BARBARA COPELAND: Will be interviewing Sister Pat Council today. Today is Friday

Transcription

1 Sister Pat Council BARBARA COPELAND: Will be interviewing Sister Pat Council today. Today is Friday November 30* in the year Sister Pat Council is a Latter Day Saint from the Church of Jesus Christ, the Mormon church. So I just want to start off Sister Council with a few just basic background questions. Wanted to, I know that I will be interviewing you primarily about African American women who have converted to Mormonism. But I just wanted to start off just asking a few background questions. Wanted to know if you could tell me where was your first homeplace and where had your parents come from. PAT COUNCIL: Okay, I was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in My family lives, most of my brothers and sisters still live in Louisiana. I grew up in Alexandria, Louisiana. BC: How many people lived in your home when you were coming up? PC: Growing up it was my mother and father, and I had three brothers and two sisters. So it was six children. BC: Where did you attend school in Louisiana? PC: I attended school in Alexandria, Louisiana and I went to elementary, junior high and high school there. BC: Wanted to know also who made most of the decisions in your family while you were coming up? PC: Most of the decisions were made by my father. BC: Also did both of your parents work outside of the home? PC: No, my father worked outside of the home. My mother was a homemaker her whole life. BC: Okay. What was most important to the people in your community? PC: In my community growing up school, community and church. I lived, I grew up in the '50s and '60s, and I graduated in '72. So we were pretty much quote still segregated in the South. BC: So graduated high school in PC: We had just started integrating the school in '71, '70-'71. BC: Describe the patterns of relationships between the parents and the children when you were coming up. PC: Growing up my mother was in the house. So we tended to do a lot of things with her. She was there all the time, a homemaker. She had more dealings with the children. My father, he went to work

2 NOVEMEBER30,2001 early and came home late. He worked on the railroad. He retired from the railroad. So his life was working. So he would leave early in the morning to get to work, and he would come home and take a bath, eat and be tired. So it was left to my mother. BC: What do you remember about your home as far as how it looked with furnishings, different things of that nature, things that kind of stood out when you were coming up about your home environment and how it looked? PC: What I remember most, it was full of books. Books, because my father would also get books and bring books home too. So we had books, and so I always had a chance to read. BC: Did now you mentioned books. Did both of your parents go to college? PC: No, my mother had a sixth grade education. My father eighth grade. BC: Who were your neighbors? Like how far away were your neighbors. PC: We were right next door to each other. We had a yard. We had a fence. But your neighbors, we had neighbors all around us. Our neighbors were usually just neighbors we grew up with. People didn't tend to move like then do now. I mean we still have the same neighbors until they die. I can call home and they'll tell me about Mr. so and so, but they stay in the house until they die. But you know your neighbors. You knew your neighbors. BC: Did you, so then did you live like in the city part- PC: Yes. City. () City. BC: Okay, Louisiana city. Was religious training important in the home? PC: Not only in the home but in the schools. We grew up at a time where you had school prayer, and you had, you had the pledge of allegiance, and you had patriotic songs, and you had the prayer. Most of my teachers were also my Sunday school and church leaders. So we grew up in a community where you not only saw them during the weekdays, but you saw them on weekends. home? BC: Could you also describe your holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving. What was that like at PC: Well, I remember Christmas being a time where my mother always cooked a lot of cakes and pies, and we would have like in the living room, no the dining room. She had a round circular table, and it was full of different pies and desserts, and people would always come and knock on the door, and my 2

3 NOVEMEBER30,2001 maiden name is LaFere. So they would always say Miss LaFere. I know you've got something sweet. Just give me something sweet. She would just cut pieces of cakes and pies and put them on a plate. BC: Just pass it out. PC: Right. But she loved that. That was her thing. She could cook from scratch with no recipes and everything. So that was the thing. The food I think the food during the holiday time more than the presents because people would come in and out. You would have people coming in because they knew she always had enough different desserts. There was also, Christmas was a time, Christmas Eve it was homemade eggnog. I didn't realize until I met my husband that you bought eggnog in the store. So hers was also a little, was made with bourbon too. So but that, you only had it on Christmas Eve. Everything was homemade even then grating of the nutmegs. BC: Wow. Very, very old fashioned like homemade. Describe funerals in your family. Do you remember any funerals? PC: We had the wake, and the wake was usually the night before, and you always had a lot of relatives that came in. I remember my mother's funeral, which would've been in '92. She died in '92, and you would always have the gathering of a lot of family member, and they would come to the house, and afterwards you would have all the food. Lots of food and you would sit around and talk. You would do a lot of history, genealogy then because somebody would always tell the story about when someone was growing up and what Miss so and so did, and you got in trouble because you didn't do something right. You had a few cousins that, you always had that one cousin that always got either everyone else in trouble or he got in trouble. It was a time to say well how is so and so kin to the family. Or you would have people that would have the title of when we would say aunt we would say Nannie we and something and we would have someone that would tell the history of well she is so and so's sister. So it was a time of gathering and also doing history. BC: So it was sort of like a combined family reunion type thing also. PC: Right. That's when you like I said a lot of time when you got together if you didn't have a family reunion, it was at the funerals. It was a gathering of people that you hadn't seen from a long time. BC: What kinds of things would your family do together when you were coming up like from week to week that sort of thing? 3

