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Interview with James Hall June 17, 1994 Transcript of an Interview about Life in the Jim Crow South Sylvester (Ga.) Interviewer: Gregory Hunter ID: btvct01005 Interview Number: 28

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Interview with James Hall (btvct01005), interviewed by Gregory Hunter, Sylvester (Ga.), June 17, 1994, Behind the Veil: Documenting African-American Life in the Jim Crow South Digital Collection, John Hope Franklin Research Center, Duke University Libraries. Behind the Veil: Documenting African-American Life in the Jim Crow South An oral history project to record and preserve the living memory of African American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South, from the 1890s to the 1950s. ORIGINAL PROJECT Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University (1993-1995)  

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James Hall 1

Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South

Interview with James Hall

Sylvester, GA June 17, 1994

Interviewed by Gregory Hunter

Unedited Transcript by Cathy H. Mann

James Hall 2

Hunter: Could you just state your name and your date of birth?

Hall: Yeah, everything’s coming up on from where I was born at (). Okay,

alright, I’ll begin. I was born 1917, eighteenth day of May in Lee County,

Georgia. And on my birth it was twins, James and John was born on

1917, eighteenth day of May. That was my twin brother. He’s not living

at the present but this is what happened. So we lived in Lee County,

Georgia by a little grocery store by a railroad coming out of Albany,

Georgia. That’s where we lived, out on a farm and we worked. When we

grew up we started working there before we left Lee County. We moved

from Lee County over to Leesburg, Georgia. We stayed there two years

so we left Lee Count and we moved to Worth County in 1925. In 1923 we

moved to Worth County, Georgia and here where we have lived the rest of

our life up until now. We farmed and half-cropped with some nice

peoples. Some of them was nice and we farmed with one guy that we

rented the crop, made the crop, man turned around and going to run my

daddy off and somehow or another my daddy suspicioned when he was

going to take him to a spot where they was going to kill him at. He

discovered that this was what they was going to do cause just before he

got to the house it was a crowd of folks there on the porch and the lights

was on. They had these old lights what you make in the ground. I forget

the name of them. But there wasn’t no electric lights in that day. So

anyway, this was 1929, this was 1929, the year of 1929. So they was

going to run up our accounts and they were going to the big house to run

James Hall 3

up our accounts over to her daddy’s house. And they claimed, this fellow

we were working with, his son, Moulree, he claimed that my daddy left

owing him some money. They run us off the farm and my daddy went and

moved to his sister’s farm and that’s where we farmed at the next year.

That was in ’29. So we farmed there in ’29, in the fall of ’29 they decided

since we made a pretty good crop and cleared some money that this

brother or husband was going to be smart enough to get some money out

of the deal. We didn’t owe him nothing but this is what he said. So at the

same time after we had gathered our crops and were supposed to be

getting our settlement but they wouldn’t settle off with us til we go to the

big house. My daddy, then they said to him, bring him over such-and-

such an evening and we would settle off with him. So my daddy decided

he would go then when he got near the house and he saw all this big light

up there and all these folks he got suspicioned they was there to kill him.

So at the same time his sister was carrying him over there in a little old

rumble seat car and he was sitting in the back and he told her said stop the

car I lost my hat. So she stopped the car and he got out and told her said

go ahead, I ain’t going no further. So he turned and went by and went by

this house where he was supposed to be going to get the settlement and he

saw a crowd of men had crowded up there and women folks and all and

they was planning on killing him for they just had killed – the man was

supposed to be killing my daddy, he killed one while we was staying on

his place when he took our crop. So my daddy wouldn’t go. He come

James Hall 4

back home and told us the story. So we worked on two or three years with

his sister, 1930. We worked, let’s see, ’33, we worked three years there

and we left there and we moved to Shingle, Georgia. In 1933 we moved

to Shingle, Georgia and we stayed there. At the same time we all was

members of a church called St. Paul Isabella and we all joined church and

was baptized in 1932. Most all my sisters and brothers, we all was

baptized the same day along with some more guests and family, other

people, children of other people. So we left and moved to Shingle and we

joined Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in 1933 and where my daddy had

traded the farm with another landlord, so we started to farming there and

we farmed there for quite a few years. And in farming there, let’s see, we

farmed there about five, yeah, about five years we farmed there.

Hunter: Could you describe what farming was like?

Hall: Oh, yeah. Farming was like we were supposed to be planting cotton,

peanuts, and corn and velvet beans. The velvet beans were for the cows

and the corn was for the mule and hogs. So we raised hogs, raised some

cows, and we raised, at that particular time we raised chickens. We raised

like, in the springtime of the year we had fryers to last us all the year. We

would raise something like twenty-five, thirty, forty and fifty. We have

had as high as eighty fryers coming up during the spring of the year so

we’d have something to eat after Christmas.

Hunter: What were the fryers?

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Hall: Chickens, yeah. I call them fryers. Well, we called them chickens.

Somebody these days call them birds but anyway, they were chickens that

were raised on the farm as we go through. But we worked, made a good

crop practically every year. George Sumner was the man’s name that we

were farming with.

Hunter: Is this the same man that tried to kill your daddy?

Hall: Naw, that’s was Islend Moulree did that.

Hunter: Repeat his name.

Hall: Islend Moulree.

Hunter: Moulree, what’s his first name?

Hall: Islend.

Hunter: How do you spell that?

Hall: It was I-S-L-S-E-N-D I reckon, Islend Moulree. He’s the guy tried to kill

us. So anyway, tried to kill my daddy. Anyway, we moved on, we lived

there with George Sumner for five years and we made good crops and he

wasn’t like the other landlords around. He never did threaten to take our

crop. He was a man that loaned you money and give you a ticket. Every

time he give you a check he write it on your book so when fall come he

would take his book and our book and analyze it and he paid us according

to what we had on the book. And he was nice to us. We prospered there.

We stayed there and after that I married in 1938, I married and we went to

farming, we were farming on the same George Sumner’s place and we, me

and my wife, we farming for ourselves. My daddy died, we had to farm

James Hall 6

for my mother. We had to farm for my granddaddy and his family. So me

and my two brothers, my one brother, my twin brother, that’s all I had, we

had to work for all them folks.

Hunter: You and your brother were the only two kids?

Hall: Yeah, only two, only two boys.

Hunter: Oh, okay, how many children?

Hall: We had five sisters and two boys. There were seven of us. And we had to

do all the work after my daddy died and we took care of them until we

married and then on after we married we stayed there two years after that

on George Sumner’s place then I was able to buy, I cleared enough money

to buy me two mules and a two-horse wagon and I got half of my corn and

velvet beans and stuff like that. That’s in order so I could make a crop

when I moved. So I rented me some land. I went over on Dr. Sumner’s

place and I rented me a farm and on that farm we worked hard. That was

1920, I married in 1938, this was ’39. So anyway, we worked there ’39

and me and my wife, we were hard workers. We made a bountiful crop so

we, for the first time in history that we was able to clear eighteen hundred

dollars. That was a heap of money.

