Josephine Clemons Bell oral history

An Oral History with
Josephine Clemons Bell

This oral history is provided through
a cooperative project of USM Libraries and
USM's Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage

It is presented here for reference purposes only. Interviews in this collection are protected by copyright and
PERMISSION TO PUBLISH MUST BE REQUESTED
from the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage.

Topics Discussed

Family and childhood
Housing
Mother's working
School days at the Union School and Brumfield High School
Bell's assessment of the quality of her education
Attending college
Working for and friendship with the Metcalf family
Teaching
Classroom size and conditions
Qualifications of teachers with whom Bell taught
Classroom discipline after desegration
Omens of desegration, exchange teaching with white teacher
First class after desegragation
Discipline after desegragation, integration of Natchez High School, Patricia West
Being instructed on how to behave in the classroom after integration
Merit pay system
Behavior in the classroom after desegration
Bell's feelings about teaching in an integrated setting
Charles Evers
integration of the Natchez Hotel Racial violence in Natchez
Teachers belonging to NAACP just prior to integration
Violence at Armstrong tire plant
death of Wallace Jackson
injury to George Metcalf
Ku Klux Klan parade in Natchez
African-American reaction to white violence
Bell's involvement in politics, origins of the Federation of Democratic Women
Effect of redistricting, election of African Americans
Difficulties of teaching and raising a family
Rhythm Night Club fire (April 23, 1940)
Bell's children
Bell's community service
The Zion Chapel AME Church

This is an interview for the Mississippi Oral History Program of The University of Southern Mississippi. The interview is with Mrs. Josephine Clemons Bell and is taking place on October 22, 1996. The interviewer is Amy McPhail.

McPhail: --McPhail interviewing Mrs. Josephine Bell in Natchez, Mississippi, October the twentieth--

Bell: Second.

McPhail: --second, 1996, for The University of Southern Mississippi.

(brief interruption)

Bell: My name is Josephine Bell. I was born in Louisiana in Concordia Parish on a small plantation which is just about three miles beyond Vidalia before you get to Ferriday, Louisiana. But I was brought back to Natchez when I was two weeks old and I was reared by my mother. My father left and went away to look for work and he did not return. So my mother reared me and she worked very hard. She had to work two places. She worked at a place, Swift and Company, and during that time they had an oil mill here. She also worked at the oil mill. And she trained me that I would have to obey her and do the things that she said. So when she worked at the oil mill she could come--it was right across from where we lived--she would come back at dinnertime to see about me. Then some years later my father returned and she became pregnant with another child. Then my father left again and didn't return. So that left my mother with two children. I had a younger sister who was two years younger than I was. And that was an extra burden but my mother managed to make ends meet. And we went to school, she sent us to school. At that time it was Union School. And I had several teachers at the Union School that I liked and they really liked me because I was interested in trying to do whatever they said do. I went to Union School until they changed from Union School to Brumfield and that was many years later. So Brumfield is the school where I finished. But during those days when I was a child in between my elementary education and [when] I played with children and everything, I always wanted to be the teacher. It was just a pleasure to have the other children to be my students. And I would get a little switch. At times go to the tree and break a little peach-tree switch and that was what I was going to show them, the switch, when they would not mind. My mother used to switch me with a peach-tree switch. So I would act the part of the teacher all the time. So it was instilled in me about [being] a teacher. But then further all I ever wanted to be when I became a larger girl, I thought about a nurse, being a nurse. So I had planned in my years when I went to Brumfield School [to be a nurse]--that was all that I thought about then, was [being] a nurse. I wanted to be a nurse; I wanted to go to St. Louis. That's where the girls were going to. I think it was Phillips; I don't remember, but I think the first name of the hospital was Phillips. And I really had a dream that I would be able to go to Phillips School. But during that time, in my high school years, they had a big high water, that is a high water [the Flood of 1927]--so people came--they [were] called refugees--they came out of Louisiana over here and they had camps and places where they took care of them until the water went down. Well, the economy was so bad until the year that I finished school, my mother just was not able to send me to this school to become a nurse.

McPhail: Was that--do you remember what year that was?

Bell: Huh?

McPhail: Do you remember what year that was when you had the high water?

Bell: High water was in '27.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: Twenty-seven.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: And so after I went, finished school, I was disappointed that I really couldn't go to this nursing school. So I had a boyfriend and I married. I married and about two months after I married, the school wrote that they would send for me and pay for me coming there and give me a little money to have. But I had married. I think it was two or three months before then and that caused me not to be a nurse. So I stayed with my husband for awhile. We did not get along. I had a little girl, one girl, first a girl. Her name was Rhetaugh. I named her after her father. Her father was named Rhetaugh so I named her Rhetaugh.

McPhail: Mrs. Bell, before you go on, you mentioned several other things I'd like to talk about.

Bell: OK.

McPhail: So do you mind if we go back and let's talk about that?

Bell: Sure.

McPhail: I want to go back to your childhood when you were growing up.

Bell: Uh-huh.

McPhail: What was the situation for your mom when you were first born? You said that your father had left and she moved back to Natchez.

Bell: My mother came--my mother lived here.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: She went to Louisiana until after I was born [and stayed] with my father's mother because her mother was dead.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: And when she came back here, she brought me back and I have a--she had a girlfriend who was my godmother--stood for me as godmother. And that's how she [made it]: my godmother worked [at night and] my mother worked in the day. Or my godmother worked in the day and my mother worked at night. And that is how they took care of me growing up. And then after my father came back, my mother went back to him and got the other child. Well, it was the same thing with my godmother and my mother.

McPhail: What was your godmother's name?

Bell: Her name was Estelle Newborn.

McPhail: OK. How do you spell her last name?

Bell: E-S-T-E-L-L-E N-E-W-B-O-R-N.

McPhail: And what was your mother's name?

Bell: Julia Brown Clemons.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: Now I would like to back up too because when--about--my mother left--see, my mother married again.

McPhail: Uh-huh.

Bell: My mother married again and she married a fellow by the name of James Russell.

McPhail: And this was after you--

Bell: When she married Russell, I was grown.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: But my mother--and then--no, the first [time she remarried, it was to] Hamp Calvin. I forgot about him. He was a very good step-father. He provided well for my mother and my sister and myself, but in later years he died. So that put my mother by herself again with teenagers to rear. She worked and she worked several places. And we had to kind of look after ourselves at home when she was at work. And my sister was very, very obedient. Whatever mama said do, she would do it. But I was the one that if she said, "Don't leave, do your work and everything," I would think that I could just go out to play and come back and get the work done. (laughter) So many evening when she'd come home, I would see her coming and start running from playing to try to do the work. But my sister wasn't--she was very obedient, I wasn't.

McPhail: Then when you and your sister was growing up, how did y'all spend your free time together? Were you more like a sister to her or more like looking after her?

Bell: I looked after my sister. I was just growing up for a certain part [of the time], but I [looked after her]. In school I learned I could do better with subjects than she could and I didn't have to study as hard. And in the afternoon mama would leave work for her to do her school work, and I would have my school work. So I'd finish my school work and I would leave out to play. And she tried to stay and to do her school work and things and I would look after her, because [after] I would get my work done, then I would do the dishes and everything. I did most of the work while my sister tried to study and she was quiet. She would stay at home and do exactly what mama said do. But I would leave to play, I loved to play. I would leave the house and go play. And she would beg me a lot of times not to, say[ing], "You're going to get a whipping," and I would get a whipping, most every day because I loved to play.

McPhail: What games did you play?

Bell: Huh?

McPhail: When you were playing, what all did you play?

Bell: Well, one game we used to play--we used to play "Ring Around the Rosies," "London Bridge is Falling Down," and one thing I really loved to play [was] "Little Sally Walker, Sitting in a Saucer."

McPhail: Now what is that? I've never heard of that, what is that?

Bell: ["Little Sally Walker, Sitting in a Saucer. Rise, Sally, rise.] Wipe your weeping eyes." Let's see, "Put your hand on your hip. Let your backbone slip. Shake it to the east, and shake it to the west. Shake it to the one that you love the best." So I would just love to play. I'd just play, play, play until near time for my mother to get off and know I hadn't done my chores.

McPhail: Right.

Bell: Then I'd run to do them.

McPhail: Sounds familiar. (laughter) Could you tell me what your house was like when you were growing up?

Bell: My house? Well, my house was a nice house. Let's see, we had three rooms and the kitchen when I was growing up. And at the early age, we had three rooms and a kitchen. That was two bedrooms and a living room and a kitchen. It was a living room and a dining room combined. But in my very early childhood, we did not have a bathroom.

McPhail: And this is in another house?

Bell: We bathed--huh?

McPhail: Was this is another house?

Bell: What?

McPhail: Was this--the house that you didn't have a bathroom in, was it an earlier house?

Bell: No. In the earlier days we didn't have a bathroom.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: We used to have a large tin tub like people used to wash in. They used a washboard and a tub. And this big tub--we had to take that bath in that tub every night. And mother would heat the water and put the water in the tub. And so she would put us--see that we got in that tub and stand up and help us to bathe. But later on years, in the house that had--always had real nice living conditions because [in] the next house, we had four rooms and we had a bathroom.

McPhail: Do you remember when you moved? About how old you were?

Bell: When we had a bathroom, I think, I must have been about twelve years old, twelve years old. And we had lights. But [at a] very early age, we did not have lights; we had lamps, coal oil [kerosene] lamps. They had the glass globes on them and coal oil and she'd light the lamps. That's what they had. And we had houses at the very early age that had the [fireplace] in it [and a] grate [that would hold the coal], and we'd burn coal. They bought coal. I think the coal was a dollar a barrel. But anyway, they had coal yards here and you would order your coal. They'd bring it to you by the barrel and that's how you made your fire [with] kindling, some pine wood [kindling to] start the fire in the grate and you burned the coal.

