Lawanda Formisano, Curtis Moore, & Mrs. Otis

[Side 00:01:00conversation] MATTIE STEVENS: Okay, 00:02:00now, so it’s the aunt that was the midwife?

LAMILDRED OTIS: Our grandmother.

Q: Or the grandmother.

LO: His mother and our grandmother.

Q: Okay, okay. Now, I’m gonna ask each of you to introduce yourselves, and then tell me a little bit about you, and then go into your story about your grandmother. Okay. My name is Mattie Stevens, and I’m your interviewer today, and you’re the interviewees.

LAWANDA FORMISANO: Yes.

Q: Really appreciate all of you coming, and I’d like to get started, I guess, with you.

LF: Yes.

Q: Give us your name, and— LF: Okay. My name is Lawanda Formisano, 00:03:00and I am the baby—well, not the baby. I have a twin sister, which is over here. We have one brother in Los Angeles, and an older sister that come here [ph]. But I’m an Evangelist in the Church of God in Christ, and I’m retired now, but I retired from a domestic abuse family shelter. I had 11 counties where I went around and I taught on relationships.

Q: Okay, okay. Now, you need to spell that name. [Laughs.] LF: My name is F-O-R-M-I-S-A-N-O, Formisano. Lawanda, L-A-W-A-N-D-A, Formisano.

Q: Okay, all right. And Mister—?

CURTIS MOORE: I’m Curtis Moore. I’m the— Q: I didn’t get the— CM: I’m Curtis Moore.

LF: Curtis.

Q: And last— CM: Curtis Moore.

Q: Moore, Moore, okay.

CM: The baby son of Joe Ella [sp?] Moore. Of the six children, I’m the youngest. All them passed but me and my sister. One is in Daniel House [ph]. She be 93 00:04:00in April, so I’m proud of my mother and all that she have done as a midwife, so— Q: Very good. Very good. And—?

LO: I’m Lamildred Otis. I’m the granddaughter of Joe Ella Moore, along with my twin sister. I worked at Georgia-Pacific for 39 and a half years, along with my uncle. But that way our grandmother was a midwife, and she delivered all of us, and she delivered between 500 and 600 babies.

Q: Oh, great. Great.

LO: She never lost a mother, and she never lost a child.

Q: Great, okay.

LO: And she’s well known in Jeff Davis County and surrounding counties. I attend Harvest Celebration Church of God in Christ here in Jackson, Mississippi. Our pastor’s Timothy Tyler Scott, Jr.

Q: Okay. Okay, give us the name of your grandmother again.

LO: Her name is Joelle— LF: Dace.

LO: —Dace Moore.

Q: Okay. And Dace is— LO: That’s J-O-E 00:05:00E-L-L-A D-A-C-E—that’s her maiden name—Moore.

Q: Okay, very good.

CM: If I may say—can I say?

Q: Yes, sir.

CM: Besides bein’ a midwife of 40 years, she was the first person to vote in Jeff Davis County. She pioneered the voting in Jeff Davis County. She was the first person to vote there.

Q: Very good. All right. And you brought the documents, and I really appreciate that. Okay. So who want to start out talkin’ about your grandmother?

LO: You can start with my twin sister. [inaudible].

LF: We’ll let Uncle start talking [ph].

LO: Okay, Uncle [ph], yeah.

Q: Okay.

CM: I’m proud of my mother. I guess everybody is. Let me say this: this is a story I hadn’t told too much, I haven’t told probably to my nieces. I have three kids. My wife, we had three kids. She’s passed. And in 1963, 00:06:00it was a good crop year. We never sharecropped. We didn’t sharecrop. Daddy did his own thing. So when my baby daughter was born in 1963, she was born in the hospital, and she stayed through then [ph]. When she came home, she was, you know, ailing, and I didn’t know what was wrong. It was my third child. So we had to go to the field, ’cause during that year the weather report said that it’s gonna be a bad storm coming three days later, and it was a bumper crop. And my dad hired peoples to get his crop out before the rain came. So that morning, I got up and went, got my kids, my two other kids—was young—got them. My wife’s in bed, so weak she couldn’t get out the bed. I went to the field. My mother, bein’ a midwife—I said, “Mother.” She asked me, “How’s Jewel [sp?]?” I said, “Mother, I don’t know.” This 00:07:00was the words she said: “Let me go see ’bout that gal.” And she picked cotton. Put her cotton sack [ph] down, went around there, and she stayed about two hours. When she came back, she said, “She gon’ be all right.” And after the day was done, my wife was too weak to get out of the bed when I was up there in the morning. She’d probably die if it hadn’t been my mother. The doctor left somethin’ in her—you know what I’m talkin’ about—that wasn’t supposed to leave, and it was gonna kill her, and my mother went down there and cleaned it up. And when I got home that evening, my wife was up, after my mother went round there and did her thing. I think that she had cooked my supper.

