Oral History- Imani Harris

Abstract

My grandma reflects on her experiences during segregation as a “ Black” African American  who was born down the south ( Virginia ). She begins by giving a great answer and describing what it was like during the 1950, if she felt safe during that time, and everything she said connect on how whites were back in the 1950’s. My grandma knew that it wasn’t going to be living down south but she said that “ I know that something good is going to come and the end”.

Research

Back in Virginia segregation was a huge thing.Segregation is separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, using a public toilet, attending school, riding on a bus, or in the rental or purchase of a home. Jim Crow laws was the main reason that there was segregation. When Martin Luther King “I have a dream” speech to a crowd of over 250,00 people at the Lincoln memorial during the march of Washington. Mr.King called an end to Segregation.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_United_States

• http://find.galegroup.com/gic/infomark.do?&idigest=fb720fd31d9036c1ed2d1f3a0500fcc2&type=retrieve&tabID=T001&prodId=GIC&docId=CX2831400031&source=gale&userGroupName=itsbtrial&version=1.0

• http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/1-segregated/segregated-america.html

Transcript

Segregation Interview with Girlene Harris

By Imani Harris

ME:What was it like in the 1950’s in Virginia?

GM:As a child me growing up, it was – we couldn’t go to the places white folks went to. It was certain place we couldn’t eat. We had different places to go to the movies. The whites had their section, we had another section. It was – mostly what the black folk could do was work in the white man’s kitchen or in the fields.  Ah, we had our own churches. They had theirs. You know you didn’t mingle nowhere with them.  Like hear now everyone go to the ball game together – you didn’t go to no games or nothing with them and mostly they called you nigger.  We went to school there was a white school and a black school. They had the better buses and they ride by us and called us niggers. We walked to school.

ME:How old were you during this time?

GM:I was born in 1940, so in the 50’s I was in my early teens – 1940 to 1950 I was ten – I was in my early teens.

ME:How did you feel about segregation?

GM:It – segregation- it didn’t bother me because it never segregated our school or anything until after I grew up.  I was mostly out of school when they combined us –you know they started really going – (pause).  When I graduated from school, I graduated in 1960, and the whites and blacks still wasn’t going to school together. I think they started 2-3 years after but ah and the simple reason is – I’m up here- I left home was you really couldn’t find a job down there doing nothing unless it was working in a white man’s kitchen or if you work in a restaurant you had to work in the kitchen.  You know and all it was still segregation even though Martin Luther king was trying to break it, the civil rights was going through but it was still that you knew it was still segregation down there cause the way white folks treated you. You couldn’t go to a store and you couldn’t get waited on because you were black and they watched, they looked at you liked hey. And it’s still going on down there in some parts. You know they still prejudice, there’s a little town called Bowling Green down there that just as prejudice as they could be, if you bat your eye when you going through you’ll lose it but their still prejudice.

ME:How did you manage to keep a cool temper with the white’s doing that?

GM:My parent they had a lot to do with it. My mother and fathers was, we were sharecroppers. It’s like a whole lot of people don’t know what sharecrop is, that’s when you ah rent the land from the white man and cause you didn’t have no land you rent from the white man and he got the best portion of the money you made off the crops – that’s sharecropping and we were like that that’s how we were raised and brought up. And momma and daddy had an even temper, you know you got mad, you didn’t fly off the handle and get a gun and shot them. You, ah, was still in Jim Crow they would hang you in a minute. You had an even temper, you knew your place.  

ME:How did you get an education?

GM:I went to a public school. We had public schools down there, ah.  I went to public school from the first grade to the twelfth grade.  I graduated from union High School.  I started out in a little school, a two room school called Central Point, two rooms.  It was from prepemial to seventh grade.  Then I went to fill from seventh grade to the eighth grade and then you went to High School. It wasn’t know, I wasn’t knox middle school. It was elementary and high school and I started in ninth grade in union High School and I graduated from Union High School in 1990, sorry 1960.  

ME:How was the education? Was it bad? Was the books all ripped and trashy?

GM:No, we had good books.

ME:Compared to the whites?

GM:Compared to the whites, not really. Some of us didn’t know the differences. We had a book. One thing about it when they started to talk about integrating down there our schools, they built the black kids brand new schools for not to let the white kids come. We got brand new schools and it went on for years. Then they put us all together but we didn’t have white teachers. We had all black teachers. We had good teachers.

ME:Did you feel safe?

GM:Very safe – we didn’t have the fighting. We had no cop in the schools, no police, no nothing in the school, like it is here. Even tempered, we had good teachers. They thought a lot of kid and you felt safe around where I lived at, cause we live in the country it wasn’t to many of us.  

ME:Did you hear about the students, Little Rock Nine? The nine black students that went to an all-white school?

GM:Down south further down south yeah I heard about it. I didn’t like it.

ME:You didn’t like the way they were treated?

GM:Naw, I did like the way they were treated. And I remember the ah boycotting of the, when they sat at the lunch counter. Can’t think that. But Little Rock Arkansas stood in the door. That did, it wasn’t right because everyone is entitled to an education. Black or White.