Oral History with Charles A. Johnson, March 3, 1991 (Ms1991-019)

Michael A. Cooke: Today is March the third, 1991. I'm conducting an interview

with Charles A. Johnson of Blacksburg, Virginia. Mr. Johnson, could you give us

a biographical sketch of your life? A brief biographical sketch. Your birthdate,

birthplace, your education and occupation?

Charles Johnson: My birthdate is June the sixth, 1933. Birthplace, Wake Forest,

Virginia. Occupation, I am now a barber. Education--

C: Yeah, that's one of the questions.

J: Education, I had a rural education. Rural elementary school in Wake Forest.

Graduated at the seventh grade, going to Christiansburg Institute in

Christiansburg, Virginia. From that was four years of education of high school

and then you graduated at the eleventh grade in Christiansburg Institute. And I

graduated [from] Christiansburg Institute 00:01:00in 1953.

C: Okay. Were you a continuous resident in the area of Wake Forest or did

you--When did you move to Blacksburg? Because I know you ultimately moved here.

J: I was a continuous. I grew up in the Wake Forest community.

C: Did you serve in the military?

J: Yes. I went shortly after graduating high school. Probably in three weeks, I

was in the military. Drafted into the military, and I served in Korea. I got out

of the military in [19]55.

C: During the Korean War or after the war?

J: Shortly after.

C: Fortunate for you.

J: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Matter of fact 00:02:00they had a cease fire while I was at basic

training. And after that time, I came back and I have been a resident of

Blacksburg since [19]55.

C: [19]55.

J: Right. Yeah.

C: Could you describe growing up in Wake Forest? Was Wake Forest an incorporated

town or was it a community?

J: Community.

C: It's not really a town.

J: No. No, just a community.

C: It's in the Montgomery County.

J: Montgomery County.

C: Could you describe where it's at for people who might not be familiar? If you

had to say, well-

J: Yeah. I'm trying to think of what part of the county it's located in. I'd say north.

C: Near McCoy I guess-

J: Yeah. I was just trying to think geographically.

C: Oh.

J: Yeah it's sort of in the northwest part of Montgomery County surrounded by

McCoy and Long Shop and a mountain. You know, and Whitethorne. Sort of

surrounded by those three communities

C: Um-hm.

J: And it was all predominantly Black community. There were two white families

that came through the Wake 00:03:00Forest area to get to their home. You know, other

than that all the residents were Black.

C: How big was the community, if you had to give a number estimate?

J: Oh, roughly 150 people.

C: That's a good size community.

J: Yeah.

C: What were some of the major families? If you had to recall the families, what

are the family names that are typically people from Wake Forest?

J: Well Johnsons, Eves, Miltons, Bannisters, Pages, and Mills.

C: What about Shermans?

J: Shermans, yeah. There were plenty of Shermans. I would say that the major

family was the [inaudible 3:43] family.

C: Could you give us some background on how these people ended up in Wake

Forest? Do you know any history about how these people ended up in Wake Forest?

Or speculation on how 00:04:00they ended-

J: To the best of my knowledge, and what my grandparents told me, they ended up

there--After reconstruction days and Blacks became free, they were in the

Whitethorne area with the farms down there. It was called Cowan's Farm, Cowan

and Adams Farm, the farm that now VPI now owns.

C: Oh, yeah.

J: And they were there working as slave labor prior to reconstruction days, and

once they were free, the slave owners, they freed them and gave them a plot of

land which was back in Wake Forest area, where the Wake Forest community is. And

it was just really in the mountains and the trees and they went into that area

and started a community. It seemed like-

C: No one lived there previously?

J: No. No one lived there 00:05:00previously, and they just went back in there and

started a community. They cut the trees down and build log houses and so forth

and they built themselves a church too. And it seemed like--

C: What was the name of the church? Is it still standing?

J: Yeah, one of the churches is still standing. It's a nondenominational church.

For the time that I was growing up, they called it the Holiness church. But it

is still standing--

C: Could it be used the entire time?

J: Yeah.

C: Like I attended services recently.

J: Yeah. Wait a minute, are we talking about the same church?

C: Are we talking about the Holiness?

J: Pentecostal-

C: Pentecostal

J: The brick church?

C: I believe so.

J: It's farther on in the community.

C: So there's another holiness church?

J: Yeah. Yeah there's another-

C: Oh, I didn't get that.

J: See, that church is not brick. It was dedicated, matter of fact, 00:06:00on May 15,

in [19]82. That's when that church was built.

C: Oh.

J: There's never been a church in that particular spot.

C: Okay.

J: There's another church over there. It doesn't have a steeple or anything.

Doesn't look much like--you passed it probably about three fourths of a mile

before you get to that church. When you first turn into the Wake Forest

community, there's a church that's a baptist church.

C: Right. I've seen that.

J: Between it and the church that you attended, the Holiness church, is another church.

C: Kind of in the background, a little bit deeper into the-

J: It's right on the curve, but it's right off the road.

C: Okay I was-

J: You might have thought it was a house.

C: I'll look for it the next time I'm over there.

J: Right once you get down the steep hill there's a bridge down there. You start

back up the hill the first building on your right will be that church. There's a

little sign out there. It has been used now. It's some denomination now, I don't

know, but they're predominantly white who's using the church now. So, that

church has been there for years and some guy named Papa Carl [6:51]--I don't

know before my time--he built it and he deemed it a nondenominational church.

C: Um-hm.

J: Prior to that, [telephone rings] which 00:07:00might have been another church or was

the baptist church. It's been there a long time.

C: Okay.

J: I understand they had some feud in a church and the church, the baptist

church, mysteriously got burned down. [telephone continues to ring] And, I'm not

going to answer that.

C: Okay.

J: And it got burned down, and they rebuilt it. So, you might want to go down

and look at the [inaudible 7:25] because it is [inaudible 7:30]

C: Okay, I'm going to walk around and make sure I know the area.

J: Yeah, right because it's got cars-

C: Because we just simply went to the church.

J: Right. Yeah.

C: I think we've been there a couple times.

J: But that's not the church I'm talking about.

C: I see.

J: You went to one of the buildings that was built in May of [19]82. These other

churches are a lot older.

C: Yeah now that I'm thinking of it, that shouldn't have been the one anyway.

J: Right. No, no. That's not it. No, that's not it.

C: Couldn't have been it because it was too recently constructed.

J: Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's not it. The Baptist church up there that's called

Wake Forest First Baptist Church. That's the oldest church. Now I'm not sure the

holiness church may be older than it but I don't think it's Pentecostal. You

might have to ask some of the residents.

C: Do you think it's as old as some of the Black churches in 00:08:00Blacksburg? Cause

some of them are very old.

J: Yeah it's as old because the same fella, Captain Schaeffer, set up all the

churches in the area.

C: So he built--Oh, so what is now Schaeffer Memorial-

J: Shaffer was the first. After Schaeffer, all these other churches came out of

Schaefer, and the same man set them up. So, he went around in all these various

communities setting up these churches. So, all of them are around a hundred and

twenty some years, so ten or fifteen years after, they set up these other

churches. So, they're all from around Schaeffer.

C: Okay. You said you went to school at Christiansburg Institute. Before you

went there, what kind of school did you go to in this area? Was there a school

established? I'm talking about in Wake Forest.

J: In Wake Forest?

C: Wake Forest, yeah.

J: Yeah it was a small one. Wake Forest Elementary school. It was a two room school.

C: The time you went there it was only two rooms.

J: Yeah, it was two rooms. Well, it's a wide open 00:09:00school. You pull a curtain

across and make two rooms out of it. And it had no bathroom. We had a

system--they called it a hydro[inaudible 9:17]--where the water would run off

and scoop down into the pump of water out of there, and half of the time it

didn't work. We carried water from a nearby spring.

C: How far was the spring?

J: Spring was about a mile away.

C: Oh, that was not nearby.

J: Yeah.

C: [Laughs] That's a whole new definition of nearby.

J: Yeah. It was about a mile away, but each kid had their turn to go down there.

Each kid had their day to go and fetch the water, bring the water.

C: If I'd asked you the question on the day that you drew that water and carried

that water, I'm thinking you sure wouldn't say it was nearby [Laughs].

J: Right. No. Yeah. So, while I was there, they finally dug a cistern and had

water, really, you know, run on to the house down there.

C: Who did it? How was it paid?

J: 00:10:00The county.

C: Oh, the county-

J: That was a county school.

C: It was a county school, and eventually-

J: Yeah.

C: How did that come to be? Did people complain or they simply did it or-

J: They simply did it because the other schools probably already had it. Like,

see, there's another elementary school in McCoy and there was one in Long Shop,

which were white, all white. And my school was all Black, and we had one teacher.

C: How big was the school? I mean, how many students generally were at the school?

J: About twenty-five.

C: About twenty-five.

J: Yeah, with one teacher. And the older kids taught the younger kids. Say, if

you were seventh grade, you would end up teaching the fourth.

C: Because one teacher couldn't deal with everybody.

J: Right.

C: 00:11:00Was it very noisy? Or was it, you know, when you're trying to--to the best of

your memory.

J: I thought it was very orderly. No, it was not noisy you couldn't say because,

really, the teacher had good control over the students.

C: You remember the teachers, some of the teachers you had?

J: Yeah her name is Ms. Mayo Page. We called her Mayo. [10:59]

C: Was she related to the Page's?

J: Yeah, she married a Page.

C: Oh, she married-

J: Lived in the community.

C: Okay.

J: Yeah, she was my teacher. And the teacher also was the principal. So not only

that, we had a wood and coal stove, and they had a wood house and coal stove

house nearby which counted the supply in the early [19]40s because when it was

cold, we would bring it in and keep the fire going. So everybody was assigned a

duty each day. With a chart, you knew what day you were supposed to go and get

the water, what day you were supposed to carry the coal in, or what day you

supposed to 00:12:00clean the stove out. So everybody did what they were supposed to do.

C: That sounds very disciplined. Did the parents take interest in the students?

J: Yeah.

C: Their kids getting an education.

J: They had a PTA.

C: Oh, they did?

J: They had a PTA, and they met Monday.

C: Who were active people in the PTA?

J: Who were the active people?

C: Yeah, who were the active community people who were kind of demonstrated interest?

J: Well, the Bannisters, for one. They were really education oriented. And

usually most people that had children in the school at the time seemed to be

most interested and came by for PTA.

C: You said Bannister. Was that Frank Bannister?

J: Frank Bannister, yeah.

C: Was he one of the people?

J: Yeah. Right. That's true. Yeah, he and his wife.

C: Um-hm.

J: [Inaudible 12:27-12:35] Then other members of the community usually with 00:13:00children. [inaudible 12:47] They had activities going on all the time such as

they had what they called suppers where the women of the community would bake

pies and cakes and so forth and bring them out there and sell them. We went at

night, it was always a night time. We went maybe once a month at night time.

They always arranged it around payday for the coal mine, and they'd get paid

every two weeks. It was always around payday, so everybody had some money. I

remember a slice of pie cost ten cents. You could get a hotdog for ten cents and

you get a-

C: When were those days? I'd like to know [Laughs].

J: Right. And they had drinks or like tea or kool-aid and that might be five

cents or they might have even given you the kool-aid. Usually, if you'd go with

a quarter, you got plenty to eat. If you went with a quarter. And usually, all

of the kids went if they had money or not because then when the parents came or

other members of the community--everybody seemed to come--they played music

during that time too. Not much dancing, but they always had music going-

C: What kind of music did people generally listen to?

J: It was just basic music that Blacks would be listening 00:14:00to. It wasn't

religious. I remember that. It was just whatever was popular at that time.

That's what they listened to. But other people would always, if there was a kid

there--underprivileged kid--they would always give him money. They would give

and say, here son. Here's fifteen cents. They always gave them money. So all the

kids always had plenty to eat and some of them left with money in their pocket.

C: [Laughter]. It's better than being out fifteen cents.

J: Right, yeah. And you didn't need more than twenty-five cents to get all you

wanted to eat. And this money they would take it and put it back into the school

for needed things or what the school needed.