4 NOVEMEBER30,2001 PC: My father, he never took vacations because he always worked. My mother was always home, and she was a homebody. But like I said we were just so, we would always have. Oh I remember I guess the Sunday visits because you would always go visiting after church. We would go visit this aunt or that grandma or, and so you would spend time visiting with other people, and we learned how to be tolerant of older people because we did a lot of visiting. At that time when you went as children like now when people take their kids, and they run all over people's houses and jump on people's furniture. We knew you couldn't do that. We didn't do that. They would tell you, they would give you the warning before you got there. You know you sit down. Don't let me have to tell you more than one time. But you went to visit family members, and you kept in touch. That was a way of keeping in touch and doing that. BC: Right. Right. That's interesting. Wanted to know also about how you were disciplined. PC: Oh we got spankings, whippings, we called it whippings. At that time I guess that's what they taught. If you didn't do something right and they told you more than one time, you would catch a good spanking, a good old fashioned spanking. BC: Now did the school administrators, the teachers, did they follow through with that? Because- PC: Are you talking about discipline at home or at school? BC: Both. PC: They were the same. It was the same ruling. They could whip-ifyou got a whipping at school, they told before you got home or either most of the time they would take you home. You got a whipping at home. If they really felt inclined to, they would call your parents, and then they could come to the school, and they could whip you. You understood that you didn't want them to come to school. So you didn't embarrass them. BC: Exactly. Because I remember back in those days. Well, I came up in the'60s. I was born in 1960, and there in, back in well, back in the early '60s the teachers would spank you, and then when you got home, you got another spanking. But nowadays. PC: You can't do either. I think that's why we have a lot of problems in the American society. We have a bunch of unruly, undisciplined, ill respected children, and we're reaping our, we're reaping what we've sowed. 4

5 NOVEMEBER30,2001 BC: Exactly. The teachers not only are they afraid to even spank, but they're afraid to even so much as say something that might get misconstrued back to the parents. The parents are very much against the teachers disciplining or the school administrators disciplining. PC: It's within your own family. You can't whip your other your nieces and nephews without having some repercussion from a, from your own sister or brother. BC: Yeah. It's true. This is so true. Times have just really, really changed. Wanted to know okay you talked about the differences in education between your parents and yourself. What are the major differences in like the how can I say, did your parents look forward to you going, furthering your education? PC: In our house education was important. Education was the goal in the house. Everyone had to at least graduate from high school. Also outside, since the school and the church were in the community it was expected, and we were in the black section in the black community it was expected of everyone to be able to go to college. The expectation of any child was that you should be able to go to college. The means may not have been there, but everyone was expected. Everyone had the sense that you were capable of learning more. So they even pushed. It was very important. Still today my husband's family is AME Zion out of Fayetteville. We go home a lot. We do a lot of things, and when we go there, it's still centered around the church. We were there last Sunday after Thanksgiving. Melissa, my daughter didn't have her report card. But in the church they had one of the cousins who is out working, gentleman that has his business. He was giving a gold dollar for every A that you had. Then someone else stood up and said I'll match that with a green dollar for every A and for anyone in the congregation that was in school you could show the report card. It was an emphasis on when you did good work and they did a lot of praising. So in my family, my parents did education they expected you to go to high school and finish and go beyond if you could. BC: Now you mentioned also that your church and your school, all of that, the community was like in a segregated area. Can you talk a little bit about what segregation and racism was like during the time that you were coming up? PC: I think we were sheltered because we were in the community. You knew certain things, and they talked to you about certain things. It was like not as much talked about, but it was understood. It by 5

