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  • Transcripts
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  • Duration: 29 pages (transcript)
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  • Western Carolina University
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  • HL_MSS98-03_Smith_Bolden_1987_transcript

Bolden 1 WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA TOMORROW BLACK ORAL HISTORY PROJECT INTERVIEWEE: Ms. Annie May Miller Bolden INTERVIEWER: Edward Clark Smith COUNTY: Buncombe DATE: 1987 B: Now, you just drink your coffee like you want it, ‘cause I ain't in no hurry. I don't do no work today. I: Ms. Bolden, what do you remember about your grandparents? What about your grandmother? B: Yes, I remember both my grandmothers. My father's grandmother died when she was 82. And her name was Louise. Aunt Lou they called her. I remember her. I just do remember her, I think I was about two years old or something like that when she died. But I faintly remember going to her room and going and everything. And I think I was a year old when we moved out to Emma. But I remember her very well. And my mother's mother, she moved away when my mother said when everybody was going to California. The rush was to California for gold of something like that. I can't get that straight. I don't know. But anyway it was when something was happening in California that you just go there and rake up some gold and get rich. But my mother's brother took the other three girls and my mother had just married and she had to be here with her husband, my daddy. My grandmother took her other three girls and went to California. And she came back one time. I was grown then when my grandmother worked for some white people there in California. Oakland, California. And one sister taught school. Fannie stayed here and finished at Salisbury. Aunt Fannie finished down at Livingston. I think she taught a year or two down there. And then she went to California. That was Aunt Fannie and she never did marry. She got in with some of the movie stars as a maid or something like that and that's where she stayed until she bought a home and lived there a while and she died. I never did see her. She never did come back. I never did see any of my mother's sisters. The other two sisters died out there. They lived for years and years then they passed out there. I've never seen them but my grandmother, my mother's mother, she worked for some white people and they told her she would work for so many years and stay with them until the children got grown or something, that they would pay her way back here to Asheville to see her daughter. And that's what she did. I don't know how many years. I've forgot. I've heard her tell it. And that's what she did. She came back and stayed with us. I wasn't married but I was a grown girl. I had finished school. And she stayed three years with us. And then she went back to California and several years later she died. They're all buried out there. I: Have you ever been out there? B: No. I always wanted to go. My father wanted to send my mother. He wanted me to go with her. She never would consent. She just thought she couldn't leave home and leave the boys, and she couldn't do this so she never did go, and I didn't get to go. Bolden 2 I: Now you said your mother was born in Gaffney, sc. And your father was born in Rutherfordton. How did they meet? B: I don't know. See, my grandmother was in slavery times. I: Did she ever tell you anything about slavery? B: Oh yes. A lot of times she talked about it. She was with some good people who owned half of Gaffney. Rich people. And they gave her a home. I've been down to the home that they gave her. Long years ago my father went, my father was a great Mason and he was District Deputy and he had to go down there on some business so Mr. Ed Pierson went with him and me and I drove, drove him to Gaffney. He went down on this large business that day and we was gone all day. I drove down there for him and drove back. Now, what was I going to say? I just missed my thought that I was going to say. So he showed me ... Oh yeah, we went to the old place where he was born. But there was a new house on the lot and nobody ever went to see about it or claim it or anything and it was sold and somebody bought it and they built a nice little house but we went there and my father got out and looked all around and everything and there was white people in it and he told them why he just wanted to see it and walk around or something. And we stayed there ten or fifteen minutes in Rutherfordton. I: What year did your mom and dad come to Asheville? B: I don't know. Now I know my mother. They didn't know each other until after they got to Asheville and my mother's father died. My mother and her father, I don't know this must have been after slavery or something. Anyway they lived in Spartanburg, SC for a while. They left Gaffney and come to Spartanburg for a while and then he died. My mother's father died. My grandmother had three girls, my mother made four and one boy and her husband, my grandmother's husband, my mother's father died and then she moved to Asheville, and they were living in Spartanburg, not Gaffney then, they had moved to Spartanburg. Well, shortly after they moved to Spartanburg he died. Pneumonia or something, I think. I heard my grandmother tell it when she come and stayed with us three years. Well she had a whole lot of Indian in her. She looked more like ... Juanita. I'll get her picture and show you, she's a fine looking old lady. Do you want me to get the picture? B: We'll see it after a while. I've got my grandmother's picture and two of the girls. They're all dead now. My Aunt Sue was the last one to die. She took the girls out to California when the rush came in, but my mother had married and she couldn't go. I: Now, they left Spartanburg and came to Asheville. B: Uh huh. After my mother's father died, my grandmother came to Asheville. I: When did she come to Asheville? B: I don't know. She came to Asheville and I guess it was more money. She'd make out a better living. She being a widow, she never did marry no more. Then my aunt, who was my Bolden 3 father's sister, took my mother to raise when she was just a little girl. They lived down on Valley Street until she married my father. She married my father when she was 16. Where they lived on Valley Street, there are two big old houses just alike. Mr. Dixon used to have a store next door. That child opened up an undertaking place in the old store next door--Hennessee. That was Brian Dixon's daddy's store. These old buildings need to be torn down now but that's where my mother was raised. My father (Jim Miller) was 20 when they married. I: And she was 16. B: Uh huh. I: What did your dad do for a living? How did he earn a living? B: My daddy built up this town. He was a contractor, bricklaying contractor. I: He was the first black . . . B: He was the first colored contractor in Asheville. The papers give him that. I don't know whether it was the "Times” or the “Citizen". It came out in the paper when he died. They put a lovely write-up, the white people did. He dealt with white people, rich people. Now he built the first, I heard him say the first big job he had he was just a young many. My oldest brother John, I think was just small. He was a good size boy though. He taught John, he started teaching John how to lay brick on St. Mathias Church. You know where St. Mathias is. I: Uh huh. B: Well, my father was, he was. That was his first big job and he built that. He was contract. Now, he didn't do no wood work. His was brick work. He went from there to all other. Every time rich people, they needed his work, because rich people, that's who was doing the work at that time and building all. He built up Asheville. I'm telling you, wherever there was a brick to be, they get Jim Miller to do it and they didn't have to watch it and they didn't have to look after it. He built Mt. Zion. I think that was his last big work because the doctor had told him his heart was bad and he'd have to quit. He, Rev. Nelson, got after him. He warned him so bad. They were good friends. He wanted my daddy to build Mt. Zion. He wanted him to build that church. My daddy built that church and didn't charge him a dime. He didn't work on it, boss. He bossed that brick work. It's beautiful today. It was before Juanita was born and she, no, yes. She was two years old, a one year old, and she's sixty-seven. I don't know. I might be wrong about some of the majors. Well, anyway, I know she's sixty-seven. Well, now, listen, he taught my oldest brother on brick laying, started him on St. Mathias. Don't you want another cup of coffee? I: I'm doing fine. B: On St. Mathias and he went from there to other churches. He built Hopkins Chapel. You ever seen it in a paper? Well, I was gonna say I got a paper in there that I was going to show you to that man came here in the spring, early spring from the " Times " , an ideal White fellow. I said, "No I'm not going to give up no write up and pictures and all that.” I sent him away. The Bolden 4 "Times" people or whoever he was business manager, somebody he called, and he told me he just wanted. I said, “I don't know what they want with it and I ain't saying nothing, and I don't know nothing, and I ain't sending no picture. So, this man, whomever he was over the Times, white fellow, he talked to me and told me that they wanted to put this, it was seem kind of week going on and he wanted in being the prominent man that he was and all they wanted to write him up. So, I consented and the fellow came back about night, and I gave him some of what he in March, February or March. It's back here not too long ago. I got the paper in there. I sent to all the family one because it had my father's picture too. Had my little old picture in there. I don't know. I saw him snapping this and I didn't tell him about taking me no picture. I'm sitting in the living room but when the paper came out I was on it. Looks very well though. I: It couldn't help but look well, look at you. You look well. B: I had run him away at first. But my father built all the fine brick buildings. Wherever there was something to these White people, call Jim Miller, because they didn't have to go behind him no kind of way. Now, listen, this is the thing that nobody can understand and I can't understand it about him. I don't know, is the hand of the Lord, but I cannot understand. Nobody can understand it either. But I'm telling the truth. My father done all this brick work around