McPhail: And make it last longer.

Bell: Uh-huh, that was done in my early days.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: But the later years it came to the place where we had a coal-oil heater, a heater, a big heater that had coal-oil in it and you could burn that and that would heat your drums up. And then from that we went to, I went to central heating.

McPhail: When you were a child did you move from that home that had the bathroom in it, was that your last childhood home, the house that had the bathroom in it and four bedrooms?

Bell: Four bedrooms, yes.

McPhail: Was that your last home that you were growing up in that you lived with your mom and your sister?

Bell: Yeah, uh-huh. That's four rooms and bathroom.

McPhail: OK. What's your most outstanding memory of that home?

Bell: About that house?

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: Well, the outstanding memories about that house there is that was during the time that my mother had married this fellow Hamp Calvin. He worked at a club uptown. He would come home every day or every evening for his dinner and my mother would set the table. We had the four rooms. [And] we had a large kitchen and in the middle of the kitchen was a table that was used as our dining room, because [that way], we had the regular living room then. And so we used the kitchen and she would--a certain time of evening, I think it was around four o'clock, he would come in for dinner and dinner would be--she would cook dinner. The table would have to be set for him and sometimes we would be waiting to eat. Everybody would have to come to the table, say the blessing when he came in, then eat. So I said to my sister one day--mama was putting the dinner on the table, I remember in this house, and I wanted to stick my finger in [to sample] it--I went there--she had, I think it was apple rolls and they looked so good and smelled--I was tired of waiting and I went and stuck my finger down in them and burned it because they were hot. And I will always remember that house because she knew then I had been [tasting the food] all along; I'd stick my finger in the food before they'd eat. So this time I stuck my finger down in it and burned my finger. And I remember that house because that's where it happened.

McPhail: Did your mother work outside of the home when you were--

Bell: Huh?

McPhail: At that house did your mother work outside of the home?

Bell: Yes, she worked outside of the home.

McPhail: Where did she work by then?

Bell: My mother worked for a family of people that were the Learnards. Her name was Mrs. Elizabeth L-E-A-R-N-A-R-D, Learnard. They had a mill under the hill and they were claimed to be millionaires. Now at some--Andrew Learnard--that was her name, Mrs. Andrew Learnard.

McPhail: Andrew?

Bell: Andrew, A-N-D-R-E-W, uh-huh, Andrew Learnard. Her name was Elizabeth and her husband was Andrew Learnard. And they lived over on the Height [Clifton Heights]. The house was right there. Now it's caving in because that place, all that place is caving over there. But that's where my mother worked. She worked there after we were pretty good size. You know, I told you she worked at the oil mill and Swift and Company when we was very small.

McPhail: When she worked at the oil mill, what kind of work did she actually do? What did she actually do?

Bell: Well, at the oil mill they made--at this place they made some kind of cakes and I think they fed it to cattle. I think it was some kind of cakes. Well, she worked there, but she had to wear, I remember she had to wear overalls. She worked there. Now at Swift and Company, I'm not so sure but she used to have--I think, they have like a--if they had the bad eggs in the crates and [she would] take them out--and food, you know, see about the good and bad food that Swift and Company--like that. Because I remember a lot of times they would give her cracked eggs and things so she must have had to sort out eggs and things. I don't remember exactly what else.

McPhail: Did she work a set amount of hours? Did she go in every morning at the same time and come home at the same time?

Bell: Every morning at the same time.

McPhail: Um-hm. How long did she work in the afternoon?

Bell: At the mill?

McPhail: Yes, ma'am.

Bell: I guess my mother worked there about three or four years at the oil mill.

McPhail: Well, what time did she get off in the afternoon?

Bell: I think it was four o'clock. I think it was seven until four or eight--I think it was seven to five. I think that was it, seven to five or seven to four, one [or the other]. I don't remember.

McPhail: Um-hm and then she had to come home and cook huh?

Bell: Yeah. She'd come home and cook. But see, we were ready for school before she left for work. And it wasn't any buses or cars or anything when I was small. You had to get your own children to school, so we walked to school.

McPhail: How far was the school from where you lived?

Bell: Well, when I lived--when she was working on--do you know where the Natchez Democrat is?

McPhail: No.
Bell:
You don't.

McPhail: No, I don't.

Bell: Well, anyway, the Natchez Democrat is on Canal Street. The railroad--Canal Street, and you come from Canal Street straight on up to Union Street, where the school was. It was straight, just straight up the railroad. And, let's see, there was--I said was Canal and Union--it was just about five blocks.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: Straight--

McPhail: Straight down the rail.

Bell: That's right, straight up the [rail]road.

McPhail: And that's how you walked?

Bell: We walked, we walked. Of course, there were streets, you know, [along] the side of it. No sidewalk, no sidewalk at all, just the rail and the ground on the side. Well, we walked to school from--we walked there and then later on we moved [to] another place on--I was going to say my mother never moved. We didn't move over twice when we were small. That was from the railroad we went to school there and then I never--

McPhail: That was when you were in the younger ages?

Bell: Uh-huh, younger age and I'm trying to think where--on Beaumont Street. Then we moved on a street where the school was about seven or eight blocks [away]. Never was too very far from the school.

McPhail: And that was at Brumfield?

Bell: No, then [the one] I'm talking about was Union School.

McPhail: And that was when you were younger.

Bell: Now Brumfield is a school when I was--well, I started going to Brumfield in my last year, you see.

McPhail: Um-hm. That's what it was called. Did the name change?

Bell: Um-hm. That was '26 when I went to Brumfield. That was my last year. So I now, let's see, I lived on Brenham Avenue and that was not too far from Brumfield.

McPhail: OK. When you were in elementary school did all students walk to school? Was that just the way it was? There wasn't any buses?

Bell: Well, we walked. Yeah, there wasn't any buses. The white children went to school in buses for awhile but wasn't any buses for the black children. The white children had a way to ride to school, but during that time they [the African Americans] didn't have [buses].

McPhail: Um-hm. The black children had to figure out how--

Bell: --uh-huh, the black children had to walk, so we walked to school.

McPhail: Could you tell me what the schools were like when you were little? Did you have your own textbooks? What were the facilities like?

Bell: Oh yeah. When yeah, you had to have your own textbooks.

McPhail: Did [your mother] purchase yours?

Bell: You had to purchase your own textbooks. You purchased your own textbooks, and you would pass every year if you made the grades. And I remember my sister was a little slow in school, and there was one book entitled Little Alice and Her Kittens. I remember that. I remember the words from my mother. My mother [said if] she didn't pass at school--my mother told her, "I am so tired of buying Little Alice and Her Kittens, I don't know what to do." So she had to get it the second year, you know. My sister had to repeat. They made you repeat the grades.

McPhail: Right.

Bell: So I never had to repeat.

McPhail: What was your school building like? Was it nice, a nice building?

Bell: Well, Union School, the first school that I went to--I only went to two schools here and that was Union and Brumfield.

McPhail: Right.

Bell: Well, Union School was a nice building, it was a nice building. You had the--the strange thing about it, the girls were all in a class together.

McPhail: Really?

Bell: Yeah.

McPhail: I didn't know that.

Bell: The girls and the boys--well, not in a class together, but what I mean by that is the girls and the boys at recess, they could not play together. One side of the yard--Union School had two big, had a big yard and it was partitioned. One side was for the boys to play and one side was for the girls to play. So I remember that at the Union School they had the outdoor toilet, you know, long, house-like, with these toilets. And you go in about, I think, about fifteen or twenty holes, you know, straight along. And all the girls would go in that and then on the other side of the yard was the boys' toilet.

McPhail: And that was outside of the school.

Bell: Outside of the school.

McPhail: Uh-huh.

Bell: And then the teachers were very, very careful. There was a teacher at the gate. You sure wasn't going to get to go on the boys' side and the [boys] weren't going to come on the girls' side. So that's the way they--

McPhail: And that was at Union.

Bell: Union School, yeah. But at Brumfield, well now see, when I went to Brumfield that was my last year in school. And I was the first class to finish and--to go to school and finish at Brumfield. And that was the class of 1927.

McPhail: Um-hm. What was your--at Union, what were your teachers like? Did you feel--

Bell: Hmm?

McPhail: Your teachers at Union.

Bell: Oh, my teachers, they were--at Brumfield, you see, they had departmentalized, you know. At the other school--at Brumfield I had an English teacher and a teacher that taught Latin and a math teacher and they were all very nice teachers. I remembered them and still remember some of them, you know. I never gave any trouble in school. I was salutatorian of my class. And I respected my teachers and they respected me. I didn't give any trouble at all in school.

McPhail: How was discipline at the school?

Bell: How was the discipline?

McPhail: How was the discipline? Did you have as much roughness as there is going on in the schools today?

Bell: No, no, when I was at school, you did whatever the teacher said. It wasn't any--now children would be mischievous sometimes and would have to--but you know they had straps--

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: --during my time and they would strap you, they would spank you.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: They were allowed to spank you, and they didn't have any trouble.

McPhail: Because they knew that they would get spanked.

Bell: No discipline problem at all. And when you moved about during my days, you had a line. See there was--say the bell would ring one [ring], sit up; two [rings], turn around; three [rings], stand; four [rings], march, I know. And those [lines] would move, going anywhere.

McPhail: Really?

Bell: See if you were going--well, we had an auditorium [at Brumfield] and we had to leave out of the auditorium and go to our different classes. But it was just as orderly. You could hear a pin fall. And we had a professor, Professor G.W. Brumfield. He was the principal, G.W. Brumfield.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: And you had no trouble with children in those day?

(The interview continues on tape one, side two.)

McPhail: We were just talking about discipline at Brumfield High School.