6 NOVEMEBER30,2001 the middle '60s we watched some of the stuff that was going on in Alabama and the Montgomery and the Birmingham the marches and stuff like that, but we knew that it was certain places that you didn't want to be in after dark. But you still had a vibrant community with your doctors and lawyers and teachers, and you still had your classes like WEB. Dubois, your bourgeoisie and you had those things in place. You still had your debutante balls, and you had all those things. You had cotillions. So you still had your community. So we existed within a world. BC: That was on the outside you saw all that was going on. PC: We still had access to universities. I went to Grambling, and friends went to Southern University, which were rich in their own histories. So we had our own, you knew that it was there, but you lived, went on and lived your life. BC: So that that fear- PC: We had more hope then. We talk about. People my age, I'm forty-six, but we talk about we had the hope of things to be better versus now the kids have no direction, no goals. Even with all the adversities, I was in the eighth grade when Dr. King was killed. I remember being in the fourth grade when John F. Kennedy was killed, but we never, we had hope. So it was always a good thing. It was for fun. We always, we had a group of teachers that got you on the path to thinking college. So it was, it was not like are you, do you think you'll go to college? It's when you go to college that kind of thing. It was never they thought. They never talked to like you couldn't go to college. It was when you go to college, this is what you're going to do. At an early age so we always had teachers that had the motivation. BC: So all of that was really in place at that time, which was very important. That's good. That's really good. Did children of different class backgrounds attend the same schools? You mentioned that when you had your debutantes, your bourgeoisie did they attend different schools? PC: Remember black kids were black kids. You only had black schools to go to. BC: So at that point, that early on in the stages they didn't really have, like what they have now. PC: No, you don't. Everyone lived in the same community. So you didn't have the integration of communities of different neighborhoods. It was the thing, black people lived together. Your merchants were up the street. You had your own area that you really did things in. So you had those that had a little bit 6

7 more money, but the thing was you didn't really have the, you knew who the doctor's children were and the preacher's but it wasn't that much of a distinction. BC: Like it is now. PC: Right. Like I remember Doug Williams the black quarterback from the Redskins. He said he didn't realize how poor he was until he got to the NFL because even when we went to Grambling University, you had kids with a little bit more money, but you didn't know the disparity until, he didn't feel it until he went to in the NFL. BC: That's when the real culture shock came. PC: He knew there was a difference then. BC: Do you remember when the women got the vote? voted before then. PC: I think-was that before? Because civil rights was '65 and that was LBJ, and I think women BC: Because I can't remember exactly what date it was or what year, but wanted to know just what your, how did you, what are your opinions on that when they did eventually get the vote? PC: It probably was a long time in coming. I was, when they had that women's lib stuff when it came out, I thought- EC: Feminism. PC: Right. I thought that was more of a white woman's thing because I felt that growing up that black women had to support families. They worked anyway. They worked in the home and outside of the home whether taking care of some white person's children or not. So women, black women have always had to do a lot more. The women's lib thing was more of a white woman's. BC: And that was how you- PC: That's the way I viewed it because it was like well we're already working, and we're already doing some things. Even from slavery time black women have always had the job where the black men may not have. So I was like that was something, that was them with their burning the bra type. I looked at it from, I looked at it as they don't have anything to do. 7

8 NOVEMEBER30,2001 BC: I guess like when women got the vote, there was this notion about well it was more or less a political thing. So I guess I was just wanting to know basically how, what were your views or how did you view women being able to have more of a political voice once they got the vote? PC: Well, I think issues that affect women and children are foremost in the mind of women. So women vote on issues that, on things that they more care about whereas men will vote because of a business situation. Women vote on more economics and more emotional things whether your schools or how your schools are, whether your kids are being safe or not. That's what affects women. They have a voice, and they should be heard. BC: Right. Exactly. Wanted to know, now I don't remember if you mentioned your parents' religious background that you-i know you mentioned your husband's. So what, was that Baptist? PC: I grew up Baptist in Louisiana. I was baptized in the church (), and the pastor is still there, the one that baptized me when I was about I think nine years old. So we grew up, and we lived in the community where you could walk to church. So we would walk. The kids would walk up the street to the church, and everybody knew you in the church. So you behaved all the time. If you didn't, they could tell you that you weren't behaving, and if it was bad enough, they would take you home. So it was BC: Did you ever hold any offices while you were in church? PC: No, I didn't. I sung in the choir. The children I think it was the tiny tot choir and the young, the young people's choir, in the choir and pretty much that. BC: I've lost my train of thought here. Wanted to know also at what, how old were you when you did leave home? PC: When I graduated from high school, I was seventeen, and I went right into college that fall. So pretty much I was on my own. its band. Grambling? BC: Grambling is right there at- PC: Grambling is a hundred miles form Alexandria. It's in Louisiana. It's known for football and BC: Right. Right. So at what point then did you meet your husband. Did you meet him at 8