C: Um-hm. So, supplies-

J: Right. Yes. Yeah, sometimes for school supplies or things the county didn't

supply 00:15:00 adequately.

C: Did they supply you comparably to white schools?

J: No. No. Not before. Not before.

C: You mentioned they were in Long Shop and McCoy-

J: McCoy.

C: Do you remember looking at those schools? Maybe the outside and maybe-

J: The outside looked almost the same. It looked like they built them all at the

same plan-

C: Plan.

J: Yeah. So they looked the same and were spatially the same. But Forest

supplied more. I don't think we had what they had.

C: Okay.

J: And one other thing in school, we would have--about every three months--we'd

have a visitor. Somebody from the county would come by and visit the school or I

guess would check on instruction or procedures or whatever checking on teachers.

Then we would have a kind of county medical person come by and give our shots

and check our teeth and all this kind of thing. If they found somebody that

needed some medical care, they would assign ways to [inaudible 15:52] Or,

Christiansburg, I think I 00:16:00remember always wanting to get my eyes checked. You

would go there, the person would take you there as a kid. They would tell you

you need to have your tonsils taken out and all this kind of stuff.

C: So, there were some services. They were good services, too.

J: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

C: I gathered from what you're talking-

J: Right. They were, and it was quite disciplined. The boys, if you did

something wrong, you got a whip. Another one of my teachers there was Mr. Carr,

Ledonia Carr. He's now deceased. His widow lives in Christiansburg. You might

want to talk to her.

C: Um-hm.

J: Yeah, he was one of my--a matter of fact, he was one my teachers when I got

to high school too. He was my science teacher in high school.

C: Okay. Talk about your high school.

J: I have one more teacher-

C: Oh, I'm sorry.

J: That's deceased too. I was getting ready to tell you about Mr. Holmes. So, he

was a teacher down there.

C: Was it Zea?

J: What?

C: One of them.

J: I don't know.

C: 00:17:00 Zacherea?

J: Zacharia and Zimri-

C: Zimri.

J: Zimri [Holmes] was the teacher down there, but he didn't teach me. Mr. Carr

taught me and Mrs. Wale. They were both teachers down there.

C: Okay. And Carr, was he from Christiansburg?

J: He was from Christiansburg. The teachers would come down and live in the

community for a week. They'd come in on Monday morning, stay with somebody, and

then would leave on Friday evening and go back to Christiansburg.

C: Why did they do all that? I mean why did-

J: There was no place for them to stay.

C: Transportation was that bad?

J: Yeah. I mean if they had a car. Some of them didn't have a car. Like Mr.

Holmes, obviously, he had no car. He would get S. B. Morgan would bring him over

there. He would stay there all week. He'd pick him up on Friday evening and take

him back to Christiansburg to his home. And Mr. Carr did finally get a car while

I was there. He would commute. But most of the time, they'd stay in the

community. But prior to that time, 00:18:00there was a fellow named Shed. He was the

minister, and he was the school teacher and principal. And he was really a

community leader. I don't know anybody but him. I just hear about Mr. Shed. But,

he was a community leader. I feel like some of the older ministers of the

community [inaudible 18:12]

C: Would tell you about that.

J: Right because he seemed like he might have been the first minister that

[inaudible 18:20]

C: Okay.

J: They would come by from time to time, the county maintenance crew, and come

by and make repairs on the school all the time. Because I remember we had some

steps where the school was quite high. And they would come by from time to time

to replace the steps because it had steps and sort of a small porch on both

ends. On one end, you could just walk right into school. The other end was

higher and it had steps in it. And they would come by and do that. So, I would

say, I guess, they kept it up just about as well as-

C: High.

J: This is Dr. Cooke. It's Sandre [18:55].

C: Uh-huh.

J: So, other than that-- 00:19:00And they had a formal graduation in June, usually about

six of us graduated, and they had plays from time to time. Almost every month

you had a play.

C: So there was a lot of-

J: A lot of activities.

C: If you had to say, was the school the center of social activities?

J: I would say-

C: I mean, maybe church is?

J: The church is.

C: I was going to say.

J: The school and the church tied in. It was on the same grounds.

C: Oh.

J: The Baptist Church. The school is still standing as a matter of fact and the

church is still standing. See when you go down the turn you passing the biggest

part of history right there. Going over the community. You just passed the history.

C: [Laughs]

J: The school is still standing there. The guy bought it and he made apartments

out of it, people living in it now.

C: Oh people-

J: People are living in it now. It's actually the same school I went to. And

down the hill from it is the church.

C: Okay.

J: As a matter of fact, the church now gets water from the school up there.

C: Hm.

J: 00:20:00When Mr. Cowan deeded the land to the Blacks living in that area, he also

deeded the land for the church and the school. You know, so [inaudible 20:06]

back then I think they might have had a log cabin school or something.

C: Well, when you graduated and went to Christiansburg, was it easy to get to

Christiansburg Institute?

J: We would bused over there.

C: Okay, so you don't remember being in the bus from the very beginning then?

J: Yeah, that's right. It was eighteen miles, eighteen miles from there.

C: How long did it generally take to get from Wake Forest over there.

J: It's about forty-five minutes.

C: Forty-five minutes. Did they stop at a lot of places besides--I guess they

didn't come simply to Wake Forest.

J: It came to Wake Forest. Well, the bus was usually in Wake Forest. It left

Wake Forest.

C: Okay.

J: The drivers usually were there. Most of the time my drivers were female drivers.

C: Okay.

J: Female drivers. And a lot of times on the bus we'd have to stop to put 00:21:00chains on.

C: Okay.

J: And we always got the second hand bus. Never had a new bus the whole time I

rode it.

C: The county never provided brand new buses?

J: We got the buses that the whites had used and gotten old. They got a new bus,

we got the used bus. The whole four years I never rode on a new bus.

C: Do you remember the stops?

J: Yeah, I remember the stops very well. [Laughter] Our first stop after leaving

Wake Forest, we stopped down at Long Shop. There was a Black family down there.

C: Just one?

J: Yeah, just one Black family.

C: Hm. Do you remember the family's name?

J: Yeah. Oh, I'm trying to think of the name, but I remember [inaudible 21:32]

and Sherman. Yeah, Sherman.

C: So, were they related to the Shermans of Wake Forest?

J: Yeah right they were related to the Shermans of Wake Forest.

C: Oh, okay.

J: So, it was Barbara, Ann, and Miller Sherman. So they had a stop down there

and pick them up. As a matter of fact, when the bus came through, it picked them

up and brought them up to the 00:22:00elementary school to go to the elementary school.

C: Okay.

J: Then they picked up the high school kids on the way back. On the way back

out. But, when they became high school kids, the one boy went to high school.

The girl never did. But she [inaudible 22:02] high school. But we would pick him

up. See, it might leave Wake Forest, but it doesn't go to Long Shop to pick up

those kids and bring them up there. Then it would pick up the high school kids

and go back and head towards Christiansburg. And then, one time, the school

teachers picked them up. The one I was telling you about commuting.

C: Um-hm.

J: He would come by and pick them up on his way to school. Just two kids, a girl

and a boy. And we leave out of there make a first stop in Long Shop, the second

stop would be right here on the corner when you turned in up here.

C: Oh, right here?

J: Because this was Heth Farm. The farm house is still right over there.

C: Oh it is? This is the farm? Heth Farm is where Amus Bofman and-

J: Yeah, that's right.

C: And who else was there?

J: The married name was Bofman, and they had two girls and two boys.

C: And also 00:23:00Mr. Dobbins, Rice Dobbins, also worked on that farm.

J: Oh yeah? I didn't know. I wasn't aware of that.

C: Yeah.

J: Yeah, but this is it-

C: He left probably in the early [19]40s.

J: Right. Yeah he did.

C: He probably didn't-

J: Right, yeah I don't remember him being out here, but I know-

C: Yeah.

J: The Bofman lived on the farm.

C: Yeah.

J: And they lived in a house down here and we would pick up the three of Bofman

kids. This would be our first stop. And halfway to the second stop-

C: Did you go to school with Amus?

J: I graduated with Amus Jr. he and his twin, Amus and Alvin, and we graduated.

We went in the Army together.

C: Oh, last I heard, somebody told me that too.

J: Yeah, right. The three of us graduated together and we went into-

C: I didn't know Amus had a twin.

J: Yeah, he had a twin named Alvin.

C: Does he live in this area?

J: No, he lives in Chicago. Well, both of them lived in Chicago after they came

out the service. They went to Chicago because they had a sister up there. And

Amus, he came back. I guess he came back here oh 00:24:00probably about fifteen,

sixteen, seventeen. He came back by the time I was in the barber shop in

[inaudible 24:21] and he came back around that time. But his brother is still up

there. And they was identical twin. Nobody knew how to tell them apart but me.

One had a mole and the other one didn't. That's how I could tell them apart.

C: [Laughs]

J: Anyway, we picked them up. From here, our next stop was up there on Gibson street.

C: Okay.

J: You know-

C: Oh, yeah where-

J: Where the garage is on the corner there.

C: Oh, yeah. Not near where the-

J: New Port. It's called New Town.

C: Yeah, was New Town near where the Bell's used to live?

J: Yeah. That whole street was Black residents. That whole street. And there

were several kids there.

C: Um-hm.

J: So, we picked up there, and as we picked up there, somewhere down in town, we

started to pick up some of the kids that lived in the inner city. Collins. I

remember the Collins. And some other kids.

C: Did you ever go over to Clay over that area?

J: No, it didn't get off Main Street there. They'd 00:25:00had to walk down to Main Street.

C: Okay.

J: And then we left on again. We picked it up on the other end out there where

there's a Giddy market now. That's where the kids would--it used to be Harpy,

but they called it Gideon or something now.

C: Oh yeah Geddy. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

J: Right. Right there. That street that goes up, I think, Nellies Cave Road. We

would pick up the kids from down there.

C: So, you picked up people from Nellies Cave?

J: Yeah right. They had to walk up there cause the bus followed Main Street.

C: I don't think it could have went down there and got right back-

J: Right. Right.

C: [Laughs].

J: Yeah so we picked those kids up. Mills's and Collins's.

C: Yeah. Those are the-

J: Right. Not too many Collins. Mostly the Mills and Realms.

C: Trussels, maybe?

J: Trussels, yeah. Right, we picked them up. Then after that we left and went to

Vicker, Virginia.

C: Vicker? You went all the way over to Vicker?

J: Yeah, we went to Vicker, and we picked up about five or six kids there. You

drive all the way down to Vicker on [State Route] 114, turn around down at the

store down there--Black fellow owned a store down there. I think the building

still might be there. No, I think his son tore it down--We turn around in

Dillard's store and come back up 00:26:00to where the bank and [State Route] 114 at the stoplight-

C: Yeah.

J: Go over there. So, from time to time, we would have bus drivers who would let

us kids off. We could [inaudible 26:05] riding it. They would let us off. We

would just stand there and talk until the bus go down to Vicker come back and

pick us up. Then after a while some parents from schools said we weren't allowed

to do that. Doing it of course at the time, we would ride on the bus and we

would go to sleep. We would close our eyes, and we could tell another student on

the bus where we were along the road, anyway. We would play games like, close

your eyes and tell us where we are. You ride it so much you know, for most of

the bus, you know exactly where you are. You know what turn you make. It's like

if I'm riding this bus, and I come through here, well you know you might know

you picked up the [inaudible 26:40] kids. You know where your next stop is, and

then you know when you get on Main Street, you make a right down Main Street. So

you can pretty well tell where you are. You close your eyes, you know all the

way to Vicker and back up into Christiansburg. You know exactly where you are.

You close your eyes, and some student could ask you where you are and you could

tell them.

C: And this bus, you didn't have whites being bussed this way did you?

J: We had a white school teacher on 00:27:00 it.

C: Oh, you did?

J: We picked her up down at Prices Fork.

C: Okay.

J: I can't remember her name.

C: I mean, you were just picking her up because she lived there?

J: She lived there. We picked her up, and she rode the school bus over to near

Vicker. Right down to--you know where the DMV is down in--

C: Yeah. Yeah.