here. I see some of the buildings that they tear down, he just, it was just the Lord. But look, he quit school when they started in the third grade. He quit school. I heard his mother tell it when she come to California to visit us. She said, "I couldn't make Jim go to school.” School had started and Rev., she called name somebody, preacher opened up a school first on his own over there on catholic Hill somewhere. Then the Catholic Hill School started and they started the school. She couldn't make him go. He'd start and then she's think he was going and he'd go wherever somebody was building a house and stay all day. Go to the spring I've heard him say plenty of times he'd go down, there is a spring somewhere down here below Hopkins Chapel somewhere and he, when they were building the first not this, he built this first one. I mean this last church, he was just a boy. He used to go down that spring and bring them water. He'd lay around that building. They'd give him some of their lunch and all that. He'd hang around there. Everywhere someone was building something he was there. I: He was learning. B: He's just a little ole boy but he wouldn't go to school. He just started third grade and quit. He quit, never did go back either. But here was the thing that was puzzling everybody, when he grew up and went out on his own with this stuff when he was young, just married, where did he get his knowledge from to do the work that he did, technical work. Turning the corners he was brick laying, he's doing. But listen, and never go to school. Started in the third grade and quit. But I have seen him come home this is the truth, here is my hand, I have seen him come home with a plan like this and half of this table. Eat his supper. He had a special chair, an old rocker that he liked to sit in and get his plan and sit down in his rocker and throw his feet up on the . . • I'm telling you what I seen. He did it for years and years. We all saw it. Take that plan and throw it up like that. Look, take his pencil and make figures. He could read his figures. You could read them. He'd sit there thirty of forty minutes maybe that long and where he put that down, he could tell you how many brick it could take to build it. Now, what's that? He done it. I've seen him dozens and dozens of times. Other people, they don't know how he did it. He didn't do it through Bolden 5 education because he didn't go to school enough to learn one corner from another. But I've seen him take those plans of white people, give them the plans and he'd figure on them. He'd bring it home and throw it up. Honey, he'd tell you how many bricks it would take and about how long it'll take to do it because he had to carry that in to the white man in the morning to see if he was. He carried it. The white people he's working for like the Coxes and I saw some where some man is dead here this week that he used to work for. I: He was a Cox wasn't he? It was a Cox. B: Maybe it was. Well, anyway he had that sewed up with the Coxes, all the rich people he did anything, they knew him. I've seen him lay that down and didn't bother him, go out the next morning and he'd got it with him and the white people saw Jim. They'd sit down and discuss, Jim so and so. It's gonna take so many bricks and so many. It gonna take so long and so long. You know I haven't gotten too many brick layers. Jim, it's your job and they never questioned him. They never come back to see if he was laying the bricks straight. He never, never had no trouble. He went to the bank and they told him that they'd finance him. When it was all over and the building built up and they paid off his first place, he went to the bank. Paid off. He was honest. He was a business man. Where he got all that business from I don't know, so many things. So many, and he taught all them boys, every one of them. The doctor was just a good brick layer as any of them. He used to say, laugh and say, well, I can quit medicine and lay down and get my trowel and make a living. They weren't quacks. They were bricklayers being demanded for, “I want you group to build it because they never had no trouble." Now, if a man came down and he couldn't do that job and he couldn't fix that straight or what now, he just had to find another job because my father said my reputation is at stake, he would tell him. He'd stand down on the ground and look there and all that's to come down. He was a business man. I've never, nobody could figure it out. He didn't get it in school. You know he didn't when he didn't go to the third grade. I: How was he as a father to you? How do you remember him as a father? B: Oh, I remember him so well. I remember him as a lovely father. I got everything I wanted. If I saw a hat or dress, sister had to have that and all my brothers, they just idolized me because I was the only girl. I did good. Did what I could. I was good. I didn't give no trouble. I never had no trouble in my life. But listen, my father was he didn't play, he was strictly business. In the church he loved St. Mathias. He was… I: Was he a member there? B: He was a senior warden in the Episcopal Church. He built that you know. From that he built the Hopkins Chapel. He built the corner of French Broad, I don't know where he built. My brother built after my father died. My brother built Hill Street. I can't tell you the places, the big places, nice places that he built. My father, he just, he could read it all right. I don't know how he learned that. We said scratching. But honey when he got through, it was well done and he was pleased. He just worked for rich people. If a poor person come and wanted him to build a foundation and he bossed, he got to the place where he didn't work at all. He just had to boss; He got to the place something wrong or something and he go, he didn't charge them. “I’ll put that Bolden 6 foundation in for you. I'll put it in. “He’d send the men around there and put it in. He said, "Well, she ain't got no money. I don't want to take her and they've been working for White people in the morning getting up. I can afford that.” He was like that. That was his way and you couldn't change him. No, you didn't change him. Uhhm. Don't argue with him. He's whatever he said that he meant that. Then another thing, he had his own, he built a house out in Emma that we live in. You see it on the thing in there? I: Uhhm. B: He built his own house of fifteen rooms, solid brick. He built. Now, they call it something else, but I don't know where he got this from. He built what we had a cow. He built what they call out in the yard and the edge of the yard. He built what we always called a milk house. It was two brick thick. But now they call it, what is the insolation, they call it something else now, but then it would have been called, I don't know. I can't think of. I: A spring house? B: Yes, we called it a milk house. It was one nice little room. I: Silo. B: It was a nice little room, cement floor and two troughs in there and the water running in. My mother sit the jars in there and then you'd pull the stopper out down here at the bottom and the water would run out and down the drive way. Then you'd stop it back up and this thing on the outside was a little foil thing but you, and we had a well, and you draw off a buck of water and it's made so you just turn it right over into there. You didn't have to carry it now where, carry it over in this trough in this little thing here. I: It kept it cool. B: It would run in a pipe right into the little trough that my mother set her jars down in. Then the cement floor in this little thing that you held water was cemented. They had two, divided into two places and two troughs. It had the little chimney and it was real cute and had two windows but he had it screened over. It was what we call today insulated, I guess or something. He had that two brick thick. B: He knew to do that way back then it must have been the Lord. He had all this stuff in him. So when we killed the hogs, we put the hog meat in there. It had double doors. The inside door you locked the outside door we didn't bother. Just push them to. It was supposed to be-- what do you call it--no air, it was cold in the summer time. You'd take the jars of milk and set them in the trough and it would seem like ice water. The milk would be just like sitting on ice because the heat didn't get to it. I: Was it a spring house? Bolden 7 B: It was called spring, we called it the milk house because that's what it was. But he built it with brick, had the boys built that. He was good. Had three door garage and it was brick. I sold it. He left it to me. I took care of him for four and half years after my mother died. I was living in Kentucky. I: Do you remember his birthday? B: My father's birthday? I: Yeah. B: It was the sixth of April. I: What year was he born? B: I got the Bible upstairs. I: We'll get it later. B: Well, all right. I: How old was he? B: Well, I forget but he was eighty. He lacked two weeks of being eighty-two years old when he died. I: Well, did your mother work? B: My mother was seventy-two when she died. I: Did she work? B: No. Never did. She had a plenty at home. She had a lady helping her. A lady until I got grown and all. This lady came every morning to help my mother until she got through cleaning up. She had to help her because she had five boys of her own and raised two others. They were boys. One, Willie Lee was. I don't know whether you would know any of his family or not. Willie Lee Miller, Uncle Lee. I talk too much and I just keep talking and one thing brings on another. My cousin Willie Lee was just a little boy. I don't remember his mother but Fa's brother, Lee, Uncle Lee's first wife died and she left these two boys. So, his second wife was mean to them. Just treat them like dogs and wouldn't let them go to school because she had two or three children of her own and they'd have to stay home and do for them children, wash and iron and cook and take those bad days they'd have to put them children on their back and take them to catholic Hill School. She didn't live too far from the school. He had her over there. So, they came so many times to my mother, beat half to death and my Uncle Lee come and get them and take them back. So, this particular time, I remember this. I was a little girl, but I remember. They came up the driveway running. I believe they were barefooted. It was summertime. They came Bolden 8 up through the driveway and their backs were just as bloody as they could be. Their back, where she done beat them half to death. They come running up and went on up