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Ah, this is David Selsky and uh students from my UN C class documenting the civil rights movement. It's October 4th 2003. Today, we're at the Durham Public Library in downtown Durham and we're interviewing Mr Benjamin Speller. We're visiting with Mr Ben Benjamin Speller. Thank you very

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much for coming. Ok. Yeah, I want just take it from here or would you like me to get things started? Oh, yeah. Are you in the mouth? And the only hint I will give you is that the more you ask him about his family background? Uh

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The more interesting it will get. Hm, I was born in Bertie County, North Carolina in Windsor, which is up in the northeastern part of the state near Virginia. And it's the colonial area of, uh, the country where most of the settlers came in after they, uh,

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came, arrived in Virginia. Then they start migrating, uh, southeast. You? How long did you stay there? Uh, I stayed there, uh, until I was 18 and when I came to here to Durham to go to North Carolina College, it was called North Carolina College at that

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time. Um, and I grew up on my grandfather's farm. And then for a while I lived on my grandmother's farm, each one of them had a farm, uh, separate farms. And so I lived on one and the other depended on what we were doing for projects

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and stuff like that. It was not unusual for, at the time to have a grandmother and a grandfather who had their own separate farm. Um, not for that area. Uh, quite a few of the African Americans, uh, after the civil war ended up with, uh, land

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because of the fact that, um, they had been, uh, left that land by their fathers. Uh, our, uh, our representatives were out with the plantation owners and many of them had, um, freed their Children and give them land. So, uh, that's the way we got ours,

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right. My father's mother ended up with a farm because her father's father had left him a farm and by the time he died, he had about 3000 acres and he left her, uh, one third of what he had, he had to show, did you get a

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sense view of a community while living on the farm? Yes. Uh, the unique thing about that there is that in that community because of marriages and arranged marriages and so forth, everybody in both directions for about 18 or 20 miles were related. And, um, even now

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where we all live there in, in that community, black and white, we are all related and they've been there since the 17 nineties in that area. So it's been an almost intact situation, although there are fewer now because so many of us have gone into the

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cities and places like that. But, but when you still go back there and you start driving in those various areas, everybody is related right now, which is not unusual for that area. It's very remote. Um, the population, uh, is not that large. Most of the people

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there can trace their heritage back to the 16 fifties. And I always tell people if you are black or white and you can trace uh your family history back to the 16 forties and fifties. You are usually gonna be related because there were very, very few

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people in the areas and they all came in uh as a result of somebody else going in and then bringing in a friend or a relative and so forth. The slaves that were brought in during that time, they weren't but a few and the slaves lived

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in the house with their owners. And in most situations, there were more men than women. And in most situations, there was a lot of death, you know, because of disease and things like that. So you would have a, a man coming in and bringing in his

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wife and, and Children and then he might live 15 or 20 years, he would die, then his wife would remarry and the husband would die and then she would marry the friend. So for an example, um, in my family, the, um, uh, I'm related to the

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Swains, the Smith Wicks, the Spellers and the outlaws, the outlaws came to Virginia in 1640 then came to the Chuan area, uh, in 1650 58. At the time he brought with him, uh, John Smithwick and Henry Speller and he had married patients, uh, from patients parish

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from uh Rhode Island. They all came down there because, uh, they were Quakers and the Quakers were not treated very well up in the Easter of the eastern colonies. So they came out into the hither lands, you know, that was out there way out in the

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sticks and they could do what they wanted. So the only thing that was out there in that area and people always are surprised were Quakers, there was the church of England and nothing was out there. And so you had friends groups and Quakers in the Edington

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areas and so forth. But I'm digressing but getting back to the families, um, what I have found through research, I had heard it. My grandparents had told me to always remember you were related to the Smith Wicks and whatever and so forth and that's all they

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said. Ok, well, now that we have the internet and I got interested in my family genealogy, um, I, someone put on there some information that led me to the records in Edington, North Carolina. And then I found a wheel and in the wheel, um, patients had

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ridden her will and in her will she had um uh left each one of her from her husband's turing uh her turing uh uh the turing of this slave woman that was there at the house. She was living in the house with them. She and her