Hunter: Off of one crop?

Hall: Off of one crop, yeah. We cleared eighteen hundred dollars and we was

able to finish paying for our mules, wagon, cows, hogs and then maintain

enough hogs and chickens and things to make another crop. So we made

James Hall 7

another crop there and made good that year. And the next year the guy

thought I was making too much money.

Hunter: Who was that?

Hall: Okay, Dr. Sumner thought I was making too much money by renting the

land but he wanted me to rent the land and he boss it and sell the crops and

I wouldn’t let him do it. So me and him had a kick-up over it and I

wouldn’t let him do it so before I’d do that I move. I went across Shingle

five miles from where I was and rented me a farm. Old man Daniel, from

a white man I rented a farm from old man Daniel, was a three-horse farm.

I rented it and moved over there and I had a half cropper. I got me a half

cropper to help me.

Hunter: What is a half cropper?

Hall: Oh okay, it was a man and his wife that were working on halves with me.

I was trying to name the person. Lolly, what was them folks worked with

us on Daniels’ place? Them colored folks. (Mrs. Hall responds.)

Grimsley, Grimsley and his wife worked for us on Daniels’ place while

we was there. So we stayed there, we farmed there two years. We farmed

there two, three years and we made a bountiful crop there on Daniels’

place. Then we made enough money, we cleared enough money as to

save some money to buy us a little strip of land. So we sold a hundred and

fifty, two hundred and fifty dollars worth of watermelons that year.

Hunter: What were some of the prices like? How much did a watermelon cost?

Hall: Watermelon was bringing?

James Hall 8

Hunter: How much were velvet beans? How much was corn? How much was

mules? How much did you pay for them?

Hall: Yeah well, the price of mules back in that day, I had to give six hundred

and fifty dollars for two mules.

Hunter: Oh, okay. This was in the late 1930’s?

Hall: This was in the late, yeah, yeah. This was in ’33, ’34. This was ’40. I

married in 1938 and this was in ’39 that I bought, we made enough money

as I foresaid on this place to buy this stuff and then we moved from there

over to Mr. Daniels’ place then I bought two more mules. I give about I

believe right at five hundred dollars for them two. So Grimsley and his

wife took and farmed with me and my wife, half cropped, and we made a

good crop that year. We worked there another year, we paid off our bills

that year and we worked there another year and we made a bountiful crop

that year. So we saved the money that we made. The first money we

saved we sold watermelons for thirty or forty cents a piece and come up

with two hundred and fifty dollars. So we hid it under the rug.

Hunter: The money?

Hall: Hid the money under the rug until August, September.

Hunter: Why did you hide the money under the rug?

Hall: Well, we didn’t want to put it in the bank because this is the money we

were going to save to buy us a farm with. So we saved the money, we hid

the money and saved it and in July when I laid by, I took a stroll down to

Madge, Georgia.

James Hall 9

Hunter: Where?

Hall: Madge, Georgia.

Hunter: Madge, Georgia?

Hall: Yeah, it was an old man down there owned a farm out to Shingle, Pleasant

Grove, out to Shingle. He owned this farm but he lived in Madge,

Georgia.

Hunter: How far from Shingle is that?

Hall: Shingle is five miles from here.

Hunter: How far to Madge, Georgia?

Hall: Madge, Georgia was about sixty-five or seventy miles from here. He lived

there so I went on the bus down there and got off the bus at his house and I

went in there and set down and talked with him. He was sitting on the

back porch and he invited me in, went on and set down and we got to

talking and I told him a story. I said that me and my wife, just got one or

two children, I believe I had two then, I said we need somewhere to stay.

I said you got a little old farm out there I’d like to buy. He says oh, yeah.

He said yeah, them there crackers out there are trying to beat me out of it.

Hunter: Was he white?

Hall: Yeah, he was white.

Hunter: Do you remember his name?

Hall: His name was, oh, look like I would know. Ought not to never forgot the

cracker’s name but my mother suffered with Alzheimer’s and I is too.

What you call old timers, you forgetful, you know, it’s possible you

James Hall 10

forget. But anyway, this guy, let’s see what his name was, maybe I’ll

come back to it and we can add it in somewhere. I paid him the two

hundred and fifty dollars you know I said I hid? I gave it to the man down

on the place. It was sixty acres of land and he sold me the sixty acres of

land for thirty-nine hundred dollars.

Hunter: Thirty-nine hundred dollars?

Hall: Yeah, that was cheap.

Hunter: That was cheap?

Hall: Yeah, that was cheap. Thirty-nine hundred dollars, I bought it then I come

on back and I told him when I finished gathering my crops I would come

finish making the down payment. I just give him two hundred and fifty

dollars, you know, when I was down there and trading for it. And so when

I did I went down there and I paid him all I could pay him. I had to leave

enough money to operate the next year. So I went down there and I paid

him and he give me a copy of the deeds, we made up some deeds, he give

me a copy of the deeds and all. Then I come back home and built, that

same year, 1942, I built a house, I built a barn, I built a cow stall, I built a

little pasture for my hogs and cows and turned loose and I farmed.

Hunter: This was on your own land?

Hall: This was on my own land. I just had bought this sixty acres and this was

my own land. So I built all this stuff on my own land. So then I worked

that land there and I rented about, I don’t know, I rented about four

hundred acres of land, three or four hundred acres of land and I put two

James Hall 11

half croppers on it. I put John Tow and James Lamar. They half cropped

with me. And my brother, I let him have enough to rent, he was renting

from me. So I took it from there and went on that year, we made a good

crop that year. Everybody made a good crop and we cleared pretty good

money so I decided I needed some more land. So I went tried to get some

more land away from home but I couldn’t make it. But in the deal at this

sixty acres when I moved there then I was joining some whites, some

crackers, you know. I was joining they farms.

Hunter: What do you mean you were joining their farms?

Hall: My line fence, that split us, you know. I was on this side and he was on

that side. So he claimed during the, John Bachelor claimed during the

years we was there, the first year we were there that his hogs got out on

me and I took part of them. So me and him had a big blowing out because

I didn’t take nary one. We had a big blowing out and I stood hard against

him.

Hunter: How did the blowing out take place? What happened ()?

