Interview with Maya Angelou for "The Great Depression"

Maya Angelou take one camera rolls seventy-three sound rule 38 book described segregation as well as a young girl in stamps Arkansas you described segregation being so complete that it's as if whites were aliens yes you kind of explore that describing well yes when I was growing up whites were called white folks I mean it was one word they were one people white folks and people who were not very cultured or who had no pretensions to to the niceties of the world called them polite trash that was one word also at we it seemed to me that we blacks we Negros we colored folks were humans and rifles were those others they were other than and as a child I was certain that my folks didn't have innards they were Oh what you saw was what you got I mean they're their bodies their heads and their bodies were empty that you could put your hand on a white folks and your hand would go right through them does my believe they seemed so different they walked differently did you have no so you had no no real dealings in interaction with not made them anymore Hewitt our autopsy phone at all and every action from white folks was an action of disrespect cruelty scorn so they couldn't be just now mind you I read about white people in other places and I believed them I was a fond reader of Charles Dickens and so I I wept with with the children and laughed with the Micawber and Oliver I mean I was I in fact read Horatio Alger jr. and I was at little white boy I understood him I understood being a lone daen and deprived almost forced upon one's own resources which were negligible if at all but I didn't connect those people with my folks I just didn't so then what was your community like I in saloon was very insular and the there were women who worked as maids for my folks and they would bring laundry over into the black area and they would stop at my grandmother store clad often and put the baskets down and I wanted so to go through those baskets and see what if I first use you know what did they what kind of things did they have but the only the only venturing into our area by rifles took place when people would come over to pick up up cotton pickers cotton pickers used to gather in the in the clearing in front of our store and the white folks would come over either in trucks or wagons and pick up the cotton pickers and one could see them then I could see them and they talked they didn't they didn't have what the West Africans and Senegal the sillier and two cooler called lalang do the sweet language I never heard my first you sweet language and I always heard black people use it so the sweet language was a language dependent entirely upon tone and even the lengthening out of a word so if you spoke if I suppose the sweet language to you um in the south instead of saying hi there how are you at say hey how you doing well I never heard white folks use sweet language and I heard black people use it all the time even though they didn't call it that you simply did it so um you know you talk about your store the store is almost like an institution what was the institution of the store well doing at the turn of the century my grandmother with two sons left and divorced my grandfather and his little village in Arkansas white women didn't get divorced as a turn of the century but my grandmother divorced my grandfather and she had to raise the two boys so she made meat pies uh from either canned sausage or but she canned or chicken our ham smoked meats she would make them up in the night and then at midday she would appear at the cotton gym which was on one side of town and the lumber mill was on the other side five miles apart my grandmother would fry the meat pies there in front of the cotton Jim and as the dinner bell rang at 12 o clock the men would come down and buy these hot meat pies for five cents if she didn't sell them all she would wrap the rest of them turn the brazier of hot clothes out dig it place in the sand and leave it there and run five miles to the lumber mill where she'd seldom tepid for two cents but the next day she would be at the lumber mill and she seldom hard fresh the fire sent after she built up a substantial clientele she built herself a stall between the two so the man could run to her and there began her store she mmm she in the end bought most of the land behind the town much of the land in the town she was really a West African market woman I didn't know that till I lived in West Africa the store was it a place was it just a place where she sold good to was it more than that it was oh it was everything it was the center of the black term that was not a store just the store so good the store was the center of the black town and the non religious center the lay center there was a Willie Williams Dew Drop Inn there was a kind of Roadhouse but a place where all the people could come at that place was my grandmother store but if she didn't name it her store she named it for her son my uncle who was crippled my uncle was crippled the whole right side of his body was paralyzed and had been since he was three mama thought he was crippled because he'd fallen off a porch he was crippled because of some neurological malady but mama named the stood the WM Johnson general merchandise store so that my uncle was never at the sufferance of a larger society as a black male in the south and crippled so that was his store I'm on Saturday women came there and had their hair curled um there was a big Chinaberry tree in the yard and so women sat there and they had croakin old curls put in the barber would come and do hair cuts around the Chinaberry tree um the Gandy dancers who