KATHY HOKE: Today's February 18, This is Kathy Hoke. I'm here in the office of Timothy Bazemore in Windsor, North

Transcription

1 START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A KATHY HOKE: Today's February 18, This is Kathy Hoke. I'm here in the office of Timothy Bazemore in Windsor, North Carolina at Worker's Owned Sewing Company. Well, you were born here in Bertie County, is that right? TIM BAZEMORE: Yes. KH: Can you tell me when? TB: I was born in the rural area of this county April 23, My birth date that's on my birth certificate is April 23, The reason for that is that during the second World War if you didn't register when you were eighteen, you would be penalized. I was so busy on that day of my birthday, working, I forgot to register, and I just waited until the next year to register. I've been a year younger ever since. I did not have a birth certificate in the courthouse when I was born, because a midwife at the town did the birthing of me. That's why there never was a birth certificate of me in the courthouse. KH: I see. Okay, can you tell me what your parents did for a living? TB: My parents were farmers. They were sharecroppers as well as self-employed farmers. They bought a small farm when I was, you know, early childhood, and later they bought a larger farm which they still owned by the nine sisters and brothers. The nine of us, we still own the farm. KH: And that's what part of Bertie County? 1

2 TB: It's in the southern part of this county, just ten miles from Windsor, called the Woodard Road, the farm's located. KH: And your grandparents, what kind of work did they do? TB: They were farmers, and on one side they experienced slavery. My grandparents experienced slavery. My grandmother used to talk about it. I was very small, but she knew about slavery. She came through some slavery. KH: She was a slave then? TB: Yes. But they were farmers. Worked on the farm, which, historically, this kind of was agrarian and it still is. So most of the blacks in the early history of my recollection, they were just sharecropper farmers. Some land owners, of course, some black land owners when I was a boy. KH: Okay, tell me about the schools you went to when you were young. TB: My early childhood I went to a rural, Rosenwald School. It was a three classroom, wood frame school. It was very cold in the winter [laughter] and hot in the summer. You could see through the floors, but it was something that all the children were familiar with. It had the potbellied stove and it used coal. The school kids would go out in the woods and cut some wood at times, when we were using wood, and supplement with wood. The people in the community would get together and cut wood sometime for some of the stoves when the coal was not available. So it was more or less a lot of community involvement when I was 2

3 a child. Our parents, and my parents were particular community leaders, my mother, back in those days, protested black children not being able to get school. The white children, they had buses even when I was a little boy. They rode into school, and my mother and father organized the blacks to buy a bus, a bread bus, and it took black children into school back in those days. KH: This would have been the 1930s? TB: Yes, that was in the 1930s that I was in elementary school, and it was out in the rural, as I said, wood frame, three teacher school. That's where I started my education. Then into high school, I went in high school in Northhampton County. There were no buses available to take us to school. My parents sent us to a boarding school in W.S. Creecy High in Rich Square. Many seasons I had to stay out and work on the farm. One year in particular I only went to school one week, well, maybe two weeks, out of a semester because I had to stay home and help get the crops out. Different than now, we didn't have the opportunities that children have now. We were deprived. We were more fortunate than many children, but we still were deprived, extremely deprived. KH: Can you explain? TB: Well, being a sharecropper, having sharecropper parents, and tenant farmers, we many times only had one set of school clothes, one pair of overalls to wear to school, or pants that my parents provided for us. We'd come home every evening 3

4 and we'd change clothes and go out in the fields and work. We raised much of our crops. Our parents were foresighted to raise a lot of their vegetables, can fruits and vegetables, raise chickens and hogs. So we had plenty to eat, but we still were deprived of--i had to walk to school three and a half miles every day going and three and a half miles coming. Sometimes when the weather was extremely bad some of my older brothers would take the mule and a cart and come pick us up from school, but most of the time we walked three and a half miles. It was different then, a lot more blacks in the community, they had rides to school. They had school buses back when I was a little boy and we didn't. And sometimes they'd ride by us and throw spitballs on us [laughter]. Even in those days, that's what was happening back there, but more or less children pranks and there wasn't really hostile at blacks at the time. The children weren't. They felt that superiority that they had, and they used it. We would have to recognize the whites as Mr. and Mrs., and they called our parents Aunt and Uncle. But it's something that you can't forget, how wrong we thought it was then, and how wrong we think it is now, you know, to have to do that. Many of them were poor like us. They always felt a superiority over us, and they have shown it, and it still exists. As I finished elementary school, I managed to go to high school. I did not attend regular, not that I was a person who would miss school at lot. In fact, I stayed out quite a bit to work, but my parents 4

