Interview with James Hall

Interview with James Hall June 17, 1994 Transcript of an Interview about Life in the Jim Crow South Sylvester (Ga.) Interviewer: Gregory Hunter ID: btvct01005 Interview Number: 28 SUGGESTED CITATION Interview with James Hall (btvct01005), interviewed by Gregory Hunter, Sylvester (Ga.), June 17, 1994, Behind the Veil: Documenting African-American Life in the Jim Crow South Digital Collection, John Hope Franklin Research Center, Duke University Libraries. Behind the Veil: Documenting African-American Life in the Jim Crow South An oral history project to record and preserve the living memory of African American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South, from the 1890s to the 1950s. ORIGINAL PROJECT Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University (1993-1995) COLLECTION LOCATION & RESEARCH ASSISTANCE John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library The materials in this collection are made available for use in research, teaching and private study. Texts and recordings from this collection may not be used for any commercial purpose without prior permission. When use is made of these texts and recordings, it is the responsibility of the user to obtain additional permissions as necessary and to observe the stated access policy, the laws of copyright and the educational fair use guidelines. http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/behindtheveil

Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South Interview with James Hall Sylvester, GA June 17, 1994 Interviewed by Gregory Hunter Unedited Transcript by Cathy H. Mann James Hall 1

Could you just state your name and your date of birth? Yeah, everything s coming up on from where I was born at (). Okay, alright, I ll begin. I was born 1917, eighteenth day of May in Lee County, Georgia. And on my birth it was twins, James and John was born on 1917, eighteenth day of May. That was my twin brother. He s not living at the present but this is what happened. So we lived in Lee County, Georgia by a little grocery store by a railroad coming out of Albany, Georgia. That s where we lived, out on a farm and we worked. When we grew up we started working there before we left Lee County. We moved from Lee County over to Leesburg, Georgia. We stayed there two years so we left Lee Count and we moved to Worth County in 1925. In 1923 we moved to Worth County, Georgia and here where we have lived the rest of our life up until now. We farmed and half-cropped with some nice peoples. Some of them was nice and we farmed with one guy that we rented the crop, made the crop, man turned around and going to run my daddy off and somehow or another my daddy suspicioned when he was going to take him to a spot where they was going to kill him at. He discovered that this was what they was going to do cause just before he got to the house it was a crowd of folks there on the porch and the lights was on. They had these old lights what you make in the ground. I forget the name of them. But there wasn t no electric lights in that day. So anyway, this was 1929, this was 1929, the year of 1929. So they was going to run up our accounts and they were going to the big house to run James Hall 2

up our accounts over to her daddy s house. And they claimed, this fellow we were working with, his son, Moulree, he claimed that my daddy left owing him some money. They run us off the farm and my daddy went and moved to his sister s farm and that s where we farmed at the next year. That was in 29. So we farmed there in 29, in the fall of 29 they decided since we made a pretty good crop and cleared some money that this brother or husband was going to be smart enough to get some money out of the deal. We didn t owe him nothing but this is what he said. So at the same time after we had gathered our crops and were supposed to be getting our settlement but they wouldn t settle off with us til we go to the big house. My daddy, then they said to him, bring him over such-andsuch an evening and we would settle off with him. So my daddy decided he would go then when he got near the house and he saw all this big light up there and all these folks he got suspicioned they was there to kill him. So at the same time his sister was carrying him over there in a little old rumble seat car and he was sitting in the back and he told her said stop the car I lost my hat. So she stopped the car and he got out and told her said go ahead, I ain t going no further. So he turned and went by and went by this house where he was supposed to be going to get the settlement and he saw a crowd of men had crowded up there and women folks and all and they was planning on killing him for they just had killed the man was supposed to be killing my daddy, he killed one while we was staying on his place when he took our crop. So my daddy wouldn t go. He come James Hall 3

back home and told us the story. So we worked on two or three years with his sister, 1930. We worked, let s see, 33, we worked three years there and we left there and we moved to Shingle, Georgia. In 1933 we moved to Shingle, Georgia and we stayed there. At the same time we all was members of a church called St. Paul Isabella and we all joined church and was baptized in 1932. Most all my sisters and brothers, we all was baptized the same day along with some more guests and family, other people, children of other people. So we left and moved to Shingle and we joined Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in 1933 and where my daddy had traded the farm with another landlord, so we started to farming there and we farmed there for quite a few years. And in farming there, let s see, we farmed there about five, yeah, about five years we farmed there. Could you describe what farming was like? Oh, yeah. Farming was like we were supposed to be planting cotton, peanuts, and corn and velvet beans. The velvet beans were for the cows and the corn was for the mule and hogs. So we raised hogs, raised some cows, and we raised, at that particular time we raised chickens. We raised like, in the springtime of the year we had fryers to last us all the year. We would raise something like twenty-five, thirty, forty and fifty. We have had as high as eighty fryers coming up during the spring of the year so we d have something to eat after Christmas. What were the fryers? James Hall 4