were the men who who worked on the railroad would come over to the store and buy their coca-cola and cheese and sardines and crackers and the and the blue singers would come through the when they were walking through Arkansas and their sound I can I learned I think to speak in my mind because of the sounds of the South the sounds around the store and in the church AB from the time I was seven and a half until I was almost 13 I was a mute but I listened I just took in sound and the guys would say that from different places had different sounds so that from the Brazos in Texas they would say well to tantrik take to change camera roll 74 change sound rule 39 during the Depression the troubadours were as peripatetic as were hobos however they didn't catch rates because they carried their instruments and the instruments sometimes were washed tubs and sticks in them and cat got so they had washed her bases they could break them down but they couldn't jump trains they couldn't catch Freight and they had cigar box guitars literally cigar boxes with the fret made of a piece of wood and cat death strung and the fellows from Texas from the Brazos blind sounded different from the fellows from Mississippi from the Delta so they come around the store in a Saturday and sing and the Braves guys tie it sounded like this they might want you to know I just don't want your man running little maven Ella damn burned down by now the guys and from the bait bread from the Delta sang like this babe please don't go wave a Kemetic they please don't coup it was so beautiful goodness and I would stand in the doorway I just loved it and my grandmother would say sister come away from that that's worldly music I loved it and it was worldly music in the best sense of the word know at that time sort of all that I have you a sadder crueler know there was lynching mm-hmm what was this kind of psychic effect on the folks in your community in the community when even before a lynching when a black man had been accused of something which terribly offended the white community the news went around the black community like a string of Chinese firecrackers being set off I don't know how it got around so fast and then appalled a cloud of gloom and fear would settle over the community I kept a heavy blanket being put over a light a little candle and people you could see it you could sense it but you could also see it in the sag of the people's shoulders when they'd come into the store and just shake their heads and I'm sure it is exactly the same universal sense of loss and fear and dread and terror that obtained in Russia when the pilgrims were rife in the Stickles when people knew uh-oh here they come the Cossacks are coming you described in your book I light a very specific night you remember there was a man I think it was a white man mr. steward or what and you're that somebody had messed with somebody in town your Uncle Willie got so afraid well whenever um-hmm whenever the boys as they were euphemistically called uh the Klan would ride into the black area all black men had to hide and my brother and I would take potatoes and onions out of the bin under the bin was under the candy counter and we take potatoes and onions out of the bin and not the petition out which separated them and my uncle would take his stick holding on to his stick and laborious ly get down into the bin and my brother and I would cover him with potatoes and onions and he would lie there all night until you we couldn't hear the horse hooves the horses hooves are or the truck which would ride over and by its very presence be a threat when you went to school what how are the schools that you went to different from the white schools the school that you went to or even before that when did you first discover that your schools were different for you well um I thought my school was grand it was the Lafayette County training school so there it was a first grade through the twelfth one building now there was the second building a home economics building um because I went downtown occasionally and downtown was a an area with one block of paved road and one block of sidewalks and I saw the white school which was say four times larger and bricks and all that but I didn't I don't remember envying that I mean that was those those rifles that had nothing to do with me until mrs. flowers who is the woman who started me really to reading I mean I had learned to read but to enjoy it she when I stopped speaking this black lady took me in hand she knew I'd liked to read and she encouraged me to read every book in the black school in the library starting with a and after a few months she would come and ask me how far I've gotten them had gotten to be Arizona and I had a tablet which I kept in built of my clothes and I would write how I'd like to didn't like and I didn't understand that much but I read every but well she had some connection with the white school and from time to time she would bring books and they were new ah that was so unusual to me because we used the the thrown away books the books with the spines broken or with no with one cover gone and I learned to repair books because black kids did that we would get cardboard and with some cover the cardboard with cloth remnants that were round and glue make cooked glue with I mean not just flour but cooked flour and water to make glue put a little coal oil in it and put that on the back of the spine of the book maybe even use wood by the time the book was finished it looked lovely you know so we learned to do that and but I had never seen a new book until mrs. flowers brought books from the white school for me to read the slick pages I couldn't