INTERVIEWER:: GERALDINE BELL # INTERVIEWEE: MRS. ELNORA ...

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INTERVIEWER:: GERALDINE BELL # INTERVIEWEE: MRS. ELNORA FINCH

My name is Geraldine Bell and today is April 23,2007, and it's about 4:30 p.m. and I'm sitting with two young ladies from Pamlico County. I am being the INTERVIEWER: for the Pamlico County African American Experience, Oral History. We're so happy to have them with us. We will be asking questions about the historical growth in Pamlico County and your experiences in this community. Let me know if you do not understand a particular question. Your information is very important to this project. We're interviewing people from this area to get information about their African American experiences and what has influenced your lives and that of your community. We will be talking about family, daily life, education, religion, military history, social life, vacation and travel, and some community changes, possibly.

INTERVIEWER:: Could you please give me your name, please?

MRS. FINCH: Elnora Finch

m INTERVIEWER:: Thank you. And where are you from, Ms. Finch?

MRS. FINCH: I was born in Oriental and I live in Grantsboro, North Carolina, now.

INTERVIEWER:: Good. Very good. Could you please give us some basic information about yourself and your family? You were born in Oriental, you said. What was the name of your parents?

Allen and Lula Keyes.

Do you have children?

Yes.

How many children do you have?

Five.

MRS. FINCH:

INTERVIEWER:

MRS. FINCH:

INTERVIEWER::

MRS. FINCH:

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Interview number U-0336 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.

INTERVIEWER: And what are the names of your children?

MRS. FINCH: Barbara, Annie, May Alice, Ropel, Jr., and Alice Martha.

INTERVIEWER:: Now, what about the siblings? Brothers and your

sisters? Do you have brothers?

MRS. FINCH: Yes. They are John, Warren, and Alfred.

INTERVIEWER:: And they are all living?

MRS. FINCH: No. Three are dead.

INTERVIEWER:: All right. And your sisters?

MRS. FINCH: Agnes, Elnora, and Fannie

INTERVIEWER:: So there were how many children in your family?

MRS. FINCH: 10. INTERVIEWER:: 10. There were 10; very nice family, very nice. Describe

yourself and the family that you grew up in. where were you in the list of 10 children?

MRS. FINCH: I was the 3rd.

INTERVIEWER: You were the 3rd?

MRS. FINCH: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. And how many, who were older than you, were they girls or boys?

MRS. FINCH: We had one boy and one girl.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. All right. So you lived right there in Oriental all your life?

# MRS. FINCH: All my life.

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INTERVIEWER: All your young life.

MRS. FINCH: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: And, were there other relatives around you, a grandmamma or granddaddy, or someone?

MRS. FINCH: Yes. I saw my great granddaddy; he was about 100 years old. We'd pass his house and he had this long beard and he would be smoking and slinging cotton and that was grandpap. { }

INTERVIEWER: Okay, so you saw your grandfather?

MRS. FINCH: On both sides; on my mother's side and my father's side.

INTERVIEWER: Okay and his name was what, Keyes, and your

grandmother ...

MRS. FINCH: Vernon Keyes and William Hargett.

INTERVIEWER: Okay.

MRS. FINCH: He was a Methodist preacher. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Wonderful. Wonderful. What do you remember

most about your family, and their involvement in the community as you grew up, as a young person?

MRS. FINCH: My father's father was active in the church; he was the superintendent of Sunday school and he was a deacon and later my father was a deacon and superintendent of Sunday school. And my mother, her father was secretary of the church. I barely remember him he died when he was about 50.

INTERVIEWER: Okay.

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MRS. FINCH: And my father's father died about the same age. I remember that they were widows and they never remarried.

INTERVIEWER: Do you recall any family gatherings, family reunions or activities that brought your family together back in those times? Were those things possible?

MRS. FINCH: Yes. There were 10 of us and every year momma would have, we would say a social now, but she would always make ice cream on Saturday nights and we would have ice cream parties and when Santa Claus would come, we would always get our gifts. In that day, we were so happy to have fruit. We would get plenty of fruit and one doll baby. And whatever the dolls were made out of, when it rained on them, they would melt. That was when I was a child and that's been I would say 80 years ago, because I was about 6 then. And we would get together. Momma had a sister and she had 10 children and momma had 10 and we would all get together and have so much fun. They were real happy times. We would get out in the road and play ball and we would have a ball that they made from twine and we would take a shingle for our bat. And I think the boys would hit the ball and make the girls think they had hit it.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, good, so you all had a good time.