5 provided the best that they could. My father died when I was six years old, so I just had a mother. I'm from a family of nine. KH: Are you the youngest, oldest? TB: I am the next youngest. I have one sister younger than I, and I'm next. All of my brothers and sisters lived until three years ago the older brother died. All of us have lived past sixty-five. We were a fortunate family. None of us died at a early age. I am sixty-eight now and never been in the bed a day in my life. I have had the flu but no real illness. I have never drunk any alcohol. I've never smoked [laughter] any cigarettes. I smoked one playing with somebody just momentarily, but not smoked. One of the reasons I never drank alcohol, because my older brothers, they would drink, and I could see them sometimes drink and get drunk and fall in the ditch they were so drunk. [Laughter] And I just said, "I'll never do that." My mother didn't allow it, period. She was real Christian. She built a small rural church, and it's still in existence. She made us go to church and Sunday School. I have not lived all the things that I was taught, but much of the things that I was taught still are remembered by me and controls my life up to now. Sometimes as a boy we would get out and play or whatever, and one of my biggest problems of being disobedient is I would fail to put on my hat [laughter], and I'd go out and she would get the switch and she'd switch me terribly. [Laughter] Sometimes my brother and I would get out and we would just be talking and use 5

6 a cussing word or use profanity, she would get salt, black pepper, soap and make a mixture, maybe a little turpentine, and take a cloth and wash our mouths out [laughter]. "Don't do it no more now," she said. But really how horrible one might think, it has lingered with me through the years. Now, I've said some things, but I don't curse. I will not use the Lord's name in vain [laughter], and I'm thankful that she did what she did because it helped me. But she was strict. We were brought up in a Christian home, and it served a purpose. My mother was outgoing. She believed in, even in those days, humanitarian situations, and blacks and whites should be treated alike, and she stood up for it. And that's one of the things that, I guess, instilled in me the things that I have stood for, because I believe that all people are created equal. All people should have a fair and equal opportunity to achieve the best of their abilities, not meaning that all people should have the same wealth or all people should have the same educational levels, but it means all people should have, I feel, an opportunity to achieve to their fullest. I have tried to bring about some of these attributes. KH: Was there a high school in Bertie County at the time you were going to high school? TB: Yes, there was. There was a high school right here, W.S. Etheridge, down the street now. But it's closed. It's not in use at the time. It's a discarded old building. 6

7 KH: So you had to go to Northhampton? TB: I didn't have to, but my brothers and sister had gone before me. There was a boarding situation there at the time they went, and at the time I started there was a boarding situation. I lived in a boarding home. This school had a boarding situation there. It was easier to get to the boarding situation than it was to get the bus. The bus would run some days, and some days it didn't. Children walked part way, and some lived with people near the school, and so forth and so on. It would just mean a better way to get to school in a boarding situation than trying to catch a bus. Finally, the county provided two or three buses for blacks, to cover this whole county. So it was still very hard to get to and from school. So I don't know how we did as well as we did really. We didn't have any opportunity to even go to school. KH: Well, you did any way? What made you decide to go into the army? TB: It was not elective. Everybody had to register, and I was drafted. I didn't want to go. I don't regret that I went but I didn't want to go. I do not believe in killing. I believe it's a way that people should find to solve their problems without war. I'm not a conscientious objector, but seems the leaders could find a way to solve problems without war. But I was drafted to go in the war, and I was in the army less than six months before I was sent overseas. I went to Manilla, stayed a 7

8 while, and I didn't get into any combat. I was in the combat area where they were fighting, but I was in a trucking company, and I didn't have to really fight. I saw numerous dead men, soldiers, both enemy and American laying dead in the Philippines, but I was not in combat. I was transferred to Japan, and when the Japs surrendered, we were getting ready to invade Tokyo. I was lucky there. A torpedo almost hit our ship. The concussion from it rocked the ship on one occasion, but that's as close to any kind of direct contact with the enemy there was. You could hear the guns and all this, but I never was faced with bullets. I stayed in the army just two years. After going overseas, I was promoted. I came out staff sergeant with a tech sergeant rank. I was in charge of the motor pool for a transportation company, 55 two-ton trucks and five weapon carriers and some jeeps. I was the motor pool sergeant. I had the opportunity to come home and stay a little while and go back and take my job as a civilian. Could have made some good money but I elected to be home. KH: So you were about twenty-two when you returned home after the war? TB: That's right, twenty-two. As a matter of fact, I went in at nineteen and come out at twenty-one. KH: So what was it like when you came back home? TB: One of the incidents that happened as I went overseas, and we were a black unit. We had a white commanding officer, lieutenant. Our school, the motor pool mechanics school, was 8