J: There's a school out there. There was a school out there. And they dropped

her off at the school, and then they'd pick her up in the evening time and

brought her back to Prices Fork. Her name is Williams, Mrs. Williams. And a lot

of times, our school bus driver was white. So, that was our bus route. I didn't

miss too many days out of school the whole time I was over there because there

wasn't anything going on in the community you would enjoy getting up and going

to school. You looked forward to going to school, as a matter of fact, because

there were some activities in school, you get to see 00:28:00your friends and there's

things to do. So, most kids in Wake Forest went to school pretty regularly. I

have a cousin; he didn't miss one day out of four years. And my brother only

missed about three or four. And they gave attendance slips--

C: Oh, yeah. Right.

J: Showing that he attended because my brother, looking at my brother [inaudible 28:36]

C: Okay. Let's see.

J: But, of course, back to the community activities, they had a baseball team

down there called the Wake Forest Eagles, if I remember correctly. They were

quite popular. They balled real well. Beat most teams down there.

C: In fact, I was talking to Mr. Ban--was it Mr. Bannister? He might have been

on that team or something.

J: His son was. He wasn't, but his son was.

C: Somebody. I can't remember who but someone-

J: Frank Jr. was on it. He was a short guy, but he was a good player. And that

was really the highlight of the community in the summer time. 00:29:00Every evening

after they came in from work, they went up on the field. You see that baseball

field just off to your right there?

C: No, I never noticed it.

J: Well, there is a baseball field. The same field is still there. They play

games down there now. Labor Day is community weekend down there.

C: Um-hm.

J: They have baseball games down there now.

C: I'll have to open my eyes a bit better.

J: Well, yeah. It's a baseball field there and now, even now, we have community

day every Labor Day. And this is people who lived in the community come back to

the community. They have church service on Sunday and dinner.

C: When is this generally?

J: It's-

C: Labor Day. You said Labor Day.

J: On the Saturday they have what they called Play Day or Games Day.

C: Games Day.

J: And they have it at this baseball field. You might likely see hundreds of

people. I'd say around two hundred people.

C: And all these people coming from where?

J: A lot of them are local people just coming back down there now. And a lot of

them 00:30:00come from near and far. They form a [inaudible 30:08] with who grew up

there. They contact all of them. Right now they still have a community

organization there now. I can't think of the name of it but--Each member of the community-

C: Is there a newsletter they have connected with?

J: No, I don't think they get a newsletter. No, I don't think they have a

newsletter. But there's a community. They have a president, secretary, and the

whole--and the vice president and treasurer and all of that.

C: It's kind of like a neighborhood association?

J: Yeah. Yeah. [inaudible 30:34] neighborhood association and you know-

C: Has it been in existence for a long time?

J: Probably five or ten years.

C: Uh-huh.

J: And they even have a scholarship now. They help anybody that grew up in Wake

Forest that had children, descendants of their children.

C: That's very noble.

J: Matter of fact, they probably give three a year away. Each-

[Break in recording]

C: Okay, we are back on the tape. You were talking 00:31:00about,--I'm trying to

remember what.

J: Community association.

C: Community association. You mentioned scholarships and that recently they've

been giving sometimes three scholarships-

J: On average three per year.

C: Three per year.

J: And the community dues for individuals, it's a dollar a month and twelve

dollars a year.

C: Um-hm.

J: And most people--they contact a lot of people that never return to the

community--but they send the twelve dollars in a year and even more donations.

C: Hm.

J: This goes for upkeep of the cemetery. And in the past, the cemetery has grown

up in weeds. Now-

C: I see.

J: It's a nice little cemetery. And they have a groundskeeper for the cemetery.

This is where they pay, from this fund. They also--if a member of a former

member of the community dies--they would send a reef of flowers. I 00:32:00don't care

where they are, they send them a reef of flowers. And any other help, if some

member in the community or some person in the community's falling on hard times

or so forth, they would take money from this fund to help them. They also use it

for when they have the community day to buy the food and to rent portable

toilets and so forth. Just anything they need, they used that money for this purpose.

C: It sounds like a very close knit and cohesive community.

J: Right. Yeah.

C: I'm really envious because I don't think most communities act so cohesively.

J: Yeah, our minister that spoke down there [inaudible 32:41] community,

Reverend Beamer, he said the same thing. He said he came from Galax and they

don't have that in Galax. Yeah. I don't know the amount of funds, but everybody 00:33:00seemed--they contact people, as a matter of fact-

C: So many people are related to one another through marriage, so it's kind of

like one big extended family.

J: Right, it is. And most people keep their Wake Forest heritage. Although they

may not come back that often--sometimes maybe once every ten years--but when

that letter comes out to them for their dues, the twelve dollars, they will send

that plus. So, it's well funded. And then one minister usually--we had one

minister, Mr. Frank Bannister's son--will usually come down there and preach on

that weekend. And they take up the collection for him, and he donates the

collection over to the scholarship fund.

C: Uh-huh.

J: He started the scholarship fund. No, the scholarship fund may be the last

Bannister scholarship fund because he started it. He made the first donation and

he recommended that's what we do with the rest.

C: That's a very good idea. Like I 00:34:00said, it really makes this community stand

out apart from others in terms of--I can't think of any other community I've

ever interviewed people that were connected that brought that to my attention.

That type of-

J: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's doing very well.

C: Um-hm. Well, what kind of work did people do in the area when you were

growing up? Did they farm? Did they work in the mines? Did they work at VPI? Did

they have their own businesses? I mean, what did they do?

J: Roughly no businesses. From time to time there might have been a general

grocery store.

C: Um-hm.

J: The Bannisters at one time had a grocery store.

C: Right. I understand he had-

J: The Page's at one time had a grocery store.

C: Right. Clarence Page?

J: Right. Clarence Page.

C: Right.

J: Really his wife, Mrs. Regina Page. And those were the two stores in the

community at the time when I was growing up. And there was a store nearby in the

McCoy community Pa's Place which is still in existence-

C: Was that a Black store?

J: No. 00:35:00It was a white gentleman. But it was near our school. As a matter of

fact, we walked out there on our lunch break all the time.

C: I see.

J: And we carried a ball and we carried soda, milk, and pop. We made soda balls

out there [35:12] and exchanged them for three cents. And we take the three

cents--it was the only three cents we had--and bought candy and stuff and

whatever we wanted. We went out there a lot to that store because at the time,

it was the closest to us. And a senior at the time, I was in elementary school

and the other two stores didn't exist. They, from time to time, seemed to exist

and then another time, they did not exist. And so most of the men worked in the

coal mines. Very little farming because the soil down there was really--the

mountain rain so forth and a lot of rocks weren't too good for farming. The

Bannisters did farm, and several other 00:36:00people farmed. But they rented or leased

land down near the railroad. They did a lot of farming down there.

C: Is that near New River?

J: Yeah, it's right beside New River. As a matter of fact it's the same property

that VPI owns now.

C: Uh-huh.

J: And we as kids during the summer, we worked down on those vast farms for--we

worked on farms usually chopping corn and picking corn.

C: Um-hm.

J: And helped to put up hay.

C: So basically hay and corn?

J: Right.

C: What about the Bannisters? What did they grow?

J: That was in their property too. Mostly corn.

C: Corn.

J: Corn and hay. They didn't grow a lot of vegetables like you would take off to

the market like beans and so forth.

C: Yeah.

J: For some reason they grew--it was a lot of--everybody had a garden down

there. Everybody had their own little plot of land and a garden. And most people

down there had oranges, and they picked berries. Anything that was in season,

they 00:37:00gathered at that time.

C: Did these berries grow wild?

J: Yes, they did. Strawberries grew wild and--What did we call them--blueberries

grew wild. They would go up to the mountain and get blueberries.

C: That's kind of like where I live. I have trees that are just growing wild

with all kinds of things.

J: Yeah. Well that's the way it was down there. All kinds of stuff growing wild

[inaudible 3716] Whatever was in season, we picked because a lot of times we, as

kids, we picked things to sell. We would take them down to Long Shop and into

these stores. You'd pick like blueberries--they called them huckleberries

then--and we picked them, cleaned them up, take them down to the store. We got

fifty cents a gallon or something like that. If I remember, fifty cents.

C: Were you treated well by the merchants?

J: Yeah. Yeah.

C: They didn't say any derogatory names?

J: No. No. Because really the merchants depended a lot on our community.

C: Um-hm.

J: 00:38:00And there were two stores down in Long Shop. And we would go down--one was

Mr. Gamos's store and the other Mr. Long's store. And most of-

C: The Long of Long Shop or?

J: Yeah. Right. Yeah Long of Long Shop.

C: Long Shop.

J: And there was a blacksmith place down near the gas station. That was

everything in the community.

C: Uh-huh.

J: And the gas station had a repair shop called Carl Automobile. Most people in

the Wake Forest community got their car repaired in McCoy, Burford's Garage.

Which Burford is still there, and he would be a nice person to interview. Far as

I know he's still working in his garage.

C: Uh-huh.

J: Yeah. I mean, he must be in his eighties. Got to be.

C: Old man.

J: Yeah. Right. Yeah. But he would be a nice speaker in person because he knew

all the Blacks in Wake Forest, and he would give you credit. You could go out

there and you pay him so much every payday. So, we kind of caused our debt

mostly. Even when I came with a car, Burford fixed my car, and he had his

junkyard in the back of his--you know 00:39:00used car parts. He could go out there in

the back of his garage. Some of the cars are still there. I really need to take

you down there and just show you these things.

C: Show me.

J: Right. Yeah.

C: Like some of the mines that people used to--

J: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

C: You said Big Vein and Great Falls.

J: Yeah, I think they called it Great Valley, but it might have been Great Falls.

C: I'm sorry. Great Valley.

J: Great Valley.

C: You're right. You're right. Not Great Falls.

J: Yeah. Right. Great Valley. So, a lot of the history is still there. Of

course, some of the physical things you can't change, but a lot of it is still

right there.

C: What about the people working the mines? You said, a number of people--the

Bannister's, I believe, did both because didn't they-

J: They did farming and mining. They were working the mines, and even Mr.

Bannister took his two sons in the mines because they were going to college down

at Tuskegee.

C: Yeah. Both of them?

J: Both of them, yeah. And at one time, they had their daughter down in St. Paul.

C: That's right.

J: His daughter would work in Blacksburg during the summer in people's houses, cleaning.

C: But they didn't take to, 00:40:00obviously, to the mining?

J: No. No, no, no. So, they would work in the mines all summer, then they would

go back to Tuskegee in the winter time.

C: Um-hm.

J: But most men worked in the mines down there. Some of the whites that lived

further back over from us, they would walk over to the Wake Forest community,

then they would get a ride. Mr. Bannister had a truck where he would just load a

lot of the miners would ride. He would drive them down to the mines and back.

C: Hm, for a price or?

J: Yeah, for a price. Yeah.

C: For a price.

J: Yeah, so a lot of whites-

C: He was very enterprising.

J: Yeah. Right. He was. Yeah, he was. So a lot of the whites would walk over to

our community from miles back in the woods, to tell you the truth-

C: Like McCoy or beyond?

J: No, not from McCoy. You see, the mines was in McCoy.

C: Oh, yeah.

J: I mean beyond Wake Forest, back over in the woods. I can't even think of the

name of some of the places, but all of them went by Run, like Spruce Run, Null's

Run, all them 00:41:00places. Each little hollow had a ranch that ran down there called

a run. That was the name of the whole place. So they would walk back over there.

I remember the prices-

C: I mean miles.

J: Yeah, miles. Just a fellow named-

C: People didn't have a car?

J: They didn't have a car, but they had families back over in the woods. I

remember a fellow named Mr. Hayprice. He used to walk over there, and several

folks live down there now. A whole family of them. Three brothers, they all

would walk over there, walk over there to catch Mr. Bannister or whoever had a

truck and was hauling them at that time. Sometimes Mr. Bannister may not have

been doing it, might have been another individual in the community. So, they

would ride down there and work. They would change the clothes they had in what

they called Change Houses and shower and change your clothes. But I remember

these white fellows for some reason didn't change. They would walk back to the

community with dirty clothes all face real black 00:42:00walking back home. We called

them Bankers for some reason called them Bankers, I don't know why they called

them Bankers-

C: [Laughs]

J: But that's the clothes they wore to work in. But they would walk to and from

the [inaudible 41:53] all the time. They walked through our community with a

dinner bucket.