Q: All right. [Laughs.] LF: And our grandmother, she prided herself in—there were a couple midwives around, and they would have babies, and the babies had the big navels. The 00:08:00navels like a thumb, stick out. And our grandmother would use a special method, and she would just make sure they had a band around them so the bellies would come out really nice, and all our belly buttons are beautiful. And all the children she delivered, the belly buttons were really beautiful. She took so much pride in what she did. She had a chicken farm. We could see her now, just with the turkeys, and she had butter and the whole nine yards. But she always had time for a woman in labor. And, as my uncle said, sometimes they would wake up, and she’d be gone for days. She didn’t always get paid for what she did. She would charge that $20. In them times, goin’ back to those days, it was $20 a lot of money. So she worked whether they got money or not. And $20 for the whole duration of the pregnancy, not just for deliverin’ the baby but doin’ her stuff and everything. So Grandmother took a lot of pride in what she did. And there was one time—it’s kinda funny, in a way, lookin’ back—there was a lady—I think her name was Fannie Reed [sp?]—and she had went out among the people, white people, and started badmouthin’ my grandmother. My grandmother was really small, but she was really 00:09:00tough. And she took her and beat her down, which probably is not very nice, but— LO: She was Grandma Moses-like.

LF: Yes, she was, like a Harriet Tubman type, so she didn’t take a whole lot of stuff. And— CM: She didn’t back up from nobody.

LF: She didn’t back up. So she put a tire tube around her and just beat her down. And Grandmother was known to be really, really tough, didn’t take no stuff, but she was as gentle as she was kind. She was sweet. And we can see her sitting back now. She loved wrestling, sittin’ back watchin’ the wrestlin’, and dippin’ snuff. Back in those days, women dipped snuff. So she’d be back dippin’ snuff and watchin’ the wrestlin’, and just havin’ herself a grand ol’ time. [Laughter.] Yes, and she delivered all of her grandchildren. The last great-grandchild, which is our oldest sister’s daughter, there was some complication with—her older sister had got in a accident in Chicago and had a pelvic kinda, like, messed up and stuff. And so Grandmother, at the time, she was, like, in her sixties, maybe late sixties?

LO: It was 1967.

LF: Sixty-seven. She had the presence of mind to call the doctor, Dr. Dale [sp?], and they took her to the university, 00:10:00and Dr. Dale delivered that child. Soon after that, she stopped deliverin’, mm-hmm. She was a tough warrior.

Q: Okay. So, now, how did she get around? Did she—?

LF: She had a car. She had kept a car. She kept a nice car. I think— LO: Always with a car.

LF: Last one she had was a red and white—it was a—remember that Ford?

LO: [inaudible] Ford.

LF: She had a Ford convertible, you know. And see, many of the women, they would come, and they would get somebody to bring them—cars were kinda rare back in those days—and so she would go to where they were, and then sometimes they didn’t have a ride, she would take ’em, she would do what she had to do. But she always kept her ride, because she had a little money.

Q: And this is in the ’40s, right?

LO: About every three years she would buy a car.

Q: This is in the ’40s?

LF: This was in the ’40s.

LO: She started in the ’40s.

CM: Yeah, she started ’43.

LF: And she stopped in the ’60s, wasn’t it?

LO: She said in her word 1970.

LF: 1970, uh-huh [affirmative].

LO: ’Cause my grandmother delivered some babies. I lived 15 miles from my sister and my uncle and from my home, and in that community, two ladies that I know of, and 00:11:00they say how children lived that she delivered. And we married in 1968, and Grandmother delivered some of the babies, so she actually stopped delivering about 1970.

LF: And really, back in those days—I mean, today, having twins is not a big thing, but she delivered us, being twins and stuff. So back in the day it was kind of a big thing, especially country, you know?

Q: Delivering twins.