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husband was there and the two friends and based on what you could see that she was doing, she was leaving the slaves to their fathers. So she would have so and so and so being left to Henry speller, she would have so and so and so

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being left left to swift wick and whatever. So she was making sure that they moved him around that way. And also she, her stipulation was that um this lady, her name was Sarah, uh could live with any one of the families she wanted as long as

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she lived. So they were stuck with having they could not sell her, she couldn't come and visit and live anywhere she wanted to. So those were the kind of uh incidents and the kinds of things that generally happen uh in that area. And so I always

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tell that because most people always think of uh uh plantation life and so forth as here's all these folks out here. But when it initially got started, the largest number they would have would be three or four and um there were very few men at that

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time. Uh uh black men as slaves. Um Most of the slaves that came up in the, in the plantations that the larger plantations um came along about um 1820 in 1830. That's when they really started bringing them in, in LA in very large numbers and acquiring

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large groups of property as you can reap Piedmont plantation and get a flavor of that by Gene Bradley Anderson. Have you all heard of that? Uh, ok. So you can, uh, look at that and get an idea of what it would have been like for a

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very large plantation. And the, but there weren't that many, very large ones like that. Most of them would have had anywhere from 50 to 70. Now, in my area, the geo geographic area is very, very large. So you would have plantations being 2030 miles apart and

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the larger ones would have six or 700 uh slaves and only about maybe 20 whites in that whole area in the six. So you could see what, what is happening there that slaves could really take over if they wanted to. I mean, in sheer numbers and

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so forth. Um But in, in truth, the, um, the slaves were allowed a lot of independence as long as they, they could go and come and nobody cared very much unless they didn't come back where you ended up with a lot of the legacy that we

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now have resulted from um two things because of the large number of mulattos being born, there were more what we call mixed race Children out there because of the sheer numbers and the opportunities for uh uh sexual interaction among the white males. Remember there weren't that

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many white females out there. So if they were going to have families and so forth and many of them prior to the seven to the 18 hundreds, actually married had families and so forth. But people got afraid of this because of the fact that here you

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have all of these free, free blacks over here next to these slave blacks and that was creating all kinds of problems. So laws were made to discourage this. So the free blacks were encouraged to leave the state and the areas and so forth. And uh if

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you go and look anywhere, there are larger number of blacks and whites, you end up with a lot of racial problems because of the control, the perceived control factor. And in that area now you still have a whole lot of problems because in my county, the

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blacks are still 68 to 70% of the total population. Although there are very few race problems, there could be more, but there isn't really more because nobody is, is really admitting it. But everybody knows that they're related to each other. The uh Ku Klux Klan never

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could get a hold there. Because if they put the sheets on and open their mouths and said something, we all knew who they were. So they had to throw up their hands and go about their business, you know. So, so you had all of these kind

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of things going on. Um Right now, what we are trying to do is to document a lot of this and get it down because um, the current c being born in the family are not there. Most of my family now are in the, uh, Columbia Maryland

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area, Silver Spring. Um, two thirds of them, uh, you would not be able to tell that they are African American, they could pass for white. It may be as far as I know in our family reunions, we have to ask, are you black or are you

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white? Mhm. Ok. The relation, you know, with white parts of his family and black parts of his family, do they, what do better now than they used to. It used to be a situation where, uh, you wouldn't even know that they were there. They did not,

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um, attend, uh, anything together and so forth in the last, uh, 20 years. Um, we had one family reunion and we had a call and the black relatives were the ones that called for the family reunion. And, um, there were 400 people showed up and 300

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of them were white and just completely took over and they were, were from Idaho, South Dakota and New York and everywhere. And they were coming, thinking they were coming to a white reunion and we were coming, thinking it was gonna be mostly black and local. And

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so it really did. It was, it was an eye opener and we learned a lot because they had a lot of records too. And as a result of that, uh the local ones now are doing more things together When someone dies, we all go to the

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same church and a whole lot of different things. So it is, uh being recognized. Now, I think the thing that really opened the door and cause our families to start doing more together really was the Clinton situation and the Thomas Jefferson thing, you know, with the