Bell: Yeah, discipline was very good. We had our proms. We never had any trouble and we had lovely proms. Well, that was all black, you see, and you were allowed to invite someone come in, but you had to know who they were. And after the prom, they started to having--well, now, this didn't happen during my year. After the prom--we went to the prom and when it was over, we went straight home. But in later years, they decided to have a breakfast or something for the children afterwards. But that didn't happen during my time, that was later years.

McPhail: At that time were there sports in schools at all or was it just academics? Did they have sports and extracurricular things like that at school?

Bell: Yeah, they did. At Brumfield they had the baseball team, they had a basketball team, and I wasn't sure, no, they didn't have tennis. But they had boys that played basketball, football, and baseball.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: They had--

McPhail: But they didn't have any sports offered for girls?

Bell: Well, the girls played basketball.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: Uh-huh.

McPhail: Did you play?

Bell: The girls played--I played on the team. I have a picture here somewhere, but I don't know where it is, but I played on the team. That was my last year.

McPhail: And did Brumfield have indoor restrooms?

Bell: Brumfield?

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: That's where they were, Brumfield.

McPhail: That had the--

Bell: That had them, yeah.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: They had them then. And we had a music teacher, you know, that played. Brumfield was quite a change from--

McPhail: Union Street.

Bell: --Union Street, yeah.

McPhail: Well, tell me what the classes were like at Union? Did one teacher teach every subject?

Bell: Well, you see, at Union Street, mostly at Union Street when you were in a class, that teacher taught everything. That was up until you got up in the high school, see, [the] elementary teacher she taught math, English, taught the child all day, one teacher. At Union Street in the beginning you had one teacher that would teach all the subjects to you.

McPhail: About how many kids were in the class with you, can you remember? (A brief portion of this interview is not being included in this typed transcript.)

Bell: Oh, we used to have somewhere around about forty and forty-five children.

McPhail: Really?

Bell: Yeah, in the beginning.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: Uh-huh, but they cut back down. At Brumfield we had thirty in some [classes] and some we had classes with thirty and thirty-five children in them even then.

McPhail: It was good that the classes were that disciplined then.

Bell: Yeah.

McPhail: They had to be.

Bell: Yeah. We had--well, you see, later on in the--well, before I finished, they didn't have aides and [the] teacher had all the children. But they didn't have any discipline--see in the morning when you'd go to school, you went to the auditorium.

McPhail: Um-hm, for an assembly?

Bell: You went to the auditorium for assembly. And when the time [came] to go to your classes, the bell would ring. All the teachers assembled in the auditorium with you, and when each bell would ring, you would know what bell was for the first group to go. Well, that teacher would stand and her group would stand [and] get in line and march on to that class. And they had them going--the hall, the classes were down the hall from the auditorium. They [would] come out and each class would go right on. It was arranged so the ones on the right would go in the right rooms, and the ones on the left would go in their classes, their first classes. So everything moved smoothly. And they also had classes downstairs. Now the elementary children at Brumfield didn't come to assembly.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: They went to their rooms like the first, second, third, and fourth grades.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: When they went in school in the morning, they went straight to the room [and] the teachers were there. It was only the high school that had assembly in the morning.

McPhail: Um-hm. When you were at Union Street, the classrooms, did they have air and heat? Were they comfortable?

Bell: At the Union School?

McPhail: Yes, ma'am.

Bell: Yeah, they were comfortable.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: The seats were comfortable, they were comfortable.

McPhail: Uh-huh and your teacher had--

Bell: Now, you didn't have--you know, at Union School you had to carry your lunch with you.

McPhail: You didn't have school lunches.

Bell: No, you didn't have a lunch. There was a little place--in fact, this teacher Sadie V. Thompson, once in a while she'd go down in this little place and make pies and sell them. But other than that, you had to carry your lunch with you every day.

McPhail: So you had to purchase your textbooks and bring a lunch, right?

Bell: Hmm?

McPhail: You had to purchase your books.

Bell: Oh, yeah.

McPhail: And you had to purchase--you had to prepare your lunch before school.

Bell: Oh, you had your parent prepare the lunch for you.

McPhail: Yeah.

Bell: See, the children, you'd see them with little lunch buckets and things going to school. I had a little lunch bucket that my mother prepared. And, see, she prepared a lunch for the two of us because my sister would be out--we'd have recess at the same time, and I always carried the lunch bucket.

McPhail: Um-hm. Why did you change from Union School to Brumfield?

Bell: Why did we change?

McPhail: Uh-huh.

Bell: Well, that was all, see, it was that was only one school. They had one other school for the blacks and that was called Prince Street [School]. That was on the other end, on this end, way out on the other end of the town. And you had the--so they had to--they had a drive where the children and the parents and everything raised money and helped to get money going to start--they wanted to put a fence up around Union Street School. And we all worked and our parents worked and got money together and put that fence around. But then they started complaining [that] you had too many children for that one school. See? Then the whites had several schools.

McPhail: Right. Why did they want the fence? Just to protect?

Bell: Yeah, see the school was right on a street.

McPhail: Uh-huh.

Bell: And they wanted this fence so you'd be sure you'd keep them in, the children in.

McPhail: Right.

Bell: And the parents raised the money to put up that fence. But through all of that, they never had a lot of discipline problems. And during those days--and Union School--it was a lady worked there who had a surrey. You know what a surrey is?

McPhail: Unh-uh.
Bell:
Well, it's a--you see, these wagons that they drive around during pilgrimage with the--

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: Well, that's what a surrey--but, anyway, hers was just like one of these surreys, the ones like you see on the street for garden pilgrimage. And so she used to bring all the teachers--most of the teachers would come packed up in that surrey. And she had, I've forgotten now what she called--the horse was Old Meg. Anyway, you'd see the horse would just be walking, walking. We'd get there--now that's in the morning--and we'd beat all the teachers there. That's when we would have our little fun before they got in.

McPhail: Right.

Bell: And we'd watch to see Old Meg coming, that surrey with our teachers in it, most of the high school teachers.

McPhail: Um-hm. Were most of your teachers female? Were they mostly women, or did they have men teachers also?

Bell: Well, at the Union Street School, they were women, but at Brumfield they were mixed.

McPhail: Did they seem real knowledgeable as teachers?

Bell: Well, I wouldn't say that they--the children did learn during those days because they didn't have all of the outside things to do, you know, and they did they had to concentrate on just that--well, down in the elementary they had to--you didn't have a child that I had to deal with when I was teaching. You didn't have a child who would, say, was in the fourth grade reading on a second-grade level.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: We didn't have that.

McPhail: Right.

Bell: No. If you were in the fourth grade, you were reading on a fourth-grade level, you were reading. But when I came along teaching, you had children fourth grade reading on first-grade level and all that kind of stuff. Well, we didn't have that.

McPhail: They advanced them [just] because they got older.

Bell: That's right. They really did learn. And one thing about it now, I enjoyed schools. Now they're talking about when they integrated. Well, we had such lovely, lovely programs and the closing of schools, things when we were just altogether. Well, then when they integrated, well it was different, you see.

McPhail: Right.

Bell: So I really enjoyed the programs and our banquets and our different things before that because we put so much in.

McPhail: Because they were yours.

Bell: It was ours, we put so much in it. We made the decorations, we had everything just beautiful. And it was a part of the things that we had made and decorated and done and seemed as if it was--you were together more so than it was after it was integrated.

McPhail: Um-hm. Did you feel that your education prepared you to go on to college? Did you feel that you were as knowledgeable as maybe white children that went to the white schools, as far as going to college?

Bell: Yeah, yeah, I did because you have some children are going to learn. Some children are going to learn in spite of that.

McPhail: Right.

Bell: Now, we really--we did not have the books and the material and everything that the white children had.

McPhail: What did your teachers use to teach with when you were in school?

Bell: Huh?

McPhail: What did your teachers use to teach with when you were in school?

Bell: What did they teach with?

McPhail: Like what materials did they have?

Bell: Oh, they had--well, they had--they mostly used--when I was small and in school down in the grades, the teachers didn't have all of this run-off material and all of that.

McPhail: Right.

Bell: They used the blackboard.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: They used that chalk and the blackboard. What they wanted you to do and work, they wrote it on the blackboard. You copied from the blackboard most everything. Your assignments and the things that you were supposed to do was posted, written on the blackboard. And they used to script, you know. And so they didn't have all the--they didn't have the overhead projectors and all those things. But they put it on the blackboard and you got it.

McPhail: Um-hm. And you had to purchase your textbooks.

Bell: Yeah, the children had [to while they were] going to school--these smaller children--the parents bought them--I don't know if you ever heard of the slates.

McPhail: I'm not sure.

Bell: Slates, uh-huh. They were about this large and looked something like the--

McPhail: That's about what, letter-size?

Bell: Yeah. And it looked something like a--well, you know the color of slate. Then they had the pencil. When they took assignments off the blackboard children used--instead of using a lot of--

McPhail: Paper.

Bell: --paper, they used slates.

McPhail: Uh-huh.

Bell: That's right.

McPhail: That is interesting.

Bell: I haven't seen one in years, slates.

McPhail: Um-hm. Well, why did you decide to go on to college? Did you go on to college? You mentioned that you thought about going to nursing.

Bell: Yes I went. I did. I went to college through in-service training. I went to college after I was grown and after I started teaching.

McPhail: OK. So you actually started teaching and then went to college.

Bell: Yeah.

McPhail: Did you go in the summer?

Bell: Yeah, I went in the summer and in the winter, too. See, like they'd have courses at Alcorn College.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: I took courses from Alcorn College and from--they had one or two courses over in Natchez College and what is this, USM-Natchez.

McPhail: USM-Natchez.

Bell: Um-hm, I had two or three courses there. But, anyway, that's how I finished my college went to Alcorn College. And then later, later I went to--I took subjects from Tuskegee and then I also took subjects at Southern Connecticut. That was in New Haven, Connecticut.