9 PC: I went to Grambling in '72, and I didn't meet my husband until '77. So I went to Grambling from '72 to '75, and I graduated in three years in physics. BC: Wow, physics. That's interesting because well nowadays there's just this push to try to get any African American women into math and science. It's just been a real shortage. PC: Growing up I guess somewhere I loved math and science. I remember my third grade teachers being the good influence in math, Miss McGruter. Fifth grade was Mr. Richard Green in math. Somewhere the spark flew, and then I had a seventh grade teacher Mrs. Pierot, different teachers. She taught science. So I had the love for science and math. The thing I liked growing up even though we were during segregation time in black communities they didn't segregate you whether you were boy or girl. If you were a good student, you were good for the community, and you represented the community. When you went to college, when you went off, if you go to a black church or you go to a black community, when they send you off, they say well she's graduating. She's getting ready to go to college. Remember you represent us. You always represented them. So you did your best. So when they taught you they didn't look at you as being male or female. They taught you as a smart black child, and that's what their emphasis was. BC: So they saw in you early on your ability to excel in math and science. PC: Also it was expected of mostly all the kids. I went to black school, and it was like they expected a lot more than in the integrated school today. The expectations of black children was a lot more than what the teachers now. If you're just, if you're quiet and you don't give them any trouble, you're a good student as a black child. But there they expected everyone to excel. Their expectation levels were more than what you thought. BC: Than it is for today. Pretty much so. I would have to say that that, I could see that because when I was coming up, there was a lot expected of me, and I have a daughter, she's twenty years old now. In my interactions with her teachers coming up there wasn't, I didn't get that sense of so much of a great expectation. PC: No. It's not there. BC: Not only did I not just see that with my daughter, but when I- 9

10 PC: It's even less with other black kids. My daughter is a tenth grader right now over at Cary High which is three minutes. I could walk there in five minutes. We're having battles now, and I'm over there. I volunteer two to three days a week over there. We got an interim back in math, and I'm constantly saying well how's she doing. Well, she's doing fine. I get an interim back, and it's like a D. She had a B the last nine weeks. She was a three-six student the last nine weeks. So it's like why did you let it get this far? When you see me every day, I come over. It's like their expectation of black children is not as high, but we're going to straighten that out. BC: That's so frustrating. PC: Yes, and you're thinking, when you talk to your children and you realize it's a miscommunication. So you have to take and fight your battles for your children. Education is very strong in my family, in this house and within around community, our other cousins and sister in law, brother in law's home. your own life? BC: Extended family, right. What did you learn from your parents that has helped you to live PC: Hard work. Hard work from my dad because even though we grew up without a car we were in the city. But he would always get and be to work on time. So punctuality is something that I have. I like being somewhere on time or either early but never late. So then he was always a hard worker. He still did stuff in the yard, yard work and stuff. We do that and we, my mother was service in that during the summertime when the mailman, in Louisiana by nine, by eight o'clock in the morning it was always about a hundred degrees. So when the mailman would pass, she would always have lemonade ready for him, iced lemonade. For the garbage men that would come by and she would always have a bucket, a tub full of warm soapy water so they could wash their hands, and she would always have cakes and pies for them to eat. So she did things like that. She would have a favorite cab driver that would pick her up and take her places. On Sunday she would make him his Sunday dinner. She would make him a plate and call him at the station, and he would come get his plate and have him a Sunday meal because he worked on Sunday. So she would always do that. So the service and the hard work. 10

11 BC: That's very, very, a picture of a very, very close and tight community. Just that description alone I envision like the Norman Rockwell pictures that you see that emphasizes community and family and to yourself- PC: It was there. You don't think about it, but it was there. BC: I guess you have to kind of step out of that setting and look into it and look back and you say PC: It wasn't bad. BC: Right. Exactly. There was this sense and this notion of community that existed. PC: Like today we would probably be labeled as a poor community. We didn't have a lot, but you didn't know that you didn't have a lot. The emphasis wasn't on material things as it is now. Education, treating people with respect, doing for others were more the norm. BC: Right. Right. Just kind of more or less helping instill them in you as you were coming up. Wanted to know how long had you known your husband before you got married? PC: Probably over a year. BC: Wanted to know what were your friends' reaction when you told them you were getting married? Were they excited? PC: By that time I was already, I had left from Louisiana. I was in transition. I was in graduate school in DC at Howard University. I met my husband when we were both working at Fermi Lab, the Fermi National Laboratory outside of Chicago. It's a high-energy physics lab. So by the time I had met him, I was twenty-two, twenty-three. My friends, there were, I didn't have close friends that I kept up with. BC: Okay. Okay. So your husband also majored in physics. PC: He was, when I met him, he was a physics engineer in engineering, but then he changed. He was going to school at A and T in Greensboro and when he switched over to electrical engineering when he came to State, and he finished up at NC State. BC: Wanted to know at what point did you and your husband decide to convert to Mormonism? PC: My husband graduated from NC State in He interviewed and he took the job with Carolina Power and Light, CP and L, here based in Raleigh. Our first training, his first training area was in Southern Pines, which is about an hour south of Cary. So we left NC State and went to Southern Pines, and 11

