u-^oo +TRANSCRIPT MELVIN MARLEY Interviewee: MELVIN MARLEY Interviewer: Sarah McNulty Interview Date: March 8, 2008 Location: Asheboro, NC Length: 1 Tape; approximately 1.5 hours MM: The protest was organized. A guy named Blow, who was one of the guys that led the demonstrations, he was out of Thomasville. So me and my brother was in college at A & T State University in Greensboro and the sit-ins there was going on at the same time, so we would actually go to jail up there through the week and come home on the weekend. So we was home one weekend and they were having demonstrations in Asheboro so some people approached us and said since ya'llyou and your brother were in those in Greensboro, would you like to come help us organize? So we came over and organized with them, we started out at Saint John's Baptist Church and from there we would send different groups to different places. And once we were dispersed, cars would take us so far and then we would get out at the courthouse and walk to the establishment that we were supposed to go to. So our assignment was at your grandfather's place [Laughter] Hop's Bar-B-Q. We proceeded there and when we got there, the police was already waiting like they knew we were coming and knew...like at all the establishments, because Walgreens and Little Castle was pretty close together, two eating establishments. Some went to Little Castle and some went to Hop's Bar-B-Q so we proceeded there and went up to the door and they said "no you can't be served here." And your
grandfather, which was a short, jolly little fellow, he didn't take too kindly to it, so we decided since we couldn't go in, we'd just lay in front of the door where you nobody could go in. That was a lot of abuse, just laying there. It was really, really a hard job to keep everybody under control, not to show anger or not to say anything to anybody...just lay there, a peaceful type demonstration. My twin brother was laying beside of me and a lady came up and talked real big and spit in his face and when she spit in his face, I caught a hold to his hand because he was about to get up and I held him down I said "no, no, no." He wiped his face and the way we would do, we would lay at arms length. SM: So you were actually laying down? MM: Yes laying down, at arms length everybody touching the tip of the other's hand, forming a big circle where nobody could get through. SM: Oh, I didn't know that. MM: And while were laying there, there was another incident. A lady walked up with her high heels on and took the shoe and started beating on one of the demonstrators. SM: Ah, I don't know how you don't react to that. MM: So, you know, we had something in mind. It had to be nonviolent because you couldn't accomplish anything by rolling up your sleeve and taking someone on. The hecklers called us many names, the one that was the most devastating to us was to be called niggers, niggers go home, such as that was being said. The police came and there was a lady named Emma Jean Stemson, she weighed somewhere about 300 hundred and some pounds. We tried to get as many people of size to help because that would not only make the lines larger but it would also the police would have a hard time picking them up because we wouldn't get up, we'd lay 2
there, they'd have to bodily take us to the car to put us in. And we'd just lay limp and wouldn't cooperate with being led from laying down to being put in police cars. So we'd lay there, so they said "Mrs. Stemson, would you please get up?" And she said no and it took about four of them to get her up and put her in the car. And you know, by the time they had put all of us in the car the policemen were sweating and tireder than we were and probably wanted something to eat. So they would take us to jail, to the old Randolph County jail, which was on Salisbury Street, on the back side. And they would lock us up and we would in cells that usually hold ten or twelve people and at one time there was something like thirty five of us in one cell. SM: Oh my goodness, did they separate you by sex too? MM: Yes, yes the women were downstairs, the men were all upstairs. So the organizers they would be out in the parking lot and we would tell them, you know call off our names, who all was in jail. And what they would do, they would go back and get people with property to come and sign our bonds so we could get out of jail. And one incident is that we stayed so long that they had to bring us supper one night, so they brought us hotdogs and so one of us asked the guard, at the jail, one of the jailers, where did the hotdog come from? And they came from Hop's. SM: Hop's. [Laughter] MM: And at that point we were afraid to eat them because they said that they might poison us, you know. SM: Yeah. 3