Chickens, yeah. I call them fryers. Well, we called them chickens. Somebody these days call them birds but anyway, they were chickens that were raised on the farm as we go through. But we worked, made a good crop practically every year. George Sumner was the man s name that we were farming with. Is this the same man that tried to kill your daddy? Naw, that s was Islend Moulree did that. Repeat his name. Islend Moulree. Moulree, what s his first name? Islend. How do you spell that? It was I-S-L-S-E-N-D I reckon, Islend Moulree. He s the guy tried to kill us. So anyway, tried to kill my daddy. Anyway, we moved on, we lived there with George Sumner for five years and we made good crops and he wasn t like the other landlords around. He never did threaten to take our crop. He was a man that loaned you money and give you a ticket. Every time he give you a check he write it on your book so when fall come he would take his book and our book and analyze it and he paid us according to what we had on the book. And he was nice to us. We prospered there. We stayed there and after that I married in 1938, I married and we went to farming, we were farming on the same George Sumner s place and we, me and my wife, we farming for ourselves. My daddy died, we had to farm James Hall 5

for my mother. We had to farm for my granddaddy and his family. So me and my two brothers, my one brother, my twin brother, that s all I had, we had to work for all them folks. You and your brother were the only two kids? Yeah, only two, only two boys. Oh, okay, how many children? We had five sisters and two boys. There were seven of us. And we had to do all the work after my daddy died and we took care of them until we married and then on after we married we stayed there two years after that on George Sumner s place then I was able to buy, I cleared enough money to buy me two mules and a two-horse wagon and I got half of my corn and velvet beans and stuff like that. That s in order so I could make a crop when I moved. So I rented me some land. I went over on Dr. Sumner s place and I rented me a farm and on that farm we worked hard. That was 1920, I married in 1938, this was 39. So anyway, we worked there 39 and me and my wife, we were hard workers. We made a bountiful crop so we, for the first time in history that we was able to clear eighteen hundred dollars. That was a heap of money. Off of one crop? Off of one crop, yeah. We cleared eighteen hundred dollars and we was able to finish paying for our mules, wagon, cows, hogs and then maintain enough hogs and chickens and things to make another crop. So we made James Hall 6

another crop there and made good that year. And the next year the guy thought I was making too much money. Who was that? Okay, Dr. Sumner thought I was making too much money by renting the land but he wanted me to rent the land and he boss it and sell the crops and I wouldn t let him do it. So me and him had a kick-up over it and I wouldn t let him do it so before I d do that I move. I went across Shingle five miles from where I was and rented me a farm. Old man Daniel, from a white man I rented a farm from old man Daniel, was a three-horse farm. I rented it and moved over there and I had a half cropper. I got me a half cropper to help me. What is a half cropper? Oh okay, it was a man and his wife that were working on halves with me. I was trying to name the person. Lolly, what was them folks worked with us on Daniels place? Them colored folks. (Mrs. Hall responds.) Grimsley, Grimsley and his wife worked for us on Daniels place while we was there. So we stayed there, we farmed there two years. We farmed there two, three years and we made a bountiful crop there on Daniels place. Then we made enough money, we cleared enough money as to save some money to buy us a little strip of land. So we sold a hundred and fifty, two hundred and fifty dollars worth of watermelons that year. What were some of the prices like? How much did a watermelon cost? Watermelon was bringing? James Hall 7

How much were velvet beans? How much was corn? How much was mules? How much did you pay for them? Yeah well, the price of mules back in that day, I had to give six hundred and fifty dollars for two mules. Oh, okay. This was in the late 1930 s? This was in the late, yeah, yeah. This was in 33, 34. This was 40. I married in 1938 and this was in 39 that I bought, we made enough money as I foresaid on this place to buy this stuff and then we moved from there over to Mr. Daniels place then I bought two more mules. I give about I believe right at five hundred dollars for them two. So Grimsley and his wife took and farmed with me and my wife, half cropped, and we made a good crop that year. We worked there another year, we paid off our bills that year and we worked there another year and we made a bountiful crop that year. So we saved the money that we made. The first money we saved we sold watermelons for thirty or forty cents a piece and come up with two hundred and fifty dollars. So we hid it under the rug. The money? Hid the money under the rug until August, September. Why did you hide the money under the rug? Well, we didn t want to put it in the bank because this is the money we were going to save to buy us a farm with. So we saved the money, we hid the money and saved it and in July when I laid by, I took a stroll down to Madge, Georgia. James Hall 8