home and they were crying. And, Ma said well, this is it. My mother said, this is it. So, she got some of the other boy's shirts and breeches and put on them. So, she told them that she wasn't going to send them back to let Aunt Emma kill them. Aunt Emma was teaching them at the catholic School. So, Uncle Lee came after them that afternoon. See, they used carriages, it wasn't automobiles, it was carriages then and he'd get a carriage and come after them. They'd come out there for a dollar. For a dollar, he'd go out there and take anybody or bring anybody or what not. So, he got out of this carriage to get the boys. My mother met him at the door. She said, “Uh huh." She said, "Now, Lee, I'm not gonna let them go back this time. They your boys but you should have seen their backs blooded up when they come here this morning and I washed them and put them on some clean clothes. Now, I'm not going back for Emma to kill them, and, you get in that car and go right back and forget about them because I'm gonna keep them." That's what she told him. He said, "Violet, do you mean," he said, "Well, I'm not going to keep them because I know Emma has not been very nice to them.” My mother said, "No, they aren't going back." From that day until this, now one of the boys, our home had plenty of room, had fifteen rooms. I: Now, that's out in Emma? B: Uhhm. In that house. I: How did Emma? B: You didn't see that picture on the wall did you? I: I did. I saw it with the car in the yard. The carriage in the yard, I looked at it. B: Well, there was plenty room. See, all the bedrooms upstairs except one was downstairs, my mother and father's bedroom, downstairs. It was a well-built house, a nice brick house, nice. So, my mother kept them and she had given them bath and put them on some clean clothes and they stayed. James, about three years after that, went back to Pennsylvania with his real mother's sister. She came for a visit and she wanted to take one of these boys back with her. James wanted. He said he wanted to go. He was the oldest. James went. He didn't live too long until he died. The doctor said he had been injured some kind of way on the inside something. Aunt Emma had done killed him, beating him, something. Something had happened in here, his heart. He died from it. When Willie Lee, his brother, Willie Lee now, you know. I don't reckon you know Louis Miller, anyway when Louis grew up, he's gone now. They live in New York now, he and his wife. But when Willie Lee left our house, he married. He was married. He stayed until he married. My mother, Will Greenly, their first cousin came on the other side. Ma took him too. So they stayed there just like they were my brothers. Ma done for them. She was so good to them until they married. So, I said the Lord blessed her after all and blessed me through it. But listen, when my mother died, guess what I say happened to me. When my mother died, now I'm through [talking about] my father because we don't know where got his intellect. It come from up there as you say. That's all we can say, we don't know. He could just take a plan and look at it and read it. He was business and he could do business with rich people and white people. He did it. How he did it, that's… Well, now, listen, they say sister don't get sister started. But my Bolden 9 mother, something I was going to say right then. Oh, yeah. I was living in Kentucky when my mother got sick enough, she had double pneumonia. She had a bad heart. She didn't live but a few days. But I was living in Kentucky 'cause that was the only place that was where the brick work was going on. I had married Will Clark. He was a bricklayer. They had taught him how to brick and I was married to him and so he went there to live and wanted me to come and stay. We had our own home, too. I: In Kentucky? B: Yeah, it's out there now. I sold it but it's there. Some white people bought it. My father had 27 houses for rent when he died. Twenty-seven houses! I mean there was three rooms. Five or six of them was three rooms. The rest of them was four rooms. When he'd finished a job, he built a house and it's called Brickyard place now. If you're ever out that way, down from Violet Hill, he and my brother bought that hill up there, Violet Hill, my father and my brother. I: Who was the town of Emma named after? How did Emma get its name? B: From some white people, they said. You name it and I've got the answers. This was three sisters, the Clayton sisters. I've been to the house plenty of times. I guess they're all dead now ‘cause they all moved away years ago, but when I was a child I used to go there. They, the father, had slaves. I don't know how many but this old man, Uncle Ike. He was still living and living on the place. They had a little house right below the three white sisters right below their house. He had like right across the street over there, he had a nice little house and he ate up there. I knew Uncle Ike, the boys used to tease him and all and they had him talk about slavery and all, my brothers when they was coming up. Well, Uncle Ike lived there. He was with them in slavery. They buried him in their own cemetery. They have a private cemetery out there and they buried him in their cemetery so he was with them through slavery. Well, Uncle Ike was just like one of them sisters, Ms. Em, Ms. Anna, and Ms. Nan-white. And they run a boarding house in the summertime. People come down from the north and stay in the summer and go in the fall. They didn't have it in the winter, but they come and stay from April, you might say, until October or something like that then everybody is gone. Yeah, Uncle Ike was there. He didn't do nothing much, just piddle around. He was a funny little fellow. And anyway, those sisters' parents, they had some s laves. Uncle Ike was one of them and that's where Emma came from was his wife's name and he bought all that side over there. You don't know where it is, but I could show it to you. A lot of property. And he named it for his wife, Emma, and that's where it got its name and from year to year after they died, the three sisters was there. The three sisters just kept it Emma. And that's where it got its name and they didn't move. They're all dead now, I think. They moved away before I did, before I came over here they sold out. They had property, property but he had acquired all this stuff in slavery time. I: And your dad had to acquire his on what his on what he earned. B: Oh, my daddy bought all that stuff. Twenty-seven houses to rent and they stayed full and I worked 17 years for him collecting rent. Seventeen years I worked for him. And he used to tell me, “Sister, I want you, when I'm gone, I want you to have an independent living, “and I had to deal with him just like I was dealing with some white people, the bank. He didn't allow nothing Bolden 10 but I must collect that money during the month. The last day of the month, I must make my report to him on paper who paid, if they owe anything, like Mr. Jones owed $30, paid $25 balance. I had to deal with him just like I was dealing with the bank. I had to bank that money all during the month and then at the end of the month I give him a check less commission. I didn't take a dime. He fixed it so you didn't steal nothing. Look, less the commission. And then he would take it and look over it and say, “That’s the way I want you to know business when I'm gone. I don't want you to let nobody beat you 'cause I'm gonna leave you well fixed so you don't have to go begging and you don't have to go hungry. You can still be “old man Jim Miller's daughter." That what he told me in the 17 years I did that for him and sometime I would have a time collecting. He said, “Don’t let anybody get in your debt too far. Deal with them with business and when you go to the house to collect”… I had maybe four of five colored but it was mostly white people. They had a plant over there that was running. Most of the men worked in that Asheville plant company , they called it , and he said, "Don't let nobody beat you, be nice to everybody , be kind to everybody , and when you go to collect rent don't ever sit down and make yourself common with people. Do your business. Go home. That's the way to do business then if you have to go back for something , that's all right if you want to go back and sit on the porch a while with them, O. K. But when you are doing business, remember business is business. “He said, "Don't go over there because they will soon get familiar with you and say, “I ain't got but $10 today and can I do so and so?" He said, "No, don't let that happen.” You collecting rent you go to the door and do business and you're gone. Now he told me all of that and so he was strictly business. He was a business man. You wanted business and you had to go straight, and then less my commission, then he give me a check for my commission. I'd take that check to the bank and sometimes he would say to me, "Well, you done well this time. I'm gonna give you $15 or $20 or something, “and he would pull out his deposit book and give me… and that kept me encouraged. I saying this, you see, I had to do business with him. He was my father but I didn't play with them. He said, "You may need this later on in life. You do business. "Now that's the way he was. That was his life and if you couldn't do business he didn't bother about you. I: And your mother just stayed at home. Well, I guess with all the kids and the house she had more to do. B: She took care of the house and the children and after my older brother ran away and married, then he started having family and my mother and here comes his grandchildren. I want to stay out here with my grandma tonight and I don't want to go home. And I'd want them to go home because I would have to wash their feet and see they get in the bed. It's summertime and they go barefooted. My father had a great big place and a big orchard and all of that and they loved to come out there and climb the trees and be at home they wouldn't want to be penned up into… I: And you had to take care of them to get them to bed. You wanted them to go. B: That's it. And they would go home, go on Fridays. Have to go to church on Sunday. They would go home Friday evening, but here they would come back Sunday evening. Why can't you all stay home until Monday or some other time? We want to stay out here with you all. We love it out here. And the boys, they was wading in the creek down there and messing and going on. They loved our home. Barbara writes me now, Doc's daughter. She lives in Ann Arbor, Bolden 11 Michigan. And she writes