C: I guess they didn't mind because what's the purpose of getting clean. You got

to walk three or four miles and get sweaty.

J: Right. Yeah. Probably.

C: I guess that's probably why they didn't do it.

J: Yeah. Yeah. And then they put the same dirty clothes on the next morning and

walk back over there-

C: They didn't wash it?

J: No. No. No, they didn't wash it. They might have worn them a whole week

before they washed them.

C: What about Black miners?

J: Basically the same. They washed them occasionally but-

C: But everybody had the same kind of-

J: Yeah, they might wash and put clean underclothes with their other clothes.

Now this might be a question to ask somebody from the mines because I never

worked in the mines. They would asked me to come around-

C: You just saw those people go down-

J: Yeah, I saw them. Yeah. My uncles and all worked at the mine.

C: Okay.

J: But as young boys, they always would take us down to the mines and wanted to

introduce us to the mines. They would take you down in there, the mines, and see

if you like it or something. I was all right until I looked back and I didn't

see no more daylight. Man, I was terrified, so I never went back in the mines.

C: [Laughs]

J: That's one thing that determined that I was going to do something else in life.

C: Besides being in the mines.

J: Right. That's right. I had a brother that worked in there and a cousin that

worked in there. When I left for the Army, they both went to the 00:43:00mines. They

worked in the mines all summer.

C: Who were they? What were their names?

J: Well, my cousin is named Russel Johnson. My brother is named Daniel Johnson.

They apparently didn't like it either. They didn't like it either. They worked

there one summer, and they said, there's something better than this. So, they

came to me. They volunteered [inaudible 43:26] my brother went into the Air

Force. My cousin went into the Army. And they retired from the Army. Both of

them retired. They stayed in. They said, no more. They do have experiences that

I don't have-

C: Faced with dealing with the mines-

J: Yeah, you either went to the mines or worked on the farms. No other choice.

You mentioned about VPI. Now VPI was employing very few Blacks at that time.

C: Um-hm.

J: If you had a job--But especially for my area, we just didn't have too many

Blacks working at VPI. But all the local Blacks in Blacksburg worked over there.

C: Um-hm.

J: We had a bus that ran from McCoy to Blacksburg everyday, a commuter bus. And

a lot of the 00:44:00women worked for these professors up here, cooked and cleaned the

houses and so forth or childcare, and they would ride the bus everyday. And a

lot of whites would ride it, but they would be coming to VPI to work in the

laundry and the dining halls. But, there were no Blacks in there.

C: So, people from McCoy, whites from McCoy, would work for the university?

J: Yeah. Right.

C: With very few Blacks.

J: Very few Blacks.

C: Whites.

J: Whites traditionally have always had a lot of people employed at Virginia

Tech and at Radford Arsenal. If we wanted a job, we would have to go out to

McCoy and see some white person to get a job at VPI or the arsenal. They had

worked up positions that they were supervisors or something. If you went out to

McCoy and talked to a Mr. McCoy or Mr. Snider or whomever, and if he said, I'm

going to get you a job, you were pretty sure you can get it.

C: So you can go down there and fill out an application-

J: No. Unh-huh. You just went and talked to the individual. He came back and put

the word in for you or 00:45:00maybe some instances they had to [inaudible 45:10] employee.

C: Hm.

J: So then they'd give you a job. And we found the people from McCoy more

liberal than the ones in Long Shop and other places.

C: Why is that do you think?

J: I don't know. The Long Shop community was more a rebel type community than

McCoy. And one part of it might be--I didn't know at the time I was growing

up--but in later years I found out that the Blacks in Wake Forest and the whites

in McCoy were related. Yeah, they were related. I mean, genetically related.

Yeah. It's like my wife, or deceased wife, her uncle and like Clarence Page?

C: Um-hm.

J: His brother, really half-brother, lives right down here in Prices Fork right

now. 00:46:00So then my wife would see him, and they'd talk. And their cousins would

talk. And a lot of that was going on. I wasn't aware of it when I was growing up.

C: But a lot of interracial-

J: Interracial--well, children interracially. And so it might have been one of

the reasons the people in McCoy were more liberal or something because it was

family--to be frank about it--in some instances. Yeah.

C: Okay. That's interesting.

J: Yeah, it was family.

C: Were there any ever times of racial tension between Blacks and whites or instances-

J: Not community wise. But maybe individuals-

C: But individuals-

J: Yeah. Right. Yeah. We, as kids, used to always have racial tension with the

kids down in Long Shop but not McCoy.

C: Hm. That's interesting.

J: Yeah. Yeah. For some reason, there was a lot of racial tension. See, we would

have to go to the store and buy groceries all the time. I had to walk from Wake

Forest down to Long 00:47:00[Shop]--we also went down to Long Shop after the groceries

many times carrying groceries, numerous times. Same way with the mail. One time

I was almost at the mail board--I would get my bicycle and ride it down to

Whitethorn. And pick up everybody's, a whole bunch-

C: Everybody's mail was at Whitethorne?

J: Yeah. Our mail was at Whitethorne. When I went in the Army, my mailing

address was Whitethorne, Virginia. Wasn't Wake 00:48:00Forest, Whitethorne, Virginia.

C: Hm.

J: That's where the post office was. That's where the train came through, Whitethorne.

C: Um-hm.

J: And that's where if you were going somewhere on the train, you went to

Whitethorne, the depot, and get on the train to go down to Charleston, West

Virginia. Wherever you're going--to Roanoke--you go to Whitethorne because the

train stopped there and the mail stopped there. And that's where we picked up

our mail.

C: Hm.

J: Then they finally got another fellow to carry mail. His name was Frederick

Eaves. He was a [inaudible 48:24], he carried mail for-

C: Was he Black?

J: Yeah, he was Black.

C: I said, Eaves. That sounds like one of those Blacks from Wake Forest.

J: Yeah that's right. He had a brother named George Frederick Eaves. They was

midgets, and he carried mail for many years. He couldn't ride a bicycle. He

would walk down to Whitethorne, and we paid him. We paid him to carry our mail.

Everybody in the community paid Frederick to carry our mail. And he's the

brother to [inaudible 48:52].

C: Okay.

J: Yeah. He carried the mail. He 00:49:00also repaired shoes in the community. And as I

was coming along, after I went to Christiansburg Institute, I became the

community barber. We did have a barber-

C: So did you take up barbering at the Christiansburg Institute?

J: Yeah. Right. Yeah, that's why I-

C: I knew they had some number of--they did a lot of things actually-

J: Yeah, right. They did. They did, yeah-

C: Programs and trade school programs. A whole realm of things.

J: Right, they did. Booker T. Washington, came up and set up--was it Booker T. Washington?

C: Yes. You're right. You're right.

J: He set up the curriculum at one time before I got there.

C: He traveled. He had been to--I've seen evidence he had been here, been to

Christiansburg Institute-

J: Christiansburg Institute-

C: On a number of occasions.

J: That's right. And then he went back and got some of the students that

graduated from Tuskegee. They came up here to teach.

C: Um-hm.

J: And this is one reason when you study Christiansburg Institute history you'll

find that a lot of students left Christiansburg 00:50:00Institute and went to Tuskegee.

C: Uh-huh.

J: That's to do for college.

C: Oh that's what my friend.

J: Yeah. It's through that connection.

C: I see.

J: Then everybody went to Bluefield College. And they went to Virginia State.

And they went to Hampton.

C: Um-hm.

J: And St. Paul. These are the colleges that they traditionally went to. Very

few went to schools down in North Carolina.

C: Like North Carolina A&T or?

J: You're right. Very few. I don't know why. Just my study of it. A lot of them

went to Tuskegee, and a lot of them went to Bluefield State and Virginia State

and Hampton and St. Paul. Those are the schools they attended. [inaudible 50:43]

Because some relative had already gone there or some teacher from those schools

was teaching at Christiansburg Institute.

C: And talked about the school.

J: Yeah, they saw the counselors that recommended that school [50:31] So that's

how they went to those schools.

C: Let me backtrack a little bit. You said there was 00:51:00racial tension between the

children in Long Shop.

J: Because they would call you racial names so--

C: Did that lead to fights at any?

J: Yeah. Sure. Sure. It sure did. Just every time you went down there--We never

went down there alone. It was always two or more because we knew that we were

going to get in a fight with them. Or a rock throwing contest, really more so

than physical fight.

C: Yeah.

J: Then later on in one of my years, we would go down there and some of the

Mills' they went down with knives-

C: What Mills'?

J: It was a Mills family. Well, this guy, he was named James Mills. I graduated

high school with him too.

C: Is he connected with the Mills of Nellies Cave?

J: No. It's not-

C: So another Mills?

J: Another set of Mills.

C: Okay.

J: There was one Mills family in Wake Forest.

C: Okay.

J: And it had like one [inaudible 51:54] family. There were several families

there, but just one family with that name.

C: Um-hm.

J: And some of these families that had these one names like their 00:52:00family might

have migrated to Wake Forest. [51:39]

C: I see.

J: One way that they probably got there. Or they probably went down to the coal

mines to work because we had coal miners came from various places.

C: Black ones?

J: Black coal miners looking for work.

C: Where did they come from? Can you recall some of the people?

J: Well, some of them were out of West Virginia.

C: Uh-huh.

J: And other areas around Virginia. They would hear through relatives. I don't

know how. They would hear there was work down there, and they could get a job.

And they would come. They used to have hobos ride the train through this area,

and they would get off the train down at Whitethorne and just ask somebody,

where is the Black community. And they would tell them, and they would come up

there. If they were looking for it, they might work in the coal mines. So a lot

of people [inaudible 52:50]. And that's how you'd get a bunch of names that's

really not related to the people that came off the farms.

C: I see.

J: Yeah.

C: You mentioned before on tape about Merrimac. There was a mine in Merrimac. 00:53:00Did Blacks work at the Merrimac mine?

J: No. Merrimac? They never worked at Merrimac. To my knowledge Merrimac was a

very racist place. Even Blacks will tell you now, Merrimac is a racist place. I

don't want to say Blacks live over there [52:51].

C: Um-hm.

J: That was a place if you went over there, you were likely to get insulted or

hurt. So, we never went there. See, Merrimac is a shortcut from Prices Fork way

over to the shopping center. We were scared to even drive through that.

C: You didn't go through there?

J: We didn't go through there.

C: Hm.

J: Yeah. Even now, you don't have no Blacks living in Merrimac.

C: Any other mines that Blacks didn't seem to get employment?

J: One's called Pattery, across the river from McCoy.

C: Okay.

J: You didn't get employed-

C: Is that in the county or outside-

J: It's in the county. It may be in Pulaski County. Could possible have

been--it's right on the edge. It could be in Pulaski County, and no Blacks were

in Pulaski County.

C: I have to go back and check my map. I can't remember if it is or 00:54:00 isn't.

J: I'm not sure either, but no Blacks was employed there.

C: Why do you think there were none employed there?

J: I don't know. Well, for one reason, it was hard to get to the mines over

there because you had to cross the river, and in the town there was no way to

cross the river. Eventually, they put a ferry across the river, so you could cross.

C: Even after they had that-

J: They didn't go.

C: They still didn't go.

J: No. No. Because the Blacks just weren't employed there, and they didn't feel

comfortable. But at one time--I forgot to mention--after they put the ferry

across the river, you went to a place called Whitethorne and you'd take the

ferry across the river and got off on the other side and came through what was

known as Hercules over there, the power plant.

C: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

J: Walked through. That was all farm. That was Flannigan's farm.

C: Hm.

J: And a lot of Blacks worked over there too. They would go down and catch the

ferry across the river, work over there, and come back at night.

C: At the Hercules plant?

J: Yeah. That old Hercules plant was a 00:55:00 farm.

C: Um-hm.

J: Maybe two farms in one. And when the World War II broke out, they more or

less took the farm or confiscated. I don't know. The government took the farm

over, and so then the Blacks lost their jobs there.