MM: To make sure that they were, the hotdogs was all right, one of the jailers ate one. So we, I think we got two hotdogs a piece. [Laughter] SM: They probably came from Hop's because there were cheap because I think at that point they were selling them for ten cents a piece. MM: Right. SM: So they could probably feed everyone for a couple of dollars. MM: So they bought the hotdogs from Hop's, no french fries of course, just regular hotdogs. And then our parents that had property would come and get us. And then other people that didn't have kids, there was a man in the city back then named Mr. Tom Brewer and Mr. Lon Strickland who owned right much property on the east side at that time and they signed a lot of bonds...because I think the bonds were something like $250 to $500 and the property value was much higher so they could actually sign out several people. So me and my brother went back to A&Ton Monday, went back to jail like on a Tuesday because we would also demonstrate there in Greensboro and then on the weekend we come back to Asheboro and I think in all we had about maybe went to jail maybe three times. And, but it was non-violent for a long time until one day some black girls went to the Sunset Theater, which is right beside of Little Castle and Hop's, in that area. And they went upstairs, you know, to see a movie and when they got ready to come out, they wouldn't let them out. And they had them surrounded and said they were going to kill them and all that stuff and called them all sorts of names and so somehow word got back to the church that they were being held and the police wasn't doing anything about it. And so that's when it actually a little bit of violence came into play, the way they had them get out of the theater was that somebody went up 4
and shot a shotgun in the middle of town and fled and so they come out running and just kept on running and were hitting them and kicking and all that, but they got away. And then Mr. Blow had said that if Asheboro, cafes wasn't integrated by a certain day and a certain time, twelve o'clock noon, that he would lay in a casket in front of. SM: Yeah, yeah I've seen that in the newspapers, I actually have that with me. And that obviously never came to fruition? MM: And No, because it was supposed to happen and they bought the casket up there but the Reverend Banks out of Thomasville was also one to coordinate and go with his name was Robert Blow, Robert "Joe" Blow yeah. SM: And he was from Thomasville too? MM: No, he was from somewhere down South and so that day that he was supposed to lay in the casket, he was called away to go to Alabama, down to be with Martin Luther King and some more, so that demonstration hadn't started down there, as a matter of fact Greensboro was what kicked it all off and then after Greensboro, and then it went other places and then it came to Randolph County because it was so close to Greensboro that, you know the East Side could do something down here, the NAACP was helping to organize us. SM: And that's where these guys were from...naacp? MM: Yeah, they were NAACP organizers. And then they set up the mood down here by Greensboro being Asheboro being so close to Greensboro, they decided that hey, you know, lets go ahead and take care of this while we are in this area and that's when that took place. As a matter of fact, Asheboro was real early on doing those demonstrations because as a matter of fact 5
that one in Birmingham, Alabama hadn't even started at that time. As a matter of fact, A & T was probably the first. SM: Yeah. MM: Anywhere to start. And I was there SM: And so were you at A & T at the time? MM: I was at A & T at the time I went to jail. SM: Did you know those four. MM: Yes I did, Ezell Blair was the President of the student body at the time. SM: Really? MM: Oh yeah, I knew all four of them because we were there at that time. SM: What years were you in school? MM: We were there at the beginning of 61. SM: And was that your, what year were you. MM: That was my freshman year. SM: Oh wow. MM: But there were some repercussions of, in Asheboro that some of the white people knew some of us and started talking to some of our daddies say hey, put pressure on our parents to try and get us to stop, but our dad came and got us out of jail and said this is the last time I'm coming and when we finally got out of jail, we'd go to Greensboro, we didn't come back to 6
Asheboro so we just demonstrated more in Greensboro because the people in Greensboro they had more people that would or could get property bonds or whatever and get you out of jail. And the thing about being in Asheboro, living in Ramseur, Randolph County, it was due time, because there was so many years that I can remember that we used to catch the bus from Ramseur and ride to Asheboro, I think it was something like fifteen cents a ride to ride from Ramseur to Asheboro and you'd come up and you always had to go in the back, you couldn't even drink water, you know because they had fountains that they had black and white fountains to drink out of but, you know, the black fountain, they were always in the very back and the ones that were for whites were right up close to the street, but we weren't allowed to drink out of those. So it was time that something be done, there was a lot of hostility and a lot of hecklers that was involved in it but the police didn't bother them, you know, they would take us to jail because we had done it peacefully. SM: Yeah. MM: But it changed the most for Asheboro entirely because in 1966, they began to integrate the schools, but the food part, the restaurant part, was way before 66, it was before then. But that mood that took Randolph County from the demonstrations here in Asheboro, there was a great sigh of relief when over, when it was announced they no longer could do it and we could just go in the front and order what we want. But even then you could go in and the people that would be serving you would let you sit there, they wouldn't come wait on you sitting at the table or whatever. They done many things to try and discourage us while we were there but the thing is that hey, we had accomplished something that needed to be done. And it was just so sad that, that you had to go through that just to sit down and have a sandwich. But you know, you have to 7