just about every week I get a letter from her with a little money in it or something and I got my Mother's Day card, one yesterday. I want to stay with Aunt Annie May. Where they're loose they can run free. Well, the letters are lovely. She's always talking about our home-our home. So then you know I have had a wonderful life with the children. I never whipped one in my life and they admired me. I was good to them. I: When did you start to school? B: I started to school when I was about five years old. I: Where did you go? B: The first school I went to was St. Mathias School. It's not there and been torn down for years and all but I went there two years. It was a schoolhouse right below the church. Between the church and Valley Street going down that hill was a schoolhouse. One room, and my brothers they all walked from Emma to school and I cried to go and my mother just let me go with them. I tell you when my father built that house out there my mother didn't want to go out there in the country. It was country then, it's not so much country now. She didn't want to go because, see he built that house with the round thing . . . on South Beaumont Street. That's where I was born and I don't know who. I: She wanted to stay there. B: And she didn't want to leave and go out to the country, so for three years she wouldn't go, and he rented the house to Mr. Hendrick. Did you ever know Dr. Hendrick? I: Uh huh. I knew of him. B: You know McKinley. He was the dentist and I was talking to McKinley's wife the other day. We are good friends. We talk to each other every two or three days. She lives out on Eloise Street. Now she's Dr. Hendrick's wife. He's been dead several years. They've got one son. He's a professor or something down in one of the colleges in Virginia somewhere. Virginia state College or something. He's been there for years. Irene's son. Irene Hendrick. I: The first two years you went to school at St. Mathias School. You lived in Asheville. How did you get from Emma over here? B: Walked. We wouldn't think nothing about walking. There were the Hendricks, that's what I wanted to tell you. There was Cordilia, and McKinley and Rita and Cordilia was one of the sisters. She's dead now. Of course they all dead now. Every one of them is dead and Emma Sue. That was the Hendrick family. They walked. After my mother decided to go home then Mr. Hendrick had to get another house. He ran a dairy. Old man Hendrick, he finally ended up with the North Carolina Mutual Insurance, but he use to run a dairy around the road. He just moved around from us out at Emma. There was Cordilia. We all went to school. Oh, we'd be there in about an hour or a little more. We'd leave home about 7:00 or 8:00 and we'd be over there by Bolden 12 9:00. And we walked right up to the, the school building was right below the church. And I went two years there. I: Then where did…after the two years there, that was like the first and second grade. B: They put me in Allen Home, school on College Street. That was a girl's home then, was a girl's school, then was a girl's boarding school. They took in about 40-50 girls. It was run by the white missionary, Methodist missionary, something in Indianapolis somewhere I think it was. And Miss Dole and her sister and two other white ladies and Miss Bell Jones; she's dead, Miss Nathan Alexander -- they all dead. They were the teachers. I stayed in Allen Home 10 years. I: All the way through? B: All the winters, of course, at home. They closed down in May, opened up in September. I: Did you live on the place at Allen or did you go back and forth? B: No, I stayed in the home. I: What kind of things did you learn there? B: Everything, every day school it was, just like going to school. The school had day scholars just like children going to school now -- ABC's. It went up to the ninth grade -- tenth grade, I forget which. I got my graduating picture upstairs. I graduated in 1911. I: What did you all do for entertainment? B: Well, they had nice entertainment. Lots of times Mr. Dole, maybe once a month, would have entertainment in the chapel and invite people in and they'd have ice cream and cake. And they would buy the ice cream and cake, but we made the cake you know, ‘cause there was a cooking school there and we would socialize in the chapel until about 9:00, from about 7:00-9:00. And other people would come in – Professor and Miss Lee was always there, the preacher and his wife from Berry Temple and other people. Mostly people from Berry Temple because we went to church every Sunday at Berry Temple, mostly. Sometimes one of the teachers would take us somewhere else to break the monotony, but we went to Berry Temple twice every Sunday. Maybe once every two months-one of the teachers would say "I'll take you to Hopkin's Chapel." Miss Dole was principal, Alsie B. Dole, Alsie Baker Dole was principal and she would, whoever the teacher was, take us and we would be just happy to get to another church -- just to get out. I stayed in the Allen Home all winters. I went home when school closed and went back to Allen Home when it opened. I: What were things like for black people then? B: Well, now you take Allen Home, I spent my winters there. It was different. You didn't have places to go. The facilities was not like they are now, in a way, I'll say it like this, you went with your group, colored went with the colored, white went with the white. It wasn't mixed like it Bolden 13 is now. Only teachers who had come down from the North would be working in the schools. Now, Allen Home all but two teachers from the time I was there -- only two colored teachers. The rest of them -- four would be white. But they were nice. Asheville wasn't -- the colored people didn't have the way like they have now. They didn't belong to these things. I don't even know if they had a city council. There were so many things that they didn't have that they have now. But you stayed in your place – they let you know they were superior. I: Or at least they thought they were. B: Yes, it wasn't like it is now. You said, "Yes Ma'am and No Sir." You wouldn't want to come here no more, will you? [Laughter] I can talk from now till this time in the morning and wouldn't be through. [Laughter] I: Now, when you left Allen what did you do? B: Well, I went down to St. Augustine in Raleigh. I: What year was that? B: 1912-13. I finished Allen Home in 1911. I got my picture up there. I wish I had known to get all these things. I: Well, we'll see them before it’s all over. How would you go to Raleigh? How was the traveling then? B: By the train. People didn't have no automobile. I forget the first person who had the first automobile in Asheville. He was a doctor, a white doctor. Then the second or third colored person in Asheville to have a car was Dr. Walker, a colored doctor and then from then on -- way after a while in 1912 or 1913, I believe, I was in Raleigh, my father bought an automobile and he came down there after me in a Ford. I: But you went down on the train, what was it like? Can you remember your trip? B: Yes, I remember. I: What was it like? B: It was like everything -- you go -- we had St. Augustine clothes we got our parents to send the money. My youngest brother Charlie came down to the Commencement. He was just a little boy with short pants on. Charlie came down to Commencement and wanted to come back with me. And there was another lady came down for Commencement - she died here - she came here and she worked here and she stayed. Oh she belonged to St. Mathias. She lived over there by Ridge Street. She hasn't been dead too long , she was a dressmaker , she knew somebody here and she came but, what happened coming back--my father had bought a round trip ticket for Charlie - well he was 3 days down there - Bryon Dixon took care of him and he had a nice time , but we were on the train coming back I don't know where we were - I done forget , but the Bolden 14 conductor took Charlie's ticket and looked at it and looked at it and he started an argument with me about how Charlie was more than 12 years old - I forget what the limit was on the train for the ages for half fare tickets. Well , Charlie had this half fare ticket, and you know that old mean conductor somewhere, I don't know where it was , and it was just about night he wanted to put Charlie off, said that he was older than what he said he was and he didn't have any business r i ding on a half-fare ticket. Oh, he just raised sand, and he reached up and got the cord to put Charlie off and it was nearly night. We all saw this. Bryan Dixon was on the train and Bryan's niece was on the train; (she's dead now), on the coach. The conductor reached up to get the cord to stop the train to put me and Charlie off, I would have to get off of course, with Charlie. And Bryan Dixon (poor old Bryan, he's dead now) well Bryan had $2 and something in his pocket and that's all he had. I didn't have any money and nobody else on the train had any money. Young people didn't have no whole lot of money then. He reached up to grab that cord and Bryan yelled, "Hey wait a minute", and Bryan took that $2 and something out of his pocket and gave it to the conductor to make up the difference in the fare. Then we come on home. When I got home and told my father and he went down to the station and he turned that in and they fired that conductor and he got some money out of it, I never did know how much, but he sued - he got it. They couldn't prove he was more than what they said he was and he wasn't! But he was a little tall for his age and so Pa got good money, he never did tell us how much he got, but he got some money out of it, and they fired that conductor! See if he had put us off that train in the dark, we wouldn't know where we were, in the dark, and there we would have been stranded. But Daddy got him a good lawyer. And so I just had to stop and tell that little incident, I was coming home from Raleigh, from St. Aug. and then I went to summer school here for years. Most of the times they had it at Hill Street. I: Hill Street School? B: No, the old school. I: What was Allen Home like when you were there? B: Oh, it was lovely, just like home. I: It was fixed up nice? B: Oh yes, it was fixed up nice. Two to a room, double beds. They were nice and the teachers were nice. I enjoyed it. I: Well what was St. Augustine like? B: Well it was different from Allen Home, all those ladies over there just took you like you were their own. But at St. Augustine you were more on your own. You know what I mean. You had to be more… I: Were the facilities nice? Bolden 