C: Oh, they were working on the farm?

J: They were working on the farm.

C: Before the Hercules plant.

J: Right. Right. Yeah. That's the only farm that they did in the community, and

I had forgotten to mention it earlier.

C: Any Blacks from this Wake Forest community-

J: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

C: So, that's what generally-

J: Yeah. But it was really before my time. I only hear through my grandmother.

C: Oh.

J: About working over there. Really my grandmother, also, she worked down at

Great Valley, the coal mine. She worked down there as a cook. She would go down

there and stay all week.

C: Hm.

J: And my oldest aunt took care of my mother and the rest of the children. As a

matter of fact, we buried our aunt just about three or four weeks ago. And she

didn't get a chance to get an education. She didn't get a chance to go to a very

good school because she had to take care of all of those children.

C: I see.

J: My mother. My 00:56:00aunts and uncles. She stayed there when my grandmother and

grandfather went down there to work.

C: What about the pay? Did Blacks get equal pay for equal work at the-

J: As far as I know it was, yeah. As far as I know.

C: Were they ever promoted?

J: Oh, yeah. Occasionally some of them would get promoted. I don't know. See, I

don't know much about the mine system.

C: I see. But you just know they were mining over there-

J: Yeah. Right I just know they were mining over there.

C: You ran into the mine, and you said that was enough.

J: Right. I knew a lot about the mines by not having gone in it, but they would

talk about mining all the time. Come back home at night time all them sitting

around in a circle. A lot of times down in Wake Forest we did road run through.

We just sat along the side of the road and talked. Men and women and boys would

be sitting nearby, and they would just talk about coal mines. You just hear so

much coal mine that you'd feel you could go down to the coal mines yourself. You

heard so much about it.

C: Do you think that's probably in doctored helping the young 00:57:00people get into-

J: Maybe so.

C: So, this is what you got to expect, and this is what it's going to be like.

J: Yeah. Right. Alex Hailey mentioned the other night, and it related so much to

me Wake Forest, you know, a lot of it I reminisce a lot. His life was sort of

parallel to mine growing up in a rural Black community.

C: Um-hm. Yeah.

J: And there's a lot of relations that he was talking about his family and, you

know, when he was talking the grandparents would tell them [telephone rings] all

that history.

C: In fact, I remember the same thing when I was going down to North Carolina,

and on the stoop and listen to a lot of history about-

J: Right. Yeah.

C: Period right after slavery and so forth.

J: Right. Yeah. So, that's how I learned a lot of this stuff from my grandmother.

C: Uh-huh.

J: And I heard a lot of this from coal mines from just being in the community

and my uncles talking about coal mines.

C: Um-hm.

J: You know, they used mules in there to--and there's nothing on it--during the

summer they'd bring the mules in as they 00:58:00closed the mines down. But would

apparently bring the mules out [57:39] into the Wake Forest community and raise

them out there all the time. It was a big thing for us to go down and see the

mule because we had horses around Wake Forest, but no mules.

C: But no mules.

J: You saw mules only during summer time. They'd bring them out and raise them

during the summer. And then they had mule drivers. Some coal mines didn't go in

and dig coal, they just drove mules. You know, to haul the coal up to the-

C: Up to the-

J: See, going down the shaft mines there's like, going out from it, look

something like a tree with the limbs. Each limb out there was called an eye, and

out from each eye, you brought the coal to here. And you'd dump it into the coal

trolley, whatever, that brings it up to the top of the mines, and after it gets

to the top, you'd dump it into what they called a tipper. But everything down

there, we had nicknames. The train that carried the coal from the coal mines up

there down to McCoy and dumped it into--used to be Virginia Railroad--dumped the

coal into the railroad, it was called a dinky. 00:59:00It was a little train that did

it. Came up the road.

C: A little small train.

J: Yeah a small train.

C: So, they called it a dinky.

J: Yeah, they called it a dinky. Everything down there had a name. And we kids,

we knew what it was. So, if they called a nickname, we knew what it was.

C: Cause you always had been socialized-

J: Exposed to it. All the time, you know. That's your life. That's your life in

the coal mines. You get paid every two weeks. You would know almost how much

they were going to get and everything. How much they had earned that day.

C: Were they given good pay for the work?

J: Yeah. You know, there was good pay. Better than you can get anywhere else-

C: Anywhere else. It was hard working-

J: It was hard work because they actually dug coal manually. They dug the coal.

And they would load so many carts a day. That's what you'd hear-

C: How big was a cart? I mean, I talked with Frank Bannister, and he said

sometimes he could load eight cars. How big was a car? I mean is it-

J: It wasn't too big, I'm gonna say. About like the back of a pick up truck.

C: Oh 01:00:00 like-

J: About an eight foot pick up truck.

C: Oh like an eight foot-

J: And about the same height.

C: Oh.

J: That's doing a lot of loading though.

C: Oh, man. Yeah. If you're doing eight of those-

J: Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's about like that. And that's how you got paid, by each

car you load.

C: Um-hm.

J: When you're down in the mines though, you chip the--it's called rock. They

called it slate and coal. When you shoot it out, or blast it out, with dynamite,

it all comes out as a big lump-

C: Yeah.

J: So you had to determine what's coal and what's rock. So, you didn't get paid-

C: For any slate?

J: The slate, you got paid for it. But it was like a dollar for the car. [1:00:13]

C: But you didn't get-

J: But, the coal you got paid I don't know how much. [inaudible 1:00:23]

somebody would know. So, you had to load the slate to get to the coal to get it

out of your way.

C: I see.

J: So, they would load so many cars of slate and so many cars of coal. And then

they can tally their at the end of the day how much money they earned, you know. 01:01:00Then you'd hear a lot of, at night time, well I loaded eight cars today. Or

then, I might not feel too well. Or, they ran into a portion of the mine where

it's just all slate and didn't make hardly any money today because you had to

load the slate, get it out of the way, or you go back tomorrow and blast to get

into a pocket of coal. So, that's they way--and they got paid traveling time.

You would get paid to go to the mines and come back. When you went down there

and something broke down or for some reason-

C: Or if there was gas in the mines.

J: Yeah. Right. If there was gas in the mines or slate fall.

C: So, they got paid for just traveling?

J: Yeah. Right. That's when the union came in.

C: Cause-

J: When the union came in they got that.

C: Were Blacks in the union?

J: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They was in the union. Because when John L. Lewis--the big

mine union man--when John L. Lewis said, come out, all the Blacks would come

out. And sometimes I'd hear that name so much I thought it was a God.

[Audio static 01:02:00 1:01:43-2:12]

[Break in recording]

C: Okay, we're resuming. You mentioned that when you got back from the military,

the mines were closing. That-

J: The union mines.

C: The union mines?

J: The union mines were closed. The two large mines down there, Big Vein and

Great Valley, were closed.

C: These were the bigger mines?

J: Right. Right. They were the ones that had hundreds of people employed.

C: Hundreds of people?

J: So, from those closing, the other mines, smaller mines, and some of them were

family owned mines, private mines, and so forth. They continued to operate, and

then 01:03:00after that, some of the Blacks in the community started operating their own

mines. They would lease the property from the property owners up there, which

were plants in Blacksburg, and they would operate their own mines.

C: So, what Blacks were-

J: You got one Black guy named Johnny Grade. You might need to talk to him.

C: Johnny Grey.

J: Okay, there was Jones's and Fizz. They were called Jones and Fizz Mine. Those

two Black men, they managed it and they operated it. There was two Black men,

and they operated it. And maybe Eaves. Them three, I know, operated the mines.

C: What were their first names again?

J: Oh, Riley Fizz. His widow is still living down there. She's the one I told

you about. Ms. Kaefier.

C: Oh, Kaefier?

J: Her husband operated the mine-

C: Oh, I see.

J: With two other Black fellas.

C: Okay.

J: For many years.

C: Are these two people still alive, the other two?

J: The men are not.

C: Okay.

J: But the women are. Yeah. Right. You 01:04:00got an Ester Jones down there, nicknamed

Queen Jones. Her husband operated one. She's still down there. They operated

their own mine. And you got a Johnny Grade. He is one of the persons that

operated a mine that's still living. He's down there.

C: Johnny Grey.

J: Grade-

C: Or Grave?

J: Grade. G-R-A-D-E. That's the way you spell his name.

C: G-R-

J: A-D-E. That's the way you spell his name. And he still lives there. He's

retired, but he still lives in the community.

C: Um-hm.

J: You might need to talk to him.

C: That sounds like a person I should-

J: Right. Yeah. Cause he's one of the operators or he did operate the mine

because I bought coal from his mine many times.

C: Um-hm.

J: Cause-

C: So you bought coal from-

J: I bought coal from him, and I would haul it to the Blacksburg area with

whoever wanted on a pick up truck. I didn't have a coal truck. I was coming to

work. I'd be coming up to the barber shop, and it was just another enterprise of

mine. I'd go by the coal mines, pick up a load of coal, and bring it up here.

Back my truck up into the coal shoot, and 01:05:00during the day time, the person who's

buying the coal, somebody come in and unload it. And I'd come back at evening

time, and I'd pick up the truck and go on home.

C: Uh-huh.

J: So, I would haul coal. And then on my days off I would just make trips to the

coal mines. Plus, at one time, my family was using coal.

C: Oh, I see.

J: Yeah. So, I was hauling for myself too.

C: When were you doing these types of things?

J: I would say probably between in the [19]50s.

C: In the [19]50s.

J: Between [19]56 and [19]60.

C: Okay.

J: During that time. AndI was hauling from the private mines, from the mines

that these Blacks operated.

C: Okay. That's interesting.

J: But they had bigger trucks, you know. They usually had some trucks of their

own or it would be an enterprise for a person to buy one or two trucks and just

truck coal to--they would bring it to VPI, and they would take it to and dump it

off to the coal carts down in Whitethorne place like that. And they'd haul it to

Roanoke. And then they'd also haul that slate to 01:06:00Roanoke for making cinder

blocks and whatever they did with it.

C: Yeah.

J: Put it in concrete.

C: Why did they make a profit when the corporations said, we're going to fold up

the tent?

J: I think the union pressured [inaudible 1:06:04] because the union was

constantly demanding more and more of the operators.

C: Yeah.

J: And the operators decided-

C: We can't make a profit.

J: That and during the time, people in this locality had started using oil for

heat. They had done away with coal.

C: I see.

J: My family had [inaudible 1:06:23] by the time I moved to Blacksburg. When I

was in Wake Forest, I had a coal furnace. I moved to Blacksburg, I had an oil

furnace. And this type of thing. So, it's the change in times or the use in

fuel, how they was heating their home. So that was one of the other things that

caused the--I would say the union pressure demanding more and more money and

then the change of the use of the coal. So, 01:07:00that was two of the things that I

would say is a factor. The reason it got away from them. But it was still enough

people in the rural areas that needed this coal that would buy from these people.

C: Okay. What about Black businesses? Now, I know this is a loaded question

'cause I know that you're a prominent Black business person in this area. But

how did you get your start? When you came back from the Army, what did you do

when you first got back from the Army?

J: Yeah, the first year I worked at VPI in the dining hall at Hillcrest [Hall].

It was an all girls dormitory then. So, I worked there as a cook, a salad maker,

or whatever they needed me for, but most of the time I made salads. And during

that time--or after--during that time I was cutting hair out in the community,

just door to door. I just went door to door.

C: Door to door?

J: Yeah, cutting people's 01:08:00hair. Then-

C: After work, I guess?

J: Yeah, after work. And then on Sundays--I still lived in [inaudible 1:07:49]

with my grandparents--on Sunday, I would cut hair down there. Kids would come

wake me up on Sunday morning, and I'd be trying to get some rest. And I'd get

out on the porch and I might have ten or fifteen kids, some with money, some

with promises.

C: [Laughs] Some with promises.

J: Yeah, promise that momma's or daddy will come over here and pay. Some of them

never paid, but I cut everybody's hair out there. Then I was picking up some

experience too. So then, later on, I started cutting in Blacksburg, and it just

got too much for me going door to door. So right up here where that little store

is A & J Market is?

C: Yes. Right.