believe it and that's when I think my first anger real anger I add a depressive an oppressive system began I was angry at the way people treated my momma my grandmother who owned the land they lived on I was angry at that but that was a personal learn anger because of their maltreatment of momma but when I saw these that the white kids had these fresh books it was so unfair because I loved books and I deserved them and just because I was blaghhh I couldn't have them take three change camera roll 275 we actually between roles we talked about this a little bit but what effect if any did the economic problems of the depression have on your community the depression well there's a a bitter and yet wry statement which was made by Blass about the depression they said in the South that the depression had been going on for ten years before black people even knew about it even knew it existed and that was true particularly in the south and in villages and small Hamlet's and small towns because the people lived subsistence at a subsistence level for the most part many were sharecroppers and that line in the popular song of a couple of decades ago it was absolutely true they owed their lives to the company store so because they hadn't been able to get education then they were vulnerable to the greed and and evil of the farm owners so at the end of a year the farmer found himself not even even not even even he found himself in debt so the the Depression had gone on long before the crash of 29 took place um I think that the I imagine that the large hordes of men walking around the country had some effect on the black community and this is interesting one of the ways it affected the black community was that the white hobos would come to the black area to ask for food now partly out of pride and maybe the other part out of an ability to identify to empathize with the hobo black people always gave food now they had beans maybe with a little piece of I've smoked me a dried me cured me that cornbread and black people would give beans and cornbread to black hobos and white so at the railroad line that they would all they would come to the black area first I feel like there's something costs in that suit next day the Depression was going on ten years before black yes mmm there's something else about that about that I guess the sense of that things were always poor so maybe white folks felt the difference yes this is true I mean they because of the general subsistence level in the southern states non-industrialized areas black people did not did not depend upon industry are upon a Wall Street for anything they depended upon the earth they were farmers and sharecropping farmers for the most part so that they were not really affected in a in a large way maybe subtly yes but it wasn't until the end of the 30s beginning of the 40s with the advent of World War two when black people left the south and went into the shipbuilding and ammunition plants that they began to to in mass be able to be a part of the market I'm gonna take a stab at a really wildly general question well can you tell me if you wanna if you wanted to go for this one but is there a way that we are we're talking about the yellow pea was there a way that in some way to give a sense of that that life for black people was very different than than it was no I mean we're talking about 50 60 years ago before the civil rights before a lot of things have happened is there someone again I'm dealing in a I'm crab groping here with the gross generalization but I wonder if you have never there were great differences in the quantity and the quality of life and the black communities forty years ago great differences 50 years ago and the things one could hope to own were minimal compared to today's black community I mean even in poor areas and a black community could count on can today count on there being certain things in the house there will be a television in the house there will be probably a VCR and there will be certain there will be a stove in the house there will be refrigerator mouse there will even be a bathroom in the house and a toilet in the house people will actually have clothes they may not be the newest clothes there may not be the most expensive clothes but people will have clothes now so here we are talking about things when I grew up and in the south of that time and a house was considered all right if it had a floor and walls and windows and that was all right the floor would have no rugs the floor would be washed once a week with lye water so that the wood came up quite and that was always a mark of pride for the housekeeper that her floors were white white wood because they were so clean the toilet was outside the bath was a big tub and which heated water was poured once a week there were places one washed up during the week but the real bath to sit down in water and the rigid one didn't turn on the top faucet or the town there was a well and one drew up the water there qualitative differences in things however there was in the black community a sense of unity a sense of pride a sense of love there was a a communal sense of religion and morality people simply didn't do certain things because it wasn't nice to do certain things children were loved and looked after I don't know anybody who ever abused a child I mean children got spanked children got whipped children got talked to pretty roughly settled in corners and so forth but to abuse a child had this what this is absolutely new in the black community never before until the last two or three decades had we heard of people actually burning children and hurting them not that there wasn't sexual abuse I don't mean