9 with whites. My rating was excellent. I did well, and I was brought back to the company as a motor pool sergeant. But in returning home, I found it different here then even overseas. I found the hostility in blacks and whites, more or less whites than in blacks, but I was traveling and we rode by train from Seattle, Washington, and got into somewhere in Maryland, crossed the Mason-Dixon Line [Interruption] KH: You were talking about your experience in coming back from the war, and you were talking about having been in a black unit and the train. TB: In coming back after I had served my time and the Japanese surrendered, and, of course, many of us immediately came home maybe one or two months after--i was asked to remain but my points allowed me to come home and that's what I wanted to do. But on my way home, as I was saying, I got in Maryland and we shifted from train to bus. We were traveling along in this bus, and it would stop almost at will when somebody wanted to get on. But we were seated by requirement from back to front. White, front, and black in back. As the requirement, whites got on the bus, the blacks had to shift backward, and if the whites got on, the blacks had to stand up even if the whole bus was filled, the seats were filled, the black would have to stand. And I vividly recall, there was an older black lady seated in about the one-third rear of the bus, almost at the back. And whites had come on. A young boy got on the bus, maybe fourteen year old 9

10 boy, and the driver asked this black lady, 85 or 90 year old lady, to get up and let this white boy set. And it bothered me and I can't forget it. We were dying overseas. We were fighting for our country, to come right back in America to see that. It was something that, it must be, it's going to last me to my grave, because I can't forget it. That, within itself, said that something was wrong with this country. We can go fight, come back, and, had it been in the front portion of the bus, we might could look at it. But they had already driven the blacks all the way back to the back, then made this older lady stand. I asked her to take my seat, as I was in the very rear of bus, I asked her to take my seat. I watched then, and watch now, in the same frame of mind, much of its still here as in David Duke. It's there. I guess I have been trained to try to be reasonable, but I can't just make myself adjust to that kind of injustice. I don't do it well. I realize that I can't change everything, but the things that I can change, I try to do my part. So that's one of things that I feel has caused me to try to do as much as I can, and as well as I can afford, to bring about some changes of injustices in Bertie County. KH: So you came back to Bertie County right after the war. What kinds of jobs were open to young black men at that time, and women? TB: The only jobs that were available in this agrarian area were farm-related jobs. Tenant farming was most prevalent, and 10

11 that's what most blacks did. Unbelievable how small pieces of land would provide a livelihood because most of the food was raised on the farm at that time. Most of the land was owned by whites, but some blacks owned land. More than now, had ownership. Women, there were some jobs available for white women, but most black women kept white children while the white women did this work, for example, in sewing factories. When I was a child or boy, young, the whites did it, and the blacks kept the children for them. I just so well remember the kinds of jobs that were off limits for us as blacks, like telephone operator or something of that sort. We didn't get the opportunity, like tellers in the bank. They didn't have none of these. Even in the courthouse, we had a black fountain to drink from and a white fountain, and black restrooms and so forth and whites and all this. In the cafes, we weren't allowed to go. They had a little hole in the window and they'd pass the stuff through the window. Using the same dollars, same prices, that was crazy. And that was one of my experiences in the '60s, as I come along and finished my career in the army. I had the ambition to be self-employed. I was a farmer, self-employed farmer, and a logger. I logged more or less pulp wood at the time when there was not very much machine. It had to be done by hand. Of course, we had trucks, but crosscut saws rather than the chain saws and the tractors and so forth. It was hard work. You had to really know how to utilize your skill in getting this wood 11

12 out, as economical as possible. I was successful in getting a crew of men to know how to go in and get it out. Even in those times, we had incentives in our work. I guess I learned a lot from that even back in those times. I was self-employed for maybe twenty years. I farmed and logged, and finally moved up into the '60s and when we began to look at things a little different and organize ourselves to bring about some changes, and through anti-poverty programs we became involved to look at how we could change things in Bertie County and in the rural South. We had organizations. We had civic organizations composed of blacks to come together and form the kind of organization that would get out and really do some things, voting rights. KH: What was the name of that organization? TB: We had several, three organizations during my time. In the early part of it we had Bertie Citizen Council, and then we moved into, what was our next organizational name? [Interruption] KH: We were talking about the different organizations that were getting formed in the '60s. TB: Bertie County United Citizens. That was one of the organizations that was really a stronghold during the '60s, and much of the time I was even chairman. I was active almost historically throughout the '60s. I think it got a lot of things done. KH: What were the goals of that group? 12

13 TB: It was to, first of all, bring about the awareness of the injustices and the kinds of things that would be promotional for the black community. It was to first alert them, educate them. Voting registrations and voting activities was one of the things that we saw would do more than anything else right at the time. As well as to get involved in the anti-poverty programs. The awareness of the nation that something needed to have been done. We tried to create different kinds of programs right here in the county, good neighbor councils and so forth. We became involved in finding ways that black people had to be treated a little different. You know, it had to come by way [laughter] of--frank could tell you more than me--we just had to get out and make it more or less a fighting demand that some changes had to be made. Standing up and fighting for what we knew was right. KH: Well, now that Frank Adams is here maybe you want to take care of whatever? [Interruption] You were telling me about the different organizations that started in the '60s. But let's just go back a little bit. You got married after you came back from the war, is that right? TB: Yes. I got married about four years after the war. I was approximately 26 years old when I got married, 27. KH: And your wife's name? TB: Hannah Bond Bazemore. KH: And she's from Bertie County? TB: Bertie County. And I have seven children. 13