12 we were staying, he was getting trained. One of the supervisors that he had that trained him was a Mormon. What he did was he had tapes in his cars. Herbert could go out like go out to visit different customers or what they called different clients. Clients could be an industry. Like Burlington Industries or something you go out and meet with the plant manager and things like that. You were in and out of the car as an engineer manager, an engineer. My husband was just riding along, and he popped in a tape, and he started listening to it. So from that he said well what is that all about. It was the Book of Mormon tapes. So from that led to a discussion of the church, and then they invited us to come to church to some of their meetings. What happened was they were having the women's organization which is the relief society. They were having a monthly homemaking meeting. They met once a month at the church, and they would discuss different things like from decorating, making things in the home to maybe being better finance managers and stuff then recipes and stuff. I would go to those meetings and they would invite us to firesides. The firesides would be at someone's home, and it would maybe be on food storage and different things. So we would go to different meetings. Well that went on for, and for a while, from like November to February in Southern Pines. We had different discussions from the missionaries, the different people that ride the bikes. BC: They would come and do regular- PC: Discussions. In the home and stuff or either in someone else's home that was already a member. Then we moved in February because he was assigned a regular position because we were only in training in Southern Pines. So we got the regular position was up in Asheville. We moved to Asheville in February, and our name was forwarded for other members of the church to fellowship us. But we had had such a good rapport with the people in Southern Pines that we didn't really want to do it up in Asheville because we were going, we didn't have any family in Asheville. It was just my husband, myself and my son Lamont. But we moved to Asheville, and we didn't attend the church. We knew where it was from February to about August. Then in August we liked the things that had been discussed with us. We liked the people that had been around us. So we decided that we really wanted to go back to church, and we liked what's in the Mormon church. So we just decided one Sunday morning to get up and go. Then once we appeared they wanted to fellowship us. So we went to church a few weeks and stuff like that. It was, we had the invitation to be baptized, and I was baptized in '83, in October of '83. My husband was not 12

13 because he still had some questions about the different doctrines and things like that that he had to work out within himself. But it was all right. We agreed that I could, that it was right for me. I felt right that it was something that I wanted to do. He still attended church with me. In '83 he would go. We would get up and go. Lamont was going to church. Lamont was only four. He had just turned five. So he was still going because we were going. Then when Lamont turned eight and he was ready to be baptized and also during that time my husband was also studying and asking questions and being active in different things. Then he joined. I joined in'83. He joined in'86. So it was two and a half years later. So he and Lamont were baptized. So we were a family in the church. BC: So you had mentioned that he had a strong background, the both of you in the Baptist. PC: He was AME Zion. BC: AME Zion. PC: His family was strong into that. That was the thing too. They were very supportive. I know like in the church we hear where people join and their family disowns them. That never was the case in our family. BC: On either side. PC: Either side. I was very strong willed, and I did what I wanted to anyway. So I didn't need permission or response from anyone in my family because I was very independent and I from a strong, from an early age. It was something I did, and I was going to do it because I felt right about it. behind me. BC: So now remind me, you're the oldest of all of your siblings? PC: No, I have an older brother and older sister. So I was like number three, and there are three BC: So they supported, both families supported you. Wanted to know what are some of the differences between the AME Zion that your husband finds or that both of you collectively find between the AME Zion church and the Mormon church and then also some of the differences that you find between the Baptist church and your Baptist upbringing and the Mormon church. PC: Okay, let me get my ideas together. There's a strong emphasis in both churches on family, very strong on family. In the Mormon church the hierarchy in the church or the leadership is as far as the chain of command is of men. It's male. Whereas the AME Zion church you have women that preach as 13

14 well as men. It's like the baptism I guess they both you can be baptized from the time you're eight and older. wait? BC: Do they baptize early, at an earlier age in the AME Zion and the Baptist churches or do they PC: They do the sprinkling or the christening the water over the baby's head. Whereas in the Mormon church the baby can receive the blessing, and it's through the father or through the priesthood. BC: I actually attended one of those services where they announced the baby, and I think at that point they give it, the baby its first name PC: Give the baby the name and the blessing. The baby has a name. They give the baby a name for the church record. Someone records it. So that say if, they do that because of the genealogy work. Because if someone needed to go back and find a long lost relative, they may have records of a blessing. The blessing may have a record. It's kept on the role. So if you want to look up in and research, there are different ways of researching family members. So not only if a death certificate, but you may have the records of things that happened like whether a young man received at the age of twelve became a priestholder, and that's recorded somewhere in the records of the church. BC: So there's different avenues of going about genealogy within the Mormon church. PC: They keep records, and you keep the records. So the baby has a name from when they leave the hospital, but the name is given like on record. BC: So are there, what do you see differently doctrinally? What did you find to be most striking doctrinally between the Baptist church and the Mormon church? Was there anything about the Mormon church that made you feel that this is the church, the right church instead of a Baptist church, or do you still consider yourself a member of both? PC: I'm a member of the Mormon church, but my background is Baptist. I didn't really quote study the doctrine because I guess I became an inactive Baptist when I left home. I was still I did everything. I paid monies and stuff like that. But I may not have thought about the doctrine. I went to church. BC: At a Baptist church. 14

