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Text:
I'm wondering why your family decided to leave Mississippi. How was that decision made and why was it made?
Well, the North offered better opportunities for blacks. John McCord, who was a distant cousin, came and explained about conditions, here and so my father and mother decided to come.
I've heard that recruiters were often in danger in Mississippi if they came down to get workers for northern companies. Do you recall him ever expressing any fear about this job that he was doing?
Yes. I know that many of the blacks would leave the farms at night and walk for miles. Many of them caught the train to come North, come to Beloit at a little place called Ecru, Mississippi. Usually they would leave with just the clothes on their backs. Maybe the day before they would be in the field working and the plantation owner wouldn't even know that they planned to go and the next day he would go and the little shanty would be empty. These people would have taken off and come up here.
Was there a fear that the plantation owner wouldn't let them go or that they couldn't leave?
That's very true. They wouldn't. Plantation owners had much to lose. These people were illiterate and they had to depend on the plantation owner. He would give them so much flour for use during the year, cornmeal or sugar or that sort of thing and then at the end of the year you would go to settle up with him and you would always be deeply in debt to him. That was his way of keeping people. You never got out of debt with him. And that's the way it was with my dad and this fellow, Mr. Stiggel.
So, many of the people who left were legally in debt and could have been forced to stay in Mississippi? Did you know of any instances where that happened?
No, because they would leave at night. They would leave when the plantation owner wasn't around. Of course, they needed these workers to work the cotton fields, that sort of thing. But many of them left under those circumstances.
Now, as a young girl, did you agree with this decision to move North? Did you think it was a good idea?
Yes. I think I did. Because even as a child I think I was pretty sensitive to a lot of the inequalities that existed between blacks and whites, and I know that after we came here my mother and dad used to tell me that if I went back to Mississippi, they would hang me to the first tree.
What role did the church play in your early life in Mississippi?
Well, I think the church played a very important part in the life of all blacks in Mississippi because it was religious center as well as social. That was one place that they could go and meet and discuss their problems. Relax. So just the--their big picnics and big church meetings they used to have. I might tell about the type of house we lived in. We lived in a little three-room house. There were two big rooms with fireplace in between…. the--fireplace on each side of the partition, and one was where we lived and the other my mother kept for company, and I remember the embroidered bedspreads and pillow shams and that sort of thing that she had in there. And the third little room was the kitchen, where we had the old wood stove, and my sister and I would gather up the wood for cooking. Whenever they would have one of these big church meetings, usually, some minister or some delegate or somebody from the church would come to our house and they would have this one room that we were permitted to peep in once a week. But the church did, it served as a gathering place for people and they had many union meetings for example between mostly Methodist and Baptist faiths.
Given the opportunities that were available in the North, why did anyone decide to stay in Mississippi?
Well, I think that it was a lack of knowledge of about what the North had to offer until these agents came there to get them to come up here to work.
You were leaving at least a few of your relatives and friends behind. How did you feel about those people that you left behind and weren't ever going to see again?
Well, I think it comes back to a matter of trying to exist, really, and trying to improve your own lot.
Were there any differences that you noticed between those people who left and those people who stayed?
No. Not really.
Were the people who left more ambitious or anything like that?
No. I think not, because many of those who stayed had either begun to acquire a small plot of land or something like that and there were black tradesmen, like I say, the carpenters and the masons and that sort of thing, who had been able to improve their own lot in Mississippi. And many of those stayed and some came North. Most of these people, I think, that came North at first were people who hadn't been able to acquire anything.