Where? Madge, Georgia. Madge, Georgia? Yeah, it was an old man down there owned a farm out to Shingle, Pleasant Grove, out to Shingle. He owned this farm but he lived in Madge, Georgia. How far from Shingle is that? Shingle is five miles from here. How far to Madge, Georgia? Madge, Georgia was about sixty-five or seventy miles from here. He lived there so I went on the bus down there and got off the bus at his house and I went in there and set down and talked with him. He was sitting on the back porch and he invited me in, went on and set down and we got to talking and I told him a story. I said that me and my wife, just got one or two children, I believe I had two then, I said we need somewhere to stay. I said you got a little old farm out there I d like to buy. He says oh, yeah. He said yeah, them there crackers out there are trying to beat me out of it. Was he white? Yeah, he was white. Do you remember his name? His name was, oh, look like I would know. Ought not to never forgot the cracker s name but my mother suffered with Alzheimer s and I is too. What you call old timers, you forgetful, you know, it s possible you James Hall 9

forget. But anyway, this guy, let s see what his name was, maybe I ll come back to it and we can add it in somewhere. I paid him the two hundred and fifty dollars you know I said I hid? I gave it to the man down on the place. It was sixty acres of land and he sold me the sixty acres of land for thirty-nine hundred dollars. Thirty-nine hundred dollars? Yeah, that was cheap. That was cheap? Yeah, that was cheap. Thirty-nine hundred dollars, I bought it then I come on back and I told him when I finished gathering my crops I would come finish making the down payment. I just give him two hundred and fifty dollars, you know, when I was down there and trading for it. And so when I did I went down there and I paid him all I could pay him. I had to leave enough money to operate the next year. So I went down there and I paid him and he give me a copy of the deeds, we made up some deeds, he give me a copy of the deeds and all. Then I come back home and built, that same year, 1942, I built a house, I built a barn, I built a cow stall, I built a little pasture for my hogs and cows and turned loose and I farmed. This was on your own land? This was on my own land. I just had bought this sixty acres and this was my own land. So I built all this stuff on my own land. So then I worked that land there and I rented about, I don t know, I rented about four hundred acres of land, three or four hundred acres of land and I put two James Hall 10

half croppers on it. I put John Tow and James Lamar. They half cropped with me. And my brother, I let him have enough to rent, he was renting from me. So I took it from there and went on that year, we made a good crop that year. Everybody made a good crop and we cleared pretty good money so I decided I needed some more land. So I went tried to get some more land away from home but I couldn t make it. But in the deal at this sixty acres when I moved there then I was joining some whites, some crackers, you know. I was joining they farms. What do you mean you were joining their farms? My line fence, that split us, you know. I was on this side and he was on that side. So he claimed during the, John Bachelor claimed during the years we was there, the first year we were there that his hogs got out on me and I took part of them. So me and him had a big blowing out because I didn t take nary one. We had a big blowing out and I stood hard against him. How did the blowing out take place? What happened ()? Well yeah, he said to me no wonder you got so many hogs to go to the sale, said you got a ditch cut out under the wire, you know, where my hogs could come on over there and you re selling them. Man, I blowed him up and told him how big a liar he was. I said if you find any hog on the sale belong to you I d like for you to describe him. And so he went on back home and he told his folks I was a crazy nigger. Said that James Hall over yonder, he s crazy. Said he ain t got good sense. Said he over there, my James Hall 11

hogs getting under the fence and it was the biggest lie he ever told. The hogs didn t even root against the fence. So anyway, we went later on my cows got out, my cows got out and he got out in the road and he drove them up the road and put them in his pen, you know, in his barn. The same white man who lived next door? Yeah, John Bachelor, yeah, same white guy. Then when I got over there to get them, to get my cows, twenty-five dollars, that s what I had to pay him to get my cows out of the pen where he had them locked up. Did you pay the twenty-five dollars? Yeah, I paid him the twenty-five dollars and got my cows and carried them home. Why did you have to pay to get them out? Huh? Why did you have to pay twenty-five dollars to get them out? Oh, he said they was going to eat up his crop, they didn t allow it, at that particular time, now they don t allow other folks stock to go on their place and eat up their crops. They put them up and charge them a fee and some of them go out there and kill them, white folks do. This was fair? That was fair but they could overcharge you. He overcharged me cause the cows didn t get out the road. What they done, he had his hands to push the cows in up there and headed the cows right off the highway, right off the public road right into the barn and he ain t never () his place, () to James Hall 12

eat nothing. But he charged me just because he s mean enough. That was his trouble, he was just mean. So on down in the year, fall of the year, we had stacked our peanuts and put them on the pole. You put up the pole and then you stack the peanuts around the pole, up like that getting ready for them to dry to thrash. His old cows come over there and got on my peanuts and went to eating them. So I went over there and told John Bachelor I said your cows are over yonder eating up my peanuts, tearing my stack down. I said I want you to come over there and get them. He got his hands and he rushed over there and got them and brought them back home. He didn t pay you? Naw. He asked me he said how much I owe you. I said not a dime. Why didn t you want him to pay you? Well, if anybody s mean to you you ve got to be nice to them and this is the reason I didn t charge him nothing. I wanted to let him know that the cows didn t ruin me and didn t eat up much of my stuff. Therefore, I didn t charge him not nary dime. So he come got them, put them back in his pasture. About two days later they was out again. I went right back over there and told him the same story and he come out there and got them. How much do I owe you. I said not a thing. I said just keep them up til I get my peanuts thrashed and if they get over there then they ain t going to bother me, you know, won t worry me after I get my peanuts thrashed, you know, if they walk across my land. So he come over there James Hall 13