Hall: Well yeah, he said to me no wonder you got so many hogs to go to the

sale, said you got a ditch cut out under the wire, you know, where my hogs

could come on over there and you’re selling them. Man, I blowed him up

and told him how big a liar he was. I said if you find any hog on the sale

belong to you I’d like for you to describe him. And so he went on back

home and he told his folks I was a crazy nigger. Said that James Hall over

yonder, he’s crazy. Said he ain’t got good sense. Said he over there, my

James Hall 12

hogs getting under the fence and it was the biggest lie he ever told. The

hogs didn’t even root against the fence. So anyway, we went later on my

cows got out, my cows got out and he got out in the road and he drove

them up the road and put them in his pen, you know, in his barn.

Hunter: The same white man who lived next door?

Hall: Yeah, John Bachelor, yeah, same white guy. Then when I got over there

to get them, to get my cows, twenty-five dollars, that’s what I had to pay

him to get my cows out of the pen where he had them locked up.

Hunter: Did you pay the twenty-five dollars?

Hall: Yeah, I paid him the twenty-five dollars and got my cows and carried

them home.

Hunter: Why did you have to pay to get them out?

Hall: Huh?

Hunter: Why did you have to pay twenty-five dollars to get them out?

Hall: Oh, he said they was going to eat up his crop, they didn’t allow it, at that

particular time, now they don’t allow other folks stock to go on their place

and eat up their crops. They put them up and charge them a fee and some

of them go out there and kill them, white folks do.

Hunter: This was fair?

Hall: That was fair but they could overcharge you. He overcharged me cause

the cows didn’t get out the road. What they done, he had his hands to

push the cows in up there and headed the cows right off the highway, right

off the public road right into the barn and he ain’t never () his place, () to

James Hall 13

eat nothing. But he charged me just because he’s mean enough. That was

his trouble, he was just mean. So on down in the year, fall of the year, we

had stacked our peanuts and put them on the pole. You put up the pole

and then you stack the peanuts around the pole, up like that getting ready

for them to dry to thrash. His old cows come over there and got on my

peanuts and went to eating them. So I went over there and told John

Bachelor I said your cows are over yonder eating up my peanuts, tearing

my stack down. I said I want you to come over there and get them. He

got his hands and he rushed over there and got them and brought them

back home.

Hunter: He didn’t pay you?

Hall: Naw. He asked me he said how much I owe you. I said not a dime.

Hunter: Why didn’t you want him to pay you?

Hall: Well, if anybody’s mean to you you’ve got to be nice to them and this is

the reason I didn’t charge him nothing. I wanted to let him know that the

cows didn’t ruin me and didn’t eat up much of my stuff. Therefore, I

didn’t charge him not nary dime. So he come got them, put them back in

his pasture. About two days later they was out again. I went right back

over there and told him the same story and he come out there and got

them. How much do I owe you. I said not a thing. I said just keep them

up til I get my peanuts thrashed and if they get over there then they ain’t

going to bother me, you know, won’t worry me after I get my peanuts

thrashed, you know, if they walk across my land. So he come over there

James Hall 14

and got them and put them back in his pasture and later on down the line

his wife told him said you keep bellyaching about James Hall, said James

Hall’s a nice fellow. He said I don’t know, I don’t know, he’s tell to be a

little better than I thought he was. She said yeah, he’s a nice man. So he

died, his buddy died and left two hundred acres of land and the line fence

through there. His buddy owned this side next to my farm. Steve

Bowington is his name. Steve Bowington, alright, owned two hundred

acres of land next to my land and Steve Bowington told his daughters just

before he died said when ya’ll get ready to sell that two hundred acres of

land said ya’ll give James Hall the first offer. He’s the man that me and

him like to had a little shooting scrape. He come to my house going to

make me move and I told him yeah, the only way I’ll go away from here is

he’s going to have to tote me away from here dead. I’m not going no

other way. I said if that be the case, this morning would be a good time to

go. I started back to the house and he hauled off and left. Went back and

told them niggers I was a crazy nigger. So sure enough when he died,

when he died, old Steve Bowington died and he told his daughters says

James is a nice man. He’s better than I thought he was. We found that

he’s a nice fellow. Said if ya’ll get ready to sell them two hundred acres

I’m willing ya’ll, there was two sisters, said you give James Hall the first

offer. So sure enough, they called me down in that next year, called me

over the telephone, said this is James Hall. I said yes ma’am, this is him.

I just wanted to talk with you. Said my daddy, he knew you and we got a

James Hall 15

place there by you, the place Steve Bowington had, he willed it to me and

my sister. Said he told me, we’re ready to sell it and said he told me that if

you get ready to sell it, ya’ll give me the first offer. Sure enough, they

said do you want it. I said yeah, I want it. So we went on, I said I’ll be

down there Monday to make a down payment on it. So sure enough, we

went down there, I made a down payment on the two hundred acres of

land and come back and went to the government, Farmers Home

Administration, to borrow enough money to finish paying for it because

they wanted….

Hunter: Which government agency did you go to?

Hall: Farmers Home Administration. We’ve got it here in Sylvester, Farmers

Home Administration. It’s a company buy land for people, furnish money

to buy land. So I come there to borrow the money from the company and

the old boss man what was operating the office, he was operating the

business for the Farmers Home Administration, he took all my application

and everything. My rep proved that they could loan me some money on

my rep, you know. I had a good rep. So anyway, he said well, I’m

sending after the money. And we just had a set time to, you know, you

got to put up a down payment and it last sixty days or six months,

whatever time you set up. When that time out the money you put up you

lose every dime of it cause you didn’t close the deal out. So anyway, had

my money held up there and I’m wanting the place too. So I had to fight

him like I don’t know, I had to worry him day after day trying to get him

James Hall 16

to get me that money so I could pay for that place before the deadline

come. The old agent was (). His name was G.E. () or something. But

anyway, he was the man that was supposed to been the man letting me

have the money, the government letting me have the money, you know, to

buy the place. He got to fooling around there and he messed with me. My

boy come in from Florida I said run me to Athens, Georgia. So he run me

up to Athens, Georgia that next day and we got up there, it was a big time

colored fellow, he was holding an office there.

Hunter: What did you have to go to Athens, Georgia for?

Hall: They were the head of all of this money that I was wanting to borrow, you

now, from FHA but the big office was in Athens, Georgia.

Hunter: Was it a black man who ran that office?

Hall: Black man running it. It was four of them there, three whites and one

colored. I got there and told my story. Man, that Negro went to raising

sand and them other white folks got to raising sand. So they set up a line

where everybody would have a telephone, put me on one and all four of

them had one and then they called this cracker in Sylvester. (Laughter)

Man, they blowed him some! Said if you don’t have that money there

before closing today, and see coming up that Friday was my closing date.