LF: Delivering twins. So she had a lot of skills. And she was always self-assured, and very confident. Small, little woman, you know, that always wore galoshes on, ’cause she would, like, be feedin’ the turkeys and stuff. You know, very thin and very tall, very small.

Q: Did she carry a satchel or a bag or somethin’?

LO: Black bag. She had a black bag.

LF: She had a black bag. As a matter of fact, she talked about the black bag in the logbook right here, and we couldn’t quite read, ’cause she was, I think, a third-grade education back in those days, which was equivalent to a college degree, but—and she had all the tools and everything, but, unfortunately, you know, I think especially in the country people didn’t pride artifacts and the old stuff. They didn’t have presence 00:12:00of mind to preserve.

Q: They threw their stuff away.

LF: They threw a lot of stuff away.

CM: And one other thing: during those time [ph]—well, she mentioned that—when she would go, and she would spend the duration [ph]—you know, often the baby don’t come when it’s supposed to. She stayed there until the baby was delivered. Sometimes it would be almost two weeks. I know sometimes when we go to bed, when we wake up she’d be gone, and a week later she’d come in, maybe early in the morning. Instead of her goin’ to bed and resting—because she’d be for a week with the baby—she’d be tired, and what she would do is she’d lay down and rest for two hours, and she said, “Now, I’m still a mother, and a wife, and I got that duty, and I get up and do my duty.” Like she said, she had chickens and all that, and she got up after two hours of rest, for bein out for weeks, she got up and did her motherly duty, as a wife and a mother.

Q: Okay. 00:13:00Now, this your mama, right?

LO: Our grandma. This is his mother.

LF: Our grandmother, his mother.

CM: This is my mother.

Q: This is your mother we’re talkin’ about. Okay.

LF: This is our uncle.

Q: Okay.

CM: I’m the least—they said baby, but I’m the youngest. [Laughter.] I’m not a baby. I’m the youngest.

LF: She’s the baby of us. She’s a twin, ten minutes younger than I am. She calls herself the baby. She takes advantage of me.

LO: Our grandmother--

Q: Mm-hmm [affirmative], go ahead.

LO: Our grandmother was such an independent woman, as my sister and my uncle said. But our grandmother, she was active in the community. She started off with our grandfather, like he was telling you a little earlier, going—when somebody passed in the neighborhood, she would go and get that person ready for burial, and they had, you know, little embalming [ph] at the time. And then my grandfather would build the box. And then she did quilting. She quilted with ladies in the community. But she sold quilts, up until—Grandmother sold, made 00:14:00quilts up until she died. Yeah, she was a strong woman. She died somewhat suddenly. And she picked huckleberries. She sold huckleberries. She would pick, like, eight gallons a day. My twin sister went out with her quite a few times. I went out a few times. It was very snakes [ph].

LF: And churned butter [ph].

LO: And then she picked blueberries. She would churn buttermilk. She sold buttermilk, cream.

LF: Sold at the market.

LO: And then she—it was several things she did. She had turkeys, many turkeys for Thanksgiving. She always gave families [ph]— LF: Cornish hens.

LO: Cornish hens, Yetis [ph].

Q: Yetis [ph]? Okay.

LO: Bed hens [ph]. That was the Cornish hen, wasn’t it?

LF: We don’t mean a few; we mean just far as the eye can see.

Q: [inaudible], okay.

CM: We didn’t sharecrop.

LO: And she sold eggs.

CM: We didn’t sharecrop. Daddy raised his own cotton and corn, and she helped him raise those six children [ph] about what she’d [inaudible], like, sellin’ eggs and butter. We milked. We milked about every morning. We’d milk about six or seven cows. And, [laughs] you know, we was kids. We liked the cream 00:15:00on the milk. She raised hell about her cream on her milk. “Who got the cream off of my milk?” And she would take that cream, you know, and make butter. And we wanted those cream on our milk. We got the cornbread in milk, and we ate the cream. [Laughter].

Q: I love it.

CM: And she raised hell about it. “Who got my cream?” And she sold eggs to one of the biggest markets in Prentiss [ph] there. She sold eggs to them. Everything we ate, we raised on the farm, except coffee and sugar. And she sold eggs and got that coffee and sugar with this merchandise in Prentiss [ph]. She sold eggs and butter to those people, and— LF: And can I just make two points? I think they’re kinda important. One thing, keepin’ in mind, now, where we’re from, the population is very—we only have one red light.