and got them and put them back in his pasture and later on down the line his wife told him said you keep bellyaching about James Hall, said James Hall s a nice fellow. He said I don t know, I don t know, he s tell to be a little better than I thought he was. She said yeah, he s a nice man. So he died, his buddy died and left two hundred acres of land and the line fence through there. His buddy owned this side next to my farm. Steve Bowington is his name. Steve Bowington, alright, owned two hundred acres of land next to my land and Steve Bowington told his daughters just before he died said when ya ll get ready to sell that two hundred acres of land said ya ll give James Hall the first offer. He s the man that me and him like to had a little shooting scrape. He come to my house going to make me move and I told him yeah, the only way I ll go away from here is he s going to have to tote me away from here dead. I m not going no other way. I said if that be the case, this morning would be a good time to go. I started back to the house and he hauled off and left. Went back and told them niggers I was a crazy nigger. So sure enough when he died, when he died, old Steve Bowington died and he told his daughters says James is a nice man. He s better than I thought he was. We found that he s a nice fellow. Said if ya ll get ready to sell them two hundred acres I m willing ya ll, there was two sisters, said you give James Hall the first offer. So sure enough, they called me down in that next year, called me over the telephone, said this is James Hall. I said yes ma am, this is him. I just wanted to talk with you. Said my daddy, he knew you and we got a James Hall 14

place there by you, the place Steve Bowington had, he willed it to me and my sister. Said he told me, we re ready to sell it and said he told me that if you get ready to sell it, ya ll give me the first offer. Sure enough, they said do you want it. I said yeah, I want it. So we went on, I said I ll be down there Monday to make a down payment on it. So sure enough, we went down there, I made a down payment on the two hundred acres of land and come back and went to the government, Farmers Home Administration, to borrow enough money to finish paying for it because they wanted. Which government agency did you go to? Farmers Home Administration. We ve got it here in Sylvester, Farmers Home Administration. It s a company buy land for people, furnish money to buy land. So I come there to borrow the money from the company and the old boss man what was operating the office, he was operating the business for the Farmers Home Administration, he took all my application and everything. My rep proved that they could loan me some money on my rep, you know. I had a good rep. So anyway, he said well, I m sending after the money. And we just had a set time to, you know, you got to put up a down payment and it last sixty days or six months, whatever time you set up. When that time out the money you put up you lose every dime of it cause you didn t close the deal out. So anyway, had my money held up there and I m wanting the place too. So I had to fight him like I don t know, I had to worry him day after day trying to get him James Hall 15

to get me that money so I could pay for that place before the deadline come. The old agent was (). His name was G.E. () or something. But anyway, he was the man that was supposed to been the man letting me have the money, the government letting me have the money, you know, to buy the place. He got to fooling around there and he messed with me. My boy come in from Florida I said run me to Athens, Georgia. So he run me up to Athens, Georgia that next day and we got up there, it was a big time colored fellow, he was holding an office there. What did you have to go to Athens, Georgia for? They were the head of all of this money that I was wanting to borrow, you now, from FHA but the big office was in Athens, Georgia. Was it a black man who ran that office? Black man running it. It was four of them there, three whites and one colored. I got there and told my story. Man, that Negro went to raising sand and them other white folks got to raising sand. So they set up a line where everybody would have a telephone, put me on one and all four of them had one and then they called this cracker in Sylvester. (Laughter) Man, they blowed him some! Said if you don t have that money there before closing today, and see coming up that Friday was my closing date. If I hadn t closed it then them folks would have took the money I had deposited down on it and then didn t have to sell me the place. So I was wanting the place more than I did the deposit but anyway, we got on the telephone and when I come from work that day, I usually go by there James Hall 16

every evening cause time was pushing me, you know, to have the money so I could finish paying them two women off for the place. Sure enough, when I got there that day and stepped up there and pulled the door open, oh yeah, I know you re happy! You ain t smiling. I said I don t know nothing to smile about. He said your money done come. Told that lie, it had been there for the longest, didn t want me to have the place. So anyway, come on, get your wife Friday and let s go ahead and buy it, pay for it. Sure enough, we went on down there and they paid everybody off and we paid for the farm and we come on home. So we went to farming on it. We farmed there til five years ago. We farmed there until then. Then we rented it and stayed off it four years or something like that. So you stayed on that land for Them two hundred acres, see that made me had two hundred and sixty acres. That give me two hundred and sixty acres of land all total. Mrs. And you farmed that ever since? We farmed it til five years ago. No, it s been more than five years ago. We stopped farming and rented it awhile and then went back to farming. Yeah, but I was just trying to kill it out on one deal. But what time this was then, go ahead. Mrs. I don t know but it was further than that back I know cause we stopped farming for four or five years or something and then we (). James Hall 17