14 KH: When did they start school, what year? TB: They started school, I would have to get that information. I can't recall the exact years that they started. KH: Roughly. TB: They started school in '47. When they went to kindergarten and on up, I would have to just concentrate a minute and get the years. Get the birthdays and then the years. But that's information I could just give to you in writing if you need it. KH: What's your recollection of the state of the schools when your children were going to school? What were the schools like then? TB: My children were at a disadvantage in going to school because we lived out in the rural country, and even in the black schools, we were one of the last schools to be consolidated. Our school was a little grammar school that I attended when I was a boy. They were schools that still had the pot belly heat with the outhouses for them to go to, even in the mid-'60s. We had better schools, facility-wise, and the people going to those schools were just unfairly left out. We had elementary school right here in Windsor where the teacher-pupil ratio, they had less students than any in the county, the teachers. Yet and still, we were down there in the old, wooden school, cold, outhouse for restrooms. In one school, water was standing all around the outhouse at that time. I guess that's probably one of 14

15 the things that made an enemy in the white community. I saw it needed to be changed and it could have been changed, and we met with the superintendent on many occasions, and they gave us the runaround. That was in the early '60s, I've said, mid-'60s, '64. The Civil Rights Act passed, passed the freedom of choice. They talked about, at that time, building a school to accommodate these three schools. KH: They, you mean the.... TB: Superintendent and local school board, at that time was white, all white. And in doing so, they designated us, and from these three schools, two of them were in the southern most part of the county, the other one was near the northern part of the county, northwest portion of the county. A similar situation. Three little schools out in the country and no facilities. They were still in existence. My children attended those schools. I was interested not only in my children, but the other children. As the superintendent, being pressured by us, those schools elected me as chairman to represent those three schools. We had committees to work towards getting a better school facility. The superintendent offered us a site to go look at, even though it was supposed to be the children's choice to go to the school that they elected to go to. But he gave us a site in the southern portion of the county where there was all blacks, almost all blacks, to look at the site. We began to look at the site, saying that we're not selecting this site. They're telling us 15

16 where to go and approve a site, but we're not selecting the site. But they called us the selecting committee. My being chairman of these three schools, we met and talked with the superintendent. My recommendation to the other members of these schools who were on this committee was that we go to the school of our choice, looking at the freedom of choice. We had it, and why would we be the ones to go out and find a site. The law of the land was freedom of choice. We went back to the superintendent and told him that we had done a study, and we learned that the white school here in Windsor had a teacher/student ratio of less than anywhere in the county, and that it could accommodate our children. And that's where we're going to bring them to the white school [laughter]. He asked me out and shut the door. [Laughter] It was a hostile kind of atmosphere. But we did enroll, and they were the earliest and the first group. One black child attended school the year before. These were the first children in an integrated situation, and I was the one that led them into the school. So it didn't set well with the white community, nor the superintendent. KH: Did any of your own children.... TB: All of my children went. All of my children were of age but one. They entered the school. Some in third, second, fourth [laughter], first grade. But they entered the school. They started integration right there. As well as all of the 16

17 students from these three schools, entered, and naturally it left me sort of in a hated position. I was not liked for a long time. KN: This was 1964? TB: '64 the Act was passed. '66, it was enforced, This was 1966 when we led it. So that's one of the things that I was frowned on, even back then. KN: What happened? TB: They entered, and of course, the children, we did it without incidents. No major incident. There were some. And of course, this was the beginning of the acceptance of integration, and this kind of was the first, I guess, that we knew about in the South, to fully integrate. We just put pressure, and we said we weren't going to go out and build a school in a segregated segment. The federal government asked us not to do it, and requiring schools to integrate, and here we go out there and build a segregated situation. We feel wrong. We wouldn't recommend it. We're going to bring our children up there, and we did. And that was the beginning of this integration in this county. We were one of the earlier counties to fully integrate, not token but fully integrate. And that was one of the things, and of course, at that time I was farming some, and I was logging, cutting pulp wood. And I recall I had a truck that I had used somebody else's name, where all my life I'd been going buying timber and selling it and doing everything. So I had some guys working for me, and I was using somebody else's name. I 17