MRS. FINCH: Yes, we were happy; because we didn't know anything but that.

INTERVIEWER: So, you didn't have much, but that which you did have, you were happy. You had each other.

MRS. FINCH: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: How was it different from the family that you live in today? I know that many of them have passed away, but I'm sure that there are, the things that you do today, the way that you live with your family and so forth, I'm sure


MRS. FINCH:

it's different they?

.. many of them have moved away, haven't

Yes, they moved away. With me being 87, I'm just some of the last family members left. But we all are close. The ones that did move away would come back on vacation and spend time with mama and she would always fry chicken and bake biscuits for them. When they'd leave to go back to Philadelphia, they'd put it in a shoe box. And their children would be waiting for the parents to get back because they loved that chicken that she fried for them; so, we couldn't have places to buy food.

INTERVIEWER: And I'm sure they moved away for different reasons.

MRS. FINCH: Yes, for a lot of reasons.

INTERVIEWER: Were there many jobs in this area back in those times that they could get?

MRS. FINCH:

INTERVIEWER:

Just farming. All I know of is farming. Later on, they had an oyster factory in Oriental where they steamed oysters and the women would open the oysters and get paid by the gallon. And one man had a farm and raised string beans and they picked the beans and bring them to your house and we would snap the beans and we had a little cannery in Oriental. And that was a little job, but mostly, we farmed.

And I'm sure that back there in those days a lot of you lived in the house.

MRS. FINCH: Oh, yes.

INTERVIEWER: Whereas, now, you live in a great big house by yourself.

MRS. FINCH: Yes; but then we were happy then. That was real life for us.

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INTERVIEWER: You said that during the younger days, the things that you did, you would play, what were some of the things that you did on the weekends for further entertainment, or further enjoyment?

Mrs. Finch. Well, we had to go to church. If we didn't go to church and Sunday school, we could not go out and play that afternoon.

INTERVIEWER: I'm sure.

MRS. FINCH: We would meet each other and get together and play, play ball.

INTERVIEWER: That was a little bit of free time from all of that hard work, I'm sure.

MRS. FINCH:

INTERVIEWER:

Yes. We'd play games and run around the house and beat each other, see who could run the fastest, and get back to the goal line. And then we'd play throwing the ball over the house. And they'd catch the ball and throw it over the house and that was one of our fun things.

Was there baseball and those kinds of games and things back there in those times?

MRS. FINCH: Well, later on, when I was a teenager, almost a teenager, we had ball games and Easter Monday would be the beginning of baseball season. And we were little teenagers, and we would always have a little new dress because that was a big day and the end of the season, that would be Labor Day. Later on, we had a beach, Faison Beach, and we'd go there every summer, on Wednesdays. Mama would take us and we'd stay there all day. She'd make sandwiches and we'd eat and go back in the water and play, but we never learned to swim. We had all the water around us, but we never learned to swim.

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INTERVIEWER: Probably some of us are not as skillful as you were at your age. I remember that you talked about farming, that you were involved in farming. Who did you work for when you farmed?

MRS. FINCH:

INTERVIEWER:

Well, I never worked much on the farm. My father always worked at the sawmill, even his father. In the Keyes family, they mostly worked the sawmill. But mama, she was always said she was raised up on the farm, but my father wasn't. And her brother would let her have an acre of corn and she'd help him on the farm, and at the end of the year she'd get that acre of corn and she'd had hogs, and chickens, and we had a cow one time. But I never worked on the farm that much. I did pick 117 pounds once in my life, but I never went back to pick cotton no more.

Do you recall who owned the sawmill your dad worked in? '

MRS. FINCH: The McCabes.

INTERVIEWER: And, was that in Oriental?

MRS. FINCH: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Do you recall any of the crops that your mom grew?

MRS. FINCH: She always had a nice garden. She grew peas, and vegetables, and collards, corn, beans.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, and you said you did cotton. Can you think of anything else that you did?

MRS. FINCH: What we really did was dig white potatoes when we were children. Mama would be home with the babies and we would go in the field and dig potatoes. They didn't want the sun to shine on the potatoes because it would be discolored. So, what we'd do, around 12:00, we'd go up

7 Interview number U-0336 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.

under the shade tree. So, we kids out there playing, we were just as happy as we could be, all of us out there, all Black but we were happy playing. So we went in the house and bought some food from the lady that owned the potato patch, and when we were playing, we broke the plate, and we knew we'd better go tell her. If we didn't, we'd know what would happen when we got home if we didn't tell her. So we were playing and broke the plate. So, we went up to the house and said, "Miss Sanie, we broke the plate." And she said, "Oh, that's all right; it was the cat's plate, that's what the white woman told us." We laugh about it now because we just were always that type people, where everything didn't make us mad, and we get together and laugh about it right now. That's what she said to us.