Yeah but I can t remember the dates so I just said we stopped farming for five or six years and I went back and I farmed four more years and saw that it looked like things was getting tough like it is now. Crops was hard to make. Drought was eating us up, so I quit again. So I leased it. But during this time I was fortunate enough to own over a hundred, most of the time I ve had over a hundred head of hogs during farming on this land. The highest head of cows I ve had, I had a hundred and one head of cattle that I was farming on this same land that I tell you, the two hundred acres I bought from them women. So we farmed on that land until we quit five years and then we went back and started up five more and we quit and today we re sitting down here in town. We put, me and my boy went out there and we planted a hundred and seventy-five acres of pine trees on it and a fellow leasing it now, Charlie Nelson. He s leasing the farm now, he rents it. We rent and he pays us the rent and this is how we survive through the rent process. So he pay us rent every year and then the pine tree man, they pay us for planting them pines and then turn around they pay us monthly or yearly and they give this check comes in every October. Every year in October they send us a check and they ll send this check for ten years and after ten years they don t send nary nother one. So if I live the ten years out we can go in there and we can sell fence posts to start with. Then we can go in there and we can sell, next thing we can sell telegram posts. And the next thing we can sell, we can sell sawmill wood, timber. We can sell timber for sawmill purpose, that is to cut lumber out James Hall 18

of. So we got three steps there that we can take whoever lives to see it. But when you start planting pine trees and waiting on them to get grown sometimes you go down one or two generations see to get to that point. Back in the earlier days when you first started out with your farm when you first got the two hundred and sixty acres, were there many other black people who owned their own land? No, not many. Just steady as they tried to own something they went to losing it. They () round and wouldn t do justify it and crackers would beat them out of it. But you since you were one of the very few or one of the only ones to own your own land, was that very difficult? Did you get a lot of harassment from the white community? Oh yeah, when I was working for the NAACP, I joined the NAACP and I fought them like fighting a mule. When did you join the NAACP? Let me see, way back in 194-, around, yeah, it was when they were starting the school bus. I started then. That was around 50, it was in the 50s, right at 50, right in the 50s and I fought them jokers for year after year until it ain t been too long. I give out down the line. What were some of the activities ()? A heap of it. When they found out that I was president of the Of the local chapter? Yeah. James Hall 19

Was the chapter in Sylvester? Sylvester, yeah, local chapter here in Sylvester. So they harassed me so they come out there and near about arrest me every day sometime they would arrest me and put me and put me in jail. Why? Say I run a stop sign, that I had a taillight wasn t right, just anything, you know, to lock me up. What kind of activities was your chapter of the NAACP doing during that time? Huh? What kind of work were you doing with the NAACP? Oh, we were marching, trying to open up the bank, to put a man in the bank or woman in the bank or somebody in the bank. We were trying to open up the stores, trying to open up the restrooms. They wouldn t allow us to drink out of the fountains. Eating places, we couldn t go in there. Couldn t ride on the bus. So we had all that to go through with. Then they found out I m president and they wanted somebody they could pick on because most of the black folks was working for the white man and they didn t want to do nothing to damage the white man. So what they d do for us, they d come out and cut my fence where my cows would get out. They stole a bunch of them. They put a beat up, poisoned my cows and put beat up glass in there so when the cows eat the food it would go through their bowels and cut their inside and they d bleed. And they d James Hall 20

shoot my hogs. They done some of everything. They come and burnt two or three crosses. Burnt up one of my pecan trees, just about burnt it up, in my yard. Now was this, you mentioned the crosses (End of Side A) Side B Okay. They burnt crosses and they put a bomb in our mailbox. Put a bomb in your mailbox? Yeah. And they done all kinds of nasty things like that. They did it several times, cut my fence and let my cows out. And at this time you said you were living, where were you living? I was living out on the farm. Where was that? Shingle. Our farm is out there four and a half miles from here. So we were staying on the farm there and they come out there and burnt a cross, set it up in the tree where it burnt up my pecan tree. And every time we was in town if they didn t arrest me they d try to pull my children, you know, make like they was running too fast and all this type of stuff. So these cops when they would arrest you and send you to jail, how would you get out? The NAACP, we had a way of getting them out of jail. Folks in Atlanta and around, way up in New York City, they would be sending us money all the time helping us back here to try to free this country where we could survive better than what we was. So they were sending us money and James Hall 21

every time they d put one in jail, when I was president I d have to go over, we had to go way over to different towns and get the boys out of jail where they done locked them down. So we go over and bond them down in Tipton, we bond some out in Tipton. We bond them out here. Fill up this jail here and then turn around, we d bond them out off of somebody s money. I don t know exactly all the places the money was coming from but it was coming out of New York. Ted, Ted, what is his name, Ted, what s Ted s name, Ted what? Mrs. Mrs. Who you talking about? President s son, Ted? President? Ted Kennedy? Ted Kennedy, I m talking about Ted Kennedy. Old Ted Kennedy sent us a whole lot of money too. He sent up a bunch of money. He sent us a lot of money and some of these crackers around here, we were fortunate enough to get some money out of them. So we fought it on up until we just about opened up everything like fountains and bathrooms and eating places and all of that. We got all that kind of settled and I was getting old and I decided I d wing off from it. How many people were in this chapter, in your chapter? Oh, we have had as high as three hundred across the board. And they were all black? Yeah, they were all black excusing one or two. We had one or two whites was a member of it. James Hall 22