15 B: Not too much because it had outside toilets [Laughter.] You had to go out there to use the toilet. Well, that's the truth. The first two years I went into Allen Home, they had an outside toilet. The old man would come along on Monday morning with the wagon and the barrels in the wagon and had the cover over them, his name was Nap, Nap, N-a-p, and old man nap would come along on Monday mornings, (you'd have to close the window) and take care of the toilets out there. I: Well, in the house that your Dad built… B: There wasn't nothing in the house, no, the bathroom had boiler in it, (but that was all) they had water in it. But didn't have private bathrooms, it was downstairs you had to go and get your bath, everybody, you couldn't put one person at a time. [Laughter.] Just one facility. But after a few years, they improved things. I: What year did you finish St. Augustine? B: I finished St. Augustine, I didn't finish St. Augustine, I wish I had. I didn't finish St. Aug., I didn't want to go back. I: Why? B: I had malaria, I had fever and Dr. Walker said the lighter climate was low for me. I was sick the next year and couldn't go back and then after that I didn't go back. But I went to summer schools here. And then Professor Michael gave me a little j ob. I: What was the job? B: I was substitute teacher. I was kind of smart [laughter] if I do have to say so myself. I could learn, I could do things and it didn't take all day to do it. I could read something once, and I had it. And he helped me and coached me, and give me work in the West Asheville schools. Sometimes a teacher would be out for 2 - 3 weeks and I would make about as much as the rest of them, substituting. Our family and Miss Lee was just like one family and Miss Lee was at Hill Street at that time and every time a teacher was out, she'd call me. And west Asheville, I just stayed in West Asheville. I: Did any of your brothers and sisters have more education than you? B: No, my brother John went to Biddle University, I don't know if that still a school or not, I haven't heard nothing about it… I: Where? B: In Charlotte. He went a year or two there and then he married. I: What school did he go to? Bolden 16 B: At that time, it was called Biddle University. I: I believe that's Johnson C. Smith University, now. B: That's it, well he went there two years when it was called Biddle, the name of it was Biddle University. He went there two years but he didn't finish, he married. Didn't any of the rest of them want to go anywhere and they didn't go, they got it here. And then my father said this, "If they don't want to go, I'm not spending no money on them. “They didn't want to go, they wanted to learn their trade. They didn't want to go back to school, and he didn't make them. He just taught them a trade, which might have been better. Anytime a man could make $30 and $35 an hour, he's doing all right. I: He's doing a lot better than some people who got some education. B: So they wanted to learn a trade. They wanted to lay brick. And that's exactly what he give them, and he give them, and he give them the best. I've heard my brother Tom would be building something somewhere, and an old fellow in Lexington, Kentucky, was building a hotel, and Tom went on, and this fellow said, "I don't know, I ain't never worked no Negroes, " and he said, "Well just give me a chance, " and he, had some daggos working, working the whites. I: Some what? B: Daggos is what they called them. I: What are they? B: It's white fellows. I: O.K. B: So Tom said, "Try me and see." So Tom got up there with his trowel, he had bought these boys from somewhere, these white men, so when quitting time come, he told him he'll try him. And the man asked him, could he come back in the morning. That was the kind of bricklayer he was. I: He showed him. B: He didn't raise up until time to get up. He stayed with that man, the man wanted him to take him with him. He was going from there somewhere else to build another building and he wanted to take Tom with him. He wanted Tom to go awful bad, but Tom told him he couldn't. He was in Lexington, KY. Now that's the kind of thing, he was fast and good. So they wanted a trade and they got it and made good money. Now, you talk. I: Have any historical events such as wars on the Depression or drought or floods affected your family? Bolden 17 B: Wars? My oldest brother went to war -- World War I. I: How did you all fare during the Depression? Do you remember the Depression? B: Yes, I do. Well, we lived about as well as we always had. You couldn't go and buy all you wanted, but you could live on what you could get, is that what you mean? You know you had little tickets or something for everything and sugar [laughter] was the main thing. But we always had a way. There was always somebody come by to sell you something. We never did get in trouble or anything, but if somebody came by and wanted to sell you their sugar or their tickets, you just bought it. Two of the boys lost their homes. They couldn't get no work. I: How old were you when you started your first job after you didn't go back to St. Augustine? B: Oh, I guess I was about, oh, I don't know, I was about 16, 17, maybe, something like that. I: Well, I'm talking about when you got out of St. Augustine. B: Well, I was sick a year. I was down in St. Augustine in 1912 and 1913. I: But when did you start work? When you came back? How old were you? B: Well, I didn't start for a year because I thought I was going to have T.B., but I didn't and Dr. Walker said, "Let her stay out a year." He said I studied too hard and it was against me, what I had, you know, and he said, "Let her stay, don't press her back to school. Let her stay out and get some fresh air." I thought I was going to have T.B. I stayed out 1914 and most of 1915. Professor Michael and my father were very good friends, so Dr. Walker thought that I could do a little work. So I started back in 1915 or so to work. I: Did you enjoy it? B: Yes, I loved it, very much so. Then I did a lot of church work, too, I had all I could do. I: Well, that's the next thing I wanted to ask you about. Is there any difference in the church then and the church now? B: It seemed to me that the old church people was more sincere. People didn't have nothing else much going on. There was no ball games. That was out. There was no ball games on Sunday. Grocery stores, everything was closed on Sundays. You didn't get nothing like that on Sunday. You didn't go to no swimming pool on Sundays. Everything like that was closed. You went to church in the afternoon and most all the colored people, most of us went to the Y. M.I. 5:00 Psalm service and it would go from 5:00-6:00 or 6:30, something like that. Sometimes someone would come to speak and maybe there'd be a program, just something going on every. They had a secretary, you know. Rev. Trent was there most of the time. I believe Professor Martin came in following Trent and seems like the people began to fall off because there wasn't the man Professor Trent was. He was a little, you know, didn't mix like Professor Trent did. Bolden 18 Martin couldn't and it began to go down. But that's where you didn't go to the church or you didn't go to the Y. M.I., you were just lost on Sundays because there wasn't nothing else open. You couldn't go out to the store, you couldn't go to the mall, there wasn't no mall. They was all closed up. That's the difference today. Things open on Sunday just like Saturday. But you didn't get it then when I was growing up, it was sacrilegious. You go to Sunday school or you go to church. You didn't go out to dinner or have someone over because you went to the Y. M.I. at 5:00. Sometimes that auditorium be running over with people. Most of the churches didn't have service at night. Rev. Nelsen had it, at Mt. Zion. He was with the old church. Well, I went there a many a Sunday. Now that's the difference in yesterday and today. I: Do you remember any customs that they had in the church then that they don't have now? B: Well, I don't know. They serve communion about like they do now. I guess it's about the same. You went there and behaved yourself, I knew that. I: Well, we had to do that when I was coming up. B: You'd better not cut up or somebody would tell your parents and you got a whipping. I: That's right. B: When I got old enough and big enough, I taught Sunday school you was more respectful to the church more than now. I: Were the ministers any different? B: Well, yes, they seemed like they had more confidence or something. I: O.K., that's a good way to say it. B: More confidence or something. People regarded the church more. They held it more in respect than they do now. You behaved yourself when you get there, old and young. You act nice and people were more respectful to God than they are now. I: Who were some of the leaders in the black community? B: Well, Professor Trent was one, Professor Martin was another, he… I: Now, Professor Trent, did he teach at the school? B: He had charge of the Y.M.I., he didn't teach school at all. But his wife was. His wife was a teacher. But Professor Trent wasn't. All he could do was to take care of that building and keep it going, just like church and he had charge of everything. Everybody liked him and they called him. He went from here to the President's seat at Livingston College when he left here. And everybody wanted to cry. We hated so bad because he was so good. They loved him. But that's where he went and you got speaking this afternoon or somebody's giving a program or Bolden 19 somebody, something like that. Intelligence … talk about intelligence, it was more in operation then that it is now. Because they don't go to church and sing and everything and don't respect nobody or nothing. This generation, there is a generation just don't care nothing about nobody. And they think it's alright. Sometimes they pass you and don't say anything, no respect for you. Then, when I was growing up, people had respect. You'd better. But now, it's a different day I: Why is that? Why do you think that is? What happened? B: I don't know what's happened, I just don't know. People are just not as respectful, they're just on a tin pan beating for themselves. Used to, when somebody was sick, a member of the church would go to visit that person, to see what they could do for them, you know. They wasn't like the old lady. A young man died one time. They say this is true. I've heard it told. Said this old lady always went to everybody's funerals. She never missed nothing at the church. She went to church all the time and