Q: And this is— LF: That’s where my mother—Prentiss area, and we live in, like, a rural area. We call it suburbs out from there. But she called five or six hundred babies. That was a lot of babies. Just about everybody— Q: That’s a lot of babies.

LF: Just about everybody in that community, she 00:16:00delivered. She delivered personally. And she was intrepid, okay. She would hunt snakes, literally. She was not scared of any snakes. She was not scared of any snakes—she would hunt snakes—but she was scared to death of lizards.

CM: Oh, lizards. She was scared to death of lizards, but never snakes.

LF: Now, that’s an oxymoron. [Laughter.] But she would hunt snakes, and scared to death of the lizard. Amazing. The way they moved or something, jumped, maybe, I don’t know.

LO: Because she was not afraid to pick huckleberries, and she did it all day with my twin sister. I still today get in that tree. [Laughter.] I’m done. I’m gone. But my grandmother was not afraid of any snake.

CM: Not afraid.

Q: Wow.

LF: She wasn’t afraid of people, either, ’cause, you know, back in those days they had it kinda rough in town, stuff like that, but she was well respected by all the races and stuff, you know. But overall she was a great woman. She loved her job. She had dignity. She was a churchgoin’ woman. She was a devout Christian and stuff. And she left quite a legacy, and we really appreciate what she stood for, you know, and we’re still eatin’ 00:17:00the fruit of it right now.

Q: Okay. That is great.

CM: One other thing: durin’ that time, in the ’40s, when she was deliverin’ babies, she would charge $20 but most of the time, she told me when I got older, she never got a nickel, but she still did the job, because she loved what she was doin’. She wanted to do it, and she was inspired by her job. Even though she didn’t—sometimes she knew she wasn’t gonna get nothin’. What she did was she— LF: It mattered.

CM: —did and went on. And sometimes, about half of the time, she never got a nickel. Never got a dime.

Q: Right. ’Cause those people were goin’—a lot of time they’d have to go in their bonds and get whatever they had. They didn’t have very much.

CM: Yeah. Sometimes they give her chicken, eggs, stuff like that.

Q: Potatoes, chickens, eggs. One got a mule. [Laughs.] LF: Oh, yeah, we had mules. We had mules.

CM: We had mules. We had a farm.

LF: And we know we’re talkin’ about midwifery, but to show you how courageous woman she was— Q: But that’s all about it, right.

LF: —we remember we were on top of the hill. Back in those days, we had—we still got pretty 00:18:00good acreage for Blacks. And we were up there hoein’ cotton. We used to chop cotton all the time. And we’ll never forget, well, some of the whites came from New York and different places, and they were leadin’ her—we up in the field, and they come and got her and led her to the poll to vote, like, a couple cars, like, one behind. Because it was very dangerous, you know what I’m sayin’? And we remember up in the field, wavin’, wavin’ as they passed by, like she was a celebrity, you know what I’m saying? Back in those days, everybody that live out of the town was a celeb—but we waved at her, and so she took a stand. And our father, which is her son, her oldest son, he would make sure everybody vote. He would make sure you take ’em to the poll. People didn’t have cars and stuff. He did until the day he was killed on a tractor. You see, a woman with a cellphone ran into him, talkin’ on the cellphone. But anyway, he would make sure everybody voted. He would get out there. He would espouse, you know, they’re comin’ today. And my grandmother had to learn the Constitution. They had to learn the Constitution backwards back in those days. We had to learn it backwards.

Q: But 00:19:00she did it.

LF: Yeah, and she was uneducated. If you saw what she wrote, there’s some stuff we had to kinda decipher ourself because we can’t read all of it, because she was uneducated and stuff, you know? But she was just—she was very renowned. She was a trailblazer, what she was, and, like I said, very intrepid.

Q: Very good.

LF: And so she was just a [inaudible].

Q: Okay, let me see what I missed.

LO: And you likely know, Ms. Stevens, that she’s listed here. She’s [inaudible] here at the Smith Robinson Museum.

Q: Oh, is she?

LF: [inaudible].

CM: Her picture’s in there, yeah.

LO: That picture, right, right there.

LF: It was on the wall. They took it down, so I don’t know— LO: It’s the picture that we have, and— Q: One of these pictures?

LO: Right. And when my sister was takin’ it— LF: Uh-huh [affirmative], [inaudible].

CM: When she first voted.