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Thomas Jefferson uh controversy, then local people start looking around and saying, hey, wait a minute. Um You know, we can have some problems if we don't want to do this. So in our communities, the whites jumped in real quick and acknowledged who we were and so

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forth before we had a chance to start looking around and ask some questions. Of course, we already knew, but they didn't know that uh because they weren't communicating. But um then the older whites started informing us of our heritage because they had the records and they

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did not wait for us to try to find them. And so what they gave them to us, which I think was very good and really did make us think a little bit more about uh the situation. Now, we did have some situations where because of the

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number that had migrated away, the number of whites uh that had migrated away, that the local tax collectors and so forth knew who everybody was because down in that area, most of the tax collectors families had been there just as long and they know that. So

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we had some situations where taxes had not been paid, uh, some problems were there and the tax collectors would actually call up and say, um, Miss, so and so it hasn't paid her taxes in 10 years and we're getting ready to do so. And so and

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so, uh, are you all interested? And then we would respond like this? Why should be, be interested? Well, you know, she was married to your great, great grandfather. Did you know that Mr So, and so was your great, great grandfather? Oh, well, then that meant without

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saying anything that we should decide whether we were gonna try to keep the land and pay the taxes and so forth. So the whites in charge of the government and business and so forth in those kind of situations would go through the white circle first and

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try to get them to take over the situation. And if they didn't, they would move on to the African American ones. And as a result of that, we ended up, um, um, getting about 40,000 acres of, uh, land that would have gone out of the, the

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families. So we created a family trust and put the, uh, land in. Now that works because I have a lot of relatives who are medical doctors and things and they need write offs and, um, you know, capital losses and all that kind of stuff. So, do

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some, a lot of accounting stuff. They, they manage to do this because they're about the only ones it's very expensive to maintain farms and so forth. So if you do not have something, you're not a medical doctor with a whole lot of, I have one cousin

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who, um, is a medical doctor but he doesn't practice, he's in business, he has clinics and so forth and so on. And so he's, he operates our farms as an agribusiness. We don't even know what's going on. They have business managers and lawyers every which way

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and all kinds of stuff. And we have meetings just like you would have as a corporation and all that kind of stuff. But it's been, it's been really in, it's been really interesting to see all of this in place as the older ones die out. And

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when we say older ones that are in their nineties or in the hundreds, they, they are recognizing that a lot of this is gonna be lost. And so the white, they don't have any cheering around. So they are passing it on to us. We're getting a

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lot of records. Um, we just, for an example, two years ago, got a trunk and in the trunk we found, uh, a picture of my great, great grandfather with, uh, with his Children who are our grandparents and so forth and that documents that he really was,

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you know, you hear all this thing, he was so, so somebody who can believe that you don't have the records and here he is standing up with the six Children and so forth at the house and all that kind of thing. So it makes it really

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interesting. Mhm. Did you ever hear of any of these stories? Like you obviously, you said that you don't read on the internet and something like that? How much of it did you know, as a kid? And how, how was it like growing up? Well, as a

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kid, I would hear bits and pieces for an example when I was growing up, you would have all of these quote unquote white people at the house. You know, being a child, you don't think about race really? You really don't, you don't think, you don't even

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think about the fact that your skin color is different. You know, I can tell you from experience. I really hadn't thought about it until one day. Um, my grandmother's, uh, uh, first cousin was there and he was whiter than any of you in terms of looking

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like blonde hair, blue. Eyes and in a reddish complexion. Um, and that particular day he had gotten sunburned. And I said to her, well, why is he having all that? And she said, well, you know, he, he's so white. I said white, what does that mean?