McPhail: What took you to Connecticut? Did you just decide to go--

Bell: What caused me to go to Connecticut?

McPhail: Right.

Bell: My daughter was teaching at Yale.

McPhail: My goodness.

Bell: And that's why I went to Connecticut, she was there. And during the summer I could visit her and go to Southern Connecticut, which I could drive her car to the campus. So that's why I went to Southern Connecticut two years, two summers. And I went to Tuskegee for two summers.

McPhail: Well, I want to talk about that later, but let's go back to after you finished school.

Bell: Uh-huh.

McPhail: OK? You mentioned that you wanted to go into nursing school, but you decided not to because you got married, is that right?

Bell: That's right.

McPhail: Now who was this person that you--can you tell me about your marriage?

Bell: My marriage?

McPhail: Uh-huh.

Bell: Well, I married--my first husband was Rhetaugh Graves. And I had two children by Rhetaugh. We separated and he went away and while he was gone away, I divorced him. And I worked for a family that helped me a lot with my children. I worked for a white family that was the Metcalfs.

McPhail: Medcliffs?

Bell: Uh-huh.

McPhail: M-E-T--

Bell: M-E-T-C-A-L-F, Mrs. Art [?] Metcalf.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: And she had two, she had three children.

McPhail: Were they around the same ages as your children?

Bell: They were about nearly the same age as my children.

McPhail: Well, that worked out good.

Bell: And that worked out good because she helped me with--she gave me clothes for the children and she was so close. We were so close until I could bring my children down there to spend the day with her children. And when I was supposed to have my vacation, most of the time she brought all of them out to the house wherever I was to be with me while she went around.

McPhail: This is your early twenties, is that right?

Bell: That's right.

McPhail: And was that your daughter, your two children--

Bell: OK, my daughter her name is Rhetaugh. And then later I had the son who was named Wade. Now they were by my first husband.

McPhail: Right.

Bell: We separated and this lady [Mrs. Metcalf] helped me with those children. Then I met my husband now.

McPhail: Right.

Bell: I met him when my daughter was five years old and my son was three. I met Norman Bell.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: I still worked for the Metcalfs and them a while.

McPhail: What type of work did you do for them?

Bell: For the Metcalfs?

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: Nurse, cook, clean up everything.

McPhail: Um-hm. So you hadn't started being a teacher yet.

Bell: No. Yeah, I had taught as a substitute after I finished school awhile, I had taught as a substitute teacher.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: At Prince Street School there was a lady out by the name of Daisy Sims. She was ill and I taught in her place nearly a term. And then after that I taught several days when they needed someone at Prince Street.

McPhail: Was that an elementary school? (A brief portion of this interview is not being included in the typed transcript).

Bell: Uh-huh. That's where I taught in a person's place. That was before I ever ever taught in the, you know, went as a teacher.

McPhail: Right. So you got married and you had your two children and then you started working for this family. How long did you work for that family?

Bell: I worked straight for that family nine years.

McPhail: Um-hm, that's a good while.
Bell:
And she helped me. She encouraged me, knowing that I had had subjects and things, she encouraged me to become a teacher, you know.

McPhail: Oh, really?

Bell: She helped me to get in the system because I could better my condition by being a teacher. And she didn't want to hold me back because she knew that before I came to work for her, after I had finished school, I had done some substitute work. So she helped me and encouraged me to become a, you know, to apply for a teaching job.

McPhail: Did she work outside of the home at that time?

Bell: Oh, no, Mrs. Mrs. Metcalf was a rich woman.

Bell: OK.

McPhail: Was she white, from a white family?

Bell: I'll tell you whose house--who the house is owned right now, by her son--this garden pilgrimage house they called it Parsonage.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: Uh-huh. She was original--she was the owner of the Parsonage. And her son that I nurse right now, they have Jordan Auto Company right on the road up here.

McPhail: Um-hm. Well, how did she encourage you to--

Bell: Well, she was working when I was working and so they needed teachers. And I was taking classes and she said to me when that--she wasn't going to hold me back--

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: --working because she couldn't pay me what I would get teaching. And she just helped me to get in, helped me to apply for my license. And she knew the superintendent; he was a friend of hers.

McPhail: Do you remember his name?

Bell: Gilmer McLaurin.

McPhail: Yeah. And you were taking classes at that time?

Bell: I took classes. Would go sometimes at night, you know, take classes.

McPhail: And that was at what school were you taking classes?

Bell: Alcorn.

McPhail: At Alcorn.

Bell: On Saturdays, some Saturdays, and then some--once I took classes at Natchez College.

(telephone rings, brief interruption)

McPhail: OK, continue.

Bell: Mrs. Metcalf was very kind to me in every way. She didn't just want to keep me there working in her home when she thought that I could do better by having a job that would pay more. So she helped me all she could to get on the school system, to get in the school system. And after that even though she had extra work and things for parties and things, I used to go and serve parties and help her out in the way after school. And we were friends until she died.

McPhail: OK. How long has it been since she's passed away? How long has it been since she's passed away?

Bell: I really don't know. I guess it's been about five years. I forget. I lose track of time with that, but I think it's been about five years. I wouldn't want to say that, I'll just say [she] passed away some years ago.

McPhail: That's fine, that's fine. When you started going to teaching, were your children of school age at that time?

Bell: Yeah. When I started to go in teaching, my children were school age all, but I didn't tell you about--I left out the boy. When my daughter finished high school, I had another child with this husband.

McPhail: Oh, my goodness. (laughter)

Bell: See in 1946, [I had] another child. See, I told you about me marrying when she was five years old and my other boy was three?

McPhail: Um-hm. What year that was?

Bell: Well, I waited until '46 and had another child, a boy.

McPhail: Goodness, gracious. Um-hm.

Bell: And that was the only child I have by this marriage, Norman Bell.

McPhail: OK. Well, we'll talk about him in a little bit. When you first started teaching, what school did you teach at?

Bell: What school did I teach at?

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: Well, you mean--when I first started teaching I taught as a substitute at Prince Street School but the regular job was Brumfield.

McPhail: Was at Brumfield.

Bell: That's right.

McPhail: And you were in--

Bell: Well, I went and I taught at Brumfield. Then when they built Sadie V. Thompson, I taught at Sadie V. Thompson. When they built Northside, I taught at Northside.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: Then they moved me from Northside School to Washington School. When I went to Washington School, there were only thirty-two blacks in the whole building.

McPhail: And that was after desegregation.

Bell: After integration, that's right.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: So I taught at all those schools and I've retired from Washington School.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: That's the school where Copiah-Lincoln was right on the road to Washington, you know. That's that school out there.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: That's where I retired from.

McPhail: Could you tell me about your first years of teaching? What the schools were like? Had they changed from when you were in school?

Bell: What [do] you mean?

McPhail: From the time that you were in school until the time that you started teaching, what was different about the schools?

Bell: Oh, it was a lot of difference about the schools from the time I was in school. From the time--you mean from the time I taught the integration or the time I went to school?

McPhail: The time that you were a student in school--

Bell: Oh.

McPhail: --until the time that you started teaching.

Bell: Oh, yeah. Well, the time I was a student in school it was a good bit of difference because when I was in school, we did not have--we did not have, in the later years we did not have all the equipment to work with like they did. See, at first we used the blackboard, run-off material, and things like that. And then later we had overhead projectors, we had movies, and all the different new techniques that we did not have when I was in school.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: But even having all of the different things, it didn't seem to do much, it didn't seem to help some. And I always believed, you know, that they would run-off a lot of material--teachers would run-off a lot of material and give [it to] the children to work on and sit down. And to my idea, sometimes I used to say that was just busy work.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: Because that was keeping them busy and keeping them quiet. When I liked--when my teaching with the younger children, I always liked to go to the blackboard and take a piece of crayon and write everything that I was going to do and say, write it so they could see it. Write it on the board, explain it to them, erase it, have them to tell me what I said, write it back. And that was my way. But I didn't like a lot of--but during my time we had run-off material. Somebody would run-off all the material and then you passed it around. They would work on it like that.

McPhail: Um-hm. When you first started teaching, what were the conditions of the building? Had the buildings and facilities and things like that changed during your first few years?

Bell: Oh yeah, oh yeah. When I first started teaching, oh yes, when I first started to teaching they had outside toilets.

McPhail: Um-hm. What year was that?

Bell: Huh?

McPhail: What year did you first start teaching?

Bell: No, it was in when I first--let's see now, let me see. My daughter was--when I first went to Prince Street to teach, my daughter must have been about three. No, they didn't have outside toilets when I first started teaching; it was when I went to school they had the outside toilet.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: They--my daughter was five years old, about four years old, when I first taught a class at Prince Street, so you see, that would be that would be sixty-three years ago.

McPhail: Um-hm, my goodness.

Bell: But they did have running toilets then. It was when I was in school, they had the outdoor toilets.

McPhail: Well, what were the classrooms like?

Bell: They had nice classrooms. They had large classrooms. They had the individual desks--no, they weren't individual desks. They were a desk where you had two, you know, two of you would sit on the desk, yeah, uh-huh, that's what. And the rooms were crowded, they were crowded.

McPhail: About how many students?

Bell: Yeah, because some of them had forty-eight and fifty children in a room.

McPhail: Goodness gracious.

(The interview continues on tape two, side one.)

Bell: --when I first started teaching, you say?

McPhail: Yes ma'am.

Bell: Um-hm. When I first started teaching I--school conditions, they were all right, just crowded, the conditions were crowded. And one thing about it, you had--the child had more freedom then because you didn't--even though you didn't have to follow this child every step of the way when I first started teaching. You could give this child permission--like they wanted to speak in another room, you could let them speak to someone in another room. Or you could allow them to go to the bathroom by themselves.

McPhail: Um-hm. And these were elementary children.