If I hadn’t closed it then them folks would have took the money I had

deposited down on it and then didn’t have to sell me the place. So I was

wanting the place more than I did the deposit but anyway, we got on the

telephone and when I come from work that day, I usually go by there

James Hall 17

every evening cause time was pushing me, you know, to have the money

so I could finish paying them two women off for the place. Sure enough,

when I got there that day and stepped up there and pulled the door open,

oh yeah, I know you’re happy! You ain’t smiling. I said I don’t know

nothing to smile about. He said your money done come. Told that lie, it

had been there for the longest, didn’t want me to have the place. So

anyway, come on, get your wife Friday and let’s go ahead and buy it, pay

for it. Sure enough, we went on down there and they paid everybody off

and we paid for the farm and we come on home. So we went to farming

on it. We farmed there til five years ago. We farmed there until then.

Then we rented it and stayed off it four years or something like that.

Hunter: So you stayed on that land for…

Hall: Them two hundred acres, see that made me had two hundred and sixty

acres. That give me two hundred and sixty acres of land all total.

Hunter: And you farmed that ever since?

Hall: We farmed it til five years ago.

Mrs. Hall: No, it’s been more than five years ago. We stopped farming and rented it

awhile and then went back to farming.

Hall: Yeah, but I was just trying to kill it out on one deal. But what time this

was then, go ahead.

Mrs. Hall: I don’t know but it was further than that back I know cause we stopped

farming for four or five years or something and then we ().

James Hall 18

Hall: Yeah but I can’t remember the dates so I just said we stopped farming for

five or six years and I went back and I farmed four more years and saw

that it looked like things was getting tough like it is now. Crops was hard

to make. Drought was eating us up, so I quit again. So I leased it. But

during this time I was fortunate enough to own over a hundred, most of

the time I’ve had over a hundred head of hogs during farming on this land.

The highest head of cows I’ve had, I had a hundred and one head of cattle

that I was farming on this same land that I tell you, the two hundred acres

I bought from them women. So we farmed on that land until we quit five

years and then we went back and started up five more and we quit and

today we’re sitting down here in town. We put, me and my boy went out

there and we planted a hundred and seventy-five acres of pine trees on it

and a fellow leasing it now, Charlie Nelson. He’s leasing the farm now,

he rents it. We rent and he pays us the rent and this is how we survive

through the rent process. So he pay us rent every year and then the pine

tree man, they pay us for planting them pines and then turn around they

pay us monthly or yearly and they give this check comes in every October.

Every year in October they send us a check and they’ll send this check for

ten years and after ten years they don’t send nary nother one. So if I live

the ten years out we can go in there and we can sell fence posts to start

with. Then we can go in there and we can sell, next thing we can sell

telegram posts. And the next thing we can sell, we can sell sawmill wood,

timber. We can sell timber for sawmill purpose, that is to cut lumber out

James Hall 19

of. So we got three steps there that we can take whoever lives to see it.

But when you start planting pine trees and waiting on them to get grown

sometimes you go down one or two generations see to get to that point.

Hunter: Back in the earlier days when you first started out with your farm when

you first got the two hundred and sixty acres, were there many other black

people who owned their own land?

Hall: No, not many. Just steady as they tried to own something they went to

losing it. They () round and wouldn’t do justify it and crackers would beat

them out of it.

Hunter: But you since you were one of the very few or one of the only ones to own

your own land, was that very difficult? Did you get a lot of harassment

from the white community?

Hall: Oh yeah, when I was working for the NAACP, I joined the NAACP and I

fought them like fighting a mule.

Hunter: When did you join the NAACP?

Hall: Let me see, way back in 194-, around, yeah, it was when they were

starting the school bus. I started then. That was around ’50, it was in the

‘50s, right at ’50, right in the ‘50s and I fought them jokers for year after

year until it ain’t been too long. I give out down the line.

Hunter: What were some of the activities ()?

Hall: A heap of it. When they found out that I was president of the…

Hunter: Of the local chapter?

Hall: Yeah.

James Hall 20

Hunter: Was the chapter in Sylvester?

Hall: Sylvester, yeah, local chapter here in Sylvester. So they harassed me so

they come out there and near about arrest me every day sometime they

would arrest me and put me and put me in jail.

Hunter: Why?

Hall: Say I run a stop sign, that I had a taillight wasn’t right, just anything, you

know, to lock me up.

Hunter: What kind of activities was your chapter of the NAACP doing during that

time?

Hall: Huh?

Hunter: What kind of work were you doing with the NAACP?

Hall: Oh, we were marching, trying to open up the bank, to put a man in the

bank or woman in the bank or somebody in the bank. We were trying to

open up the stores, trying to open up the restrooms. They wouldn’t allow

us to drink out of the fountains. Eating places, we couldn’t go in there.

Couldn’t ride on the bus. So we had all that to go through with. Then

they found out I’m president and they wanted somebody they could pick

on because most of the black folks was working for the white man and

they didn’t want to do nothing to damage the white man. So what they’d

do for us, they’d come out and cut my fence where my cows would get

out. They stole a bunch of them. They put a beat up, poisoned my cows

and put beat up glass in there so when the cows eat the food it would go

through their bowels and cut their inside and they’d bleed. And they’d

James Hall 21

shoot my hogs. They done some of everything. They come and burnt two

or three crosses. Burnt up one of my pecan trees, just about burnt it up, in

my yard.

Hunter: Now was this, you mentioned the crosses… (End of Side A)

Side B

Hall: Okay. They burnt crosses and they put a bomb in our mailbox.

Hunter: Put a bomb in your mailbox?

Hall: Yeah. And they done all kinds of nasty things like that. They did it

several times, cut my fence and let my cows out.

Hunter: And at this time you said you were living, where were you living?

Hall: I was living out on the farm.

Hunter: Where was that?

Hall: Shingle. Our farm is out there four and a half miles from here. So we

were staying on the farm there and they come out there and burnt a cross,

set it up in the tree where it burnt up my pecan tree. And every time we

was in town if they didn’t arrest me they’d try to pull my children, you

know, make like they was running too fast and all this type of stuff.

Hunter: So these cops when they would arrest you and send you to jail, how would

you get out?

Hall: The NAACP, we had a way of getting them out of jail. Folks in Atlanta

and around, way up in New York City, they would be sending us money

all the time helping us back here to try to free this country where we could

survive better than what we was. So they were sending us money and

James Hall 22

every time they’d put one in jail, when I was president I’d have to go over,

we had to go way over to different towns and get the boys out of jail

where they done locked them down. So we go over and bond them down

in Tipton, we bond some out in Tipton. We bond them out here. Fill up

this jail here and then turn around, we’d bond them out off of somebody’s

money. I don’t know exactly all the places the money was coming from

but it was coming out of New York. Ted, Ted, what is his name, Ted,

what’s Ted’s name, Ted what?