Mrs. Some whites that came in here (). Yeah. You mentioned how the Ku Klux Klan and other white hate groups would burn crosses and try to hurt your animals and things like that. What kind of responses could you, what could you do, what did you do? I couldn t do much. I d tell the sheriff. Sheriff said we tell lies. Man come out there and burn a cross right in our yard and we come down here and told the sheriff. I told the sheriff that somebody burnt a cross in the yard and we were trying to find out who he was and he said, ain t nobody burnt a cross. You don t know who he was. I said I don t know, I said but let me tell you one thing man, they ever burn another cross out there I say you re going to be able to come there and pull the hood off him and find out who it is. This is the high sheriff I was talking to. Who was the sheriff at that time? Hudson, Sheriff Hudson, he was the sheriff at that time. And boy, he got mad as foxfire, my wife she told him off too. So I said just as sure as you woke up this morning, just as sure as Christ lived, if they keep burning crosses you re going to know who they is, I said cause I m going to kill him. So they didn t burn nary nother one soon. They went and throwed some sticks of crosses out there, set them afire you know and drive by. But coming there and setting up another one, they never set up no more. So anyway, life has been rough, has been good and has been rough. So we then went to hauling children coming out of high school to different places James Hall 23

trying to get them started to learning how to, well they was learning how to do different jobs, training. I used to haul all them () down to Moultrie and they was down there training to get better jobs, you know, and go to college. So most of them found favors in going so much in so until they, about half of them, over half of them finished college by we working with them. Of course, didn t most of the brothers didn t want to spend the money to carry them down there. Nobody wasn t paying me but we was in pretty good shape. I d haul them down there and didn t charge them nothing. Could I ask you to go back into early in your boyhood to talk about your grandparents and whatever relationship you had with them. Do you remember your grandparents? Yeah, I know what Mama told me about my grandparents. My mother, her people come from overseas, her daddy. From where? Well, they were floated in here from overseas, they were brought in here by the white man. White man brought them over here in this country. What happened, he brought the daddy, he brought the mama over here and let s see, my mother s mother, they re Indians. My mother was a half Indian. ()? Yeah, half black and half Indian. Where did her father come from? James Hall 24

He was already here. He come from overseas. They brought her mama and her parents over here. They had children by these black women and my mother come along. Do you know where from overseas they brought them? Africa. Well, it had to be Africa. Where else were they going to come from? Well, they brought them over here from Africa. Mrs. You know all these black folks in America () they brought from Africa but we don t know nothing about no Africa here. (Laughter) You never heard a name, ()? No, not particular, but they brought them from across the water and they brought them here but her mama, her daddy was a, well, her daddy was a Indian, his mama was a Indian. And her mama, they brought them here in slavery time, and said that then her daddy was a Cherokee Indian, my mother s daddy. So your grandfather? Yeah, my granddaddy was a, he was a Indian, half Indian, that s my granddaddy and my mother, she was a half Indian. Therefore, my uncle he got the most of, well, he didn t get as much as she got but he had hair that long, black as smut and it never did turn white, stayed black. When I come along he was fixing to die. I had a chance to see my granddaddy just a few, maybe a year before he died. So he was a Indian and they all come from the Indian tribe and this is how they come and was mixed up here among these white folks that float these Negroes in here to work for James Hall 25

them. So it was a pretty sad situation. My great grand on my grandmama s side, my daddy s side, on my daddy s side she had two sisters that we seen them. They come over, they were sold to some of them old gypsies and they had ships on the water and they were sold to them fellows that operate them ships, the boss man and they had to work on this ship and didn t see home but once a year. Every Christmas she d come by my grandmama s and them and spend the night and the next day they d pick her up and put her back on that water. Where would they get off of the ship at, where? (Laughter) I can t figure it out. It had to be, it couldn t have been in Albany, it had to be up the country further. I () tried to ask about where they were getting off at but they d get to the water my grandma said and they d catch the train and come home. So it must have been up the country a little piece, up there somewhere. She d catch the train and come home. My granddaddy would put her on the train the next day and send her back. Sometimes they d let her spend two days with us, you know. So that s the most time they would let her stay and she was a slave. She was in slavery. She was working for them crackers in slavery. She didn t worry about it. She d come there and time she d get home she d start to helping Mama cook. Mama always was slow anyway cooking and boy, she d get in that kitchen and you talking about cooking and cooking, she d just cook the whole time she was there and wouldn t let us children come in the kitchen. Get out of here! (Laughter) She d raise sand with us the James Hall 26

whole time she was here trying to keep us out of the kitchen out of their way. But anyway, it s a long story. I wish I could have kept up with it more than I did. I was trying to think about What kind of food did ya ll eat when your mother cooked? What did ya ll eat for breakfast and lunch and dinner? Oh, what breakfast? Okay, we eat ham meat for breakfast mostly. If not that we eat middling, bacon, hog bacon, pork bacon. They called it middling. Mrs. Middling? Middling, yeah. That s what they make the bacon out of, that part. Oh, that s a part of the hog? Yeah, that s part of the hog. Yeah, that s how they make the breakfast bacon. And what else would ya ll have? And ham, we could eat ham for breakfast, then we eat ham for supper. Lord, you could smell it from here downtown when they started cooking. That s the best smelling stuff you ever saw in your life. So anyway, we were raised up off of a lot of pork. And once in awhile my granddaddy and another old man, once in awhile they d get out, see back in that day they didn t have no fences for cows. Cows run everywhere, just cows. And they d get out there and kill them one and bring him in that night and James Hall 27