Bell: This was elementary. They could go to the bathroom by themselves and things. But later on it moved to the place where every time after my--this was after it was integrated.

McPhail: It changed.

Bell: It changed. You had to go or watch that child or be with that child everywhere. If the child wanted to go to the bathroom that were small, you had to see to that child going to the bathroom, see to that child coming back. Or if the child wanted to go, you had to kind of monitor them going out because a lot of times they would have friction between the two groups. And I remember the principal came to me one day--

McPhail: Which school is this?

Bell: Huh?

McPhail: Is this at Sadie V.?

Bell: No.

McPhail: Which school?

Bell: That was at Prince Street School.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: That you'd have to watch the children and everything.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: No, and then at Sadie V.--well, at Sadie V. you didn't have to because they weren't integrated then.

McPhail: Right.

Bell: You could give them privileges and things to do. But now the school that I taught at that was integrated was Washington School. And before going to Washington School, we had a type of integration. I went to Carpenter School and taught social studies while the white teacher from Carpenter came to Northside and taught social studies. That was the first--

McPhail: What year was that?

Bell: --that was the first beginning of integration.

McPhail: Was that in the '50s or the '60s?

Bell: Huh? That was in the '60s.

McPhail: That was in the '60s.

Bell: Yeah.

McPhail: OK. We'll get to that later. We'll talk all about that. But going back to when you first started teaching, the schools really hadn't changed that much? It was still crowded and--

Bell: Yeah, the schools were a little crowded then. Now they are not crowded like that. They have a--see, you didn't have as many teachers then, but now the schools are not crowded. I don't think they have--you're not allowed to have those many in a class like I started off with.

McPhail: Right. Could you describe to me the attitudes of the teachers that you worked with when you first started teaching in the black schools? Were they well educated?

Bell: The who?

McPhail: The teachers that you taught with, can you tell me a little bit about them?

Bell: Well, the teachers that I taught with they were hard workers. They gave their attention to the children. Some of them weren't college graduates; they were working on their degrees. See they were called--they were getting their work--they called doing in-service training.

McPhail: And that's what you did teaching?

Bell: Yeah. Some of them weren't as far advanced as others in college, but they really were dedicated teachers. They paid attention to the children, and they gave them all that they had, they really did. And I really think that the children back--the teachers, the ones back in those days, I think, they came out better prepared than some of them of today because they had people who were really interested in what they were doing and for them to get it. And now I heard some of the teachers say, "Well, I've got mine, it's up to you to get yours."

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: They tried to make them. They had the little strap. They gave them homework, work that they had to do at home. They explained it to them and [the students] had to go home, take it home, and they had to bring it back. There was no note. The work that you gave the children to do, they had to bring that work back. If they didn't, they got strapping, you know. They didn't--nobody hurt anybody too much, but they had little twigs and straps, and they figured they were going to get that work and they got the work. You didn't have as much waste of time as you've had now.

McPhail: The school year, did y'all have a--was the school year the same as the school year now, when you first started teaching?

Bell: Yeah, uh-huh, yeah. It was a hundred and eighty days, yeah. It was the same. The only thing about it is, most of our [schools] turned out [closed] in May, and [the end of the school year] comes later now.

McPhail: Um-hm. But y'all went to school in September.

Bell:The same, yeah, September. We went to school the day after Labor Day.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: But now they start in August. But usually then, the very day after Labor Day was the day that the students would come in the class. And I think that they really worked the teachers, and the teachers got along together well. They worked well together. They discussed different issues and things.

McPhail: That's important.

Bell: And they did the best they could for the children, and they were determined to make those children do, you know, just insist that they do [their work]. But, Amy, when they, after they integrated that caused a different thing. You couldn't use a strap, you could not use anything, you could not--your words had to be monitored, what you're going to say, and this and the other, and it just--things just fell apart.

McPhail: A lot of worry.

Bell: I really do.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: And everything was so funny to them. I remember the supervisor said, after it was integrated, she said, "Now be careful you get these children's names right, because if you don't call their names right, they're going to break out mad and there's going to be a big uproar." (laughter) So it was. But I didn't have, I just didn't have any trouble, even then. Didn't have any trouble.

McPhail: When was it first indicated to you that things among the races were about to change? What's your earliest memory of things between the races such as segregation was going to change? (A brief portion of this interview is not included in this typed transcript].

Bell: Well, you know, in listening to [the radio and reading] the papers and the different discussions about the suits and the things, I knew it would change. But I didn't know just how that change was going to come about. But the first thing the superintendent called then, I think it was fifty, fifty of us, and told us that we would exchange these classes. That was the very first thing.

McPhail: And that was in the early '60s?

Bell: I think it was around the '60s. No, let's see, that was right at the beginning, before they integrated. That was just a year before they integrated the schools.

McPhail: Um-hm. So that was '63 I believe.

Bell: I think so. I'm not sure exactly now when it was, because I don't keep dates well, but this was the very first beginning of the integration. And we called it, the teachers, we called it "token" because--I taught now--that was just some of the teachers--all the teachers didn't get a chance, but I was picked to teach at Carpenter One social studies.

McPhail: And that was a mostly white school.

Bell: That was a white school.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: Then that teacher came, Mrs. Bryant, Hattie Bryant, came from Carpenter to Northside.

McPhail: Um-hm, where you were teaching.

Bell: Where I worked [in] the black school and taught social studies. She taught my social studies in my school and I taught her social studies in her school. And that was the first, the first beginning of integration.

McPhail: How did teachers feel about that?

Bell: How did I feel about it?

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: Well, I didn't mind it because he called--certain teachers he picked to do that.

McPhail: So you kind of felt honored that he picked you?

Bell: Well, I'll tell you what, I figured that I must, in fact, I had to be rated among the good teachers. And this white teacher was just lovely, Hattie Bryant. We got along fine.

McPhail: Hattie?

Bell: Hattie, H-A-T-T-I-E B-R-Y-A-N-T, Hattie Bryant.

McPhail: And she had a good attitude towards it, too.

Bell: She taught social studies at Northside.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: I taught social studies at Carpenter. Then, when they--next year when they really integrated, she came--they sent her to Northside to be one of the teachers. And I was still at Northside, and they put her--to make her comfortable, her room was placed right next to my room.

McPhail: Oh, that's nice. Well, about how many white students do you remember coming to Northside when they integrated in '67?

Bell: How many white children?

McPhail: Um-hm. Was it a lot of white children?

Bell: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they came. It was about four hundred children, yeah, and in the beginning it was about half and half.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: They came in[to the] elementary [school], I know, because that's where I was there.

McPhail: Do you remember anything--

Bell: And they were bad too. (laughter)

McPhail: Not as well disciplined or--

Bell: They were hard to discipline, more so than the other ones.

McPhail: Um-hm. I want to go back to something real quick. The Brown decision that was supposed to force, integrate, even desegregation of schools was in the early '50s.

Bell: Um-hm.

McPhail: For a decade after that, Adams County schools didn't integrate even though they were supposed to.

Bell: That's right.

McPhail: Do you remember anything that happened during, you know, from '54 to '64 about anything that happened towards desegregation?

Bell: No.

McPhail: Let's see. The NAACP placed a petition for the school to desegregate. Do you remember anything about that?

Bell: I think, yeah, the NAACP did. They got in, I think, it was the NAACP.

McPhail: OK. Well, that was in the early '50s and they just kind of--

Bell: That's right when they started that.

McPhail: Um-hm, they decided the schools didn't really look at that. They just said--

Bell: That's right.

McPhail: --you know, they didn't deal with it. But you don't remember a shift in racial attitudes, or how other people out in the public felt about the desegregation?

Bell: About the--well, I'll tell you what. I know that the--you see, they were hard, the school here was very hard to--I know what you mean now. The schools here just didn't abide by the law from the beginning because we had a minister who sent his daughter to Natchez High. They were supposed to have integrated and they didn't. And his daughter, her name was Patricia West, she integrated the Natchez High School. They sent her--she was the only black over there, so she was. They did have to do and he was a minister and he was a big figure in the NAACP. And that was the first of it because Patricia did--she's a member of my church right now and her mother. They let her go. She was the only black child that went to Natchez [High School] for a whole term.

McPhail: Um-hm. Was that in the '60s, can you remember?

Bell: Now I don't know when it was, whether it was the '60s or not. But Patricia West is still teaching.

McPhail: So she went there as a teacher.

Bell: No, she went there as a student.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: When they were supposed to have integrated and they didn't, she--this was the year before they did integrate--she went to Natchez [High] and she was the only black student there, Patricia West.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: She was the only black student at the [high school] for a term; then the next term they integrated.

McPhail: Um-hm. So when integration occurred, that was around '65, right or '66? The way I understand it, it was grades one though six integrated in '66, and grades seven through twelve integrated in '67.

Bell: Um-hm.

McPhail: So the students that you taught were integrated in '66, right?

Bell: Um-hm.

McPhail: Could you just please describe how your--did your administrators come to you and tell you how to act with the students and what you needed to do?

Bell: Yeah, the administrator, he would have meetings, and they had the--well, we had supervisors. She would come and tell you what to do, and then that was something that started after they had integrated. These supervisors would come in, well, every so often just walk in and sit in the back of the room or in the front of the room and watch you teach a class. Then whatever they found wrong or something, they would tell you about it afterwards.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: But they caught some--I don't know about telling of it because it was sort of secret. They didn't have a meeting to say, a meeting that Miss So-and-so was doing such and such a thing. At this meeting, whatever they had to say, they said it to that teacher. But you would know that--the supervisor would know what it was, and they had a way of rating you. Even though you had the same degree you didn't get the same pay. They had a merit system.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: See?

McPhail: Were these supervisors white or black or--

Bell: Well, when they integrated, they had white and black.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: Um-hm they had white and black supervisors.