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And she said, well, he's white. And then she had to explain what that meant because I was thinking she meant color. So that didn't make anything. So then I said, well, how did he get that way? And then she'll say, well, our grandfather was white and

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blah, blah, blah, blah. And then, but she had never said anything before. And, um, so I still didn't think of anything. And then some of the, uh, my white cousins who lived in Virginia were little bad boys. And so their grandfathers would get them and bring

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them down there and leave them on the farm during the summer. So they wouldn't get in trouble. So I, but we still didn't know at that time that they were white. We were thinking they were just like us. And that because see, as I said, color

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didn't mean anything. And, uh, it was only when I was about 16 or 17 and was getting ready to go to college. And my grandmothers, all of a sudden realized most of the, the, the women knew what was going on and they would pass the information

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on to their daughters where there were no daughters to pass it on to I was the oldest child and every and there were eight grandchildren and all of them are boys in my group. And so all of a sudden they realized on both sides that they

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were gonna have to pass it on. So they started on Saturday mornings when they were fixing dinner and so forth for the Sunday to start telling me stuff, but they would not tell me everything. They would just give me the names. They said, always remember this.

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Like I told you when we started out that you're related to the Smith wicks the slain and whatever, but they would never say how, ok, then it would get to the point that Mr so and so and so is your great, great grandfather? And he's buried

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in Saint Thomas Episcopal Church. And grandpa is buried in an unmarked grave over here next to him. And by the way, they would acknowledge the Children as much as they could to the extent that they would uh bury them in the same cemetery. But because it

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was supposed to be against the law to put blacks and whites in the same cemetery, they would put them in a uh graves hadn't thought about that actually. Does that give you an idea of where Miss Out Hemings may be? They would bury him at midnight

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in an unmarked grave. And I have a feeling that Sally Hemings is somewhere next to Jefferson in my grave because when she died they buried her at midnight. No one knows where she was buried, but that was what happened where we grew up. And so we

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didn't think that that would be unique some other places. So I'm just telling you that. So the same thing happened with, uh, uh William Tucker. The, the first African American recorded African American child born in America was William Tucker in Virginia. And no one really thought

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about it who his progenitors were until his current, his family today a few years ago, decided to do their genealogy and they were trying to go all the way back and they hit a slump when they got to their great grand, their great great grandfather. And

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because we had named here in Durham, we have a William Tucker election named after him because he was the first one. The, um, one of his great, great granddaughters called up and asked us about him and she was trying to figure out what to do. And

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because I knew about my family, I decided that, that we were not unique. So I said, ok, this is the model. He's in Virginia somewhere. He's in Jamestown. So he, he, he is somewhere there. So she knew what he looked like. And based on what she

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said, I said, then what you need to do is go to the Anglican Church or the Episcopal church that was there that was connected at that time and see if there's anybody in their name, Tucker. Sure enough, they went and found Captain William Tucker, but they

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didn't find anything else. So they called up and all excited and said, we found Captain William Tucker. I said, ok, now what you do is go to the rector and go and get the church records, the burial records and see if you do not find another

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William Tucker in there in an unmarked grave. And if you do that's probably who you are looking for. And sure enough, that's what it happens. I'm telling them about William Tucker. Yeah, I'm telling him about the first African American child born in America who turns out

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to be the, uh, the, the, uh, the captain William Tucker who brought the group, the group into Jamestown is his father and actually left him everything. I mean, once they got there, then they found all his records showing that he had acknowledged the child and named

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him after him and then left him everything he had because he never married. Can I ask you a quick question about your mixed races, um, feel any difference between them or like, did you ever travel out of town and see how the, you know, the difference

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between each racial treated and it magni Oh, I'm glad that's a good question because I never thought about it before. I'll tell you experience we had, um, when we got ready, we were in a very insular situation. My grandmother was sort of the matriarch of the

00:24:07.810 - 00:24:24.989

whole thing and she would not let us out of the yard so to speak. I mean, she really kept up close with us and I never figured why? Because she was the first one in the family to marry a, a black man. In other words, my

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grandfather is as black as any black you've ever seen. And he was the first one that we know of on that, on my father's side. And so we had a serious problem when we travel and they, and they sort of anticipated it. Uh, when we start,

00:24:42.010 - 00:24:57.380

when we got ready to come to school, we were coming through a whole lot of racist areas. And so my grandfather would call the governor's office and call the highway patrol and tell them what cars we would have and so forth. So if anything happened, they