if anybody died, whether she knew them or not, she went to the funeral. So, somebody died and they didn't tell her, for some reason, she didn't know who it was. So she got ready. She saw people going to church, so she got ready to go to the church (this was way back in the country). She saw people going. She said, "Where they going?" "Funeral, you didn't know about the funeral?" "No." So she run in there and got some clothes on and got in the line and went to the church, and when she got in and sat down, she said, "Whose funeral is this?" She didn't know whose funeral it was, but she was there! [Laughter] I say that because people would go the Y.M.I. even if they didn't know who the speaker was or what the program was about. I know one Sunday, James Wilson, he's dead now, he played the violin, that's Fanny McCoy and the Wilson's youngest boy, lived on Madison Avenue, so Jay, they called him Jay-Bird, but his name was James. He was in a concert one time. He was playing the violin. I don't know who gave the concert. So, he played the violin, and I played the piano and when we got through, an old lady got up and she wanted to know if we knew that song, "The Church Is One Foundation." So I found it in my book and James found it in his book and he played the violin and do you know, that lady shouted. I don't know who she is now, she's dead now, but she loved that song and she got up and just shouted! I can see her now standing in the audience (at this point Mrs. Bolden proceeds to sing part of the song, "The Church Is One Foundation") we played it and that was her favorite. She died right after that, too. I: Those were sometimes, weren't they? B: Um-hm. Oh, I had a lovely life. I: What was Christmas like? B: Most of the people stayed at home. The families gathered. It was sort of a family affair. They invite the preacher and his wife, or the teacher or I was teaching school down in South Carolina one time. I: Well, you didn't tell me about that. How did you get to South Carolina? B: I got some people down there. My cousin's down there. My mother's first cousin's down there in Inman, South Carolina. I was down there about two years ago. But they have torn down Bolden 20 the old schoolhouse and everything. My first cousin, Angie Foster. If you go down to Inman about six miles outside Inman, you'll find all those Fosters. It's a crowd of them. But Freda, my mother's first cousin's daughter, Angie, comes up here every year in October and brings three or four of her brothers with her. Now, last year she brought eight people with her. She'll be up here in October. I: What year did you get married? How did you meet your husband? B: [laughter] I don't know! I: If you don't know, then nobody knows. B: Will Clark, Juanita's daddy. I: How did you meet him? B: His family and my family were very good friends. And we just got to talking and talking and we talked up our love, I reckon [laughter]. I enjoy it. I: What year did you get married? B: He was a handsome boy. I was struck with his beauty. He was good looking. The girls were after him. I didn't look too bad ‘cause my hair was down to the waist almost. I had pretty hair and I wasn't too bad looking. I: Well, I know that's right. B: Yea (laughter). I: You're still pretty. B: He didn't talk much, and I talked a lot. They were strict on me. If I went anywhere at night, one of my brothers was with me. I didn't go much at night. I didn't want to go much at night. I was in two or three weddings and entertainment or something, but I didn't run around like these boys and girls do now. People didn't do that. (A lot of talk about her interests). I: What year did you get married? B: 1916, no I married in, I'm trying to think. I was 20 years old when I married. I: So you were 20? What was the wedding like back then? What did you wear? B: I don't know. I ran away then and married. I didn't tell nobody. I: Why? You didn't think they'd let you marry? Bolden 21 B: Listen, that Sunday morning was a Rev. C. K. Brown -- don't I remember names good? I: You sure do. B: Rev. C. K. Brown was the pastor of Temple and that's where I belonged at the time. So I got up that Sunday morning and we had breakfast and I was getting ready. I told my youngest brother Charlie, I said, “Charlie, I want to go to Barry Temple this morning. You want to take me? “And he said, "I'm not going to stay for church, but I'll take you over there." I said, "You just take me, I told Will I was going to meet him at the square." So when I got to the square, I got out and Will was there [laughter]. So Charlie went on, he didn't know nothing. He had another man waiting in a hack there on the square, so we got in the hack (automobile). Low and behold the automobile didn't have no top on it, went on over to Barry Temple parsonage. It was almost time for church, and he married us in the parsonage. And we left. We had the old man to wait with the wagon, the automobile with no top on it, and we went over to St. Mathias because I knew my brother John and his family would be there. He never missed church on Sunday. I: Your dad was still alive, wasn't he? B: Yeah, Mother and Daddy, both, but I didn't tell them. I: You were in trouble? B: So I went over to St. Mathias, to church and when church was over, I told John, my brother. I said, "We got married a while ago." So when we got up town, Will and I got in their car and got to Mr. Wilson's undertaking place. He got out and went in and called and said, "Sister and Will got married." And it scared my mother to death. I: I know it did. B: Then we went on down to Will's mother on West street. My brother Ed told Will, "I guess we'll have to put you on the wall now, and give you a trade, something to take care of Sister." Then they started him laying brick. My father liked Will. I guess if he didn't like him, I guess... I don't know what would have happened. I: You would have been in a world of trouble. When you finally saw you mom and dad, what… B: We lived with his mother ‘cause she worked out at Biltmore Forest. The Doyles, the white Doyles, Will's mother worked for them. I: Well, what did your mom and daddy say? B: They didn't say much of nothing much ‘cause I didn't go home for a long time and they didn't come down. One day I called her up, and Ma was so glad. I said, "I'll see you after a while, and Ma said, “Come on," and I went on out there. Then they got after me to move back home. They said, "There's plenty of room back here, come on home." And I went on back home. Will Bolden 22 was so nice to my father. He liked Will, he was crazy about him. Will would just drive him anywhere he wanted to go and do things for him, so that was it, we got along fine. I: How long were you married? B: I don't know, Will died in 1936 ... wait a minute, it might have been 1936. My mother died in 1937. I: So you had a bad period didn't you? B: Uh huh. I: What was wrong with Will, did he have some sickness or something? B: My mother had pneumonia and a heart condition. I: And what about your husband? B: Will had a heart condition and he also had two strokes. He was a bricklayer too. They would put him up. He was a good one, but he broke down with heart trouble and he couldn't do no more work hardly, and I had to come on back from Kentucky. When my mother died, I come back and took care of my father and Cameron until my father died four and one-half years almost to the day that my mother died. He died on the 6th of April and Mother died on the 13th of April, four years apart. I took care of him, though. I told him I would. I think that's the reason the Lord spared me. After the funeral, the five boys were all living, their wives were all living, and me, and Will was sick. But he was living and the doctor called us all in and said now after the funeral, we're going to have a meeting ... a family meeting. So we come home from the church and went into the living room and he was spokesman. I had my nephew, Cameron, my mother had raised him from a baby, and he was there, that was his last year at Steven Lee. He was 16 and she had him since he was two weeks old. Him mother broke sick with T.B. So mother had to take him. So my mother and I raised him. * * * * [Something seems to be missing because Tape #2, Side 1 starts with a completely new subject.] B: We had automobile then. I: I'm talking about what caused you to go. B: As I told you, as I said before, there wasn't no work. Bricklayers had nothing to do. The Depression had just come off. They had to live. The bricklayers went that way because my brother was a contractor, my oldest brother. He was putting up a building in Kentucky. He was living in Kentucky and he told the boys to come on and he put them to work. My husband went on with my brother. I: And you went? Bolden 23 B: Two, three other people went on of men of bricklayers. So, we came back from the cemetery burying my mother. Doc called us in, the family, just the family. Now, what we gonna do? Here is this big house here. Here's pa here. We called in Pa. In Cameron, he wanted to stay right there. They say, "What are we gonna do? How is Pa gonna do? He doesn't know how to boil water." He wasn't no house man at all. So, they all talked. My other brother said, "Well, I'm living in Kentucky. I can take him with me if he'll go." Pa said there. He just got out of the bed with the flu. He sat there and he was just crying, just wiping his tears, just rolling, he didn't know what was going to come on him. This one talked. When they got around to me, I'm the last one to talk. This one said, well, he can go with me but so and so. I'm so and so." They all had, "I can go, he can go." I knew Pa didn't want to go with nobody. He wanted to stay at home. I took the floor. I said, “Pa.” I said, "Listen, dry up your tears right now. I don't want to see another one. Put your handkerchief in your pocket. I'm here and I'm here to stay and take care of you. That's where you are going. You're gonna to stay right here." I: What did he say? B: Oh, he looked at me. Then I said, "That's what my mother would want me to do." I said another thing. I said, "It's not fair for me the only girl to put you on any of the sister-in-laws. It's my duty to take care of you and that's what I am going to do. If the Lord gives me the strength and held me, until death do we part, I'm here and I'm gonna stay. Don't you worry about nothing. I'll take care of you. Cameron, the same goes to you. You just mind me and be obedient and I'll take care of you. I'm here. I'm not going back to Kentucky." I got through making my speech. I made it, too. Not going back. Married then. I turned