McPhail: Do you remember if there was a black member on the school board?

Bell: Black member on the school board then? No, it wasn't then.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: It was later they had black members.

McPhail: Uh-huh.

Bell: But during that time they didn't have black members. It was just in the later years that they had black members.

McPhail: So really your supervisors could determine how much you would make as a teacher by coming into your classroom and rating you.

Bell: Yeah.

McPhail: Or based on merit.

Bell: Yeah, that's right.

(telephone rings, brief interruption)

McPhail: We were just talking about the process of integration and about the shift to merit pay that supervisors would determine salaries.

Bell: Yeah, they would--the supervisors would come in and they would stand--you really wouldn't know what they had, how they had rated you. You didn't ever know how they rated you. And the thing that was so funny about it, they had the teachers so programmed until they would not tell their salaries. See you wouldn't tell what you was making [and] I wouldn't tell what I was making. Therefore, you didn't hardly know--

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: --until maybe one or two close, close friends--but they weren't all making the same thing at that time, no. They all had the same--at that time it had to be you would have to have your degree then by that time. And you were supposed to have been paid so much for a certain degree.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: But they had the merit system and you were paid more by the merit system than anything else.

McPhail: Do you know what all they were looking for when they were in your classroom to determine how much your salary would be?

Bell: Well, what they was looking for, they were looking to see how you would introduce your--in the lower elementary, how you would introduce your reading lessons and how you would introduce your math, how you would--in your assignments if you would--and then in your assignments, if you would give them something on a break, on a little break, and then let them know exactly how to begin the assignments for the next day. You know, some teachers would say, "Well, the lesson is when you get to the end of the page, the lesson is ended, and we'll pick up where we left off on the next day." But now you had a certain presentation to give at the end as well as at the beginning of your lesson, and they would notice for that, notice how you introduced your math and everything. So I said that was good, too. But see, sometimes you can't come in the room for a few minutes and tell exactly how a teacher is doing. So I didn't ever think that the merit system was exactly fair.

McPhail: How long did they continue the merit system?

Bell: Well, the merit system was still going on when I retired. I don't know how long after they had it.

McPhail: Well, they don't have it anymore.

Bell: But it was still--see I retired in '74, and I worked under the merit system.

McPhail: Um-hm. How did other teachers feel about the merit system?

Bell: Well, some of them felt like it wasn't fair because they said that a person couldn't come in and tell exactly what you were doing in that short a time.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: And some teachers worked hard, but they didn't get--their pay was way down. And when they found out--that's the reason the superintendent would tell you [that] it wasn't wise to tell salaries. And then they had you. Well, you just wouldn't tell how much you made. So my next door neighbor wouldn't tell how much she made. Another wouldn't tell how much she made. So that kept you from knowing exactly how low you--

McPhail: You were.

Bell: --some of them really were. Some of them were getting top. It all depended on how they rated you.

McPhail: Do you know--

Bell: But that stopped.

McPhail: Um-hm. Do you know if they had any preferential [treatment] to certain teachers? The people that evaluated, do you know if they gave maybe teachers that they knew higher points or a higher grade compared to other teachers?

Bell: Did I know some of the teachers?

McPhail: Did you know if there was any variation between how a person would grade a teacher depending if they knew them or if they didn't know them? Was there any of that going on?

Bell: I believe so. I really do, I really do. You see, it's hard to know because you wouldn't know exactly how much the other person made. They wouldn't tell you; they wouldn't tell you exactly how much they made.

McPhail: Well--

Bell: But I think that in--the only way that I found out [what] some of my friends' salar[ies had been was] after retirement. What you got then, you see, that made a big difference. If you taught the same number of years, now--you see, I made--I didn't make [quite] thirty years. If I had made the thirty years, then my retirement would have been more, but I made twenty-nine and a half years; I just didn't make the other half year. And the teachers now, their retirement is way above what ours was. And back to what I was going to say now, the only way that you could halfway tell [is if] a friend would say to you after she retired, "My retirement is such and such a thing." Well, then you knew then that her retirement was either below or above yours.

McPhail: Right.

Bell: But they had a good thing going. They didn't tell the salaries. And that kept you from [questioning the system]; you just didn't, even if you were going to fight on it, you had nothing to fight on.

McPhail: You had nothing to base it on.

Bell: You didn't have anything to base it on.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: Not really.

McPhail: My goodness.

Bell: But the thing of it was, I figured from places that I was moved and things that I was asked to do that I was rated as one of the good teachers. Because several things that had to be said, presentations to be made, then to go to this school or that school, I had--they would call on me several times, so I just figured that my rating was pretty good.

McPhail: Um-hm. Let's go back and talk about when desegregation first occurred and how you handled that in your own classroom.

Bell: What?

McPhail: Let's talk about how you handled having both blacks and whites for the first time in your own classroom.

Bell: Oh. Well, the first thing, let's see, if I can think about it. Well, I had had the white class by going to Mrs. Bryant's class. And she had talked to her children, you know, so when I went in that class, it was just like a regular class. But when it was really integrated, sure enough, the children came to me, and we used to call roll, every day. So some of them had different--some very hard names to pronounce, you didn't know. So I was very careful there. I had learned the names and I called them. And I said to them that I was happy to have them. We were going to be one family. We were going to do our work and we were going to behave ourselves. And one little boy said, "Behave ourselves." And, you know, they'd mimic little--the one little white boy, he set up there and then one or two of them set up there and just act like he was a dummy, you know. Didn't make any noise, but just set up there like he was just a dummy. And so several times when it came time to respond, he didn't respond. And I asked a question, and he told me he didn't have to answer if he didn't want to.

McPhail: So he's being disrespectful.

Bell: Uh-huh. He didn't have to answer if he didn't want to. And I said, "No. You don't want to answer?" I said, "Why you don't want to answer?" "I just don't want to." And I said, "Well, after a while you'll feel like answering. You're just in a strange place and I know I'm a strange teacher, and I know after awhile you'll be all right. So you just take your time, and when you feel like answering, you let me know." And that worked out all right. Finally, he did.

McPhail: Good.

(doorbell rings, brief interruption)

McPhail: We were talking about the integration of blacks and whites in the schools and how you dealt with the children in your classroom. We were talking about one particular student who [came to] respect eventually in your room, and we were just discussing that. Can you tell me your own personal feelings about how you felt about teaching in an integrated school?

Bell: Well, when the schools were integrated, the thing [was that] we had more material to work with, we had better equipment, just better everything to work with. And whatever you wanted, you got it to work with. But you were monitored so you just could not say, you could not tell the children what they really needed to know because you had to be careful of every word you [said]. You could not spank them, you could not scold them, and some of the parents didn't hardly want you to teach them. So you had a pretty tough time of it. But I managed, I managed. I really didn't have too much trouble with the children in my classroom because I treated them in a way that I gained respect from them and they respected me. But then we were moved on to integration in the community. We had a fellow, a black fellow, Charles Evers. He led the movement with the NAACP. They would have meetings each week at different churches. They had different crowds to come in [in] order for them to integrate certain places. I remember when they integrated the Natchez Hotel, it was called.

(The interview continues on tape two, side two.)

McPhail: We were just talking about the integration of the Natchez Hotel.

Bell: OK. Charles Evers came in, and the reason I remember [is that that was] when they integrated the Natchez Hotel. I think it must have been about twenty of them when they were going down Main Street. They went in the front door of the Natchez Hotel, in the restaurant part, and they walked in there and they all went to the counters and tables and sat down and waited to be served.

McPhail: Were they served?

Bell: So they were served, they were served. And I happened to be passing at the time--I wasn't in the march, but I was on my way to the post office, and for some reason my name got in the book, and [it said that] I was in the march, but I really wasn't in the march; I was on my way to the post office.

McPhail: Were you ever involved in any of the civil rights protests?

Bell: Yeah. I attended the meetings. I attended some of the meetings because I thought it was bad that you had to pay your money and you go to a restaurant and if you wanted something, they'd hand it to you out the back door or something like that. So I thought it was bad so I was in for integration in the community.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: For public places and things like that, but I thought it was right that if you paid your money, you should have the same rights [as the white people had].

McPhail: Right. Were you--

Bell: But I didn't take a--I didn't think that any violence was necessary. I wasn't in for any violence to integrate at all.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: And things did go bad in Natchez because I remember, one night a friend of mine called me and said, "Mrs. Bell," said, "they're just burning up the town." I said, "Burning up the town? What's happening?" She said, "There's just"--named several places where they had--she said, "There's fires all over town, and they all started at the same time." So they'd burn a lot of places down in Natchez during that time.

McPhail: And this is during the '60s, right?

Bell: Um-hm. And so she said, "I will keep you posted." She said--the last place she called and told me [was on fire] was on Pine Street. And I was at my mother's home, I was at my mother's home and--no, I was at my home, and I kept my mother posted. And they called me from uptown to tell me where different places had been burned, and I would call my mother and tell her.

McPhail: Where did your mother live at that time?

Bell: My mother lived on Concord, right next to the tire plant fence. That's why I could see all those other things that happened at the tire plant. But they had kind of a rough go of it in Natchez. And this person Mamie Lee Mazique, who is over Head Start now, she was very helpful in the movement because her people helped to feed the people who came in to help participate in this movement. It wasn't all Natchez people who took a part in the movement; some of them came in from Jackson and other places. And I really was glad when it was over, when things settled down in Natchez, because it really surprised me when they did all that burning. And they had to have planned it because it was carried out in such an order that it seems the fires were all over town, they [all] started at the same time.

McPhail: Were they burning black homes or black businesses?

Bell: Yeah, they did. They burned black homes, too. And that was one thing I really didn't know, because some of the things on Franklin Street, most of the buildings and things on Franklin Street now, they were owned by whites. But, I guess, by burning--some of the blacks were caught in it, too.