LO: —she had an entourage when they took her to Prentiss. But she also—it went across API [ph] Press, nationwide. Sure did, with that white hat on that she had. That picture went across the API Press nationwide. We saw it on the news that evening, so you know she was iconic.

LF: And, obviously, back in those days she knew it because she wrote in that law book, “My name is Joe Ella.” Well, you’ll read it. She said, “My name is all over America.” So even those days—she 00:20:00been dead a lot of years—her name was renowned and out there, and she got a chance to find out about it.

Q: How old did she live to be?

LF: She was eighty—?

CM: Three.

LF: Eighty-three.

CM: Eighty-seven. When she died?

Q: Eighty-seven? Yes, sir.

CM: Eighty-seven.

Q: Eighty-seven? Okay.

LO: ’Cause she was born in 1895.

CM: And another thing: she was persistent. You’ll read in that book there. She went there, and they turned her down when she went to vote. She went seven times. Seven times, and she didn’t stop. She made up her mind, said, “I’m gonna do this thing. I’m gonna vote.” And she was very persistent. And that’s all through her life, not on voting, everything else.

Q: Everything. She persisted.

CM: She was persistent. She was.

LO: And copyin’ that book— CM: She never gave up.

LO: —and copyin’ that book, with her writing, in 1978, she was sayin’ that she went—she testified against Dane [sp?]. He was one of the—he served as [ph] clerk at the time.

LF: In Prentiss.

LO: She went to court in Jackson.

CM: Yeah, when that— LO: She went to court. And so it was during that time. It was really frightening, you know, when you had the crosses burning and all that.

LF: She said she was on the jury in Hattiesburg. He 00:21:00was givin’ some of the Blacks a hard time, and she testified against him, which really took a warrior to do that, ’cause very dangerous then. You know that, uh-huh [affirmative].

Q: Very dangerous.

LF: And so we don’t know all the background, history of her, everything— Q: Political.

LF: —her political things, but she was very political. Her son was political. As a matter of fact, the whole family’s always believed in—they asked us recently, the last time we voted, which was last year, in November, asked me, “Ms. Lawanda,” ’cause we in a real rural area, [inaudible]— Q: Yeah, everybody knows.

LO: About 14,000 people in Jefferson Davis County, about 14,500.

LF: We know, ’cause it was late, ’cause I wasn’t feelin’ well. “We were wonderin’ when you were coming.” I said, “You kidding? You want my dad to come back down here? [Laughter.] Are you kidding? We don’t play that.” You know what I’m sayin’? We goin’ to always vote, you know what I’m sayin’? Long as you’re on this planet. My grandmother fought a war. She came up with a lot of hard knocks [ph]— CM: Talk to her [ph], yeah.

LF: —to get where she was.

Q: So she had her own home and land.

LF: Oh, yeah, they were farmers. Our grandfather did the farming.

CM: He didn’t share— LO: He hired people. They hired people.

CM: Yeah, he 00:22:00didn’t sharecrop.

LO: Right. We didn’t do all the work; we hired people.

LF: We hired people, hired people to— Q: Do you work.

LO: Right, yes.

CM: I’m gonna tell another story I’d like to tell, about my dad. Now, you’re talkin’ about my mother.

Q: Okay, that’s fine.

CM: This time, the first time I seen my dad was a strong man—hell, I could tell you— LF: He was a military guy.

CM: I could tell you a story about my daddy make the hair stand on your head.

Q: So that’s how he was able to put up with us. [Laughs.] LO: His name’s Warren [ph].

CM: They were two together, right? My dad was a very strong man. My dad didn’t sharecrop. He made his own crops.

LF: Syrup [ph] and all that stuff.

CM: This particular year, he got through—this white man lived down the street, about a mile from him. He know that it was a worker, so he wanted Daddy to work for him. But Daddy, “No, I’m gonna do my own thing.” So the particular year, Daddy got through early, and this white man came and asked him to help him. He wouldn’t help them do his crop for a week, and he promised him—I can’t remember the price [ph]. But when Daddy got through working, instead 00:23:00of givin’ the whole price, he cut him a dollar. He didn’t raise his hand [ph]. But when my daddy got sick, and the first time I see my dad—the first time—I was a grown man—see my dad shed a tear, when he said, “I worked for this white man. All I done, tryin’ to make money to help my family, raise my family.” And I look round; tears were just comin’ out of his eyes. That’s the first time I seen my daddy cry. A white man beat him out his money. And that’s why he didn’t work for white folks, because they would— Q: Sharecroppin’ was just like that. They beat ’em out they— CM: Yeah, ’cause he didn’t work for white folks [ph]. And another thing—we talkin’ about my mother—my dad was a mighty man. My dad pioneered the [inaudible] County. He made [inaudible] for white people and Black people of three counties.