around to Will. I said "Will, I'm you go back to Kentucky." Juanita had I said, "Give Juanita what she wants out that house and what she doesn't want call the second hand man, and what he doesn't want put in on the trash pile. I'm not going back." I said, "And you get in that car and come back home because I'm here to stay. I'm not going to see our father dragging around the corner in the streets dirty, unkept, hungry, nobody to do anything for him. No. I'm here. I'm his daughter. I'm gonna, by the help of the Lord, if he gives me the strength, until death do we part, I'm taking care of you, Pa. Now, you stop crying. I'm here. From this minute on, I'll take care of you. You're going clean. You're gonna have something to eat, you're gonna have a clean house, a clean bed, all that I can do for you, I'm gonna do it. That's what my mother would want me to do. I got principal enough to know that I ain't gonna put you on any of the system laws. It's my duty to do it." He stopped crying. I did every bit of it. I want you to know. I did every bit of it. He lived four years almost until the day that my mother died. I took care of him. I kept him clean. I kept him washed. I kept his bed clean. I kept his room and house clean. I cooked. I put the things how he wanted it and how he liked. I just petted him just like I wanted to. "Now, Pa, it's time for you to go to bed.” "What time is it so and so? Oh, I'm gonna sit up tonight until late. “I said, "No. You are going to bed now. I want to see you in the bed and cover you up before I go to bed. I'm going in the room and go to bed myself. “Now, if you, I put the bell away. I got the old bell, our old family bell, old fashioned bell and I kept it right on the table by his bed. I said "Now you ring this bell if you need me.” I said, "Now Cameron, if you hear the bell and I don't hear it, don't fasten your door. Leave it open and I'll leave my door open. If Pa rings that bell, we'll hear it. “In four and a half years, I nursed him just like he was a baby. When he got that bath that night and my brother came in from Kentucky and his two boys. My brother here was out. They were in the room. Pa looked at me. I was sitting right where I could see him. He looked at me and did like this. I never Bolden 24 will forget it. I got up and went to the bed and put my ear down. I said, “Is there something that you want?” He put my head down. He said, “I want to tell you that I'm gonna leave you.” He said, "But I want you to know you've been a good girl. You've taken care of me. I want you to know I appreciate everything you've done. I want you to know I've left enough for you to live on. You don't have to beg nobody. Stay at home. This is your home. Stay there. Take care of it.” He said, "Now, I’m leaving satisfied. I'm satisfied and you never missed doing anything for me that you could do and I know it. I appreciate it.” Those words, he said, "Now, don't cry. Don't worry yourself because I'll be gone. Don't cry. Don't cry.” That what he said. I didn't. It didn't bother me too much. I went to this funeral, of course, I broke down some. We had at the funeral he had built Mr. Zion and his request was to be buried there, to have the funeral there. That was his request. It was his request to have Rev. Halston preach the funeral. So that, we had the funeral there. But I didn't, I did what he said. I knew I had done my duty. I done everything. People holler and cry sometime when they know they haven't done anything. But I took care of my Daddy all the way. He died clean and in a clean bed, in a clean room, nicely fixed. Well, listen, don't you think God knows that. Maybe that's the reason he spared me. Sometimes I think that's, maybe that's it. I've outlived just about all my people. I got two or three nephews and three nieces left and that's all. All the rest of them are gone. All them five boys and all their wives are gone. Now, what am I doing here at ninety-three years old? I don't know nobody in the family that's ever lived that long. My grandmothers didn't live that long. They both died in the eighties. My mother in her seventies. My father lacked two weeks of being eighty-two. Now, where did I get this ninety-three from? Can you tell me? Wanted to go somewhere, he slipped off one day. When Pa the white minister and his family lived right below me in one of our houses, a little brick house. He slipped off one day and was going to town because he didn't want me to fix him up to take him. You know. I'd take him over to the office sometime. The doctor said, "Bring him over here and let him sit a while.” He wanted to go just like he was. I said, "People won't blame you. I said , 11Pa , you go on the street like this in public and they'll say , well , I saw old man Jim Miller today , " and said , " His face was dirty and his shirt was dirty or his shoes were unkept. He just looked bad. Say, what's that. Well, I thought his daughter was there. Well, what's she doing. She don't. She let him go like that. Well, she ain't no count." People will blame me for him, I said, "That's what people will say, Pa. I want you to go dress up and strutting. “Sometimes, he wouldn't want to go through all of that you know and I'd get his clean shirt. I'd have his clothes clean and Cameron kept his shoes polished. I wanted him to look nice going out. He'd say. That particular day, just that one time, he slipped off down the road to catch a bus. The bus passed right below us. I missed him and I hollered out to Mrs. Sprinkles. I said, "Have you seen my daddy?" She said, "No." She went to her front door and she came back to the back where I was to my door and she did like this. She pointed to him, that he's down there at this place. I went on down. He had built two great big beautiful pillars down there. I: Like on the side of the driveway. B: I went down there and he was up beside one of them on the inside of the road where I couldn't see him. I said, "Now come on, Pa, come on." “I got to go to the barbershop." I said, “Well, come on. You're not going like that.” I said, "Everybody will see you and will blame me. You done slipped off and you got a place full of clothes that is clean and all ready to put on. Now, your shirt collar is dirty. You got on your old shoes. No, you ain't going to town like that. Come on." I took him by the arm. I said, "Go clean up and then I'll put you in the car and take Bolden 25 you to town, " and that's what we did. He didn't argue. Went on up and I washed his face and brushed his, he had pretty hair, straight you know, I brushed his hair and it just laying. Just shining pretty. I put on his shoes and he put on his pants. Just dressed him up. He said, “I do feel better." I said, “I know it." I pull that old Buick out and put him in it and carried him over to the barbershop, Mr. Wilson. He said, "Now don’t come after me. I'll call you but it will be this evening. " I: Well, he's trying to get him some time. B: He said, “I ain't going right now. I ain't going back right now.” But the time I got home I started my work. I had a day's work laid out. I started doing that. The telephone rang. Mr. Pegan at the barbershop. "Ms. Annie May, Ms. Clark," he say. I say, "Yes, Mr." He said, “Your father said he is ready. You can come after him now,” and I'm fixing to do my day's work. I had to go and put my dress and shoes back on and run over there and get him. I said, "I thought you said were going to stay all day. You were going to go down to the doctor's office and sit down there for a while." “Oh, I think I'd rather be at home. There ain't no place like home." I carried him back home and he was a happy as a lark. In a few minutes old man Bob Campbell came along and they said there and talked all day long. They sit there, company for each other. Old man Campbell come out from his house and they'd sit there on the bench under the shade tree and Pa said, "This is what I like. I just want. I just didn't want to stay down today." Then I had to go on with my work. Now, that's the way I would do him. I would drive him or I would get Cameron to take him. I: Now, tell me about the clubs you organized. B: Well. I: The first one that has been running the longest. B: Oh, forty-five years, I've been president for forty-five years. Sunday before last was my last day to be forty-five years in the chair [chairperson position] and would not let me out. I've been trying to get out six years. I: And that's called? What's the name of the club? B: The name of the club is called the Cooperative Club Number One. In the club that organized us was cooperative Number one and they was from Asheville here. I think most of them are dead. They aren't a club anymore. I: What does the club do? B: Uhh? I: What do you all do? Bolden 26 B: Well, we would meet. There is thirty-two of us in that club. All the teachers and everybody, this and that. I was younger then. We'd meet at four o'clock on Sunday afternoons and carry on little business and decide what we were going to do. They said, "Will you make us out a program because I was one to help organize it." Two ladies from West Asheville and they put me in their little organization and we organized it together. So, we helped the sick. We helped each other if they needed help. We went to the rescue of some. We had our plans all made. We made our rules. Helped the sick, tried to be helpful to people and have a better community and to at tend church, things like that, that we hadn't been doing. I: You've been the president of that club fore forty-five years? B: Yes. I can name them. Mrs. Annie Pearson, ask Mrs. Pearson sometime. Talk to her about the club. Ask her if she knew me. She knows the club. She'll tell you. She's been sick a long time several years but she was out summer before last when I went to it. I wanted to get out. No, they won't let me out. You should've heard some of them and what they said. Said, "No not until the Lord has to take her." They said, "Ms. Bolden you've been bringing us up for six years and we're not going to let you out." I: You got another club in this community? B: Yeah. I: What's the name of it? B: I got another club over here. My sister-in-law organized over here. It's been here twenty-seven, Juanita said. Twenty-seven or twenty-nine. I: You've been the president? B: The president and they won't let me out. They won't let me out. They say the same thing. "Oh, no. We not gonna let you out." There are 12 of us right in here. We walk, you know. We don't have to have transportation. We just have the nicest time. We meet tomorrow, Saturday, the second Saturday in every month we meet. The