18 wasn't the well-received. I had to go out and buy my own timber here. I was cutting just some laps, tops, from logs behind a logger. He wasn't the owner but he managed timber for this company, Coleman Lumber Company [laughter]. The logger that was logging informed me that he was told that if he didn't get my truck out, he was going to have to get out. This was a white logger. That was the means of retaliation on me. That they wouldn't even allow my truck to even be there. Didn't know whether I was there or not. Didn't want it nowhere near. That's the kind of reprisal. That's the kind of means of saying, look, we're not going to accept you in no kind of business that is affecting the white community. My land, my farms that I was renting, they called me in, you know, and said, look, I want my land and that kind of thing. But I had the foresight to see that. I knew it would happen. I went to the community college and took a course in brick masonry. I did well in the course, but before I could finish the course, people were reading about me all over the state, and the three schools, and I got this job with mobility. So that was out of the country. So it never affected me at all. One of the things that I did. I tried to make sure that no identity of reprisal, no identity that anybody could visibly see my having an economic setback. I tried to be sure that it looked like I was progressing economically. And this job that I got, it appeared--and it was a decent job. KH: A job with mobility, what was the full name of it 18

19 again? TB: North Carolina Fund, Mobility ( ). KH: Mobility Fund? TB: North Carolina Fund, but the North Carolina Fund had several projects, and Mobility was the name of this project. KH: And it was based in Durham? TB: Yes. KH: And it's purpose was? TB: To find people from the rural, low-income setting, and move them into the Piedmont west where there were plenty of jobs. Farms were being mechanized and there was displacement of many jobs. And they were saying rather than these people fleeing to New York and whatnot, to join the social service role, we'll find gainful employment right here in North Carolina where there was a need for people to work. Match them with the job, find housing, and get them in a decent setting until such time that they could go on off. That's what this Mobility Project was doing. KH: I see, and how many years did you do that job? TB: I did it about two years. I then wrote a proposal with the help of Bob Cummings that worked with Mobility. The proposal was to have families, to raise the food at home. This was just more or less going back to the old tradition of family canning, freezing, raising swine, killing hogs, chickens, eggs, that kind of thing. Collectively, they could do it together, and just have one mass garden that would accommodate the whole community. I 19

20 then resigned from Mobility to carry out this project and ran the project two or three years to demonstrate that people could, together, raise enough food to provide most of the basic needs right at home, by collectively doing it together. Those who had jobs could work the jobs, and those who had no job could do this work around on the farm in a community garden setting. We had community gardens here and there and everywhere. It was a self-help garden project, we called it. KH: Did it have a name, the project? TB: Woodard Enterprises. That's the community that I lived in, a small community, and it was named Woodard Enterprises, a self-help garden program. I ran that program two or three years. END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B TB: Successful. It provided the vegetables and the different kind of garden produce. It had the swine and the meats. People came together and killed a lot of pork. It had eggs for the total community, and the people worked collectively. It's much easier to raise food in a large setting than it is in a small, because you've got one tractor that can do all the little plowing that's necessary. It was done in three communities. It brought back people into preserving food at 20

21 home, canning and putting them back on track. We gave out swine for people to raise a few hogs themselves. Gave out some poultry that they'd have eggs. Managed to give protein feed or to buy protein feeds collectively and save on the cost. Everybody had all the eggs and so forth they wanted. It was a proven project and should be continued. But Food Stamps came in and sort of replaced it. That was one of the things that we had to fight for in this county, the Food Stamp program. They thought it was too much of a give-away. Counties everywhere used it, and our country was one of the lowest per capita incomes in the nation, very low. But they couldn't see accepting the Food Stamp Program. KH: Were you involved in helping force the county to begin.. TB: Yes, we did a boycott and some huge demonstrations. We asked all men in the county, black men, to come up and participate in a march and a demonstration. And I promise you, we had people lined up almost a quarter mile, men. We said if you're not a man, don't come, but all men, black men, come. We had the whole town full, and we had speakers at the courthouse. KH: What year was that? TB: That was We boycotted the town. We had an effective boycott too. It has not been a town since. KH: So the purpose of this boycott was to force the county to begin

22 TB: Yeah, the different programs, the different projects. They fought the anti-poverty programs that were available to these communities. They fought the Food Stamp Program. They just opposed everything that was in the area of any kind of grant. They just couldn't see it. And suddenly, we had to do something about it. They didn't hire in the stores, black people. That was one of the areas of the boycott. Just a slew of things we had to bring change to, and, of course, we organized voter registration in the town in conjunction with what we were doing. We organized a tutorial program which was very successful, and the Board of Education frowned on it. But in less than two years, they had implemented the teachers' aide program. They found that teachers' assistants working along with the professionals, para-professional working with the professional, to try to promote good opportunities in the area of education. KH: Can you explain what your tutorial program was about? Who was tutored? TB: Yes, we initiated and we had college students, SNCC and other civic organizations, to come in and do the tutoring, but it was in the area, first of all, of awareness, rather than academics. Beginning the first year, we had to bring about awareness of need, you know, black and poor children, and to find ways to get the involvement of blacks who were fearful. We had a lot of fear in that town. It was just the Ku Klux Klan, the fear 22