Mrs. Hall: Who you talking about?

Hall: President’s son, Ted?

Mrs. Hall: President? Ted Kennedy?

Hall: Ted Kennedy, I’m talking about Ted Kennedy. Old Ted Kennedy sent us

a whole lot of money too. He sent up a bunch of money. He sent us a lot

of money and some of these crackers around here, we were fortunate

enough to get some money out of them. So we fought it on up until we

just about opened up everything like fountains and bathrooms and eating

places and all of that. We got all that kind of settled and I was getting old

and I decided I’d wing off from it.

Hunter: How many people were in this chapter, in your chapter?

Hall: Oh, we have had as high as three hundred across the board.

Hunter: And they were all black?

Hall: Yeah, they were all black excusing one or two. We had one or two whites

was a member of it.

James Hall 23

Mrs. Hall: Some whites that came in here ().

Hall: Yeah.

Hunter: You mentioned how the Ku Klux Klan and other white hate groups would

burn crosses and try to hurt your animals and things like that. What kind

of responses could you, what could you do, what did you do?

Hall: I couldn’t do much. I’d tell the sheriff. Sheriff said we tell lies. Man

come out there and burn a cross right in our yard and we come down here

and told the sheriff. I told the sheriff that somebody burnt a cross in the

yard and we were trying to find out who he was and he said, ain’t nobody

burnt a cross. You don’t know who he was. I said I don’t know, I said but

let me tell you one thing man, they ever burn another cross out there I say

you’re going to be able to come there and pull the hood off him and find

out who it is. This is the high sheriff I was talking to.

Hunter: Who was the sheriff at that time?

Hall: Hudson, Sheriff Hudson, he was the sheriff at that time. And boy, he got

mad as foxfire, my wife she told him off too. So I said just as sure as you

woke up this morning, just as sure as Christ lived, if they keep burning

crosses you’re going to know who they is, I said cause I’m going to kill

him. So they didn’t burn nary nother one soon. They went and throwed

some sticks of crosses out there, set them afire you know and drive by.

But coming there and setting up another one, they never set up no more.

So anyway, life has been rough, has been good and has been rough. So we

then went to hauling children coming out of high school to different places

James Hall 24

trying to get them started to learning how to, well they was learning how

to do different jobs, training. I used to haul all them () down to Moultrie

and they was down there training to get better jobs, you know, and go to

college. So most of them found favors in going so much in so until they,

about half of them, over half of them finished college by we working with

them. Of course, didn’t most of the brothers didn’t want to spend the

money to carry them down there. Nobody wasn’t paying me but we was

in pretty good shape. I’d haul them down there and didn’t charge them

nothing.

Hunter: Could I ask you to go back into early in your boyhood to talk about your

grandparents and whatever relationship you had with them. Do you

remember your grandparents?

Hall: Yeah, I know what Mama told me about my grandparents. My mother,

her people come from overseas, her daddy.

Hunter: From where?

Hall: Well, they were floated in here from overseas, they were brought in here

by the white man. White man brought them over here in this country.

What happened, he brought the daddy, he brought the mama over here and

let’s see, my mother’s mother, they’re Indians. My mother was a half

Indian.

Hunter: ()?

Hall: Yeah, half black and half Indian.

Hunter: Where did her father come from?

James Hall 25

Hall: He was already here. He come from overseas. They brought her mama

and her parents over here. They had children by these black women and

my mother come along.

Hunter: Do you know where from overseas they brought them?

Hall: Africa. Well, it had to be Africa. Where else were they going to come

from? Well, they brought them over here from Africa.

Mrs. Hall: You know all these black folks in America () they brought from Africa but

we don’t know nothing about no Africa here. (Laughter)

Hunter: You never heard a name, ()?

Hall: No, not particular, but they brought them from across the water and they

brought them here but her mama, her daddy was a, well, her daddy was a

Indian, his mama was a Indian. And her mama, they brought them here in

slavery time, and said that then her daddy was a Cherokee Indian, my

mother’s daddy.

Hunter: So your grandfather?

Hall: Yeah, my granddaddy was a, he was a Indian, half Indian, that’s my

granddaddy and my mother, she was a half Indian. Therefore, my uncle

he got the most of, well, he didn’t get as much as she got but he had hair

that long, black as smut and it never did turn white, stayed black. When I

come along he was fixing to die. I had a chance to see my granddaddy

just a few, maybe a year before he died. So he was a Indian and they all

come from the Indian tribe and this is how they come and was mixed up

here among these white folks that float these Negroes in here to work for

James Hall 26

them. So it was a pretty sad situation. My great grand on my

grandmama’s side, my daddy’s side, on my daddy’s side she had two

sisters that we seen them. They come over, they were sold to some of

them old gypsies and they had ships on the water and they were sold to

them fellows that operate them ships, the boss man and they had to work

on this ship and didn’t see home but once a year. Every Christmas she’d

come by my grandmama’s and them and spend the night and the next day

they’d pick her up and put her back on that water.

Hunter: Where would they get off of the ship at, where?

Hall: (Laughter) I can’t figure it out. It had to be, it couldn’t have been in

Albany, it had to be up the country further. I () tried to ask about where

they were getting off at but they’d get to the water my grandma said and

they’d catch the train and come home. So it must have been up the

country a little piece, up there somewhere. She’d catch the train and come

home. My granddaddy would put her on the train the next day and send

her back. Sometimes they’d let her spend two days with us, you know.

So that’s the most time they would let her stay and she was a slave. She

was in slavery. She was working for them crackers in slavery. She didn’t

worry about it. She’d come there and time she’d get home she’d start to

helping Mama cook. Mama always was slow anyway cooking and boy,

she’d get in that kitchen and you talking about cooking and cooking, she’d

just cook the whole time she was there and wouldn’t let us children come

in the kitchen. Get out of here! (Laughter) She’d raise sand with us the

James Hall 27

whole time she was here trying to keep us out of the kitchen out of their

way. But anyway, it’s a long story. I wish I could have kept up with it

more than I did. I was trying to think about…

Hunter: What kind of food did ya’ll eat when your mother cooked? What did ya’ll

eat for breakfast and lunch and dinner?

Hall: Oh, what breakfast? Okay, we eat ham meat for breakfast mostly. If not

that we eat middling, bacon, hog bacon, pork bacon. They called it

middling.

Hunter: Middling?

Hall: Middling, yeah.

Mrs. Hall: That’s what they make the bacon out of, that part.

Hunter: Oh, that’s a part of the hog?

Hall: Yeah, that’s part of the hog. Yeah, that’s how they make the breakfast

bacon.

Hunter: And what else would ya’ll have?

Hall: And ham, we could eat ham for breakfast, then we eat ham for supper.