butcher him and we d have beef, something we don t usually have but we had beef back in that day. What other kind of food? Huh? What other kind of food did ya ll eat? Plenty of fish. Fish? (Laughter) Yeah, go to a mud hole and get tin tubs of fishes, yeah. Back in that day, I don t know how come the fish growed so fast or something happened to them but you can t go there and get them now. But back in that day we d go around there to a little mud hole and we d carry a number two foot tub full and get it half full of fishes and tote them back up there to the house. Most of them though, a whole of them was big ones but most of the time the cats was about as big as your two fingers and we had to clean all them cats. Catfish? Catfishes. We d be way in the night cleaning catfish but we d get them. Boy, we d eat up some. Most of the food you ate, the hogs were from your own hogs and you raised the cows? Mrs. Yeah, cows and hogs. Milk and butter, eggs. And fish, we eat a lot of fish back in that day. James Hall 28

Mrs. Did you have to buy anything from the store? Yeah, we had to buy coffee, sugar. Flour. You make your meal out of corn what you raised. Yeah, went to buying rice after so long. We used to make rice. Where did you buy these things that you needed? Huh? Where did you buy the stuff that you needed? Oh, little country store. Most of the time a little old country store about big as this room here. Some of them won t big as this. Bout this size. Was that in Sylvester or out in the country? When we moved from Worth County it was here but when we was in Lee County it was a little old store setting side the railroad wasn t no bigger, it was a little bit bigger than this room here. Did you pay with money or would you trade? Well, my daddy, they let him trade on credit but he had to pay, you know. (Laughter) They d go up there and get anything they wanted on credit and then a set time he d have to go and pay it. So he paid his debt. Them Negroes know to pay it, them cracker beat them to death. Mrs. What did you say? Back in that day them crackers would beat them to death. Well, they could get their money if you work because they didn t have nothing to do but keep it. (Laughter) Such as it was, whatever they pay James Hall 29

you a day they took theirs out. That s how you paid your debt. They had the money, you didn t have any. (Laughter) I was about a mile or two from where I was born at, old Rambeauts, they stayed over there. Who s that? A big white section of white folks stayed over there. Could you describe what the community was like in Worth County where you lived? Like did most black people live together or did, did black people live separate from white people? Was there interaction? How did people get along? They got along pretty good later years but they stayed, just like a man had a turpentine farm, he just build a bunch of shacks, you know, and build them close together. Mrs. On the farm too, they d be (). No, they wasn t as thick as they was. They d build them there houses, them folks were working turpentine and they d build them shacks. The old shack just had one room and a kitchen, something like that. Sometimes they had two rooms, depends on the family and that s how they survived. Then the white man, he stayed up the road further and sometimes it was two or three of them built up there not far from one another, you know, like that. They didn t build theirs jam up like they did the blacks. But the black man has really caught it but now they ve moved, James Hall 30

all the Negroes now have done moved to town, (). It ain t over twenty percent of the black folks stay in the country, if it s twenty percent. Mrs. Mrs. Mrs. Mrs. Why did most people move to town? They couldn t get nothing to do, the crackers The land belonged to the white people. Land belonged to them and they took it. Tractors. And chemicals and stuff. Didn t have to hoe their crops. Didn t have to have nobody. Cotton pickers, peanut shakers and all that stuff, they didn t need no people then. So that s what s caused the black folks to have to migrate into town to work. So they stay in town. Some of them go back out and help them on the farm. Mrs. Yeah, once in awhile they need a few to come out there and help. Mostly now they re using Mexicans. All them foreigners have done took over out there. When they go to gathering their crops, watermelons and all that stuff, you might see a black man out there once in awhile. Mrs. Them who will work at all. Black folks don t want to work on no farm now. (Laughter) They () when they were working on the farm. () around town and find them something else to do. James Hall 31

So the average Negro now, they fight hard now to try to have something and save something, buy them a house in town or rent them a house in town and fight to stay there. And this is how everybody s having to do it now. Of course, we didn t have to move to town but we did. So anyway, we stay here. We got two houses out there on the farm that we could stay in maybe, one of them, but we stay here in town. What were some of the best times and some of the hardest times in your life? Oh, the hardest time in my life was back coming out of Hoover days. We had it pretty rough then. What was rough about it? So much, it was kind of rough on clothes. You couldn t get much to wear. You couldn t get no clothes to wear worth nothing. Mrs. Things hit rock bottom for some reason. Of course, I was really small. I didn t know too much about it but I remember it. Yeah, it run a little rough. Mama, it kept Mama patching all the time. Patching? Yeah, patching clothes, putting patches on clothes where it s done wore knee out and all that stuff. She d spend several hours patching in the run of a week What were some of the other difficulties? We had, first, we stayed on the farm. That makes a little difference. We were raising our cows and hogs, meat and stuff like that. Everything we James Hall 32