J: That same spot. A fellow rented me a room in his basement, and I set up a

barber shop there. And it was called Ebony Barber Shop.

C: Oh.

J: And at the same time-

C: And is that technically in Wake Forest or is that adjacent to it?

J: No, this is not in Wake Forest. This is 01:09:00Blacksburg where I set up the barber shop.

C: Oh A & J because-

J: See, they got more than one acre.

C: See, I was thinking about the A & J near Wake Forest.

J: Yeah that's down there on Prices Fork.

C: Yeah.

J: But up here it may not be A & J. The same guy, same man, owns both stores.

And I thought he called it AJ, but it may be different-

C: No, I believe you're right. Now where is that-

J: It's on Turner Street, right down from McDonald's. You know the store?

C: Oh. Yeah. Yeah.

J: Well, right there a Black family owned a house.

C: Okay.

J: And they had a basement and they rented me a room in the basement for my

barber shop.

C: Oh yeah. I know where it is. It's still there.

J: Yeah. Right.

C: It's still there.

J: The house is not. The house was torn down. The store is right there where the

house was.

C: Okay.

J: And they retired. He worked for the town. As a matter of fact, he was the

only Black that worked for the town of Blacksburg at the time, the utility. And

they retired and went back to Mississippi; they came here from Mississippi.

C: Uh-huh.

J: They went back to Mississippi, and that's where I had my first barber shop.

But I was cutting kids' hair, and one of these kid's hair I cut was a shoe

shiner 01:10:00boy down in the barber shop on campus, Squire Student Center, right there

where they building a new building. And back then it was called S A B, Student

Activity Building. And so he saw the guy. I cut the guy and the kid's hair, and

he had real curly hair. His hair was almost like white's, and really he had

straight curly hair. And I'd done a good job, and he looked at it and asked who

cut it. And he told Mr. Johnson cut it. And he sent me word to come down here

and said, I got a job for you. If you can cut that boy's hair, you can cut hair

here. So, I came down there. He talked to me a little. Asked me what I can do

and what I couldn't. I couldn't cut flat tops, so I told him I couldn't cut flat

tops. Flat tops were fairly popular then. He said, I'll teach you how to cut

them. He said, you come in on Wednesday and every day you're off, you come down

here and I'll teach you how to do it. When August comes, you got a job if you

want it.

C: So when the-

J: That was [19]56, August [19]56.

C: [19]56. When the students came back.

J: Yeah, when the students came back, I had a job with mostly cadets. So, I quit

work up there, and I went down into the 01:11:00barber shop, which was just three of us

in there.

C: Now, were you still state employed or was this state work or was it private?

J: We were working for the Athletic Association.

C: Oh, so you weren't even connected with the-

J: I wasn't connected with college at all. The Athletic Association at that time

had concessions of all the-

C: Oh, all concessions?

J: All concessions. They would take the funds and give scholarships to athletes.

C: Oh, I see.

J: And that was up until probably ten, fifteen years ago when the students

started to complain about it, and then they changed the system. So, I worked for

them for many years. So, I stayed there from [19]56 to about [19]58, and the

gentleman retired. Well, he told me when he retired, if I worked out, I could

take over the barber shop 'cause he was going to retire. He was from Tennessee,

and he stayed here in Blacksburg in a room here in Blacksburg and-

C: Which barber shop?

J: 01:12:00This is the one on campus. It's called Kit Barber Shop.

C: Okay.

J: So he left in [19]58 because his daughter was going to college and his wife

would be alone. So he left to go back and stay with his wife. And then he

recommended to the manager, business manager, that I be the manager, and I took

over then. And I managed the shop from then up until [19]74 when I left and I

went into business for myself. I had planned on going into business for myself

long before that because I could see I hadn't gotten reached my peak.

C: Yeah.

J: And they didn't want to do anything. They didn't want to improve the service

or put in new services or put in new equipment 'cause I saw trends changing from

all military because we had all military from everybody. All day long, cadets

you rarely saw--except for professors that would come in to get a 01:13:00 haircut.

That's all you saw because there weren't too many civilian students here. If you

saw a civilian student out there with some books, he was a graduate student. He

was a graduate student.

C: Yeah.

J: So, then after the trends started changing, started going to longer hair,

then a lot of more civilian people wanted to come, we called civilian back then.

If you weren't a cadet, you were a civilian. So, this is a group of students

that wore civilian clothes, not military clothes, you know. So, I saw trends

changing, a lot of things changing, and I reached my peak in pay. They didn't

want to give us no money. They didn't want to go up on the price. Year after

year it was all about trying to get the price up. And they didn't have much work

when the students would leave during the summer. We didn't have enough work. So,

I'd lose two barbers every summer. They would just leave, find new jobs

somewhere. Come fall, I gotta go and try to recruit two new barbers, and they

weren't compensating for anything. And I really wasn't getting paid. I wasn't

even getting a 01:14:00percentage. They were giving me about three more percentage than

the rest of the barbers. And I was getting a percentage of every dollar that

went through the shop, which is the way it should have been and I wasn't getting

it. So I was trying to manage the shop and work my tail off trying to make a

living, you know. And then they wanted to keep the price down, and they would

say students can't afford it. I remember many times, them saying students can't

afford it. And I would tell them, students out there, they drive these nice cars

I see around here. They must be able to afford it. And then when I first went to

work down there, I got sixty-five cents, fifty cents that's what a haircut cost,

sixty-five cents.

C: Um-hm.

J: And I'm trying to get the prices on up every time. They would go up maybe

every two years a quarter, a quarter. When I left, a haircut was $1.75.

C: Oh, that's cheap.

J: That was in [19]74.

C: That's outrageously cheap.

J: Yeah. But Morgan--I had a fellow work with me in service--he was down there

with me. We made good money compared to the 01:15:00 times.

C: What is Morgan's first name?

J: Joseph.

C: Joseph Morgan.

J: Joseph Edward Morgan.

C: Is he from Christiansburg?

J: He's from Christiansburg.

C: Is he the guy who's the sheriff now?

J: Yeah. Right. But he still works for me on Saturdays or filled in for me when

I need some help. And he and I, we were making money. We would like 175, 200

dollars a week. Back then, that was real good money because nobody else was

making it. And this is one reason [inaudible 1:15:08] we were working our tails

off. We went to work at eight o'clock, and we worked until six. And we worked

all Saturday too. Six days a week, long hours. And our business manager, he was

just envious of us making money like that. So, he would never be the one to

recommend to--after that our director was our boss, and they had a business

manager in between, was my immediate boss over me. So and I was always trying to

get to that athletic director and tell him our problems, try to get more 01:16:00 money,

and he would never make an arrangement that I could go to him. He said, I'll

talk to him for you. When he come back, he would tell the athletic director,

which was Mr. Mosley. And so that was the end of it. So, it just came to I gave

him an ultimatum. You either go up or we're not going to work. Because I would

go away in the summer to Northern Virginia, Quantico, to work for the marine

corps during the summer.

C: Yeah.

J: And they always wanted me to stay up there and work for Fredericksburg or

Woodbridge. I worked in those places, which I made a lot more money. Sometimes I

would go up there in the summer. I would make more money in the summer than I

would come back down here in nine months. So, I told them. But my family and

everything was here, and I liked it here. I didn't like that military work. It's

all right for three months but not for twelve months.

C: Yeah.

J: It's really, hurry up. Rush, rush, rush all the time. All I could do, and I

didn't want to do that. And we weren't doing good hair. I just wanted to come

back and give good, decent haircuts and take my time.

C: Yeah.

J: So that's the reason I come back.

C: Wasn't there another Black barber who owned the shop that 01:17:00you were in there

or is that-

J: No, he owned one down the street. He owned one where the donut shop is.

C: Oh yeah. Okay.

J: Same building. There was a Sears and Carol's.

C: His name was WJ?

J: Edward WJ is his father.

C: Oh WJ the father-

J: The father. And finally WJ at WJ after he deceased, WJ had the shop. But it

was short lived because he just didn't have what it takes to run a shop.

C: Okay. And what was-

J: Carol's and Sear's they ran it for many years.

C: Carol's and Sear's. What were their first names?

J: It was Won Carol.

C: Won Carol. Was he Black?

J: Yeah he was Black and-

C: Was it John Sears?

J: John Sears. That's right. Mr. Sears. But going back in barber history, Blacks

ran the barber shop on campus since day one. Ever since there was a barber shop

on campus, it's been Black. Not only the barber shop, the tailor shop, and the

laundry--not necessarily the 01:18:00laundry--the shoe shop, tailor shop, and the barber

shop. And they worked in the laundry, the cleaners. It was all Black operated.

Most of them came to this area from Tazewell, Virginia. They were relatives,

friends. That's how the Carol's and all of them lived.

C: They're not indigenous in this area. They came-

J: They came in and worked. That's another way that most Black people came into

Blacksburg. A lot of them cause professors always would come and bring their

maid with them. Most of the women in Blacksburg, they worked and lived in the

house with the professor. They came from Mississippi State [University], they

brought their maid to Blacksburg with them. My mother worked as a maid and ended

up in Blacksburg. All the houses up on Main Street, same house. So most of the

women worked. Even the ones from Wake Forest. Same way the girls in Wake Forest

after they get of age, they would come to Blacksburg and get a live-in job. It

was popular. 01:19:00They would get a live-in job, and they would work here. And that's

how a lot of Blacks got to Blacksburg. Because I go to the cemetery I see a lot

of names that's not related to Blacksburg at all. Not an old family name in

Blacksburg. That's how they got there. They stay here. They died. They're

buried. There's only one Black cemetery. So, that's how a lot get here. So, the

barber shop was in the barracks over here. Number One barracks they called it in

Blacksburg. Now this is really before my time. Mr. Sears told me they worked in

there. So, after a while, the Sears, they did like I did. After a while, they

just left the college and went on into town.

C: I heard--can't remember who I heard--there's so many stories out here.

J: Right. Right. The same way with the cleaners or the Wades. They left. The

Wades live here. You might want to talk to Mr. Richard Wade. That's a good one

too. His father had the shoe shop here in Blacksburg. 01:20:00Right up near where I got

the barber shop. In the same area he had the shoe shop. And the Carols left, and

they opened up their own cleaners called Carol's Cleaners up on Roanoke Street.

That building is still standing there. So they left campus. They learned the

trade over here, they left, and they went. And the tailors, there was a shop on

Main Street called Sanders Cleaners-

C: Right. I know-

J: That is owned by a Black family. That's the only property left owned by a

Black family there. And that's the Warners, so they operated a cleaners there.

So, what they did, they picked up the skill on campus and eventually moved off

campus. And seeing it back then, it was a little easier for them to move off

campus than me because when I got ready to try and find a place in Blacksburg, I

found it very hard. As a matter of fact, I just couldn't get it. My place in

Blacksburg cost, I don't know. For some reason, they just weren't renting to

Blacks, you know. The only way I got this place where I am now, there was a

barber shop. I knew the barber was there, and he died. So, I knew his sister.

And 01:21:00they tried to run it after his death, and they [telephone rings] and they

was getting almost to the point where they were going to lose it. So, they came

to me and asked if I wanted to buy a barber shop. That was, at the time, the

farthest thing from my mind. I told them-

C: 'Cause you already tried to get a shop?

J: I had tried before that.

C: Couldn't get a property.

J: No. Couldn't get--nobody would rent to me.

C: Was it racist?

J: Yeah, I would think so. I would think so. Or perhaps they thought I wouldn't

pay my rent or something. Then-

C: Then, they know-

J: At the time, there was three or four barber shops already in Blacksburg.

Almost five.

C: Yeah.

J: And we on the campus the prices were lower than the ones in Blacksburg. They

might have thought I was going to come off campus, come in Blacksburg, and run a

cuttery shop. And they might have had some influence for me not getting one.

They might have talked to the land owners and said, don't rent to him. I don't

know what it was, and I probably never will. But I tried for probably two or

three years before I got a place.

C: Good grief.