Lord, you could smell it from here downtown when they started cooking.

That’s the best smelling stuff you ever saw in your life. So anyway, we

were raised up off of a lot of pork. And once in awhile my granddaddy

and another old man, once in awhile they’d get out, see back in that day

they didn’t have no fences for cows. Cows run everywhere, just cows.

And they’d get out there and kill them one and bring him in that night and

James Hall 28

butcher him and we’d have beef, something we don’t usually have but we

had beef back in that day.

Hunter: What other kind of food?

Hall: Huh?

Hunter: What other kind of food did ya’ll eat?

Hall: Plenty of fish.

Hunter: Fish?

Hall: (Laughter) Yeah, go to a mud hole and get tin tubs of fishes, yeah. Back

in that day, I don’t know how come the fish growed so fast or something

happened to them but you can’t go there and get them now. But back in

that day we’d go around there to a little mud hole and we’d carry a

number two foot tub full and get it half full of fishes and tote them back up

there to the house. Most of them though, a whole of them was big ones

but most of the time the cats was about as big as your two fingers and we

had to clean all them cats.

Hunter: Catfish?

Hall: Catfishes. We’d be way in the night cleaning catfish but we’d get them.

Boy, we’d eat up some.

Hunter: Most of the food you ate, the hogs were from your own hogs and you

raised the cows?

Hall: Yeah, cows and hogs.

Mrs. Hall: Milk and butter, eggs.

Hall: And fish, we eat a lot of fish back in that day.

James Hall 29

Hunter: Did you have to buy anything from the store?

Hall: Yeah, we had to buy coffee, sugar.

Mrs. Hall: Flour. You make your meal out of corn what you raised.

Hall: Yeah, went to buying rice after so long. We used to make rice.

Hunter: Where did you buy these things that you needed?

Hall: Huh?

Hunter: Where did you buy the stuff that you needed?

Hall: Oh, little country store. Most of the time a little old country store about

big as this room here. Some of them won’t big as this. Bout this size.

Hunter: Was that in Sylvester or out in the country?

Hall: When we moved from Worth County it was here but when we was in Lee

County it was a little old store setting side the railroad wasn’t no bigger, it

was a little bit bigger than this room here.

Hunter: Did you pay with money or would you trade?

Hall: Well, my daddy, they let him trade on credit but he had to pay, you know.

(Laughter) They’d go up there and get anything they wanted on credit and

then a set time he’d have to go and pay it. So he paid his debt. Them

Negroes know to pay it, them cracker beat them to death.

Hunter: What did you say?

Hall: Back in that day them crackers would beat them to death.

Mrs. Hall: Well, they could get their money if you work because they didn’t have

nothing to do but keep it. (Laughter) Such as it was, whatever they pay

James Hall 30

you a day they took theirs out. That’s how you paid your debt. They had

the money, you didn’t have any.

Hall: (Laughter) I was about a mile or two from where I was born at, old

Rambeauts, they stayed over there.

Hunter: Who’s that?

Hall: A big white section of white folks stayed over there.

Hunter: Could you describe what the community was like in Worth County where

you lived? Like did most black people live together or did, did black

people live separate from white people? Was there interaction? How did

people get along?

Hall: They got along pretty good later years but they stayed, just like a man had

a turpentine farm, he just build a bunch of shacks, you know, and build

them close together.

Mrs. Hall: On the farm too, they’d be ().

Hall: No, they wasn’t as thick as they was. They’d build them there houses,

them folks were working turpentine and they’d build them shacks. The

old shack just had one room and a kitchen, something like that.

Sometimes they had two rooms, depends on the family and that’s how

they survived. Then the white man, he stayed up the road further and

sometimes it was two or three of them built up there not far from one

another, you know, like that. They didn’t build theirs jam up like they did

the blacks. But the black man has really caught it but now they’ve moved,

James Hall 31

all the Negroes now have done moved to town, (). It ain’t over twenty

percent of the black folks stay in the country, if it’s twenty percent.

Hunter: Why did most people move to town?

Hall: They couldn’t get nothing to do, the crackers…

Mrs. Hall: The land belonged to the white people.

Hall: Land belonged to them and they took it.

Mrs. Hall: Tractors.

Hall: And chemicals and stuff.

Mrs. Hall: Didn’t have to hoe their crops.

Hall: Didn’t have to have nobody.

Mrs. Hall: Cotton pickers, peanut shakers and all that stuff, they didn’t need no

people then. So that’s what’s caused the black folks to have to migrate

into town to work.

Hall: So they stay in town. Some of them go back out and help them on the

farm.

Mrs. Hall: Yeah, once in awhile they need a few to come out there and help.

Hall: Mostly now they’re using Mexicans. All them foreigners have done took

over out there. When they go to gathering their crops, watermelons and

all that stuff, you might see a black man out there once in awhile.

Mrs. Hall: Them who will work at all. Black folks don’t want to work on no farm

now. (Laughter) They () when they were working on the farm. () around

town and find them something else to do.

James Hall 32

Hall: So the average Negro now, they fight hard now to try to have something

and save something, buy them a house in town or rent them a house in

town and fight to stay there. And this is how everybody’s having to do it

now. Of course, we didn’t have to move to town but we did. So anyway,

we stay here. We got two houses out there on the farm that we could stay

in maybe, one of them, but we stay here in town.

Hunter: What were some of the best times and some of the hardest times in your

life?

Hall: Oh, the hardest time in my life was back coming out of Hoover days. We

had it pretty rough then.

Hunter: What was rough about it?

Hall: So much, it was kind of rough on clothes. You couldn’t get much to wear.

You couldn’t get no clothes to wear worth nothing.

Mrs. Hall: Things hit rock bottom for some reason. Of course, I was really small. I

didn’t know too much about it but I remember it.

Hall: Yeah, it run a little rough. Mama, it kept Mama patching all the time.

Hunter: Patching?

Hall: Yeah, patching clothes, putting patches on clothes where it’s done wore

knee out and all that stuff. She’d spend several hours patching in the run

of a week

Hunter: What were some of the other difficulties?

Hall: We had, first, we stayed on the farm. That makes a little difference. We

were raising our cows and hogs, meat and stuff like that. Everything we

James Hall 33

wanted to eat we could raise it right there on the farm. Therefore, as far as

that part of it we never did suffer for food. The only thing we suffered for

clothes.

Mrs. Hall: And money.

Hall: And money.

Mrs. Hall: To buy clothes.

Hall: Yeah, so we suffered for money to buy clothes with.

Mrs. Hall: There wasn’t no jobs.

Hall: It wasn’t no jobs available to get money.

Mrs. Hall: () lived on the farms, it was a lot of them came off in those, what you call

them, () or something. Wasn’t no money. You couldn’t spend it nowhere

but on the white man’s place (). Commissary they called it.