00:24:57.390 - 00:25:12.969

could be on it and we did get pulled in Wake Forest. And I had always been told that we got pulled and taken to jail to immediately call, give them the governor's office number and so forth. And they got over there real quick because they would

00:25:12.979 - 00:25:29.560

have thought that these black Children were and especially black males being with females that looked like they were white or something could have been a problem. And so then after that incident, we never traveled together anymore after that. So when we went up north or anywhere

00:25:29.569 - 00:25:46.469

like that, we went on different buses and so forth and everything. He would not allow us to travel together. I'm talking about like in 1957 58 and something like that. So we never could travel together to, you know, recently. I, I guess I hadn't even thought

00:25:46.479 - 00:26:05.290

about that but cousins and of natural, they would have blonde hair and so forth and so on. And here you come driving through looking like me back then with them and so forth. It was really d even the sheriff told us that we were smart because

00:26:05.300 - 00:26:15.390

he was mad. He thought that we had, he, he, uh, I, I know the sheriff and he said today that that was a smart move on the part of my grand because he, that by the time he got us, he had called up and said he

00:26:15.400 - 00:26:30.959

was coming in. By the time he got there, five minutes later, the highway patrol was laying somebody from the sheriff's office, I mean, from the governor's office. But that's what you had to do back then because of the fact that people outside would not have known,

00:26:32.390 - 00:26:56.640

known that. And, and so after that, we, we just never traveled together and so forth. Isn't that something? You haven't even thought about that? Have you? So they were black but, but mo but nobody would know. So in, in most situations, what we would do to

00:26:56.650 - 00:27:09.119

avoid any confusion. When we were in situation, we would ask somebody would say hello. So and so and so, and we would say, are you black? Are you white? And that meant if you have not divulged that you are, we need to know this so that

00:27:09.130 - 00:27:27.459

we can be friends but not relatives. And we still do that. A lot of them have married, uh, whites and so forth. But what they do is always make sure they come and let them know that they are in an interracial family and sometime we may

00:27:27.469 - 00:27:51.680

not ever see him again. We very seldom are invited to weddings and so forth. When there's a mix of race, marriage and so forth. Were family members aware of the innovation tension. Um, you say that you weren't aware of the interview, you traveled out to university,

00:27:54.890 - 00:28:13.180

the ones that had traveled were aware but they kept the cheer and see we were, we were really protected un un until we went out. I mean, there was, I had no, I had no problems of doing anything I wanted in my county for an example.

00:28:13.189 - 00:28:28.729

You weren't supposed to go in certain places and stuff like that. I went anywhere I want, who was gonna say anything? My grandmother had all of the mortgages on them so they wouldn't there. So, I mean, you knew about racial segregation and you knew about all

00:28:28.739 - 00:28:41.609

of this but to a child, to someone that started from a child up to a teenager, being able to do anything, they were big enough to do and nobody bothered them. And this is one of those stories that when you first told to me 15 years

00:28:41.619 - 00:28:57.589

ago that was, I was like, it's just because like, every rule gets broken and, you know, it was just as you think, you know how the South works and then your family in Virgie County, which if y'all have been to Virgie County, I mean, the biggest

00:29:02.750 - 00:29:24.500

win 100 or two or something like that. It's a real rural area and see, everybody knows every, yeah, and everybody knows everybody. So, you know, they'll grumble and carry on, uh, about it. And I'll tell you one thing that happened that really caused that, uh, about

00:29:24.510 - 00:29:47.810

80 or 90 years ago. Um, this, uh, one of our relatives adopted a black child and she was up in the north and she brought the child down and someone saw the child playing and, and, uh, that night they came in and they, uh, lynched, it

00:29:47.819 - 00:30:04.729

was a black boy. He was about 12 or 13 years old. Well, they should have known if he was out there playing with him that there would be something different, but he was murdered. And so she su because he was with these female girls, they were

00:30:04.739 - 00:30:22.859

all out in the yard playing. They thought that he had slipped up there. They didn't know he was living there. And so because of that and the fact that she sued the, the county government and they had to pay her, I got hundreds of thousands of