15 PC: Whereas in the Mormon church I believe in the plan of salvation, which is that we were in heaven with our Heavenly Father, and we came to earth. We received the body, and that we have, we have a purpose to come down. We're here to do things. We help others, and we become, we try to understand the mission and the purpose of Christ when he was here and understand that his sacrifices and his atonement for us in that he gave his life on the cross. He gave his life so that we could have a way back that we don't have total eternal damnation. Whereas in some of the AME Zion or the Baptist church that if you don't do right, you're going to hell. Whereas in the Mormon church we believe that there are three kingdoms of glory. You have the celestial, the telestial and terrestrial. According to like in there's a verse where there are many houses, there are many houses BC: Many mansions- PC: Mansions in God's house that you won't, only like those that have really done, the Sons of Perdition where they have really done something really horrible will be the ones that will reign with Satan. Everyone else has the degrees of glory. You have different places. The top, the celestial is for those it's like the person that ascended, that was translated. BC: It's the highest kingdom. PC: Right. Right. Like everyone may not be there, but it's not like you're going to be just totally damned for the rest of your life. BC: So you have that opportunity of getting there, ongoing. PC: And where you are, like the celestial is where versus the terrestrial maybe where you are on earth and you live, but you may not live with everyone that you know. Because if you decide to do the things that are wrong, then you have to, like you have a consequence for it. You're not going to be damned- BC: For all eternity. PC: Eternity. It's those who really do really bad and horrible things to others. Probably someone like maybe like Hitler or someone. Those kind of people that you know- EC: () blasphemy that sort of--. So isn't there like a distinction in those, in the two different places for END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A 15

16 START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B BC: The two separate places that a person could go is it like outer darkness? Then I think what you were probably describing the terrestrial or the telestial, the different degrees where a person has not achieved the highest kingdom which is the celestial the comparison to what the Baptist church would call hell, would that be considered the outer darkness? PC: Outer darkness is hell and that's separate from the three degrees of glory, the three kingdoms. That's separate. The Sons of Perdition, those that have really been horrible that just want to take up and follow Satan even when they know that--. If you watch Touched by an Angel, they had an episode where the Jasmine Guy is the, remember she is the one that has turned from being an angel. She has decided to take Satan's side. BC: Right. That's one of my favorite programs. I know exactly which episode you're talking about. PC: She has met the Savior. She has sat beside him, but bad is so much more appealing to her than the good. So those who are, you knowingly know. It's like someone that has seen God, and you decide that I like being a bad boy, a bad girl. You go to harm His people, the goodness of the souls of man. BC: Exactly and those are the two differences. Yeah, and so, yeah and that program does- PC: It talks about someone that was an angel, that is a fallen angel and she has sided with Satan, and those people that want to, they have gotten so mad at God and Christ that they want to do everything to bring the kingdom down. So those people knowingly will be sent to outer darkness to reign with him. BC: The other two places, the telestial and- PC: It's just different degrees of glory. It doesn't have the highest, but they're not bad either. They're not, it's not like the outer darkness. It's the outer darkness and then the three kingdoms. So they're not as bad, but some people will not achieve the highest one, but it doesn't mean, that's like just because you're an A student doesn't mean that you're, the C student is not of worth either and the B. A, B, C, C is not as high or as bright as A but- BC: Exactly. But that you still have that ability in the afterlife to continue to get to the celestial? PC: I don't know, you can improve. 16

17 BC: To get to the other higher kingdoms. I guess wanted to know what was it that made, that helped you to make that decision that Mormonism was the correct way for you to go instead of the Baptist- PC: The Baptist and the AME Zion. Because I didn't, when we got married, I did not join the AME Zion. It was just something about the doctrine I just didn't like or some of the rituals, some of the rituals. They weren't for me. The altar call where, I remember going to one of the meetings with my mother in law to one of the churches, and I remember you get to the altar call, and they told the young lady's business to the whole congregation. I said I didn't need to know that. I didn't like that kind of stuff. It could've been just pastoral, whoever the minister was at the time. But I didn't like that and just certain things just didn't sit right with me. So I could not join. Some things in the doctrines of the Mormon church I'm steadily working on. Some of them I accept, and it's not a big issue in my life, but I know that they exist. Like some people may have a problem with maybe only the priesthood holders are male. But it doesn't bother me because women still have a great influence in a lot of different things in the church. So that's not a problem. BC: So do you find that the women's position because they still have certain positions to fulfill within the church do you find that the women's positions are on equal par with the men even though there is that stated hierarchy where only the men hold the priesthood? PC: Hold the priesthood and hold certain positions like bishop and state president and stuff. I think it's not a problem. I mean some people have a problem with different, if they don't have this position, then they get all bent out of joint. I think in the church they do say the greatest calling of a woman is that of a mother. They emphasize that, and some time within families it's not always done, but they try to emphasize that that no greater call could be that of a mother and that of being a helpmate for your husband and stuff like that. BC: So now there was one other thing that I wanted to know also. As you know in the African American churches the way that they go about praising the Lord, the intensity in the spirituality, the shouting, falling under the spirit- PC: It's not there. It's not in the Mormon church. BC: Right. 17