realize that people, most of the time, when they are prejudiced or dislike for blacks or for people of color, it's essentially because of the way they were brought up. But, but the people in Randolph County have changed and tried to make things better, realizing that you are going to have cultures within the county. So it was, it began to look like hey, that we can get along with this thing and do better than we've been doing. But that was the incident that I can remember here in Asheboro, when they would not let the young girls out of the Sunset Theater. But people have learned that you know, people are human and because of the pigmentation of the skin, is no reason to treat people different until you show me that you aren't what you should be, then, and not prejudiced, you disassemble yourself from those people because they're known as trouble makers. There was times that the Ku Klux Klan would ride through over on the East Side and have on sheets and stuff and would go down one street and carry on to another street because Loach Street was predominantly black. And Loach Street was a street that you get in there and it was a little tough to get out if you went over there and started trouble because people decided hey, I'm going to protect my home or whatever. But your grandfather, just stood out there but I think it was more or less the workers that were saying so many things and he would just come out there and shake his head and say "no, we ain't going to serve you," you know and go back. It was hard time times in Asheboro during this time because we tried not to walk as individuals, you know maybe two or three people in the group, because, but I can remember so many times we had to run from uptown Asheboro back to the East Side for safety. It wasn't no just run looking back there, you had to move. They had a group, they called themselves the good ole boys or something they called themselves. Oh man, there were really, really bad people. And with the name calling, it hurt to a point that, that you would want to do something, but you 8
would realize that this is non-violent and that was the only way it would work because these individuals that came to Asheboro were playing under the Martin Luther King system. And so, you know, we took the abuse and laid there, spit upon, kicked, hit and stuff. It was hard, but we had a goal mind and to achieve that goal, it had to be non-violent because we didn't want anybody hurt, but we wanted justice. And so, it worked out here and in Greensboro too. But I'll never forget my dad said "I won't be back to get ya'll out of jail, ya'll in school, you can't be, you know." I said "well daddy, the thing about it is that it's time for a change." We go to Asheboro to shop on Saturdays and all we can do is go in the backdoor and get food and our money is just as good as we are getting paid the same, I mean a dollar is a dollar. SM: Money is money, yeah. MM: So he said "I don't want ya'll hurt." And I said "I don't think nobody is going to get hurt because if we don't retaliate, nobody is going to get hurt." But down in Ramseur, I played with white kids all my life, down there at Ramseur hosiery mill, right there, they had a big huge yard, we played baseball there and it was always black kids on one team, white on the other team, never meant no problem. SM: Yeah. MM: As a matter of fact, we used to slip into Clayton ball field in Ramseur and word got out that we were out there playing ball and those white kids and the black kids, we all played together and no problems, they would even let us use their gloves, but when it comes to going to an establishment to get something to eat, that was when the problem came in for the people here and in Ramseur too, and the kids got along fine. SM: Was your high school segregated? 9
MM: Yes, I went to an all-black high school in Liberty, North Carolina. There were two black schools in Randolph County. Asheboro City Schools it was known as Central High School and Randolph High School which was in Liberty. I lived within maybe two football fields from Ramseur High School, which was all-white, but couldn't go to school there. We had to be transported all the way to Liberty to Randolph High School. I've seen kids get on the bus at five o'clock in the morning. SM: Gosh. MM: And ride the school bus all the way to Liberty. And I've seen those I was a bus driver at Randolph High School, I've seen kids that were five, six, and seven year olds sleep on the bus, getting on and sleep getting off because it went all the way to the edge of Moore County in places like Piney Ridge and Pleasant Hill and some of those kids got on at five o'clock and got off at five or six that evening. And I've seen little kids, you'd have to wake them up and tell them they were home. And the schools there were many schools Coleridge had a high school down there, Seagrove had a high school down there and these kids lived in those areas and I lived in Ramseur and I was within two football fields, maybe four hundred yards of the high school in Ramseur. I could work down there and clean it, but I couldn't go to school there. family? SM: Did any of your siblings ever go to school there? Or were you the youngest in your MM: No, as a matter of fact, my children went to school there in 1966. My oldest son was bora in '66 and he went there in the first grade, so it must have been around '72. And my daughter went there and then we moved to Asheboro. After college I left and went to New 10
Jersey and stayed for about six years and then I got married and we had kids and I came back this way.