00:30:22.869 - 00:30:40.449

dollars that sort of gave a wake up call. And so from then on they decided that they would err on the side of this is one of these situations where, um, there's a, uh, mixed family and we gonna have to deal with it. So that sort

00:30:40.459 - 00:30:55.250

of then set the stage that, well, we don't like it but we had to put up with it. So the rules were really changed already. But in that case, that reinforced it. So you, that's one reason why you've never seen the Ku Klux Klan or anything

00:30:55.260 - 00:31:09.839

in that county. Did you ever thought about that? There's no activity at all or anything in there because of that. And the reason that they all know the one time that they put the, uh, in our neighborhood, they put the, the, uh, the boys, the white

00:31:09.849 - 00:31:20.760

boys went and put on the, uh, robes and so forth and it came down the road and was gonna scare us at night and then they were over there talking and carrying on and I just told them, I said, I'm gonna tell my grandmother you all

00:31:20.770 - 00:31:35.699

over here with these white hoods and so forth on and they took them off. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. And that was the end of that. So you don't, have you been talking about? Yeah. They asked, they, they wanted to go there. They did

00:31:35.709 - 00:31:57.020

look, the civil rights never got. Um, but, um, the, uh, but, um, no, they didn't, they didn't want to go there and, and, and, and southerners are very, very conscious about their relatives. You know, you can, they can say that we believe in black, super white

00:31:57.030 - 00:32:08.300

superior and all this other kind of stuff. But the deal is off. Now, if one of them turned out to be their relative, you in serious trouble. If you go after a black and the whites there know that he's a relative, they would turn on you

00:32:08.310 - 00:32:26.020

just like that and people don't understand that that are not from the south. So you can have a deal on going down a racial route and everything is fine until the black walks in. That's the subject of the race or whatever. And Lord help you. If

00:32:26.030 - 00:32:44.099

it turns out to be one that somebody in there with you all of a sudden realize that's his real, his or her reality, then you got a problem. You can do that one over there but not that one. I mean, that's how it works basically. Ok.

00:32:44.109 - 00:33:02.250

How different was it when you went to college? Well, here uh in college, um um we were, we experienced it more because we were just here as blacks and so forth like everybody else. So when we were in Durham and downtown and so forth, we got

00:33:02.260 - 00:33:14.040

the usual stuff. Um, if you were in the line and a white person came up, they were first and then you were second and all that kind of junk and so forth and so on. And if it got too bad, all I would do is call

00:33:14.050 - 00:33:25.479

one of my aunts and she would come up here and they were all very tall and very white looking and then they would go in and intimidate the clerks of it, whatever. And so, and that would be the end of that. So occasionally we would throw

00:33:25.489 - 00:33:37.609

our weight around and the students over at central would love it because that meant they could go to those stores and be treated well because the store clerks would never know who was what. So we would play that jam up after we realized it would work

00:33:40.030 - 00:33:52.280

and even now in some situations and you all may not think about this, but it's actually true. Um, if, if there are things that we really want to buy and so forth and want to get it at a good price or get it at all, we

00:33:52.290 - 00:34:04.189

still go through our white relatives for it or somebody that looks white. You know, if you go to a car dealership and you are my complexion and you're not dealing with a black costly government, they gonna try to get more money out of you than they

00:34:04.199 - 00:34:21.299

would. And so you know that, so what you do is actually get somebody else to do it. And up until eight or 10 years ago, um, you could come in and your net worth would not be. Mhm. I understand. I just wanna make sure you know

00:34:21.309 - 00:34:53.040

how to do that, that tape over. Ok. Uh, you could, you could have $10,000 that they knew about if you and I could have a million and we walked in for a credit card. A Mastercard, you could get $5000 credit. They would give me $500 credit.