23 to stand out and be identified in anything. That was a hostile endeavor for a parent to get a child enrolled in this tutorial program. They were standing out against the power structure. It was one of the things that they expected reprisals. They knew that the land owner would tell them, "Move," if they got too involved. But we had enough participation to make it successful. It was, of course, to also improve the level of the children from an academic viewpoint also, but first it had to let them see themselves and become aware of the need and make them proud of themselves to be what they are and strive to do better, and to give them a view of the injustices and how they might cope with them and try to minimize the fear that was in the community. But that was one of the things the tutorial program did. It went beyond academics. It was also related to parents and children. How to get things going, also, and it was very successful. Eventually the system, not long, the whole school system fell right into it. Saw that need even though they were critical in the beginning. KH: And that year that the tutorial program was started was around '67? TB: '67, '68, in those years. KH: Let's see, tell me a little bit more about the fear you were talking about. How active was the Klan at that time? What other kind of retaliation was going on at that time? TB: Yes. The most prevalent fear was that land owners 23

24 would tell sharecroppers or tenants "Don't get involved in that mess," and if they did, how they would make a move on the farms, which wasn't a big deal, but if don't have nowhere to go and no other income or job, it is fearful of that threat. The Ku Klux, they were roaming around all over the county, and there were a few incidents were they would isolate a person and threaten to beat him up. They beat up one or two, but not a whole lot. As the black community organized to grow stronger and stronger and became a force to deal with each other. It was just one of those things, you know, [laughter] it's time out. If you go overseas and die, you can stay here and die, you know. We just stood out. They had dogs at the polls, German Shepherd dogs, and things like that to frighten. One of the things that the landowners would do was make sure their tenants were busy election days. They kept them busy. They wouldn't hardly get a loose to come vote. Some of them would break away and vote. Some couldn't and didn't. But it was mostly economic fear. The Ku Klux didn't phase a lot of us. It didn't bother me [laughter], Ku Klux didn't. Didn't then and they don't now. KH: Tell me about the impact of the march and the boycott on the black community. TB: Oh yes, that boycott, it brought about negotiations. It brought about a commitment from the white community to yield to some of the things that we requested. Not all of requests were honored, but the Food Stamp Program suddenly came into 24

25 effect, which it was a benefit that much of the whites ( ). So it wasn't that it was for blacks only. The town's hiring practices began to change. Those stores that didn't hire any blacks, they wouldn't patronize them. Some of the jobs began to be filled with blacks. The anti-poverty programs hired blacks and whites, and it was a model of working together as a team, black and white working together. The anti-poverty project that was a multi-county program. It served a real purpose during those times. The march brought about a good neighbor council, where we tried to intermediate between races and tried to bring the best of good will to both races. They had some good people on it, white and black. This boycott forced a lot of things to come that wouldn't have come as early, because there were signs of violence, the possibility of potential violence. In the school there was a principal being hired, and they had wanted to change the name of one of the schools that was black. Enough black people got together and said, "We must maintain our black principal, and the name must remain the same." You know, don't try and take everything from them because of integration now. And we were successful in holding together a lot of the things that wouldn't have been, had it not been through the organizational effort and the coming together of the community, black people, and saying that we have to do something to merge into a change. And I was one of the leaders that helped with that. I have been involved, I guess, most of my life from time 25

26 to time in trying to bring about change. The most recent one, four years ago, where the little ( ) town, local town council, had a policeman to retire. The next person in line, been there the longest, was black. They elected to hired a white that had half the years experience, and from all record had not had any more training or was not academically any more capable than the black guy. Yet they were going to promote him over the black guy and give the blacks no consideration. At that time, I was asked to put together some way, organization-wise, to change their minds. There again, we came up and tried to meet and negotiate something, to no avail. They elected to go on and hire even though we asked them not to do it. At that time, we said, well, we don't need a town. If we can't some participation in this town, then we don't need to be here. We just as well finish drying it up from an economic viewpoint, boycott, and do everything else we can. Try to do it without violence. We did put together a means to bring them to the bargaining table. They wouldn't even meet until we had the courthouse tripled full of people. They couldn't get in there. The whole county of blacks was involved. And they changed their decision as to make both black and white police chief on an equal basis, money-wise, work-wise, and everything. Put them on equal basis. They had already the white, couldn't fire him, but suddenly they negotiated that they would be equal. That was our most recent area to bring about change in the county, here in the town. 26

27 KH: Two police chiefs? TB: They would be equal. They had already named the police chief, the white. Rather than rescind that, they made them both equal, equal in everything. He's chief, but they'll be equal. As long as he remains, their salary would be equal, their work hours would be equal, and almost their authority was as near equal as possible. They asked would we go along with that, and we did that. Whereas in the beginning, they wouldn't even meet to discuss it. Wouldn't do anything. But they found this black policeman another job. He's county jailer. They had to get him out of that job, drawing that big money without all of the responsibilities. So it was a step forward. KH: Well, let's go back a little bit. Can you tell me what involvement you had in the creation of Bertie Industries? TB: Well, we'll go back in the early '60s when not as controversial, but that was as a group seeking--bertie Industries was another sewing industry owned by whites. There was a local credit union manager, black, who, along with some of us--and I was at that time even chairman of the effort to try to bring about some kind of industry to hire some black people. We had a Wrangler here for mostly whites, but we didn't have anything that was really hiring the blacks. We went to Clinton, North Carolina, and got involved with some Jewish people who were willing to try to help promote some kind of sewing industry here, back in the '60s. And from that, the trial and error effort was 27