McPhail: Were you ever fearful of getting involved in the civil rights movement because you were a teacher? Were you ever afraid that maybe your job would be taken away from you?

Bell: Well no, I wasn't because at one time in the school system, you had to sign [a form listing] every organization that you belonged to. I signed that I did belong to the NAACP, and my daughter did, too. And one teacher lost her job. She signed--now what else she signed, I don't know, but she lost her job. But I put in every organization that I belonged to and my daughter did, too, but we did not lose our jobs. So this teacher said that she put in, that she [listed] the NAACP and they let her go, but I really couldn't see that, because they didn't let me go and they didn't let my daughter go. Some other people had signed and they didn't go. So I really couldn't say that she was turned off because of the NAACP.

McPhail: Um-hm. When did you--did you sign this when you first started teaching?

Bell: No, no, we didn't have to sign. That was just during a certain time when we were teaching [that] they came for you to [list] the organizations [to which you belonged].

McPhail: Uh-huh. Was that in the '60s, do you think?

Bell: That was all during the time when they were getting ready to, you know, integrate.

McPhail: Integrate?

Bell: Yeah.

McPhail: Um-hm. Do you remember any involvement, any violence, that was brought on by probably the KKK?

Bell: In the school?

McPhail: No, just outside in the public.

Bell: Well, what I do remember, the violence that took place at the tire plant things. All of that was from integration, I think, because I think it was because some blacks had--because of integration was promoted. And one was bombed and the other was bombed and killed.

(telephone rings, brief interruption)

Bell: The violence at the tire plant that--I think that started during the movement because these black men had been upgraded, and I think [there] was some kind of feeling there that they shouldn't have been. And one was killed and the other one was really bombed, and he suffered for a long time from it.

McPhail: What were their names?

Bell: George Metcalf and what was that other--you have his name down George Metcalf and--

McPhail: Was it Wallace Jackson?

Bell: Wallace Jackson, that's right.

McPhail: And Mr. Jackson was the one that died.

Bell: He died, he did, yeah. He had children, um-hm.

McPhail: And he worked at Armstrong Tire.

Bell: Armstrong, that's right.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: That's right. He had children and he died. They had them both--you see, it seemed strange that they had them both to work overtime. They didn't get off at the regular time, and the head men, their bosses, had them to work overtime. And when they--when this man, George Metcalf, went to his car and started to start up, the car it just blew up. The bomb went off.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: And it was right in front of my mother's house. And my husband was the first one to make it to George Metcalf, and he asked to get help. My husband called my mother's husband and he called the ambulance.

McPhail: Um-hm. And your husband's name was Norman Bell, is Norman Bell?

Bell: Norman Bell, um-hm. And I happen to go--we went to go to see about my mother about--well, sometimes twice a day I would be there. So this night was when Wallace Jackson was killed. Wwhen I went in my mother's house that night, his car was parked where I could see it, you know. I knew it was his car; I knew who parked there. And we went in and about ten or say about fifteen minutes later, we got word that he was dead. So evidently he came out and drove just long enough to drive from where he was parked--I said it was just about two blocks. And then his car--I think it was rigged so it wouldn't blow up right there, but about two blocks it blew up--blew all to pieces.

McPhail: And he left his family behind.

Bell: That's right. And his car was there when we went in. So [there] was a lot of violence going on. And then they had the--also during that time the Ku Klux Klansmen had a parade. But no, no violence came out of that parade, but they did parade. And they said some burnings and different things was out in the country from Natchez--a man's house was burned and they said it was through the movement, through the Ku Klux Klansmen. So we had a lot of things to happen in Natchez.

McPhail: What was the black community's reaction to all this violence?

Bell: Well, the black community was very--they were very mad about it and they had--they really had organized. If it had gone on [any] further, [there] would have been destruction, because the [black community was] organizing, and people were coming in from different places, helping them to get organized.

McPhail: Was this--who was organizing do you know?

Bell: Now, I don't know. But they had--I was thinking--I can't think of the group that they called the--I don't know who it was. But anyway [the Ku Klux Klan] had a parade. They had a parade, and the whites were all parading and everything. And I don't know what happened, but this group, and I can't think of the name of the group, but anyway-- [Note: The group was the Deacons of Defense.]

McPhail: Was it SNCC?

Bell: --one of them took the flag that one of the whites had--I don't know, I think it was a Confederate flag--and a black took it out of his hand and spit on it and stomped it. So no violence came out of that because [the whites] figured [the blacks] were organized, and they were organized.

McPhail: And this was in the--

Bell: And that was an invitation to start [trouble], but they didn't start anything then. And I can't think of the name of the group.

McPhail: The year that they had the march, was it around '67?

Bell: Yeah. It was about '67, somewhere around in there. That's right. When he spit on the flag and stomped it and--(calls to someone). Unident. Speaker: Yeah.

Bell: Do you remember that name of that group of those black fellows that used to wear those tams? What they called themselves? When they had that parade [and] they all came in here. Unident. Speaker: What parade?

Bell: The parade during the time of the civil rights movement, when that black fellow got the flag, he had spit on it, and burned it or did something to it. You know they had a-- Unident. Speaker: Oh, that was George--

Bell: What was the name of the group that-- Unident. Speaker: George Woods.

Bell: Yeah, but it was a group. I can't think of the group, they wore tams. I can't think of that for anything. Unident. Speaker: Well, I can't think of it, I never knew the (inaudible).

Bell: It was a group [of] them, and they had organized so if anything had started that day it would have been--

McPhail: A brawl.

Bell: --terrible, but nobody--they didn't--the other group didn't retaliate.

McPhail: Um-hm. Well, when did you get involved with politics?

Bell: Let's see, twenty, it's been twenty years. I think it's been twenty-five years ago, I got involved in politics. They were having what you called precinct meetings, and I went to a precinct meeting, and I was nominated to go to the convention to the courthouse, to the next meeting. And when I got to the courthouse, then I was elected to be on what they called the executive committee. You see, you have so many people that come from the precinct to the convention, they call it, and then they select so many people from each district to be a member of the executive [committee], that's the Democratic Executive Committee. And the Democratic Executive Committee, they worked with the Democratic Party in that they put on the primary election. Every primary election is handled by the executive committee. So I was--people in my district came out and voted for me to be a member of the executive committee. So after being a member of the executive committee, they had--in fact, I was elected to be on the election committee. And the election committee was actually the ones who had to get the workers. See, all the ballots get put in, all of the ballots--and conduct the whole election and after the votes and everything are brought in, they had to certify. Then after working on that committee a while--then in a couple of years, I was made chairman of the committee. Then everything fell in my hand. I would see to them getting the workers, everybody who worked at the polls. I had to go to Jackson and Vicksburg for training from the secretary of state's office. And then we'd have to see that the election was certified and everything. So last year, no, this year at the end of the year, the executive committee here--I gave up the chairman of the election committee. I am still a member of the executive committee, but I gave up [the] chairman[ship] of the election [committee] because I felt like I had grown older and it was a great responsibility and I wanted some of the younger members to take over. So this coming in year, this coming in primary, I will work on the executive committee, but I will not be chairman of the election committee.

McPhail: Um-hm. That's a big responsibility.

Bell: So I worked for twenty-five years I've been on that committee. And I worked and worked in everything I could and so now I am--let's see, about then we organized, a man by the name of Sam Blackmon, organized Federation of Democratic Women. And he organized them. The first president was Ben McNeely and the next president was Janet Kerstine.

McPhail: When was this organized?

Bell: This--I'd have to look back. If I had the year, I'd have to look back in the papers. I've forgotten what year it was organized, the Federation of Democratic Women. Here in Natchez it's been organized about, I'd say, about ten years. And so they've had two--one, two, three [presidents], then I was nominated and elected the president. I'm still the president. I can't get anybody to take it. I'm still president of the Federation of Democratic Women. And we meet the third Thursday in each month in the supervisor's room at the county jail.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: We had a meeting Thursday night, so I'm also president of that and a member of the executive committee. Now the women don't put on the elections, but the executive committee does.

McPhail: What's the purpose of the Federation of Democratic Women?

Bell: To uphold the policies of the Democratic Party, to help strengthen the men, and [to] help in the organization in any way we can. We study it and we take part in community things. Then we stand behind the Democratic men. We help in the campaign. You know now, if they are Democrats, we just help ordinarily so, but we don't take part with any Democrat, but we help the Democrats against the Republicans.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: But when we have two Democrats running, we have to stay neutral; we don't take a part in it that way. And they have--usually they have headquarters, and the women will usually take turns in helping to run the headquarters and bring in food and do everything to--

McPhail: Help.

Bell: --help the men with their campaign.

McPhail: Well, let's backtrack a little bit about, still talking about politics. Looking back in the early '60s and comparing it with today, with voting in Natchez, how has it changed for the black community?

Bell: Well, the voting has changed for the black community because the lines, the [district] lines have been drawn where it would bring in a lot of black people and, in that way, you could get a black official or something from that. At first it wasn't [like that], but the lines have been [re]drawn. Now in this district where I live, in District Three, we have a black supervisor. See, you have more blacks in District Three than you have whites. So, therefore, there was a chance of voting, getting a black in where before you didn't have a chance. You see, the lines were drawn so and you didn't have enough blacks to put you in, and the whites certainly weren't going to vote for you then. But now I understand that some whites vote for some black officials, where back in then they weren't going to vote for you. We voted for them, but they didn't vote for a black. But by the lines being drawn and you have so many blacks in the area, and some districts you can put a maybe, yeah, in a certain district you maybe would be able even to put a black official in by you having enough black votes, if all of the black people would vote. So that's the difference.

McPhail: In my research I found that in 1965, 5 percent of blacks were registered to vote, 5 percent of the people that were eligible were registered, and in '76, 60 percent were registered. Why do you think this increase in voter registration occurred in the ten years?