that I cannot say that but even that was not as rife children were so valuable and everybody took pride in all the children so any woman or any man was subject to call the child away sato who's your mama who's your papa come here I don't like the way you I was grown I came back from Europe I was a dancer I was the first dancer with paw again bears and and I was a grand a young woman and I had cut my hair off because my hair was very thick and I couldn't dance and keep my hair in a certain kind of style I went in to San Francisco and a man saw me on the street he said are you Clyde Ellen Vivian's daughter I said yes sir he gave me five dollars he said go do something to your hair find a beauty job now that sense of interdependence and him again am I talking my mind take for change camera roll 76 change seven to forty and in stamp second sow by the time I was ten years old mmm I expected my brother to become a lawyer he was a year and a half older than I he was brighter than I I didn't expect that for myself because I didn't talk um there was a fellow Henry Reid in my school who was almost as bright as my brother also a little bit smarter than I not much but it was a little bit uh I figured that he was going to be a doctor now although the people in my town did not boast of a number of black doctors and law but I did know that Fiske existed University Fisk University and Howard University existed and I Tuskegee and Atlanta and Spelman Morgan stayed in Baltimore Morris Brown and Morehouse these were these were heavenly abodes I mean I kind of thought that if a child was good and died the child would go to heaven and become an angel and if the angel was a good angel and died it would probably go to Howard I mean it that was possible and it was something to dream of and black teachers took such pride in black students and the community took such pride in smart students that a child who had gotten a's would be marched from one church to another and people would saying now his his brother so-and-so's little boy here he is his little johnny stand up Johnny Johnny got all A's this week all A's this past year people who I mean he didn't belong to that church people would stand up praise the Lord bless his heart god bless you honey keep on pressing on so people took pride in the children and their pride was a an encouragement to continue so we thought with the larger society saying you cannot we thought yes we could because somebody had gone before us dr. Dubois Booker T Washington Marcus Garvey those were names in this little village in Arkansas which were very familiar to be at a Wells Barnet we knew these names we knew and Miss Mary McLeod Bethune oh please and that was genius walking around and grace so the aspirations I don't think the aspirations were that much different from today's aspirations the only thing is that we aspired against incredible odds can you talk about the odds to live the obstacles that the aspirations had to right well in fact I and graduated from Lafayette County training school uh she or he would have a very good underpinning in black American literature you would know parlours Dunbar James Weldon Johnson County Cullen Langston Hughes Georgia Douglas Johnson and Spencer you would know the 19th and 20th century writers and one might not know mathematics very very well or have even been introduced to science other than the name George Washington Carver because the teachers had themselves not been trained in the hard sciences and they couldn't afford to get teachers black teachers from the north or who really had a training because they could go to better paying schools you see so the students came out of the high school without the underpinning they needed the foundation they could go on maybe to a a church college and get some more training in social services but to try to get to Columbia University or to Howard it wasn't that easy they needed maybe two more years of a NACA Junior - come up - just to compete with the people in the other schools that was always an obstacle because families needed their children to work and children who felt responsible to their families wouldn't take two more years you see was there any sense of even trying to move into the white society was there no not that I knew love hmm I'm sure there were people way over in texarkana way of in the big city or in Little Rock and pined laughs but not in the small towns just didn't happen sometimes the teachers themselves had only gotten high school education well you talked about a graduation ceremony in your book that you went to when you felt again there was that sense of anger that somebody was imposing limits mhm that was a a white man who really came to speak and to inform the graduating class that they would they were going to have a new playing field basketball field and an R an addition to the home economics building so I thought oh so this is to say we can become athletes and we can become better clothes and more adept washer women and men but aspire to be scientists and philosophers and mathematicians and doctors seem to be beyond us because they had the man also insensitively informed us that the white school had been given 50 new microscopes and so obviously we were being told don't you aspire beyond these limitation okay okay camera 37 sound roll for you tell me the last inch of space was filled yet people continue to wedge themselves along the walls of the store Uncle Willie had turned the radio up to its last notch so that youngsters on the porch wouldn't miss a word women sat on kitchen chairs dining room chairs stools and upturned wooden boxes small children and babies perched on every lap available and men leaned