LO: Yes.

CM: And he would make— Q: He had his own [inaudible] mill [ph]?

LF: Oh, yeah.

CM: And he made ’em like they want ’em. He told my daddy how he wanted his syrups [ph] made, and if he wanted ’em thick, if he wanted to have a big [inaudible], you want ’em to last longer, 00:24:00do you want ’em [inaudible] thin, he would make ’em thin. And during that time, it was a little bootleg. People were makin’ the liquor. And he would make so much off of the syrups, and he would sell his extra syrups to white people, and they would make bootleg liquor out of ’em. He made a lot of money on that, too. Yeah, so he was a great— LO: Big-time farmers.

LF: He made baskets and stuff, too.

CM: We made baskets.

LF: He was a basket weaver and stuff. He did a lot of stuff. And he was in— CM: We were blessed. We were a blessed family. I’m not braggin’, but we was a blessed family.

Q: That’s great. Brag, brag.

LO: Yeah, ’cause we had a great deal of land.

Q: Now, how many children did you—? You said, like, 500 or so that she delivered?

LO: She had her book.

LF: Five, six hundred. There’s a article right there. It’s a article on what Prentiss wrote about her.

CM: She said 600, over 600.

LF: It was a newspaper. She called between five and six hundred babies.

Q: Right, okay. All right. And she always went to the people when they—?

LF: Mm-hmm [affirmative], always went to them.

CM: Went—yeah.

LF: Always went to them. ’Cause we were rural out there, and dusty [ph] and stuff, so she went to them. And people called, sometimes 00:25:00in different counties and stuff.

Q: So when you say they called, they were able to— LF: It’s only a few people had— Q: Had a phone.

LF: —a vehicle and stuff like— LO: [inaudible] television.

LF: —so back in those days, we didn’t have television, we didn’t have— Q: Somebody had to send somebody to get her.

LF: Uh-huh [affirmative]. As a matter of fact— CM: Yes.

LF: —they were the first one that get a television. They were the first one in the community to get a television. We were second one.

LO: She always had a car.

LF: And people—yeah, and she always had a car. But, see, they were seein’—you know what I’m sayin’? They probably sent to a neighbor, and a neighbor sent another [inaudible] like that to get her.

CM: Yeah, the neighbors come and get her to pick [ph]— LF: And then they heard about her reputation and stuff, so people come get—especially, it’s also true, in different counties, especially, had difficulty pregnancies, you know what I’m sayin’, like a breach or somethin’ like that, ’cause her reputation was really good. She was real steady-handed.

LO: And she has in that article there, in that book, in her own writing, where she went to Lawrence County and Jefferson Davis County, and maybe, perhaps, Marion County, but she didn’t mention those counties, and— LF: And she worked in that [ph].

Q: Okay, very good. Okay. And, let me see—did she wear a uniform?

CM: Yes, 00:26:00 ma’am.

Q: What color?

CM: Let me think. It was— LF: She probably made ’em, ’cause she— CM: It had a white collar; I remember that. And I believe it was light blue. I believe white collar, light blue. She— LO: Kinda apron type. It was like— CM: Yeah. Yeah.

LO: Yeah, [inaudible].

LF: ’Cause she used to sew, now.

Q: Oh, did she?

LO: Yeah, she sewed. She made clothes for us.

LF: She sewed. She made us dresses. Pretty dresses. Oh, she was just a woman— LO: She did.

LF: —she made dresses— CM: I remember the collar. I remember the collar well because they were white, but it seemed like the dress was a light blue. Seemed like the dress— LF: Except back in those days we got the materials from those flour sacks. They came from the flour sacks and stuff, and she made us some of the prettiest dresses.

LO: Sure did.

LF: Oh, yeah, fancy, too.

Q: I remember. [Laughs.] LF: She would make ’em, uh-huh [affirmative]. So she was very talented.

LO: She would braid our hair. I mean, she’s iconic. She was legendary.

Q: Yeah, great, great. Now, did she have any—do you remember any tools in that black bag? Do you remember what was in it? It was kinda like a mystery, right, wasn’t it?