Hall: We worked for, run of a day we got twenty-five cents a day.

Mrs. Hall: Men used to work for twenty-five and thirty cents a day.

Hunter: What kind of jobs?

Hall: Farming, out there hoeing cotton, peanuts, yeah, plowing. It didn’t make

no difference what it is, had to hit it. You know, where it was a family

and they stood together, they ate good. (Mrs. Hall speaking at the same

time as Mr. Hall. Can’t understand what she is saying.)

Hunter: Who?

Hall: Where there was a family that, you know, stuck together.

Mrs. Hall: Ate good, they ate pretty good. (Laughter)

James Hall 34

Hall: Yeah, what they’d do, everybody be working public work, they go out

there, the children make twenty-five cents a day and the mama and the

daddy make thirty cents a day.

Mrs. Hall: I don’t know. That’s so far back I don’t hardly know what they made

then. Something like that though

Hall: I know that was what it was. That’s right, was paying me and George

twenty-five cents a day and my sister.

Mrs. Hall: I think by then some of them times they was paying about seventy-five

cents.

Hall: They come to giving more but in 19—

Mrs. Hall: I remember my daddy used to plow for a dollar a day. He didn’t ever

make a whole week because it would rain, you know.

Hall: In 1928 we worked for twenty-five cents a day, and the sun, you had to be

there when the sun rises. Be sitting in the field when the sun come up.

That’s right and you stay there until the sun go down. But only reason

families survived they put their money together like it was five or six of us

children that were working and all of us were working for twenty-five

cents a day. Now we would work a whole week. Sometimes we’d make a

whole week and when the week come we’d pool that money and my

daddy, they would go into town and buy enough groceries to last you all

week and then some with that money. But they didn’t have nothing to buy

no clothes with. So this is how we survived, yeah. But it was rough. And

I’m going to tell you right now, you can fool around right now and get in a

James Hall 35

mess, the days we’re living now. You can get hungry now. It’s a heap a

folks now is hungry. They’re not capable of trying to cut corners and

work and make some money to survive on, they’re having it tough.

Hunter: What were some of the best times?

Hall: Oh, best times? Best time we and my wife had when we’d clear five or

six or seven or eight thousand dollars a year or maybe more, fifteen or

twenty thousand like that.

Hunter: Farming?

Hall: Yeah.

Mrs. Hall: Yeah, it got some better when people, they could rent land and buy a little

bit.

Hunter: What did people do for fun?

Hall: Huh?

Hunter: What did ya’ll do for fun in the early days?

Hall: Do for farming?

Hunter: No, for fun.

Mrs. Hall: Recreation.

Hall: Oh, we up and down the road, like the dirt road out there.

Mrs. Hall: Go through the bushes to the neighbor’s house.

Hall: Yeah, sometimes neighbors stayed right down the road there a little piece

and they had children and they didn’t do nothing but () all day.

James Hall 36

Mrs. Hall: A lot of times the women would visit but the men folks, they mostly

stayed separate off to their selves. Families didn’t have too much

recreation together and a lot of () they don’t now.

Hall: So children run up and down the road from one house to the other one all

day playing, ripping and playing. Mama, she’d be up there sitting on the

porch with other lady talking, running their mouth all the evening. Then

about sundown alright, children, let’s go home. All of them would bag up

and go in.

Hunter: Mrs. Hall, you said that women visited each other often. What did they

do?

Mrs. Hall: Well, sometimes they’d quilt together, stuff like that. Well, in my day that

wasn’t going on but I hear tell of it way back then. I have quilted at my

house by myself. They didn’t give quilting parties in my time.

Hall: In my day Mama and them were quilting. Wintertime, they’d do a lot of

quilting. It was cold weather and they’d meet up to one house and they’d

quilt this one a quilt today and tomorrow they’d go to Sister Sal’s house

and they’ll quilt one. Go over to Sister James’ house quilt one. Just like

that, that’s how they circled around.

Mrs. Hall: Yeah, that’s what I heard. It never did happen in my day.

Hall: Life has been something.

Hunter: Did you ever travel places long distances?

Hall: Travel?

Hunter: Yes.

James Hall 37

Hall: Far as I went down to Florida to work and back home and Atlanta to work

and back home.

Hunter: Why did you go to those places to work?

Hall: Get a job, I didn’t have nary one around here.

Hunter: What kind of work did do out there?

Hall: Oh, I finished concrete.

Hunter: In Florida or Atlanta?

Hall: In Florida. Carpenter, a plumber, built houses. This was me and my

brother’s occupation. I don’t know how many houses we have built. We

built houses, carpenter, lay bricks, like this here. We got a house out there

on our farm…

Mrs. Hall: We got two houses out there.

Hall: We got two houses out there but we laid the bricks, me and my brother

laid the bricks on one of them and I hired the other one laid. And you

can’t look at, they look better than these bricks do here.

Hunter: What did you do in Atlanta?

Hall: Atlanta? Finished concrete. Lord, poured concrete.

Hunter: When did you go to these two places? What year did you go to Florida

and Atlanta?

Hall: Oh, this was I’d say it’s been twenty years ago and twenty years ago

would be ’37. No, it would be more than that, ’47. It was around ’45 or

’48, somewhere like that.

Hunter: What impact did World War II have?

James Hall 38

Hall: Oh, impact? When it come along me and my brother registered to go to

the Army.

Hunter: You registered to go?

Hall: Yeah, we had to sign up to go and then you got to fill out an application

and if you got too may folks to feed back home they don’t want you.

They’ll make you stay home and feed them folks and that’s how come me

and my brother didn’t get to go.

Hunter: Oh, because you had to feed your family?

Hall: Yeah, too big a family so we had to stay there and take care of them.

Hunter: Did it seem like a lot of people from around here?

Hall: Yeah, it was a heap of folks left away from around here and went.

Hunter: Did it make it difficult to find work?

Hall: Well, we didn’t lose too many like getting killed over there, not from

around here. We was blessed. Every once in awhile they’d ship one in

that got killed over there but it didn’t happen too often. We were blessed

not to have like forty and fifty and a hundred like that at the time like I

hear them talk around on TV now.

Hunter: How did people take care of themselves out in the country when they were

sick?

Hall: When they were sick?

Hunter: Yes sir, what kind of health care?

Hall: Oh, get in the wagon and come to town. (Laughter)

Mrs. Hall: We didn’t have but one doctor mostly in town, one or two.

James Hall 39

Hall: We had doctors here, one or two doctors here and they hauled them over

here in the wagon to the doctor and get them out and the doctor would

make like he’d done done something to them. Put them back in the wagon

and go back home. (Laughter)

Mrs. Hall: Mostly home remedies.