18 PC: It's more a reverence, subdued type of atmosphere, and yes, that is a difference, and we do see it. Our children see the difference when they go to the AME Zion church or to a Baptist church. Yes, there is a difference. BC: Wanted to know had you before joining the Mormon church had you ever experienced or how would you say, had you ever experienced that kind of worship in the African American church falling under the spirit or being touched by God in those, in the way that African Americans are touched by God in the church. Had you ever experienced that? PC: Me myself. I would have that, I was not one to grow up to, and because I saw some people that quote I thought were faking it, or being holy rallies or phonies I was still kind of reserved in my looking at those people. They're just putting on an act. They want to be seen. Those same people in an hour or two afterwards could curse Satan out. So it was like now how much of it is truly genuine and not. So I was, I tended to be more reserved in my worshiping God. It was more like I enjoyed the music, and I could feel it, and I would clap and maybe pat my foot and because now still when we go to the AME Zion church, it feels like it's a production by the minister. Sometimes by the congregation that he's not really preaching. He isn't getting me excited today. It's like you have to have it within. So I feel like, like in the church we talk about, in the Mormon church we talk about a lot of times you do things from that warm feeling with inside which is like the Holy Ghost or your comforter. So that's what you depend upon. I still get emotional or teary eyed when I listen to the Gospel station. Certain songs move and stir you soul. It's a stirring, but I don't have the, where you are falling out and you have the tongues and BC: Speaking in tongues and just- PC: But I understand that in some people, and I try not to be such a harsh judgement of people, but it's not for me. BC: So I guess what I was going to ask is if you had that experience and then not have experienced it within the Mormon church, what did it mean to you to not experience it in the Mormon church? Was it something that you felt was just lacking that you wished was there in the Mormon church? PC: I can't say that I wish they would convert or move over to the Gospel side. I think it's just like anyone in music where you can, I enjoy a ballet. I can enjoy the best of ballets or even an opera. I can go to an opera, but then I want to listen to my R and B music. They both have their own places. They 18

19 serve a different purpose in your life. Like I said when I'm on the beltline or in traffic, I may want to listen to mellow jazz. Then if you're at a concert or at a basketball game, I can deal with listening to or going to a Temptations concert. So they both have their own places in my life. BC: Exactly. Exactly. How does the Mormon music, does that, how does it. Does it appeal to you? Their songs, does it stir you? PC: They have certain songs that stir me, and I have certain songs that really touch your fiber of your soul. I Don't Feel No Ways Tired touched me as far as Gospel or that song Hold On a Change Is Coming. Those songs, I have certain songs like I Believe In Christ is one of the songs that we sing a lot. Or Because I Have Been Given Much is a song about 'because I have been given much, I too must give, because of they great bounty, each day Lord.' Those songs really mean a lot to me. BC: So you do feel like there is a sense of spirituality. I guess because my concern was if an African American male or female, family has been just raised up in like the Pentecostal tradition, the traditions where there's just so much well like you said a performance. A lot of the church attendance had to do a lot with just being filled. It's just more so an African American tradition that we express ourselves in with our bodies. PC: It's just like funerals. You fall, they grieve openly. My sister and I were at the same funeral, but my mother's death affected her differently than it affected me. I mean, she was, she screamed, and you had to have a couple of ushers to fan her. I kept mine inside. It's not that we didn't grieve. I just, we grieved differently. We, you worship differently. BC: That's a new and different perspective. I have not had anyone to give me that kind of analogy, to point out the differences and how they reconcile being filled by the spirit in the African American church and then still being able to be filled by the spirit in the Mormon church. That's a wonderful analogy. Just being able to, still be able to be filled by the spirit but in different ways and being affected differently than another person would be affected which says to me that it doesn't make one any less than, one way of being filled any less than the other. It's just that one is a little bit more expressive. PC: Yes, very. BC: I think that would be attributed to a cultural thing. 19