INTERVIEWER: You all did have some very interesting times back then. Did you enjoy any of this work back then? You said you did so we won't even go back in there. What kind of wages did you get? How were you paid?

MRS. FINCH: Ten cent a barrel.

INTERVIEWER: Ten cent a barrel?

Mrs. Finch. And the barrel held about 5 bushels.

INTERVIEWER: Of potatoes?

MRS. FINCH: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, my goodness.

MRS. FINCH: And my brother, my mama couldn't go but like I just said, was at home with the babies, probably had a little baby and she sent us with grandmamma. And we had a brother named James, we called him Juke and we'd need barrels. We'd have to go get the barrels to put the potatoes in. And we'd fill the barrels up. And we put the tops of potatoes in so they wouldn't get sunburned. So,

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we sent Juke to get a barrel for us and he never did come back and it was so long and we had got up in the barrel and gone to sleep. Juke was lazy. So we said, Grand mama, can you make Juke come on with the barrel? So, she always kept a stake and at the end of the week they'd pay mama the money instead of us. But we wouldn't get but about 10 barrels a day, the three of us.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, my, hard work, huh?

MRS. FINCH: Indeed.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, now we're going to talk about your education here a little bit. What was the name of the school that you attended?

MRS. FINCH: I guess it was named Oriental Elementary. We went as far as the 7th grade.

INTERVIEWER: What do you remember most about those school days?.

MRS. FINCH: We were happy; we enjoyed it so much. But it could have been better. Because we had those potbellied stoves and we'd be up around it, all the children in the room would be up around the stove keeping warm. And the boys would have to leave the classroom to go out in the woods to bring wood back to put in the stove to keep us warm. Whenever we had a wind in March, we would get the tin blowing on the school. And we had outdoor toilets. And I don't even remember where we got water to drink. We went next door to get water. We could only drink water.

INTERVIEWER: I remember the part of that experience, the stove and the outdoor toilets. Who was your favorite teacher? Did you have a favorite teacher back then?

MRS. FINCH: I didn't have favorites. They all treated me nice.

INTERVIEWER: Well, that's good. What about your favorite course?

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I think I would say math. I guess I wouldn't now but back then, and reading.

Why do you say they were your favorite courses?

Because I had no problems with them, I would be exempted from math.

What were your favorite activities and sports back there in those times?

Not too much; I wasn't much with sports. But we would be out playing and running and we would play ball. We did have three bases and we had a lot of exercise from running.

Did your school have any sports at that time? Like they do now, the basketball teams and so forth?

We had baseball in Oriental and basketball. I can remember when my aunt and her classmates played basketball. Their uniforms were long, below their knees, and they were black.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Do you think there was anything that made your school unique? Did you compete countywide back there in those times?

MRS. FINCH: Yes. I remember one time Mesic came down to play against us. And that's when I first learned about Mesic. And Arapahoe came over and played one time.

INTERVIEWER: Wonderful. What were experiences with discriminations in school? Was there any integration in those schools back there in those times?

MRS. FINCH: No, indeed. We were walking and they were riding the school bus. We had that old potbellied stove, and an old wooden school. We'd get their books when they were finished with them. Mama would have to buy their

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books. And when they got through with their benches, we would get them. And when we were walking, they were riding the school bus throwing spit balls at us. It was tough. It was really bad. We had to walk in the rain and the parents would come to get us if it was raining too much. Then they had cars, but only one or two of them had cars.

INTERVIEWER: So, you walked from school in the rain.

MRS. FINCH: Oh, yes. People that had horses and carts, that was a big thing back then. They'd come and pick up their children. But some children were walking 3 or 4 miles to get to school. But the whites would riding on the school bus then. When I got in high school, we didn't have a lunchroom. When we did get one, we had to sell dinners to raise money to get utilities for the lunchroom, so we did finally get one. Before that, when I was in high school too, I don't know where they were getting the beans from, but Miss Ina Davis would cook the beans and would sell them for $.05 a cup and some time we didn't have money to buy it. We would get one slice of bread with it. And some of the children would take the food, in a like we would going on the farm to work, in a bucket, we called it a dinner bucket and we would just be hungry until we got back home, sometimes.