CM: Yeah, and she— LF: The little leather black bag?

CM: As a kid, [laughs] we kinda wanted to—yeah, 00:27:00I see some of ’em.

Q: You saw some— CM: She had some, like—she had some, like, gauzes, like a long strip, so wide. Then she had her little white cups, and some kind of pump there. I don’t know, pump. [Laughter.] Yeah, I’ve seen them.

LF: For the women’s breast and stuff.

Q: Strange lookin’ tubes.

CM: Yeah, a lot of stuff in that bag. Yeah, little— LO: Whatever was required, Grandmother had it.

CM: —little, old round cups, about that long, and had some strips in there, tape, and she had this— LF: I never saw inside the bag.

CM: I saw. You know, bein’ a mischievous kid, you gonna know what’s in that bag. [Laughs.] LO: And it was always ready to go. She always picked it up. But Grandmama, bein’ the type of woman she was, whatever was needed, whatever was needed— Q: She had it.

LF: She had it.

LO: —she had it. Now, we were born in 1947, and our grandmother, we always knew her to have a car, ’cause Daddy would use her car, like, to come to Jackson, where we’re—she would get one every three years.

CM: And besides that, she was a—what is it—?

LF: Woman of Jericho, Heroine of Jericho.

CM: Heroine of Jericho. She was a Heroine of 00:28:00 Jericho.

Q: Okay, okay. All right. And— CM: Whatever you call it. I mean— LF: They were the Heroine of Jericho, women was, uh-huh [affirmative], and men were the Mason.

Q: That is great.

LO: And they owned a lot of land. They had car. They was farmers.

Q: So you still have that land. You haven’t sold any of it.

LF: Yeah.

LO: They left an inheritance for us. It came to our parents, which we have land that my grandfather and my grandmother own.

Q: Okay, so you haven’t sold off any of the— LO: That they willed to us.

LF: Oh, no. See, what happens is—and our daddy made sure—if anybody sells anything, or get in trouble, which so far nobody has, they’re to sell it back to a family member, you know what I’m sayin’? But you’re not to let anybody—and so it’s in our wills and stuff, like, our children, if you sell it, if you don’t want to keep it, you want to go somewhere else, we want you to sell it back to a— Q: Family member.

LF: —[inaudible]. Family member.

Q: Great, great.

LO: And they really [ph] [inaudible].

LF: ’Cause, now, back in those days, back in those days, was a big thing—now, we don’t know all the history, we don’t want to get into it, but it was one of the family members came to about 900 acres of land, and it’s how we ended up gettin’ a lot of land. Remember? Bought all that land through there. And then something happened to him. He 00:29:00ended up goin’ to jail. They framed him, whatever. But anyway, a lot of family members got a lot of that land. He sold it to a lot of us, so we all—so everybody through there for miles— Q: They can keep it.

LF: —are all family members.

LO: Landowners.

LF: Landowners and family members. And we used to do cows, and—well, not—we used to do— LO: Run [ph] cows.

LF: Well, we used to do cotton and watermelon and— LO: Cucumbers.

LF: —Daddy—or stuff like that, but now it’s all into timber now.

Q: Timber, okay.

LF: It was timber, uh-huh [affirmative].

LO: [inaudible] corn, a lot of corn, preserved for the cows. They had big cow farm.

LF: Cucumbers, yeah.

LO: Cucumbers. They hired people to take care of it.

LF: Watermelons, uh-huh [affirmative], that type of thing.

LO: And our father was—we’re not talkin’ about our father, but he was really a big landowner from his day, ’cause his dad worked with him. They had tractors. They always had a tractor. And we hired, like, 40 people in the community. They really, between my grandfather and my father, his family, they worked the community people. They didn’t have to go out into the community and work for the white people; they worked for us.

Q: Right, right. That’s good. Sound like my granddaddy.

CM: They never did [ph]. And one other thing, then we’ll shut up.

Q: Well, I need to know all— CM: My mother, 00:30:00she fed the community. Young men my age, she fed ’em. When they wanted something to eat, they knew some liked to eat all the time. I was never—when I was off of—when workin’ in the field, I was never alone. All my friends would come to my—and besides— LF: Everybody.

CM: —she let me drive the car every once in a while to town, and they wanted to ride in that car, ’cause they didn’t have one. So they come there, and she fed ’em, she’d treat ’em like they was her own children. They never—never, never scold one of ’em, unless they needed it.