Hunter: Home remedies?

Mrs. Hall: Mostly home remedies.

Hall: Yeah, we used a lot of home remedies.

Hunter: Like what?

Hall: Like turpentine and kerosene, castor oil.

Mrs. Hall: Herb teas and stuff like that.

Hall: Herb medicine. We used a lot of herb medicine.

Mrs. Hall: Castor oil and () and all that kind of stuff.

Hunter: Were there people who knew how to use these things?

Mrs. Hall: Yeah and people didn’t be sick like they do now. You didn’t hear tell of

nobody dying with no cancer and all that stuff.

Hall: Oh, no.

Mrs. Hall: That’s something come up later since I come up in the world. Didn’t

hardly ever have a neighbor to die.

Hall: Old yellow weed, stronger as putty and bitter.

Mrs. Hall: () have a fever () and give you some of that stuff and ().

Hall: My mother give us some of that stuff and then make us bathe in it.

Mrs. Hall: It would help too.

James Hall 40

Hall: Oh, yeah. You feel, the next morning the fever gone.

Mrs. Hall: Uh-huh, and we had to walk to school all the time. Our feet stayed wet

and cold all the winter but we didn’t hardly ever come down with a cold.

Do they give some ().

Hunter: Speaking of school, what was school like?

Mrs. Hall: Well, we had to walk three or four miles a day.

Hall: Six months, that’s all we’d go to school.

Mrs. Hall: Yeah well, one time it was what, five months?

Hall: Five and six, yeah. Yeah, that’s what it was.

Mrs. Hall: Then they make it out to nine months like it is now.

Hall: We didn’t have no nine months.

Mrs. Hall: Well, I went some.

Hall: You went nine. I didn’t go no nine months. We went like six months,

finished in four. It was good. Teachers, them there teachers I went to they

make you get their lessons.

Mrs. Hall: In that school, every school had one teacher.

Hall: Yeah, but they’ll make you get that lesson. Don’t worry about that.

Mrs. Hall: They taught from the first on up through the sixth, seventh grade in that

one school with one teacher every day. You got your lessons.

Hall: It was tough.

Mrs. Hall: (), Honey, you didn’t have many dummies didn’t know their lessons.

(Laughter)

James Hall 41

Hall: I had a, when I was coming up and got to be a yearling boy I went over to

Isabella to stay with my friend.

Hunter: Where’s Isabella?

Hall: Isabella, Georgia right across down there.

Mrs. Hall: Another community ().

Hall: Yeah, in another community. So I went over there to stay with him that

night and we played and played way in the night then I decided I wanted

to come home and I lived about four miles, between four and five miles

across. I come home by myself that night and man, it was so dark. I

couldn’t even see the ground hardly but I just knew where the road was.

And I’m by myself coming home. So I got to a place called Isabella, it

was an old courthouse over there. No, it was a hotel was there, old timey

hotel but they’d done banned it and the doors was open and everything. I

got along there a big old white dog run out of the hotel and went on and

jumped over the fence over in the garden. Man had a garden out there and

he jumped over in the garden. Great God, that thing scared me! They said

there was plenty of haints there anyway. Ooh, that dog scared me so bad.

He was about that tall. He hopped over the fence and he moved on out

into the garden out that way. After awhile he disappeared, I keep walking,

he disappeared. I got around a curve over there and a star out of the

elements, it shot down right down by me. Boom!

Hunter: A star?

Hall: A star. You know, the stars in the heavens, heavenly stars.

James Hall 42

Hunter: And it came down?

Hall: It came down in front of me and shot like a boom.

Mrs. Hall: Time they hit the ground they just make that noise and if you looking up

where you can see you see it.

Hall: This one shot down ahead of me and made a big noise.

Mrs. Hall: () cause I didn’t walk at night. (Laughter) I was home.

Hall: I said great day, I put on brakes to wait til it got gone. It wasn’t there but a

few seconds when it shoot down like that. So I went on, I kept traveling.

I had a long ways to go to get home. I was scared as I don’t know what

but I had to get home. So I went on, I was fixing to get to another

highway, public road, I saw a big fire at a fellah’s house up there and they

was up there, a man and a young fellah had done died and they was sitting

around the fire on the outside wondering what to do with him. So when I

got there, ooh, them old sixty year old men, there was about three of them

there, they told me Lord, we sure enough glad to see you. I’d been a

carpenter all my days. We used to make trains, me and my brother, we’d

make trains and we put whistles in them and a sawmill. We’d fix the

whistle where it would blow all night. We’d get our boiler and head up

and get that steam going and a little old hole in our whistle, small, and it

will furnish all night, blow all night. So when I got there the boy was

dead. Then somebody had to make him a casket. I made him a casket and

put him in there and I dressed him up. I dressed him up and put him in

this casket I built and boy, when I got through building that casket…

James Hall 43

When I got there they said here the man, here the carpenter, get me some

lumber. They went to tearing lumber off the barn.

Mrs. Hall: Great goodness! (Laughter) Tearing the barn down.

Hall: And brought me the lumber and a handsaw. Boy, I sawed that stuff out. I

was strong back in that day. I cut that casket out and built it and then I

said get me some cotton. They had cotton they had got out of the field

where, you know, folks used to save cotton and they got me the cotton and

all. I dressed that casket out and give me a sheet, they got me two sheets.

I put one sheet on top of that cotton and got it pretty. Then I told them to

give me a pillow. I got a pillow and I put the headboard up there for a

pillow, you know. When I got through everybody viewed that body said

that’s the prettiest fellow we ever seen that the man built a casket and lay

him out, a boy. And so I got the thing built and all and laid the boy out

there and he was pretty. They was going to have to bury him the next

morning cause you see, they couldn’t, we didn’t have no way of

embalming him so we had to bury him the next morning. So the next

morning me and it was three old men was there and they wasn’t worth a

nickel. Scared, they were scared to go home. (Laughter) We’re on the

way home, I was seventeen, I was about seventeen years old, right at it. I

had to come on home with him and drop him off there. Then the other

one, I had to make a little circle to get him home and dropped him off

there. Then I had to take the shoot home by myself. And when I got near

home there was a cemetery in back of the farm that we were working there

James Hall 44

and I got along there and it was a man across the road right in front of me,

right in front of me going across that cemetery. So he went on, he come

across me and boy, I’m so scared I stopped and waited til he got out from

me and after awhile he disappeared. Then I had about half a mile then to

try to make it home. So I made it home and I never was caught back in

Isabella by myself at night. Boy, that was the scariest trip I ever had going

off to play. I ought to left there before sundown and got home but I didn’t

do it. So that thing happened with me.

James Hall 45