INTERVIEWER: What kind of things were served in the cafeteria? Did you have a cafeteria? Did you have a cafeteria at that time?

MRS. FINCH: We never really got one when I was in high school and I finished in '38 and we hadn't really gotten one then. When I was telling you about how we had to raise money, it was after I was out of high school.

INTERVIEWER: So it was in 1938 or about that time?

MRS. FINCH: When we got one?

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INTERVIEWER: Yes

MRS. FINCH: After that.

INTERVIEWER: After that, you got cafeterias.

MRS. FINCH: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Do you feel that you feel that you received an education that prepared you for life and for work?

MRS. FINCH: I really think I did. My father never saw to us studying. He would help us with our homework. Mama would be taking care of the family cooking, and like that. But he would always help us. He was good with math. I think it really prepared me. I don't know about the rest of them. I always have been a person until now, and I'm 87, that try to learn. See, I never be without my newspaper and magazines.

INTERVIEWER: Yes. Very good; very good. Are you continuing any kind of education now?

MRS. FINCH: Yes. I have since high school and my children got out on their own, I took some classes. I was really going for a nurse and take nurse framing and I had to take this test. This was before integration. And so, we took the task and when it came back, they said that all you are capable of doing is maid work. Now, they're begging you to go. Integration has made it better. Later on, I took some courses like for home aide and several other courses, whenever Tech had something that you could take. Because after 60, you didn't have to pay and I went and took a lot of little courses.

INTERVIEWER: Where did you take such a test that would tell you that you are only qualified to do maid work?

MRS. FINCH: We had to go to New Bern to take the test and they wouldn't let but so many of us take it. And Annie

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Fulcher went; we went and Annie said "Finch was right. Yeah, the white ones passed, but we didn't". She said, "I tell you, they had a way of knowing black from white even if they just put a little mark or something" and I believe that, too. Because the white ones, they took them. Both of my daughters were nurses. They could help me, with it. But they didn't accept us.

INTERVIEWER: Do you consider yourself to be religious? If so, what faith are you?

MRS. FINCH: I'm Baptist.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Why do you say that you are religious?

MRS. FINCH: Because when I was a child, like 12, you had to join the church, go to the mourners bench, they called it. And so, since I was 12, I've always been in the church. I was baptized. And so, I'm still in the church.

INTERVIEWER: How often do you participate in religious activities?

MRS. FINCH: Every Sunday I go to church and I don't drive nights so I don't go to too many activities at night. But whenever possible, I'm always in religious activities.

INTERVIEWER: Good. Very good. Let's talk about military history. Not necessarily you being in it but your family may have been involved, your children and so forth. Describe the military service that you or a member of your family experienced. Was your father ever in the military?

MRS. FINCH: No.

INTERVIEWER: Sisters or brothers?

MRS. FINCH: Two.

INTERVIEWER: What branch were they?

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MRS. FINCH: Three brothers. They were m the Army

INTERVIEWER: Okay, wonderful. MRS. FINCH: And my sons, they were in ROTC in college and they

went on and one made Captain and got out and the other one Lieutenant Colonel, retired. And I have nephews, and cousins, and grandsons in service. I have a grandson in Hawaii now. And the service was a big help because my brother Warren was in service and when he came out, they were given money to go to college and that's how he got his education and got his Masters, and he's retired now.

INTERVIEWER: Good. Good. Now, how has serving in the military affected people in this community? I heard you say that, because he was in the military, he received benefits so he could further his education. That was good. How has serving in the military helped the people in this community?

MRS. FINCH: It's really been a help because in World War II, boys would go in service and they got a little money and they sent it back to their parents and a lot of parents didn't have a decent place to live and they would get homes, because the boys felt that they owed it to the parents and they didn't mind sending a little allotment to the parents.

INTERVIEWER: Also, I think a lot... Cherry Point down there, go on and tell us, I'm sure that when that base was put down there, that affected the finances of surrounding people getting jobs and so forth, too. I'm sure that was a blessing because a lot of people got jobs from the base that helped their income, and so forth, because social life here ... how has serving in the military affected people in the community ... I'm sure they have ... the military afforded them some finances too, as you said, to be homeowners, and so forth. How do you yourself feel about the military?

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MRS. FINCH: Well, I really don't know at this time. I really hate to see the young men and women going in service with the war going on in Iraq, and here ... so, it's hard for me to say. I don't think it's the best thing but the little bit that I know about it; they say it's necessary to have the war, I just can't tell.