Q: Yeah, yeah, [inaudible].

LO: And we [inaudible]. Tell about [inaudible].

LF: And we’d get up on Easter-time. We, on Easter-time, we become—she would—oh, dozens and dozens and dozens of Easter eggs she would boil for her grandchildren and stuff, and color ’em all different kind of colors and stuff, and every time we got off that school bus she’d have some buttermilk, and we loved buttermilk cornbread, and—yeah [laughter]—and baked potatoes. She kept food. We’d go in there, and we’d start quiltin’ and stuff— CM: Always somethin’ to eat.

LO: And baked potatoes, [inaudible], baked potatoes.

LF: Baked potatoes and stuff, too, and they would kill hogs all the time, and they would give all the—everybody 00:31:00[inaudible]— Q: In the community.

LF: —everybody in the community would come here.

CM: Every year, we killed three four- and five-hundred pound hogs. Every year. The whole neighborhood, the whole community would come and help us— LF: Yeah, ’cause a lot of people just live unfortunate, and a couple widows.

CM: It took us all day to clean and cut that hog up, and— Q: Well, did you guys feed your hogs slop or corn or what?

CM: Yeah, we’d feed ’em— LF: Corn and stuff.

Q: Corn and stuff. [Laughs.] CM: Feed ’em corn and stuff, yeah.

Q: Okay.

LF: Yes.

Q: Well, I sure thank y’all.

LO: And one thing I wanted y’all to know—but you probably waiting on somebody else—but one thing that I wanted to tell you about my mother. When Dad and Mom married, they came to—my mom was like six years old when Malia [sp?] and them came to Jefferson Davis County.

LF: Well, Malia was Jordan [ph].

LO: And Mother, and Mom, and she said they would go to school, then they walk to school. We did some walkin’ to school ourselves.

CM: Yeah, we walked to school.

LO: And she said that Grandmother Joe Ella lived in Jordan Hill. She would come out and check their bag to see how much food they had, and she would put more food into their bag. Now, my mother’s father died when she was 12, 00:32:00and she was a big family.

LF: And they were poor.

LO: They were poor.

LF: That side.

LO: So she would look out for ’em. She said she would fill their bags up with food.

LF: And which my mom married her oldest—Joe Ella’s oldest son, but they raised them up, ’cause they were poor, and they didn’t have—they were widow. They have a family, uh-huh [affirmative].

LO: And one little point I wanted to make—and I know you waitin’ for somebody else—but my auntie, two of my aunties didn’t have children, so when they— LF: Didn’t have husbands.

LO: Didn’t have—they were married.

LF: Oh, children. Oh, [inaudible].

LO: They didn’t have children, Aunt Ruben [sp?], Aunt Thelma [sp?]. They willed the land to us. They gave the land to the grandchildren.

Q: Okay, very good. Kept it in the family, yeah.

LO: It stayed in the family. So we got [inaudible] property, inheritance from our grandparents, [inaudible].

Q: Very good, very good. All right, okay.

LF: So God’s been mighty good to us.

Q: Yeah, yeah.

LF: Yes.

Q: He’s— CM: You can tell we’re good by [ph] our family. [Laughs].

Q: All right. So, now, this is one of the— LO: That’s my husband.

Q: Oh, okay, okay, all right. Very good. Well, I thank you so much.

LF: He’s an educator. He should be a principal, but he had a stroke, and so— 00:33:00LO: And that book there, that book that— Q: This Bible?

LO: —you probably had [inaudible]— LF: That’s a law book.

Q: The law, yeah, Black’s Law, okay.

LO: —that’s a law dictionary. When he had—when he got one of his master’s—he got two master’s degrees—he got one in Jackson State—he was close to my grandmother, and we were, of course. But he would go down every two weeks, and you were crazy about him. She was a very intelligent lady. And anyway, she gave him money for a gift when he graduated from Jackson State. He was an old man. He was workin’. But anyway, he bought the gift, that book, and he took it back down to her, and she wrote in the book.

LF: History.

LO: History.

Q: Okay, very good. Very good.

LO: Yeah, real good history there about a midwife and [inaudible].

Q: Okay, I will be reading that. Thank y’all so much.

LF: Okay, bless you, bless you.

Q: Okay. All right. All right.

LO: Well, thank you, Ms. Stevens.

Q: Okay, you’re quite welcome. [Side conversation] [END OF INTERVIEW]