third Sunday, we meet at one other club. But I'm trying to get out. I'm tired. They said no. That club is called the Dalpha Dills. We organized when the Dalpha Dills was here. I named it. Sally and me organized it and named it the Dalpha Dills. It still goes with Dalpha Dills. I've been there now, twenty-seven or nine years which ever. They would not let me out. I begged to get out. I want out because I don't want no responsibility. I just want to go and sit down and enjoy myself and not have to work out no programs and doing this. I'm tired. They won't let me out. They said no. Well, I don't know. I've been there long enough. I want to go on. They said we won't have no club if you don't go. I: Ms. Bolden, what would you like to see the future be like? B: See like? Like to see. I: The future be like? Bolden 27 B: The future for people? Oh, I'd like to see a better future for people that what I've known and been through and even now there have been so many improvements as a people, as a race, it can be done if we just get somebody to lead us. What we need is not inspiration but aspiration. That's the way I see it. We got the inspiration. I don't have it and can't do it now because I'm off the wheel. There was a time when I worked with people and loved it. But we've got to get that aspiration instead of inspiration. So many are inspired and can do and want to do but the aspiration is lacking. Where is the aspiration? Who's gonna start this thing? That's what we need how. Is not inspiration, but we need aspiration. That's the way I see life. Just about as good. I never had too much mind but I got about as much as I ever had. I just don't have the strength now to do things because I'm tired and he wants me to stop and rest now. My days over, I've done my done. I've done what I could. Maybe not all that I could. No. But he spared me. We were a big family. He's taken them all, five brothers, five daughters, five sisters-in-laws, mother, father, cousins, uncles, aunts, they are gone. Why he's left me a little while go in storming and tell them what they haven't done and what must be done and how this or how that. You go in kind of loving and sweet, take them in your arms so to speak and be nice and be kind and everybody's somebody. I: ‘Cause God don't make no junk. B: Yeah, everybody's somebody. Make ‘em feel like they're as big as anybody. And I called the women together, the church women, we had a big church then and I talked and they talked. I said, "Now you're gonna stick with me and I'm gonna stick with you. This Woman's Day. We're gonna start this thing. "And so we had sort of a little meeting and asked and I got my offices and everything and the helpers and organized and everything. I did it myself. I stayed up one night nearly all night doing that. But I did it, got all my organizations ready. I called them together on Friday night again and so they come downstairs. Oh they came. I said, "Now we're going to organize tonight, come on." And they came." ‘Cause I would just get up in church and talk, you know, I just wasn't afraid, so Brian and I came and we organized and I never had a minute's trouble. Never had nobody to say no and guess how much we raised. They never had it before and people, oh, if we raised $500 that's all right. We hadn't quite finished paying the mortgage off the church and Rev. White said he wanted to get that mortgage paid off because he wanted to do some work around the church. That mortgage had been $100,000 in Rev. Halston's time. And so, all right, I think it was $23,000 so he said, "Let's get that off," and the first Woman's Day we had, I had my speaker, I got it all down pat. The place was just crowded and I tell you we had a time and we raised $4,000. The women, Women's Day. $4,000, we never had raised that much in the church before. Then I organized a Men's Day and we raised two thousand and something in the Men's Day program. That was unusual. But I talked to the men. I led that, too, and we had a good time. I told the men if they helped us we would help them. There wasn't too many men, you know, not too many that could give too much. So we started out that and I led it for 16 years and the last one we had, we raised $8,000 that day in Woman's Day. And then the doctor told me I had to have this eye operation, I had glaucoma and then my ear . . . I had to give up. But Rev. White tell me, "Now we haven't had anybody to take up your job." Well, anyway, I just love church work and I just organize and people all around me and after we raised the money we had a big dinner downstairs and we had the best time... lovely time. If you treat people nice and be Bolden 28 kind to them, they will go along with you and one lady told me she couldn't come... she come her from South Carolina, Greenville. I said, "Why you can't sweetheart?" She would come to my meetings and all on Friday nights. I called the women together and we would have meetings. We would always have cake and punch and cream and punch. She said, "I ain't got no white dress and I ain't got no money and I can't buy nothing." She had been to the meetings and all on Friday nights. I didn't know her. I don't know her name now. And the next Friday night she came to me and said, "I'm sorry I can't be here on Sunday afternoon cause I wouldn't want to come unless I had my white dress on and I can't buy one." I said, "Listen, what you do. Do you know where Lexington Avenue is? "She lived in Greenville. And she said, "Yes, I do." I said, "Well, do you have anybody that can go with you tomorrow morning?" Now this was Friday night and the program was Sunday. "Have you got anybody to go with you tomorrow to Lexington Avenue?" She said, "Well, my cousin would go but she ain't got no money either." I said, "You go down." I told her where to go and how to go 'cause this girl that worked in this place she's down there now. I haven't been there but they tell me she's still there. Way down Lexington it's second-hand stuff and new stuff, too, or something way down on the left going way down. And I told her where to go and she said her sister would know where it was. So I said, "Well, by 9:00 you be there," It told her how to get there and I give her my phone number. I said, "Now if you don't find it you call me," and I went on home. That night I woke Ann up because Ann Lowman lived in one of my houses right above me and I told her about this girl and I said I told her to be there at 9:00. And you look out for her and I said to get her a white uniform if you got one to fit her, she's small, little lady, but she was nice and a little small. I said you fit her in one that will fit her and won't have to have no work done on it ‘cause Sunday's my program and you tell her to go home and press it if she can for Sunday. I told Ann what to do and how to do it and I said tomorrow, I said, I'll bring your money down and give it to you Monday." So she went and her sister and Ann said she was down there before 9:00 and Ann fit her in a little white uniform and told her to press it so it would be looking good and all and to call me and to tell me she got it. Well, she said she didn't have no telephone to call me that Saturday. Well Ann called me and said the woman said for her to call me and tell me she got the dress. And Ann called me and told me she fitted her in a nice white uniform. And she wore it and when I got there Sunday, I went home after church and I went back up there and she come up pretty soon. She lived down there near Eagle Street somewhere and she come up to me and she said, "See, I've got my dress on. Thank you, ma'am. "And she put her arms around me and held me. I said, "Well, I tell you what I want you to do. I want you to walk with Ms. Tatum and I want you to lead the line with Ms. Tatum. Will you do that for me? From the basement come on up around that way and then come in the front door. Can you do that for me? Oh, she was just tickled to death. I said, "You look so pretty." And then after that she said she would. I told Tatum, I said, "You keep an eye on her and you let her know that it's you she's supposed to work with." And she and Ms. Tatum, oh, they led the line. You should have seen her stepping. That's the last time I saw her. She went away shortly after that she got sick or something and went back. Somebody come after her from Greenville. She died later after that. The lady that lived closed to her belonged to Mt. Zion. She's dead now. She told me that she died. She didn't want nothing to touch that white dress she bought. I did that, you know, and I put my arms around her and made her feel good because she didn't, she didn't know nobody hardly. I made her feel good. But that's the way I, I got more joy out of it Bolden 29 than she did. I paid Ann two dollars and a half for the dress and that was it. I like to do things like that. It done me more good than it done her. I didn't know I could help her some. So, anyway, she loved me, put her arms around me -- I never will forget -- and just hugged me.

Annie May (Mae) Bolden is interviewed by Edward Clark Smith in 1987 as a part of the Western North Carolina Tomorrow Black Oral History Project. Bolden talks right away about her grandmothers, then proceeds to moving from South Carolina, her father, Jim Miller, being the first black contractor in Asheville, being taught that "business is business," walking to school, graduating in 1911, how the town of Emma got its name, and more.

• Creator
  • Bolden, Annie May Miller, 1894-1996
• Contributor
  • Smith, Edward Clark
• Format
  • Sound recordings
  • Interviews
• Type
  • Sound
• Date
  • Date interview: 1987
  • Date: 1860s; 1870s; 1880s; 1890s; 1890s; 1900s (Decade); 1910s; 1920s; 1930s; 1940s; 1980s;
  • Date digitized: 2017-11-07
• Extent
  • Duration: 02:07:44 (sound recording)
  • Duration: 29 pages (transcript)
• Subject - Topic
  • African American families
  • African Americans
  • African Americans -- Religion
  • African Americans -- Social conditions
  • Autobiography
  • Bolden, Annie May Miller, 1894-1996
  • Bolden, Annie May Miller, 1894-1996 -- Childhood and youth
  • Bricklayers
  • Enslaved persons
  • North Carolina, Western -- Race relations -- History -- 20th century
  • Segregation -- North Carolina -- Buncombe County
• Location
  • Asheville (N.C.)
  • Buncombe County (N.C.)
  • North Carolina, Western
• Source institution
  • Western Carolina University
• Source Collection
  • Western North Carolina Tomorrow Black Oral History Project
• Identifier
  • HL_MSS98-03_Smith_Bolden_1987_audio
• Repository
  • Western Carolina University Hunter Library