00:34:55.418 - 00:35:15.560

The race factor was that great. Oh, no, no, no, no. Mm mm. It's too competitive. It's too competitive. They all they want to do is know your credit rating now. But back then if they checked off black and white and you were black, I mean, you

00:35:15.570 - 00:35:27.669

could have $2 million you still didn't get, but $500 credit card I'm talking about from the first line banks. Now you could go up to all kind of mutual on one of the black banks and do better. But then the black banks didn't have that much

00:35:27.679 - 00:35:51.439

money that you could really do anything big with. What did you say? You? So, you know, in the university itself was there a lot of racial tension or? No, no, I mean, over there we did anything we wanted. Uh it was an interracial faculty. We didn't

00:35:51.449 - 00:36:08.500

have any um black or any many white students. But um the um at that time there were at least 30% white faculty essential and they were from all over the world. We had, uh, the, uh, head of the German and philosophy department was from Dr Manasseh,

00:36:08.800 - 00:36:28.139

was a German Jew that had, um, uh, been run out of Germany during the Holocaust. So he came here, um, and, um, then at that time, um, uh, you had a lot of top historians that were white there because they were looking for jobs and so

00:36:28.149 - 00:36:54.209

forth and so on. So that was, you don't usually run into the racial problem in the black community in terms of making a difference between race and as you do, when you get into other situations that there was a tension, I mean, oh, it became apparent

00:36:54.219 - 00:37:09.129

when, um, we were told, um, when we got ready to go to college, my grandfather and all of them came in and had a meeting and sat down with us and told us there was a difference in how would we be they, o other words, we

00:37:09.139 - 00:37:27.489

were prepared for what we really were going to face. His concern was that since we had not been, didn't, had not faced that we might put ourselves in danger by being more aggressive and not putting up with it. You know, if you, if you didn't recognize

00:37:27.500 - 00:37:43.820

somebody came up and was treating you bad and so forth, you might have thought it was just something personal and dealt with it. That way and not realized that it was race, which is different. You know, you have to, um, see race has no logic to

00:37:43.830 - 00:38:01.070

it. So the person is going to overreact more so than they would if they really did dislike you for another reason. So you have to understand that and we might have reacted, thinking it was something else, not realizing that. Right. So you don't negotiate, you never

00:38:01.080 - 00:38:14.020

negotiate with anyone when you know that they are doing what they're doing because of racial motives because it's so vist. They're not, there's no logic in it and you're not gonna get anywhere with them and they're gonna have to discover the truth themselves and it's just

00:38:14.030 - 00:38:40.419

too dangerous, uh, to deal with. You can get yourself killed if you don't understand that you don't argue with people over religion and race because they're so Barisal. Yeah. Can you, uh, well, we were, you know, you read it in books and talk about how Mike

00:38:40.429 - 00:38:53.800

Marvis Garvey got whatever and so forth and so on. Well, it wasn't happening to you. It's not the same thing, you know, you'll say, oh, that happened way back there, blah, blah, blah, not realizing it's still going on. You know, if you haven't experience, you have

00:38:53.810 - 00:39:12.739

to experience it to really know what it is. And I did, didn't know him telling me was not like being going to a store here in Durham and realizing I couldn't get it because I was black. I mean, oh, it was awful because I've been spoiled

00:39:12.750 - 00:39:24.580

anyway. So I was used to having my way in house. So, you know, it was tough on me, you know, because I was the first child born in the family on both sides in 18 years. So, you know, I had been born to death and so

00:39:24.590 - 00:39:39.889

here I am now I can't do anything I want to do and then find out it's there. But see, there you are. So, you know, it was really hard. No. So did you go with that or did you finally get fed up with that or? Well,

00:39:39.899 - 00:39:49.250

I got fed up with it, huffed off, but I'm very resourceful. If I decide I want something, I'm gonna figure out how to do it. So then all I did was go over and make a friend with somebody at Duke and tell them to go down

00:39:49.260 - 00:40:02.949

there and get it for me. And I had lots of friends over at Duke and we used to get all kinds of stuff. Um I used to send them over. See I had a car and all kinds of stuff. So I would send them over to

00:40:02.959 - 00:40:21.459

Chapel Hill and get stuff that I couldn't go and get. And we always had a good time. I never wanted for anything cause I always yank out my white friend and say, go get it. Is there an issue in the race bound? No, not with me.