28 started, and we managed to get it going but it wasn't profitable. And at last under the Nixon administration, from a political viewpoint, there was some help provided through the local/state government to help build a building for this effort that was being done. Bertie Industries was its name, and chartered. And to provide an interest in the 8 (a) Program. KH: Is that the Small Business Administration? TB: Yeah. By the Small Business Administration 8 (a) Program. That it would infuse some funds, supplement the contract, in order that the company might become viable. Then after it is making money to graduate that program out. But this company utilized the 8 (a) Program, two or three different towns. In each town there was a manager sent in by Small Business Administration, not from local people. We didn't have anybody. So these were outside, white managers to run this business, and as I learned now, they were doing something wrong. They were operating, using the supplement of this program as a base for the operation. For an example, if to make a coat was worth four dollars labor-wise, to do it, they would add another dollar and a half, the 8 (a) Program, supplement. The manager would use that dollar and a half supplement as the base of pricing, meaning that the operators didn't have to sew as hard because it was profitable because they were getting four dollars and a half where normal competition would have been three dollars. That happened all the time. Every time they graduated from the 8 (a) 28

29 Program, they'd start losing money. That's how I became involved. They had lost, after the government had given them enough money, loaned them the money to build a building and get them some government contracts, each time when they graduated them from the 8 (a) Program, they started going backwards. None of the local black men had been trained to run that business. My involvement came when they were losing like $5,000 a week. They had a payroll of 10, 11 thousand a week, and they were only shipping 5 or 6 thousand a week. They had lost until they were insolvent. They owed about $750,000. KH: Did they go bankrupt? TB: Yes. I went in, they got me in more or less as figurehead. That's how I got involved [laughter]. We had attracted, by an ad in the paper, a Jewish fellow who said he'd come in and run it. He came in, and he was doing fair. Some company in New York, Cherry Allen, had provided some commercial work. The bad part is that the black community or the black board of directors of this Bertie Industries elected to try to finish the government contract so they could continue to do government work, which was bad. They were losing so much, because this manager bid on that contract based on the cost that the government was allowing for it and the cost of labor, plus the fabrics and other costs. He bid on it incorrectly. There was a lot of detailed sewing in it that he didn't allow in his costs. It was $3.53 a piece, cheaper than anybody in the nation. 29

30 He was making that. That was what he was getting. They knew it was too cheap, but they just really ( ). And as we tried to get it back into the 8 (a) program, I was available to just stand up. They said, "You're going to have to have some new board members before we can consider any more," because our board members had failed. "You're going to have to have somebody there on a day-to-day basis who might could learn how to run a sewing operation." So we had consulted our black lawyer, and I don't recall his name, out of Washington, D.C., who might relocate here and try to get this company viable. During the process, and I believe it was Dr. Weaver then heading the Small Business Administration from a national viewpoint, his final decision that he would not allow this company, Bertie Industry, to reenter into the 8 (a) Program. So we attracted this Jewish fellow to come in on a commercial basis. He said he would, and he did. He was a Jewish fellow, but he cursed all the time. He cursed and coughed. He smoked a lot of cigarettes, and coughed, and cursed. And our people were not accustomed to that, and some of them resented it and some of them were fearful, him cursing at them, and they couldn't perform. He, meantime, was getting $10,000 a week payroll money from this company that he was supposed to be doing the work for. But they didn't have truck franchised to come in Bertie, and when they did, he said he had thirty some thousand dollars worth of finished garments. He didn't have but about six. Had a lot of work in process, but he didn't have it 30

31 finished. He never would let me talk to anybody. I was just standing there on a day-to-day basis, trying to get reentered into the 8 (a) Program and trying to see if I could help change this company around. And this Jewish fellow when they sent the truck in, and thirty some thousand dollars that he had told them, he knew he didn't have it. He only had six thousand he shipped. Said the truck driver was impatient. Then the next day they sent the truck back. He never would let me talk to anybody. All I did was stay there and observe, watch. I did observe that they had some people who were operating the operation, some operators, sewing on a 33% level, and some sewing on a 133% efficiency level, doing the same thing. I knew that was wrong. You just can't have people sewing so low, and some doing so well, and not seeing that it's wrong. So I got the local community college to send in a person to do a training program to try to get some younger people with dexterity to sew and catch on better, and try to get, also, him to see to utilize some of this help. We got it going, and no problem, just my being there. But this Jewish fellow, when they sent the truck back the next day, he asked me to call them and say that the plastic covers on the garments were torn so badly that they couldn't ship, and that he didn't have any more. I told him, "I can't tell that lie." He wouldn't let me talk to them at first, I won't talk to them now. You know that man got his coat and left and nobody has seen him since. That left the whole plant operation, me being the only person 31