20 PC: We get the same thing when we attend the, it's a festival, the international festival that's held down at the Civic Center in Raleigh ever year in October. You get together with a different nationality, and if you ever notice it was even brought out by Chuck Davis the dance ensemble that the way that Europeans worship is different from the way that maybe Africans or maybe those from Latin America. You can see it in the dance. Whereas your dance of the Scottish is very proper upright, head up, chin up same as far as the ballet, Scottish, Irish, and then you get to the Latin dances, the South American, they would come out there bzzzz with all the vigor and vivacious. It was different. They danced, but it was different. So you compare that to your religions. One is more expressive. It doesn't mean that one is better than the other. It's just one where it stirs you differently. BC: That's another wonderful analogy. Just bringing that to bear helps me to really focus in on how they are different and just why they're different. It's just all cultural. Also wanted to know now you mentioned that from time to time you still do go to the AME church in Fayetteville while still being a member of Mormon, of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. Wanted to know do you find that that interferes or conflicts in any way sometimes for you and or do you feel that it could present conflicts for your children when you take them back and forth? PC: No. No. As a matter of fact because it's more like a family get together when we go to the AME Zion everybody in there is related in the church. We're related. So the church is like a community. Your uncles and your aunts and your cousins, and it's another time to get together. After church sometimes you go down in the fellowship hall, and you have a meal, and you sit around and eat. It's just and it's a way of getting to spend more time with your cousins. My kids they don't know their cousins as much in Louisiana as they know the cousins in Fayetteville, in North Carolina. They have grown up together. It's a sense of that you know each other which is always-they're very supportive of our religion of us and our religion. They understand that we have the Word of Wisdom where we don't drink alcohol, and we don't smoke, and we don't use substances like tea. So and my mother in law has been great about it because Lamont never liked tea as a little boy. But we would say our religion says we should abstain from tea. So it got to a point where they even stopped making tea. We would go to Kool-Aid and sodas and stuff like that. But they were supportive in that way. So we don't, it's not like we have to shift gears. It's not the 20

21 shifting of gears. When we go to church, for me I just don't take the communion because it's the red wine. When you're in the communion glass. BC: Now do they use real wine when you go to the AME communion? PC: They use, it's like Concord grape wine. That and whereas in the Mormon church our communion is water and bread. So we have that. But it's just that I think if you take the communion you have to believe in everything, every part of it and I don't believe in-they have even an Apostle's Creed, I believe in the- BC: The trinity. PC: I believe in the but it's something. I believe in the catholic church. No, I don't believe in the catholic church, in the AME Zion. There's a part in there. You know you say it every week, but I don't believe in the Catholic church. I didn't believe in it when I was a Baptist because you go back to the history of the Catholic church and how it was founded. It was from Henry the Eighth during his adulterous days when he couldn't get the Church of England to have him to get divorced from the wife. So it was made under false pretenses. So some churches have their own philosophies, but that was one that I could never-i believe in Pontius Pilate who crucified Christ and everything then say I believe in the Holy Ghost and the it's the catholic church was always the part I can not say. But when it comes to communion, I'm not going to take your communion if I don't believe. BC: Exactly and I think and when I was coming up and they would always say right before giving the communion that if there is any part of the communion that you didn't agree with, then they would expressly say that you should not take the communion. PC: So it's just different in the doctrine, but it was enough that I just can't, I can't do it. I don't stop anyone in my family. My husband does it out of ritual. Because you grow up in there and the church has been such a part of your life. Because it wasn't hard to convert to Mormonism because like I said some of the things in my church I believed in is still believed in the Mormon church. BC: So they're similar, a lot of similarities. Do you find that there are more similarities than there are dissimilarities or--? 21

22 PC: I haven't, I can't answer that. I mean without sitting down and writing down a list of it. People are not that different. You're right. There aren't that many differences. It's enough to have one church or another. BC: They are just outright distinctions especially with what we've just talked about. The way of expressing the spirit. So now you mentioned that your husband he takes the communion out of just regular tradition. So then does he also take the communion at the Mormon church? PC: Oh yeah. BC: So he takes both. PC: It's not a lot, within the year we may go to Fayetteville. We go for Easter. We go for Christmas, Thanksgiving the major holidays. So what we do is go home for the weekend. So if we're there Friday, Saturday, we stay for church Sunday. Then we come back after Sunday dinner at the house with everybody. So it's not, it may not be every fourth or fifth Sunday that they have communion. So we may not be home. So every once in a while he just, out of a tradition he does it. It's not a tradition that can hurt you whereas like when I grew up, we don't believe in the alcohol now like in the Mormon church. So I would not sit around and have the homemade eggnog the way it was made. and not as AME. BC: Because of the bourbon. PC: So some traditions if it is not going to hurt you, you do. BC: Now for your children coming up in the Mormon church so they were raised as Mormons PC: Right. Well, Lamont never because he was only four and five years, when I initially joined he was five, he was not of age to be baptized yet. He went through the church with us. He made, we helped him to make the decision through going to church and going to classes like Sunday school classes and studying that that was something that when he turned eight he wanted to do. So he did. BC: So then at eight he made the decision whether- PC: We did too. Like are you ready to. Then you still have an interview with the bishop. Asa kid and sometimes even when I joined the church, everything wasn't quote crystal clear to me. Over the years you learn some other things and it makes more sense. Even like if you grew up in an AME Zion, you do it out of tradition because your family is-so it's no different. Well they say well they come in, and they 22