00:40:21.899 - 00:40:34.449

I mean, that could be an issue for somebody but I've never had it as a problem from the point of view. Oh, well, yeah, I mean, I'm sure they did but they didn't, nobody really said anything. They might accuse you of preferring whites to blacks or

00:40:34.459 - 00:40:49.110

something like that, you know, and you get called in or you and a whole bunch of stuff. But, uh, that didn't bother me. I was, as far as I was concerned, I was doing it for a purpose. I wasn't actually trying to be different. I've never,

00:40:49.120 - 00:41:06.530

as far as I'm concerned, everybody is the same, you know. Yes. Ok. And I have a feeling that is because I came up in that mixed race situation where when I started out, I didn't know a difference and just, it's different. It's just different if you

00:41:06.540 - 00:41:22.379

don't start out that way. You know, the first person I realized when I could recognize reality, I was sitting in my great grandfather's lap and here was this white man with blonde hair and so forth and so on. But now as a baby, if the first

00:41:22.389 - 00:41:35.389

thing you remember, you know, like you nine months old, you old. And that's when I start really, I can go back to when I was that most people don't believe it. When I start telling them stuff, then they all go that, I mean, in the family.

00:41:35.399 - 00:41:54.219

So they really know I could do it, um It just makes a difference, you imprint differently and by the way, human beings do imprint. Now, most people say animals imprint, but you imprint and you, you get a lot of your personality and character on who you

00:41:54.229 - 00:42:15.679

imprint on. Do you think your town is typical in the sense that, I mean, I didn't know much about, I, I previously didn't know a lot about C I or how towns are integrated or whether they were not. Um, but it sounds to me that because

00:42:15.689 - 00:42:37.110

you're all related or mixed and you're all like, you all have the same blood running through your veins that this one is a common understanding. Do you think that was kind of to many towns or just peculiar to your own? Yeah, because even now we have

00:42:37.120 - 00:42:50.510

people who come into that community and try to what we call, use the race card and it backfires on them every time because it starts up, it flares up and then all of a sudden everybody look around and say, well, shoot out. They go, we all

00:42:50.520 - 00:43:02.800

got to get, still live here together. Big deal. We're not going with that, you know. So for about a day or two, they may stir it up and then when they get down to start having the meetings and they're going to do the usual thing when

00:43:02.810 - 00:43:14.159

they get there, everybody already know who's what and whatever and so forth and so on. And then they all say, yeah, we gonna do this. We gonna do that. We had a situation in Bertie County over some stuff. A guy came in from New York and

00:43:14.169 - 00:43:27.149

stirred up the waters and the black female was chairman of the county commissioners and she got involved in it and then they set up the co committee and they did all this kind of stuff and people got there and started wrangling and so forth. And then

00:43:27.159 - 00:43:38.879

all of a sudden everybody looked around at everybody and said, shoot, we've been knowing each other for the past 100 years ain't nothing gonna change. They went on along with it. Let the person get out of the way. They had to pay consultant and let them

00:43:38.889 - 00:43:55.010

get out of the way. Now. They going right on and they went back doing the same thing they were doing before and mad because they got sucked into because, you know, when they integrated the schools and stuff there, I mean, we, we didn't have any problems.

00:43:55.770 - 00:44:10.919

I mean, we had all been playing together and doing it anyway. Now we were just in the schools together. Big deal. We all knew each other had grown up together and after school we were all together there playing and eating and carrying on. So, I mean,

00:44:10.929 - 00:44:24.889

why are you gonna fight and carry on after now that you're in school together? That was ridiculous. Vegas went up, it went up now in terms of the civil right thing uh here in Durham, um I was being asked about my role in it and I'm

00:44:24.899 - 00:44:39.149

gonna just put this in here since he asked the question and it hasn't been asked yet. Um I was not what I would call a front line participant in the civil rights. You had uh people like Howard Fuller and a whole group of people and from

00:44:39.159 - 00:44:58.239

Duke, you had Web Gully and his brother and a whole series of students from over there out on the front line getting put in jail and all that kind of stuff. Um, I was always a business type person and the, um president at uh central would

00:44:58.250 - 00:45:10.590

always identify a group of people that could write, well, that could hand business and work with lawyers and stuff like that. And so when the whole