INTERVIEWER: I understand. Certainly with the war going on, we have different feelings about it. Where and when did you travel back in those times?

MRS. FINCH: I didn't travel that much. I guess I was a teenager before I ever went to New Bern. We had no use for transportation. My father did buy a car. We had a car about altogether, about 5 or 6 years, and after that, we didn't have a car. But, since I've been grown, I've done a lot of traveling. I've been to Germany. I've been to California, Chicago. I've done a lot of traveling since then. I've traveled by plane, by car, and by train once. I went to Michigan on the train.

INTERVIEWER: Have you ever experience discrimination when you traveled?

MRS. FINCH: Yes, when we had a bus that was going from New Bern to Oriental and we had to sit in the back. We couldn't sit up front. When we got on, we knew, no need to sit up front. We just go on and get in the back. But now, you can sit wherever you want.

INTERVIEWER: Why did you travel? You told us that, from Oriental to New Bern. How often did you travel to New Bern?

MRS. FINCH: Not often. During the summer, we'd go to New Bern more than we did other times.

INTERVIEWER: How often did the bus run from Oriental to New Bern?

MRS. FINCH: Twice a day.

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INTERVIEWER: That was good. How much did you pay?

MRS. FINCH: I guess from Oriental to Bayboro was a quarter.

INTERVIEWER: Can you think of anything else that you would like to share with us, anything concerning your experiences with Oriental, the bus, anything else that you would like to share? This has been a great interview. I've learned a lot just interviewing you myself. And I'm sure that you have been very, very beneficial to our archives and what you have shared with us will certainly make history and will be here for years and years and years for the children and grandchildren and other people, too. You have been very, very beneficial and this is it. Anything else you would like to share in Oriental? How did you and the white folk in that area get along?

We got along, I guess, as well as we could, in that day. I had just got married and we got a crab factory and I had my first child and she was about 6 or 7 and we were walking from the crab factory and they would pick at us and call us names when we were walking out from the factory. Because we didn't have transportation, we had to walk. And this little white girl, she would always pick at her. She fell on her bicycle, and almost broke her leg, but we helped her get up. But it was still a little rough up until integration. And then it got better. We always had your special person you worked for. I worked for Ms. Lill Rich and some of them worked for the McCabes and some, we had a little hotel down there, but Blacks didn't even think of staying there. They'd have black cooks and you'd work long hours in the summertime and that was a way of making, too.

INTERVIEWER: Well, thank you very, very, very much, Mrs. Finch. And we can experience some of the relationships that we understand you had. Can you tell me about what year you experienced segregation the most? What time of history?

MRS. FINCH:

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MRS. FINCH: Well, I was born in 1919.... From the time that I can remember, up until Martin Luther King's civil rights movement came about. That's when you saw a little difference. Now you can eat at any restaurant.

INTERVIEWER: What were the stores, and so forth, that had the most separation among the Blacks in New Bern and in Pamlico County?

MRS. FINCH: Well, Pamlico County, in Oriental, they had a tea room and white people would be sitting in there drinking tea and we couldn't even go in there but being children, it looked so good to us to see them sitting in there. We'd be peeping in the window when we passed by because we had to walk down to Oriental which was about 3 miles to get a box of salt. There was an old Black lady that owned a shop. And her son owned a grist mill. We made meal. We had that. A black man had a barbecue place so we had Black history week, and this man was speaking and he said "we were the first ones that had a fast food store. You could buy your sandwich, your barbecue sandwich from this old Black man, had nowhere to sit down, take it and go. And that was fast food". In New Bern, we'd go to Moore's Barbecue and would buy barbecue from him and pay our money, and the whites would be sitting in there and laughing and talking and socializing and it would look nice; it was comfortable. We had to go to the kitchen and they had, what looked to me, iron stove where they burned wood, and it was hot and a little bit smoky and that's where we had to go and spend our money to buy barbecue. And now, since integration, they almost begging you to buy. So they have the whites and blacks working. So, that's... there's a lot more if I could think of it, but these are the highlights of it.

INTERVIEWER: You have been very, very beneficial. Thank you so much, Mrs. Finch. We look forward to seeing this recorded and written so you can review it. Thank you so much.

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MRS. FINCH: You're welcome.

INTERVIEWER: You have given us a great deal. Thank you so much.

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INTERVIEWER:: GERALDINE BELL # INTERVIEWEE: MRS. ELNORA ...

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