J: And Mr. Morgan, the same way. He tried to get one. We were going to leave off

campus and set up a shop, a 01:22:00partnership and we couldn't get it. So, Morgan

finally left because during this time, the hair started getting long. And we

weren't getting as many haircuts, so it was time to do something else. I had

considered doing something else. Then, I just decided I didn't want to do

anything else, so I just went onto weekend seminars and learned how to cut long

hair. And that's what-

C: Where'd you go?

J: I went to West Virginia and places like Roanoke and Lynchburg. Or wherever I

found, they were going to tour on the weekends. I would just go. And there would

be people out there teaching you, and I would go. But you would sit down and

watch it from a distance like in a classroom. You didn't really have hands on-

C: Hands on-

J: I didn't learn. So, I went to West Virginia where--out there in Pipestem Park.

C: Okay.

J: And they had one out there the West Virginia organization was doing. But our

sales people come in. They always tell you where they are. And so I went out

there and this gentleman was doing 01:23:00one and he was out of Kentucky. And he said,

if anybody really wants to learn what I'm doing, if you wait around after

everybody leave, I've got plenty of time. I'll show you how. So, I was one of

the three people who waited. Two other white fellows and myself. We waited. We

got right up close. I saw how he was picking up the hair and doing everything.

So, I learned to cut the long hair. So, when I came back to Blacksburg I'm ready

for the long hair then. But prior to that, I couldn't deal with it.

C: You just-

J: Went to layer cuts. You know.

C: Was it that you weren't ready or you just didn't have the confidence?

J: I didn't have the training. I didn't know how it was done. See, I had always

cut hair dry. Now you go into the concept of wetting the hair, shampooing and

cutting wet.

C: Right. Right. And how to clip it and everything.

J: Yeah, see I was cutting them clippers, and they were doing it with scissors.

So, I could cut with scissors, but not with long hair. You have to learn how to

section it off, part it, and cut it in sections and cut it in angles.

C: So-

J: 'Cause I hadn't been taught. I said, my 01:24:00school is independent of Black.

C: Yeah.

J: Setting. A Black high school and all my students were Black. So, I knew how

to cut Black hair well. But I learned how to cut white hair while I was in the

Army just more or less by accident. Or I was cutting all the Black soldiers hair

and the whites just started lining up. You know, they'd get in line for a

haircut too. But I didn't know how to cut their hair. I didn't tell them I

didn't know how to cut it, so I just said, oh Lord help me.

C: [Laughs]

J: The closer they got to me, the more nervous I got because I didn't know how

to--this stuff was totally new to me. I had never in my life done that. So when

they got up there, I just dialed on it and we started cutting. I found out it

wasn't that bad after all. They didn't know I couldn't do it. So, I cut for a

while, but I wouldn't take anything off the top because for a long, long time, I

didn't know what to do with that on top. And so after a while the whites kept

coming and said, I want something on top. So, I went over to the barber shop,

and there was a Black fellow working in the barber shop. And asked him, I said,

I'm cutting 01:25:00over in my company, but I don't know how to cut these--.He said,

just stay in line I'll show you how it's done. Then we were still taking if off

with the clippers, so he showed me how to lift it up and take it off with the

clippers. So, I went on back with that technique, and so I was cutting. From

then on, I cut white folks' hair, and I came back from the Army and said, I know

how to do it. When I went to Korea, I cut Korean's hair. When I went to Japan, I

cut that Japanese hair in Japan. I just cut anybody that came in the shop. Then,

I'd have to learn how to cut everybody's hair then. So, then I came back from

the Army, and I cut this kids hair that one guy saw it. He knew I knew what I

was doing because I had given a perfect haircut, and he said the haircut was

better than I could cut it. 'Cause that's the reason he didn't cut it because

the type of hair the boy had, he didn't quite know what to do with it. So, he

sent him out in town. Go somewhere and get your haircut. And it just so happen

he came to me. So I learned how and I cut it. So, that's how I got down there.

C: Okay. That's interesting. You said you finally got a shop because a 01:26:00 white

barber had died, and his sister had tried to--what was the name of the white barber?

J: John Myers.

C: John Myers.

J: Yeah, his sister named Barbara. Barbara Gillie. As a matter of fact, after I

got the shop, Barbara Gillie, the sister, worked for me for about three or four years.

C: Hm.

J: Yeah. She came back after I got things going, and she came back and worked

for me.

C: And now, after all that--after all you just said those trials and

tribulations--you now have probably the most profitable Black business in tow, probably.

J: Right, yeah. It was quite rough. My first day up there was a great experience

for me. After, there was three barbers already working there, and two of them

promised that they would continue working there. One quit when they found out I

was taking ownership of the barber shop and uh-

C: Why did he do this? Was he one of the white barbers?

J: Yeah, one of the white--they were all white barbers though.

C: They didn't want to work under a Black man-

J: Black man. Yeah. Right. Yeah. He never did say it, but one of the other

barbers told me. That he just didn't know 01:27:00what I was going to do or not. See, I

had two meetings prior to that, and we gone over some things. I told him my

intentions and everything. He was the one that never showed up to the meeting.

So he--from that day--and then I had one other Black barber off campus was going

to go work for me up there too. So, I'm going into the shop thinking I got--well

there was two of them there and the two I was coming with--I would have four

barbers working there. I went up to the house and found the other guy had quit.

And the Black guy went back to campus to pick up his tools, and they persuaded

him to stay. I went in at twelve o'clock at night, and thought I was going to

open up January the 3rd in [19]74. That's when I opened up. And I was supposed

to pick up his tools, but I loaded up my tools and everything. I just left his

and told him to pick it up when he came. When he came in, they persuaded him to

stay. So, he stayed down there. So, this made a division. So, the students kept

coming down on campus. But what we wanted to 01:28:00do was close down the campus shop.

We were almost too [inaudible 1:27:39] and Morgan just coming in here part time.

And there wouldn't have been nobody down there. And then all the students would

come over to my shop over in town. You know, that was the game plan.

C: Yeah.

J: But it didn't work that way. When I went in, he decided to stay on campus,

and one of my other barbers from up there, he quit. So then there was two of us

up there. And really, the very first day I worked up there, I only cut one head

of hair. We moved up the price to two dollars. I made two dollars the very first

day I worked. And because a lot of people didn't know where I was. People on

campus didn't tell them I was up there, which was walking distance from Squires

up there where I am.

C: Yeah, right.

J: And it took some time before I started building and I had 500 dollars. I had

borrowed 500 dollars to go in business, and [snaps fingers] my $500 went like

this. You know?

C: Did you borrow from the local banks?

J: Yeah, borrowed from the local banks.

C: Did they give you a hard time?

J: Not too much because I had property. During that time, I had a house almost

paid for.

C: Okay.

J: They knew, but I didn't have to put the house 01:29:00 down.

C: Oh, isn't that interesting. The banks are giving the money-

J: If they know you got some equity out there-

C: They would give you the money, but you had a hard time getting property.

J: Yeah. Right.

C: I mean just getting the property to have a physical place to do the work.

J: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Right.

C: Why don't you--I mean--

J: I had been borrowing from the banks, cars, I financed all my cars until I

paid off another one. Then, when I came to borrow from the bank to repair my

grandparents house. So and I had a good-

C: But nobody would rent to you?

J: No, they wouldn't rent to me. So, I had a good record with the bank as far as

pay record. I was straight. So, they loaned me the 500 dollars, and not only 500

dollars, I had about 500 dollars more worth of credit cards. So, I used the 500

dollars in credit cards to go into business. I wouldn't advise anyone to do that

with a credit card because it took me fifty years to pay it back because the

business didn't pan like I thought it would.

C: Yeah.

J: So I had a hard time paying the credit card back.

C: Yeah. Yeah.

J: Yeah. So but in order to expand into the beauty shop and to expand my

business, I finally had to put my 01:30:00house up for collateral to get some money.

C: Hm.

J: Yeah, I finally had to do that.

C: But it worked out.

J: Yeah it worked out. Yeah it worked out. But just my first day was my most

disgusting day because I ended up making two dollars, which if I would have been

on campus, I would have made fifty or sixty dollars that same day. And then I

lost two helpers. So my whole game plan just collapsed. But I had studied the

barber shop before I even decided. And I didn't buy the barber shop. I leased it

for the first year because they couldn't show me no records where they had done

much business. And they were trying to sell it to me. They wanted to get rid of

it. They wanted me to take the lease, and it was just for whites [inaudible

1:30:123] up there. And they had already gone out and told that they wanted a

sale meeting, that the business and asked him would he let me have that lease,

which he did. Which was a grandfather clause, seventy-five dollars a month.

That's what it was. Which, that was good that I took over that grandfather. I

don't have it now, but had that same guy been 01:31:00there, then I would be paying

seventy-five dollars right now because he had it built in there. As long as he

stayed there, it would have been seventy-five dollars. So, he let me have it for

one year. Plus, I paid them seventy-five dollars, and I was paying fifty dollars

for people to rent the equipment. 'Cause I was just going [inaudible 1:31:05]. I

said, if I can make it here the first year, I'll see what's going on, and then I

will just buy equipment. So, then I made it the first year so they jumped the

price up on me. They wanted 3,000 dollars for it. And I checked around places,

and I told them I could get brand new equipment for 3,600 dollars. So, finally I

knew one of the guys married to one--See, actually, John Myers's widow and his

sister, they had partnerships in [inaudible 1:31:42] so I was actually renting

from two people. Anyways, the husband of one of them, he convinced them to go

ahead and sell it to me for 1,800 dollars. That's what I ended up paying, 1,800

dollars, for it. 01:32:00That's how I got it. It hadn't been easy after that. I had a

lot of trouble just keeping hip. There weren't any Black barbers around.

Everytime I advertised, I would get a white barber. And most of them, just not

very good workers. They just come and stay a little while. And I just got rid of

them because they didn't want to be professional. They didn't want to work.

After I stayed there and started advertising, word got around. I was up there

working off campus. I started picking up some of my people. They started coming

back over there. And I could just gradually see a progression. Year after year

in my reports. Almost day after day. And I had a daily reporter from back then.

I still have it, and I can just see where I'm increasing everyday. So, it

started increasing, so I could never get enough barbers. So, I would go to all

the barber schools around Tennessee, West Virginia, recruiting barbers. It was

just hard to get them to come to Blacksburg. Sometimes I could get them to come,

but I couldn't have a place for them to live. That was another one of my 01:33:00 problems.

C: Why was that?

J: Blacks weren't renting. Blacks, just like all these places, Blacks could not

get a place until after [19]64.

C: So people just-

[Break in recording]

C: Okay you mentioned that you had a problem getting barbers because many places

did not really want to rent or sell to Blacks. Even if you had a successful

business, you had a hard time-

J: Yes.

C: Keeping Black barbers in the area.

J: Yeah that's true. Yeah. I could get them to want to come to Blacksburg. And

see, I had to go door to door and find them a place for them to live. I'm

renting a place in the private houses. Whites, they was out. And at the time,

they weren't renting apartments or nothing to Blacks. They weren't renting

apartments to Blacks, so I had to go to the Black community and ask somebody.

There were two houses in the Black--right down near the Baptist church now on

Clay Street.

C: Oh, 01:34:00 yeah.

J: There were two families. As a matter of fact, that's where I lived when I

first came here. That street, I knew all the Black students when they first came

here. Oh, like Dr. Charlie Yates and all. I lived in the same-

C: Because they lived in the same--

J: They lived in the same house with me and we lived-

C: So, you were recruiting when you were working for the campus shop?

J: Yeah.

C: So you had to do that?

J: Yeah, I had to do that for them too. But it wasn't as hard on campus. But I

had a problem with trying to find a place because Black barbers at the time had

a hard--most of the barbers that could cut white folks' hair came from North

Carolina and South Carolina because traditionally they've done it that way.

C: Yeah.

J: For a long time. Or actually in the south, you'd find more Black barbers in

the south cutting white people's hair than anywhere. North or anywhere or west.

It just didn't exist. Whites at the time just used us more or less as servants

who cut their hair. And after a while, they found that Black barbers were

progressing economically and 01:35:00the whites started looking at, yes Mr. So-and-So.

He's got a nice car and a nice home out here and he's educating his children.