wanted to eat we could raise it right there on the farm. Therefore, as far as that part of it we never did suffer for food. The only thing we suffered for clothes. Mrs. Mrs. Mrs. Mrs. And money. And money. To buy clothes. Yeah, so we suffered for money to buy clothes with. There wasn t no jobs. It wasn t no jobs available to get money. () lived on the farms, it was a lot of them came off in those, what you call them, () or something. Wasn t no money. You couldn t spend it nowhere but on the white man s place (). Commissary they called it. Mrs. We worked for, run of a day we got twenty-five cents a day. Men used to work for twenty-five and thirty cents a day. What kind of jobs? Farming, out there hoeing cotton, peanuts, yeah, plowing. It didn t make no difference what it is, had to hit it. You know, where it was a family and they stood together, they ate good. (Mrs. Hall speaking at the same time as Mr. Hall. Can t understand what she is saying.) Mrs. Who? Where there was a family that, you know, stuck together. Ate good, they ate pretty good. (Laughter) James Hall 33

Yeah, what they d do, everybody be working public work, they go out there, the children make twenty-five cents a day and the mama and the daddy make thirty cents a day. Mrs. I don t know. That s so far back I don t hardly know what they made then. Something like that though I know that was what it was. That s right, was paying me and George twenty-five cents a day and my sister. Mrs. I think by then some of them times they was paying about seventy-five cents. They come to giving more but in 19 Mrs. I remember my daddy used to plow for a dollar a day. He didn t ever make a whole week because it would rain, you know. In 1928 we worked for twenty-five cents a day, and the sun, you had to be there when the sun rises. Be sitting in the field when the sun come up. That s right and you stay there until the sun go down. But only reason families survived they put their money together like it was five or six of us children that were working and all of us were working for twenty-five cents a day. Now we would work a whole week. Sometimes we d make a whole week and when the week come we d pool that money and my daddy, they would go into town and buy enough groceries to last you all week and then some with that money. But they didn t have nothing to buy no clothes with. So this is how we survived, yeah. But it was rough. And I m going to tell you right now, you can fool around right now and get in a James Hall 34

mess, the days we re living now. You can get hungry now. It s a heap a folks now is hungry. They re not capable of trying to cut corners and work and make some money to survive on, they re having it tough. What were some of the best times? Oh, best times? Best time we and my wife had when we d clear five or six or seven or eight thousand dollars a year or maybe more, fifteen or twenty thousand like that. Mrs. Farming? Yeah. Yeah, it got some better when people, they could rent land and buy a little bit. Mrs. Mrs. What did people do for fun? Huh? What did ya ll do for fun in the early days? Do for farming? No, for fun. Recreation. Oh, we up and down the road, like the dirt road out there. Go through the bushes to the neighbor s house. Yeah, sometimes neighbors stayed right down the road there a little piece and they had children and they didn t do nothing but () all day. James Hall 35

Mrs. A lot of times the women would visit but the men folks, they mostly stayed separate off to their selves. Families didn t have too much recreation together and a lot of () they don t now. So children run up and down the road from one house to the other one all day playing, ripping and playing. Mama, she d be up there sitting on the porch with other lady talking, running their mouth all the evening. Then about sundown alright, children, let s go home. All of them would bag up and go in. Mrs. Hall, you said that women visited each other often. What did they do? Mrs. Well, sometimes they d quilt together, stuff like that. Well, in my day that wasn t going on but I hear tell of it way back then. I have quilted at my house by myself. They didn t give quilting parties in my time. In my day Mama and them were quilting. Wintertime, they d do a lot of quilting. It was cold weather and they d meet up to one house and they d quilt this one a quilt today and tomorrow they d go to Sister Sal s house and they ll quilt one. Go over to Sister James house quilt one. Just like that, that s how they circled around. Mrs. Yeah, that s what I heard. It never did happen in my day. Life has been something. Did you ever travel places long distances? Travel? Yes. James Hall 36

Far as I went down to Florida to work and back home and Atlanta to work and back home. Why did you go to those places to work? Get a job, I didn t have nary one around here. What kind of work did do out there? Oh, I finished concrete. In Florida or Atlanta? In Florida. Carpenter, a plumber, built houses. This was me and my brother s occupation. I don t know how many houses we have built. We built houses, carpenter, lay bricks, like this here. We got a house out there on our farm Mrs. We got two houses out there. We got two houses out there but we laid the bricks, me and my brother laid the bricks on one of them and I hired the other one laid. And you can t look at, they look better than these bricks do here. What did you do in Atlanta? Atlanta? Finished concrete. Lord, poured concrete. When did you go to these two places? What year did you go to Florida and Atlanta? Oh, this was I d say it s been twenty years ago and twenty years ago would be 37. No, it would be more than that, 47. It was around 45 or 48, somewhere like that. What impact did World War II have? James Hall 37