on the shelves are on each other the apprehensive mood was shot through with shafts of gaiety as a black sky is streaked with lightning one man said I ain't worried about this fight Joe gonna whip that cracker like his open season another said he gonna whip him to let white boy call him mama at last the talking was finished and the string along songs about razor blades were over and the fight began a quick jab to the head in the store the crowd grunted a left to the head and a right and another left one of the listeners cackle like a hen and was quieted there in a clinch Luis is trying to fight his way out some bitter comedian on the porch said that white man don't mind huggin that now betcha the referee is moving in to break them up but Luis finally pushes the contender way and it's an uppercut to the chin the contenders hanging on now he's backing away Luis catches him with a short left to the jaw a tired of murmuring assent poured out the doors and into the yard another left and another left Luis is saving that mighty right the Mudder in the store had grown into a baby roar and it was pierced by the clang of a bell and the announcers that's the bell for round three ladies and gentlemen yes he's got Lewis against the ropes and now it's a left to the body and a right to the ribs another right to the body it looks like it was low yes ladies and gentlemen the referee is signaling but the contender keeps raining the blows on Lewis it's another two the body it looks like Lewis is going down my race groaned it was our people falling it was another lynching yet another black man hanging on a tree one more woman ambushed and raped a black boy whipped and maimed it was hounds on the trail of a man running through slimy swamps it was a white woman slapping her maid for being forgetful the men in the store stood away from the walls and at attention women greedily clutched the babes on their laps while on the porch the shufflings and smiles the flirting's and pinching zuv a few minutes before were gone this might be the end of the world if Jo lost we were back in slavery and beyond help it would all be true the accusation said we were little lower than sorry it would all be true the acquisition yeah my brother this is taking me now I'm doing the best I can please I didn't consider that I would be doing anything other than a reading there's another preparation I'll try my race groaned it was our people falling it was another lynching yet another black man hanging on a tree one more woman ambushed and raped a black boy flipped and maimed it was hounds on the trail of a man running through slimy swamps it was a white woman slapping her maid for being forgetful the men in the store stood away from the walls and at attention women greedily clutched the babes on their laps while on the porch the shufflings and smiles the flirting's and pinching of a few minutes before was on this might be the end of the world if Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help it would all be true the accusations that we were lower types of human beings only a little higher than the Apes true that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty and unlucky and most of all that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hues of would draw zuv water world without end amen we didn't breathe we didn't hope we waited no I did witness yeah and that doesn't follow even too hard to do this I have to do the next it did you can cut it everybody yeah he's off the ropes ladies and gentlemen he's moving toward the center of the ring and now it looks like Joe is mad he's caught Canara with a left hook to the head a right to the head it's a left jab to the body another left to the head there's a left cross a right to the head the contenders right eyes bleeding he can't seem to keep his block up Luis is penetrating every block the referee is moving in but newest sends a left to the body it's an uppercut to the gym the contenders dropping he's on the canvas ladies and gentlemen babies slid to the floor women stood up men leaned toward the radio here's the referee he's counting one two three four five six seven is a contender trying to get up again all the people in the store shouted no eight nine ten there were only a few sounds from the audience they seem to be holding themselves in against tremendous pressure the man said the fight is all over ladies and gentlemen here let's get the microphone over to the referee here he is he's got the brown bombers hand he's holding it up here he is and then that voice husky Familia came to wash over us it said normal and still having my champion on the world Joe Lewis champion of the world a black boy some black mother's son some black father's son he was a strongest man in the world people drank Coca Cola's like ambrosia and he candy bars like Christmas some of the men went behind the stores and poured white lightning into their soft drink bottles and a few of the bigger boys followed them those who were not chased away came back blowing their breath in front of themselves like proud smokers it would take an hour more before the people would leave the store and head for home those who live too far had made arrangements to stay in town you see it wouldn't do for a black man and his family to be caught on a lonely country road in the south when Joe Lewis had just proved that a black man was the strongest person in the world

Channel: wufilmarchives

Views: 196,910

Rating: 4.8190231 out of 5

Keywords: Maya Angelou, Great Depression, oral history, Blackside, Henry Hampton, documentary, interview

Id: xy5Htf6ubDk

Length: 48min 40sec (2920 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 23 2013