And he's a barber. So they started looking at that. So whites came back and

started coming back into barber. And one time it was predominantly Blacks doing

white people's hair in the south. And I knew that from this old gentlemen in

Tennessee. He came from Chattanooga, Tennessee. The one who was a manager down

here. And he told me a lot of things about the history of barbering or what to

do. He said, you go south. You're going to get your barbers. Plus, all your

schools are down south. Most of the barbers down south can cut white people's

hair. So, that's where I went. I went to Durham and Raleigh-

C: Oh, yeah.

J: All of--and Rocky Mountain. And them barbers, they came because of some of

them I worked with in Northern Virginia during the summer, and they weren't

quite satisfied up there. And I told them come on down to VPI and work down here

for not much. And make yourself some money. So, they would come. They would come

down. So, it was my duty to find a place for them to stay and all this. I had to

go to [inaudible 1:35:33] in Monroe and try to find places. And a lot of time I

just couldn't find a 01:36:00place. I had a barber that wanted to come and I needed

them. I couldn't find a place for them to stay. And if they didn't eat any

place, they would have to go to the back of the restaurants and all that stuff.

So, coming from the South they weren't used to going to the back of restaurants.

They didn't go to the predominantly white restaurants. But at least the Black

restaurants in, say Greensboro, you could walk through the door.

C: Yeah, at least they had a Black-

J: Yeah, at least they had Black restaurants. We didn't have it here.

C: Didn't have one?

J: Not one, no. You might not know-

C: I guess except for the one in Christiansburg, S.B. Morgan's.

J: S.B. Morgan's [inaudible 1:36:12]

C: Was it Mary's?

J: No, Mary's Kitchen never--that's something you just can't--Burrell's Place.

Mr. Burrel and S.B. they were the only two Black restaurants in Christiansburg

for many years.

C: That's the only one in the-

J: In the area. That's right. That's it. The whole area.

C: Otherwise you'd have to go all the way to Christiansburg to eat.

J: Right. If you went to Pulaski, you'd find two or three in Pulaski because

there was a lot more Black folks in Pulaski, at the time and perhaps now, than

it is 01:37:00down this way. Before I opened up in [19]74 in the barber shop, I ran a

nightclub over in Christiansburg about seven years and a restaurant. It was

called Club 21.

C: Where was it located?

J: It's right on Franklin Street going into Christiansburg. You know where the

railroad track it goes under them two bridges there? When you come down the hill

from the school you-

C: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

J: There's a railroad track. Just on the side of the railroad track. As a matter

of fact, when one of them lanes, like the lane you came to Blacksburg ran right

through my parking lot. That's when I ran out of business. I ran out shortly

before it. My business in the barber shop I had to make a choice. I was just

marginally in the night club. I was still working at the barber shop over there.

And I was just marginally and the highway was coming through, and I'd have to

wait two years to get some money off the highway coming through. And I just

figured up for what I'm going to make in the business for two years or what I

might gain wasn't worth the trouble, so I closed. Then, I opened a barber shop.

My business started 01:38:00picking up in the barber shop, especially with being open

all day and on Saturday in the barber shop. When I was on the campus, we got off

at twelve o'clock, so I could leave and go and open up the night club. Well, I

just went over there and cooked. I ended up being the cook over there too. I had

a cook hired, but she wasn't dependable. And I would look up on a Saturday night

and that place would hold about a hundred fifty people.

C: Woo.

J: I decided--and before the night's over I would have a hundred fifty people in

there and so-

C: I thought Burrell was the only one that had a club.

J: No, they didn't have a club. They had a restaurant, and they closed at eleven

o'clock. And I'm open at eleven o'clock. I stayed up all night. I had a

nightclub. They didn't have a nightclub.

C: [Laughs]. Oh, I see.

J: Yeah, I had a nightclub. They had a restaurant. And I had a nightclub and a

kitchen more or less for food.

C: Nightclub. Did you have music?

J: I had music. Live music.

C: What type of 01:39:00music? Live music?

J: Live music. Every night.

C: Who was-

J: I have an agency called Joy Attraction which I have now. Matter of fact, I

have to go write up a contract tonight.

C: [Laughs]. If you could get away from me.

J: Yeah, right. And at Joy Attraction, I had access to all the bands all around,

from Tennessee, North Carolina, [inaudible 1:39:08], Greensboro, and Durham,

Richmond. Just a whole area some 200 or 300 miles around.

C: Did people come or a lot? You said you could accommodate a hundred--

J: These bands I had in these areas.

C: Uh-huh.

J: So I bring them in to Blacksburg, at these fraternity houses and football

games and-

C: White bands? Black Bands?

J: Black bands. Black bands. Some white too. But predominantly Black because

this is the kind of music they wanted at the time. They wanted soul music.

C: What time was this? 19--?

J: I think I opened it up in [19]68.

C: [19]68.

J: [inaudible 1:39:40]

C: So they wanted soul music?

J: It was called Tech Attractions.

C: Tech Attractions.

J: And everybody would associate me with some student at [Virginia] Tech doing 01:40:00it. But my business didn't do too well because they thought I was doing

something. When I switched it over to Joy Attractions, things started happening.

And so I'm listed in the yellow pages now, Joy Attractions. Yeah, right now. But

I've gotten so busy in the barber business that I think I might need to get out

of it though. I get calls almost everyday for stuff that I just can't really do

a good job in. I don't have to sell. But at the time, I've had, homecoming in

Blacksburg, I had ten bands playing in Blacksburg in one night.

C: What kind of bands were they?

J: They were just all-

C: Rhythm and blues?

J: Rhythm and blues and rock and stuff. Playing that type of music. Soul music

really calm. And this is what the white fraternities wanted. This is what they

wanted. White band couldn't get hired anywhere. The only time I would use a

white band was around Christmas time or somebodies having a--around Christmas

time because these 01:41:00companies were trying to give Christmas parties. But the

bands were so integrated you could never tell if they were white or black, once

they started integrating. And I integrated a lot of them. I had a white band out

there and I told them you can't get no job if you had a Black person in there.

Not in the high schools. I had a little trouble in the high schools. All the

Black kids out there said we don't want a white band. And the white kids didn't

want a Black band. So, I said okay we integrating. We integrating. But I had

heard guys just on the line that didn't belong. Either have all Black or an all

white band. I had for a while a member of the opposite race could play an

instrument when I needed an integrated band, an integrated sound when I got that

high school job. Over there that country club job. Integrated when I needed to.

When I didn't need it, I let them go at their state. I beat the system. So, I

did real well at that you know, and now I can still do good.

C: And your club, you had your club. Now, who came to the club?

J: Blacks from near and far.

C: Near and far.

J: Because I 01:42:00was the only one operating like that. I was the only one in

Montgomery County. But I brought in from Roanoke, Vinton, and Wytheville, Giles

County--all of Giles County real heavy--and Floyd. That whole area. Same people

come to the barber shop. This is what happened in the barber shop. Because I knew-

C: I know some people come from this.

J: A lot of these people from the barber shop I know their fathers and mothers

from the club. Their fathers and mothers used to come to the club, Club 21. I'd

get open about eight o'clock. The music started about ten or eleven o'clock. And

they would go until three or four o'clock or whenever they wanted to stop

playing because I had a band. The bands would come up here and work fraternity

say eight to twelve when Blacksburg had started-

C: And then they'd get off?

J: Get off, pack up, and come over there.

C: Oh.

J: And play the rest of the night. Sometimes they would play another gig for me

or sometimes if I got two or three bands they would just come over and form one

band and play. 01:43:00So, I'd pay them. They stay in the area. Lots of girls over there

playing a good chicken [1:42:42].

C: [Laughs].

J: Chicken was the big sale over there. So, chicken and potato salad and we sold

chili and stew. Good hot chicken right out of the grill. We had a deep fried

grill. Well seasoned and all that stuff. And it sold [snaps fingers] just like

that. I remember we sold two dollars for half a plate. And chicken just sold

like hot cakes. And [Virginia] Tech students would stop, coming from random

places, and would stop in and we had beer. They would stop in to buy some beer

and buy some food because see, this was before the Marriott or Sheritan or any

of those places opened.

C: Oh.

J: I'm ahead of them. So, then in Blacksburg they had no place--Blacksburg

closed at twelve o'clock. Everything in Blacksburg closed at twelve. Everything

in Christiansburg closed at twelve. See I was operating a private club. I had a

private club. I had a state license for a private club.

C: Oh, I see.

J: So, I could stay open all night. 01:44:00I almost always stayed open all night. So

when the White clubs up there run out of something, sometimes they would come

down for me to get things. And then two, I think--they let me operate with live

music all night because they did have an ordinance. You were supposed to cut the

music off by one o'clock.

C: Yeah.

J: But they let me operate all night because they had a moose club up there and

they had some other club downtown. Blacks couldn't go. They would find as long

as I can keep Blacks contained over in this area, you go ahead and do your

thing. But I was a little smarter. I had a lawyer. I got me a lawyer. And more

or less paid him year round. He just handles things and let me get away with

things. Things that I thought were a little risky. I'd go to him and told him,

I'm doing this. And he said, go ahead. I'll protect you. Same lawyer is a judge

now. Yeah, Judge Devow was my lawyer. He was my lawyer. So he protected me, and

I go ahead and did my thing. Yeah. And meanwhile I'm booking bands and I'm

running it, and I'm trying to do the barber shop. 01:45:00Got too much. So I said,

something have to go. So I let the club go. Let somebody else have it. He didn't

last six months before it just folded. He just didn't know how to run one, and

he wanted to party with the people. He wanted to become a part of them. You got

to keep that separation.

C: Right. Right.

J: I kept the separation.

C: Business is business.

J: Right. He was the same one when we went in there together. He was a cook at

VPI and I knew nothing about food no more than how to make salads. That's all I

knew. But, I knew the people because prior to that, we was running a club called

Dance a Month Club. Every month we would give a dance, a teenager type dance-

C: Over at VPI?

J: Oh, no. Usually at the Armory down in Blacksburg. And the armories around

here ran through Christiansburg and through Pulaski onward. I would give a

dance. We would give a dance in any one of these places every month.

C: This is before you opened the club?

J: This is before I opened the club. So, I learned where all the people were,

where they lived, and names and got their addresses. So, he knew we were doing

it. So, we got together 01:46:00because we used to, for a night entertainment, would

drive to Roanoke all the time. We got tired of driving to Roanoke, so we said

let's open up here something up here for the people. That's how the idea came

out. And then my part of the thing was manage it and get the people there. He

was going to manage the kitchen and cook the food. So, after it started going he

get--I didn't know that much about him--he got so he wanted to drink and get out

there with the crowd. And I ended up managing--I got the people there weren't no

problems there-

C: Managing and cooking.

J: Yeah. I ended up managing and cooking. Just doing everything. Janitor after I

close up. Most of the time we try to close at three. But if the crowd is in

there and they're having a good time and behaving themselves and spending money,

we stayed open. But if the combination weren't--I see they start misbehaving

themselves, getting a little drunk and want to fight or something, we close. We

say, it's three o'clock. We said, get on out. But if they was in there, a good

crowd still enjoying themselves, still spending money, still buying chicken and

so forth, we 01:47:00stayed open right up until six o'clock many times. The sun was up

when I left sometimes.

C: Then they went to church right?

J: Yeah. Right. It was rough, but I was going to church at three o'clock in the

evening though so I got a chance to go to sleep because our church down in Wake

Forest was at three o'clock in the evening.

C: Oh.

J: Our minister was at two or three other churches.

C: Oh, yes.

J: And he would come every other Sunday at three o'clock in the evening. Yeah. So.

C: Well--I tell ya that's--When did you-

J: Wait, something, you know, I'll get into some of your other questions. But,

I've been in some type of business all along.

C: All-

J: Everything from selling newspapers. I started out selling Vicks [inaudible

1:47:29] newspapers. And I started carrying the rent or something way up in

Pennsylvania [1:47:19]. And Peter started up another newspaper, so I had a

Norfolk Guide, the [inaudible 1:47:39] and the Roanoke Times.

C: Oh.

J: And whatever they wanted, I got it. So, I got a stack of three sets on my

back carrying newspaper. So I learned that-

C: And a dance a month too?