32 with no experience, being there only four or five months, to take over and try to do it. I called this company, Cherry Allen, to come down. They flew down ( ). They organized everything, and the stuff was so strewn, so scattered over the floor, that they couldn't put it together, do nothing with it. So they had to give us a chance to complete it. They said that they wouldn't advance any more money, but they would pay us three days after it got there. I had to work out some kind of volunteer Chapter 11 to pay all these people as they got clothes in. I took over, and the first six months, our contract, we showed a net profit of $36,000, the first six months. It changed from losing $5,000 a week. We had a net profit. What we did, the first thing I did was to call everybody together and talk about the chart, the productivity chart, and those that were low. We said we're going to have lay those off. Not fire them, just lay them off until we can find something that they can do better. We didn't get a chance to lay but one person off. Those people who were operating on 30 and 35% efficiency level moved right on up to 80%. Just moved on. They weren't really trying. That's how we started operating profitably. But the company that we were working for said that if I didn't go out and find all the shares and give them to them, they were going to have to put a ( ) because this was in the early '70s. The economy was beginning to slip. And that they had other customers that they'd been working with, and they had to take it out. They took it out. We found 32

33 another company. Just started doing the same thing. We began to get profitable again, and they were running from the union up north, coming down here, and the union come in with a court order and stopped them. So we had to give it up. Some of the local banks foreclosed on the company, and we went into bankruptcy. KH: Kind of a sad ending for something that was developed with black shareholder money? TB: Yes. Those shares were just $25.00 and most had one share, one to four shares mostly. But it was an effort by the people to get something going, and it operated for about twelve years. KH: How many people had shares? TB: Two or three hundred had shares. KH: Did you have any shares? TB: Yes, I had some shares, not a whole lot, maybe five or six hundred dollars worth, but that was a lot of money to me back then [laughter]. Putting it out there. KH: But until you came in as a manager, you weren't working for the company? TB: No, I was a worker. In the start-up, I was the president to get it started. It just started, not before the government got involved. Then some of the other guys who had some managerial experience, they put their effort together and tried to move it on, but it was a failure. The government came in, and they moved it ahead but it wasn't profitable in a sense 33

34 that when they didn't supplement these contracts, it was most of the time losing money. I could see it. After I worked there for this short time, I saw where we could make it work because we were profitable the time I was there. We had changed it around. But I had my life earnings, savings, wasn't but about $17,000, and I lost all of it trying to put a little here and put a little there. I worked there six months, no pay, just trying to save it, but it was such an insolvent situation until it was unmanageable. You couldn't, there wasn't no way that you could bring it out with that debt load on it. But I saw that it could be done. So that's when I came down here to Frank Adams. We had done a feasibility study while we were there. In this feasibility study we saw that worker ownership--back in 8 (a) was number one. Get it back in 8 (a). They knew that the government was able to bring it back around. Then second, a worker ownership situation might work, even though I didn't understand how restrictive worker ownership could be. Worker ownership, I thought we could just come in and work and do like we wanted. Didn't have to pay ourselves no more than we wanted to pay us, and just sort of have a community kind of thing. And that's the concept we came in on, but IRS being involved, that traced us right on down to this place. And they said, "No, the manager [me], you don't have to be paid, but everybody else got to be paid." It's a requirement. And certainly that changed a lot of things that we had done, but we managed to get started 34

35 with five or six people. There was Transtream, an organization out of Durham. They had pulled together a little money, and they loaned us that little bit they had. They had a building to get on fire, and the insurance had given them some money. In that process, we got Transtream to loan us that money. We got a company out of Goldsboro and different places to let us do work for them. There were two people we had to deal with. Our mechanic, we had to pay him a regular salary anyway. But anyhow, we managed to pay ourselves a small contract, enough to keep going. I had figured out how we might [laughter] borrow some money from IRS in our taxes. Normally, you can hold one quarter and pay the next quarter. Kind of stay a quarter behind, and that was a right little bit of money. I was doing that, trying to get ahead. Add on more people and grow, using that money. And by them identifying us from down at Bertie, they came in, after we were here maybe eight or ten months, and went to the bank. We were just one quarter. We were one whole quarter behind, you know, time to pay it. They garnished our check to the bank. Thinking that they were closed. Drew all the money we had in the bank on Friday. But we ended our day at 3:30. So they were going to wait until we got our money in and make payroll, and [laughter] go in there and get it. When they got in there--they went in there at 4:00--all our people had come and cashed their checks and gone. But they had planned to close us. They came in and said, "You're going to have to pay that 35