upstairs in the balcony. And you know down there in Monroe, what's that, it would smell awful. Oh, it would smell terrible. That was because the people worked in tobacco, in the mills or something. | 11:29 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Oh, yes. | 11:45 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Oh, it was just awful. But that was way of recreation. And then we'd go to Concord. That too, was a mill town, but the odors were not as strong. So that's what we would do, go on the—As children would say, "when the flick would change," we would go up there. And that was really—And other than dances and dances by the sororities, the fraternities, that was the main thing we did. | 11:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | So why did you go to these other places to see movies? Like Monroe and Concord. | 12:13 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | That was where they had the latest. | 12:19 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay. | 12:22 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | And you couldn't—maybe in Carolina Theater here at all. | 12:22 |
| Kara Miles | Right. | 12:24 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | They had two Black theaters, you know, but they were fifth grade shows. | 12:25 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | They were fifth rate. | 12:28 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yes, it was. | 12:30 |
| Karen Ferguson | Okay, I see. | 12:32 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Mm-hmm. And they weren't clean. It was smelly. | 12:33 |
| Karen Ferguson | Were there other cinemas or movie theaters in Charlotte, the one you went—There was no, even a balcony section for Black people? | 12:36 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Uh-uh. And not places you could you go to. | 12:44 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | And one time, at the Carolina Theater, that's the big theater downtown, there was a show. What's the name of that show? They opened up Blacks, and Blacks were in the whole theater one day. | 12:46 |
| Karen Ferguson | I see. | 13:03 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | [indistinct 00:13:07] when, but I saw that down there. Just a little theater, it's nothing big. But after that, doors where closed and we never got back in there. Now, theaters are gone now. At least that theater. | 13:07 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | And then when TV came along— | 13:22 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah, that too. | 13:25 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | —We were the first in our group to have a TV. And every Wednesday night—What was on every Wednesday night? | 13:25 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I don't know. | 13:32 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Our house would be loaded. | 13:33 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | And other people would see TV. | 13:34 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Everybody. Then the second, somebody in Hyde Park. Flagg got a TV. | 13:37 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah. | 13:42 |
| Karen Ferguson | But those were— | 13:43 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Didn't happen. | 13:45 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Charlotte's a tough town really, but—It's a tough town. But it's a community. You got an area up here in Hyde Park, I don't know if you ever been up there. That's where a lot.. Most people there have basements and got big houses. I mean, big ones. Fancy ones. Somebody over there today said—thinking about those people who bought those lots. You got professionals all through them. Professional doctors, because they don't live out here. They live in Saddle Creek, where the rich White folks live. You can't tell our house from the Michaels' house. A couple big Black bankers live over there too. They don't know we're out here. There's more of us out here anyhow, anyway. | 13:48 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | This is the Northwest part of Charlotte. This is it. Where all the murders take place, those things. | 14:41 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Well, June says you can't say that about dope talk. | 14:46 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Why? | 14:51 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | She's my buddy, this one. | 14:51 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Well, I know it's over all town, but it's— | 14:52 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | —because they have dope all over. Then— | 14:52 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | They come out here and get it. | 14:54 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | —in fact, the people who supplying the Blacks are White. And see, they never get those people. They get the people who [crosstalk 00:15:03]— | 14:59 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Actors, lawyers, judges, doctors, and they run the show. Bankers, they run that little—And we know it. | 15:03 |
| Karen Ferguson | Was there any problem—Were there illegal drugs like that when you— | 15:12 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Oh, no. | 15:15 |
| Karen Ferguson | —when you— | 15:15 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | You hear somebody smoking a reefer, you thought they was terrible. "Ooh, smoking a reefer—" | 15:17 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | And only thing— | 15:24 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | "—under the jail." | 15:24 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | —Only thing, as my daughter would say, when they were growing up, was the kids would go and drink that cheap wine. You know? They never fooled with—They have to get their kicks differently now. | 15:26 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I was just thinking to drugs, some boys drunk, drinking, you'd get a—Not many. But, what was that name? Whatever. And bootleg liquor. And that stuff will kill you if you don't get the right stuff. And it killed a bunch of folks. But that was the biggest racket around here. The next thing was the numbers racket. It just bloomed. Nobody got rich. They just got rich and didn't show it. Now these fools get rich off of dope and show it. These little boys supposed to be driving Cadillac cars and I'm—BMW, you know what that is. Work for it. Let them drive it, police [indistinct 00:16:26] have it. Right here across this creek, down here. This is the worst place to travel, that you ever heard of. You can go down there right now, find any kind of dope you want, find any kind of gun you want. Right down the—Right on Jackson here. | 15:52 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | And the sad part about it, with us, we're homeowners. We're the first people who moved out of here, at this house. This house— | 16:48 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | And can't do nothing about that. | 16:54 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | —and when we moved—When we want something repaired, we have to say that we live above the creek, or the repairman will not come. | 16:55 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Or they won't come out here, as I see it. | 17:05 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | And that's so sad, because I'm innocent. | 17:05 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | I usually West—Oakland Avenue West, on the dealing with those people. To say that I don't live on that side of the creek, which I hate to have to do. | 17:10 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | It's really sad. | 17:14 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | [indistinct 00:17:22] and stuff, and different people. [indistinct 00:17:25] West— | 17:26 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | There's two churches up there. There's two churches up there, and we've failed. We've failed. Church used to be the savior of Black people. We've failed. Well, I don't want to preach. | 17:26 |
| Kara Miles | You've got to. | 17:42 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | That's terrible. | 17:44 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Where are you from? | 17:46 |
| Kara Miles | Richmond, Virginia. | 17:47 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Richmond? | 17:47 |
| Karen Ferguson | I'm from Toronto, in Canada. | 17:50 |
| Grace Lane Wyche | Oh, I love it! I love it. | 17:51 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | That's her, Melissa Cooley. | 17:51 |
| Kara Miles | Oh, yeah. | 17:51 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | You know her or about her? | 17:51 |
| Kara Miles | Mm-hmm. Yeah. I remember her. I don't know her personally, but I got—I just remember that name. | 18:00 |
| Thomas Henry Wyche | Yeah, her wedding's going to be on TV next week, they said. Studio went up there and took a picture of everything, of the wedding. You had one night, I had interviewed her parents. Her mama and all that stuff, and then later on, I interviewed his parents and all like that. It was just the brightest thing I ever done around this town, [indistinct 00:18:28]. | 18:06 |
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