Bell: Well, it increased because they found out that if you wanted to do, if you wanted to change or get things done, something someway along the lines that you like, you would have to vote. You'd have to vote and your vote would have to count to get in, to get some of the things that you wanted. That would be the only way to handle that would be through the vote. So some of them you get out with voter registration and you get some to vote. You still have some people that are not voting. They say it doesn't make a difference, but it does make a difference. They say one vote won't help, but one vote will help. So the majority of the people have been educated enough to know that that is your only weapon is the vote.

McPhail: Um-hm. I agree with you. It's hard to get that message across sometimes.

Bell: It's hard to get that message across.

McPhail: Um-hm. I want to go way back to when we were talking about you teaching and when you were working towards your education. While you were teaching, you were also raising a family and you were in your second marriage and raising two children at that time.

Bell: Uh-huh.

McPhail: You told me that you would go to different schools and try to get your advance degrees at other institutions. Could you tell me a little bit about that and the difficulties of trying to raise a family and teaching all at the same time?

Bell: Well, it was hard trying to raise a family and teach, but the thing of it, I was lucky enough and my mother was living. And then after I married, my husband, Norman Bell, he was a lot of help. I could go to school on Saturdays. I would go to Alcorn on Saturdays, and sometimes there was some particular friends would take turns in driving. Maybe someone drove this Saturday and someone [else] drove the next Saturday. And then--

McPhail: So that was a group of teachers that were going--

Bell: --a group of teachers that was going.

McPhail: Oh, that worked out good.

Bell: And I had a chance to ride with them. Then in that one point, we had a bus that would go out to Alcorn every Saturday and we rode the bus. My mother would see after my children for me whilst I was going to school. She also helped to see after them whilst I was at work, because I taught when my last child was just two years old. She would come to the house, to my house every morning, and would get that baby and be with that baby. And rather than take him out in the cold, you know, during the winter, she would stay there some days until I got home. Her husband worked at Armstrong and he would be on a late shift and she could manage it. And she'd come there to my house and help me with my children. So--and through all of my struggle with my children, my mother helped me. My mother died in '80; she lived until 1980.

McPhail: Goodness. She sounds like a very strong woman.

Bell: She was. She died; she would have been--she died the second of November in [1980], and the seventeenth of December she would have made ninety-one years old.

McPhail: Goodness.

Bell: And she was very--she was just at my side for everything. She would even teach my children or help them with their lessons at night, because when I worked for this Metcalf family, I would go to work at seven in the morning and get off at seven at night.

McPhail: So you didn't have much time to spend with the children.

Bell: I didn't have much time with the children, but my mother took care of them, took care of the two.

McPhail: You had mentioned earlier that your mother read to you while you were a child.

Bell: Oh, yeah, she did. My mother read stories to me. My mother worked hard, but she had time for us even though she worked. And she'd come in at night and when she got--after we were fed--now she was the one that did not have any help because she didn't have any people; all her people were dead. And she read stories, she'd read stories to us.

McPhail: Did she go to school? I mean elementary and high school?

Bell: My mother?

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: Yes. My mother went to school. I think she went to elementary. I think my mother went--I think during the time when my mother went to school, they finished somewhere around the ninth grade. And my mother went stopped school in the eighth grade. So my mother could read. She had a very beautiful handwriting, and she was very knowledgeable about everything because she kept up and she read. She taught us to dance. We all used to dance together and everything. Even though she had to work hard, she still had time to give to us.

McPhail: Um-hm. You had mentioned--talking about your sister, can you tell me a little bit about her?

Bell: I hate to keep asking you, but I don't hear well and I have--

McPhail: OK. You had talked earlier about your sister.

Bell: Oh, my sister, yeah. My sister was two years younger, well about a year and ten months. I'll say two months, two years younger than I was, and she was very quiet and very obedient. Very quiet and--

(The interview continues on tape three, side one.)

McPhail: --talking with Mrs. Josephine Bell about her sister and their relationship.

Bell: Yeah, we were very close and when you had chores to do, I would do all the chores of my sister. But she was more obedient than I was. She would do things my mother [told her to do], you know, mind my mother. And I, of course, I wasn't a real bad child, but I would disobey. I'd get more whippings than she would because I would play, I loved to play. And I always figured that I could go play and then get home in time to do whatever I was supposed to do. And a lot of times I wouldn't quite make it because I wouldn't have finished my work when my mother got in.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: But my sister grew up and she finished high school. She was three or four years behind me because she did not learn as fast as I did. She finished high school and she married. She had one son. And my sister and her husband went to the Natchez, the big dance that they had in Natchez. And a man came from Chicago, by the name of Walter Barnes, and played for this big dance. So my sister came and she brought her little boy to stay with my mother--my mother was living with me--in fact, [to stay with] both of us until after the dance. And when she left for the dance that night, she went home to dress. She lived on the other end of town. I don't know, but I had a very funny feeling. After she had gone home, I thought and I went out to her house and waited until she had dressed, until she dressed for the dance. And when she and her husband left for the dance, I came back home. And around about eleven-thirty or twelve o'clock that night, it was just screams in the air and you could hear that the Rhythm Night--this dance was at a place called the Rhythm Night Club--they said that the Rhythm Night Club had burned down and all the people were killed. And then I lived about five blocks from the club, and when I got up and made it to the club, I never did find my sister. The next day I found her at the--where they had them all stretched out in the undertaker parlor. That's where I found her and her husband. They both were killed that night. And the little boy was just--his birthday was the next Monday. He would have been five years old.

McPhail: Oh, goodness. Who raised--

Bell: This was April the twenty-third, 1940.

McPhail: Who raised the little boy?

Bell: So that's how I lost my sister.

McPhail: Who raised the little boy?

Bell: We did, my mother raised him. He grew up to be a bricklayer. He started drinking and he got with the wrong crowd. And somebody gave him, in his drink they put cotton poison, the poison that they would poison cotton with, in his drink. And he was very, very, very ill. However, he did overcome that spell of sickness, and when he got up, he went right back with the same crowd again, and after while he died with cancer. So I had to see after him [because] his mother was dead then and my mother had died. He only lived--my mother died in November and he died in January, in February right behind her. She reared him and, oh, she was so crazy about that boy. And so she left him and he only lived not quite three months behind her.

McPhail: Do you know how many people died in that fire?

Bell: About two hundred and fifty, I believe.

McPhail: My goodness.

Bell: Um-hm.

McPhail: No one survived.

Bell: Yes, they had some survivors.

McPhail: Oh, OK.

Bell: They had some survivors. Some of them got out. Some of them were burned.

McPhail: Did they ever say what started the fire?

Bell: You see, they had a what they called exhaust fan. And they closed all [the windows]. They had windows like these, but they had those big wooden panels in the door across. So they closed the whole place up to keep people from the outside from looking in. See? And it was some girl flipped a cigarette at the beginning. See, there was one way you come in and you go out that way. However, back of the bandstand, there were windows and doors that nobody knew about--

McPhail: Nobody knew about.

Bell: --because they had covered them with a lot of cardboards, you know, cardboard. And so when she flipped the cigarette at the very beginning coming in, that fan took the flames or something. And they had moss, decorated with moss overhead, sprayed the moss for mosquitoes, then that cigarette flipped, it caught the flames, and it just it didn't burn down but it just swept like [wildfire].

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: And they were just stacked upon each other. They all tried to [get out at the same time] instead of trying [to get out one at a time]. The fire was at the front, it started at the front, then they all just made it to the back. At back it was one window on the side. They broke out the windows where they had a better chance, but they had barred the windows from the outside.

McPhail: That's an accident waiting to happen.

Bell: So most of them were just really not say burned to death but they suffocated.

McPhail: That's got to be hard.

Bell: Suffocated. So that was most every family in Natchez--were very few black families that, you know, didn't have somebody in that fire.

McPhail: Um-hm. It's a whole generation pretty much perished.

Bell: Yeah, that's right, that's right.

McPhail: Was it just blacks went to--when you were there, were there any white families that were there?

Bell: No, no, wasn't any white people there.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: No, it was just--and people who did not live here were killed because there was a boat like they used to call them, I think they called them quarter boats or some kind of boats, used to come in to Natchez. And that boat had, I think, the boat arrived around six something. They [were] all in town, and they knew about this dance. [And the people] on that boat got readied and dressed and came to the dance and then was destroyed. Only one member, only two members of the band, Walter Barnes's band that came from Chicago, went back. The bus returned with two members, the only two that survived.

McPhail: I'd like to now talk about your children and their accomplishments.

Bell: Well, my daughter Rhetaugh taught a while here at Prince Street School. Well, she married a doctor, Albert W. Dumas, Jr.

McPhail: From Natchez?

Bell: Uh-huh. And they had one--well, in the beginning my daughter went finished school at Brumfield. Then she went to New Orleans. She finished college at Dillard. And she left Dillard and she went to a hospital in, I think, it was in New York where she finished nursing. And then after that she went to New Haven, Connecticut, and she got her master's from Yale. And she, after so many accomplishments she worked--after finishing from Yale, she was a professor for eight years and she was over the mental health or something in New Haven, Connecticut.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: I would have to get the paper to be sure. And she stayed there. Then when she left New Haven, she went with--well, I've got to go and get the other thing. But anyway, she--after she went to--she finished her master's at Yale and taught at Yale for eight years. Then she left Yale and went to work for HEW [Department of Health, Education and Welfare]. She was the chief, assistant chief deputy for HEW.

McPhail: What's HEW?

Bell: That's the health and some government, let's see now, what is that? Deputy health association or something. And after that she left there, she worked there for a number of years, and she left there and went to work [as] dean at the school of nursing--

McPhail: In Connecticut?

Bell: --in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the University of Michigan. So she worked there for--then her next job was vice provost and that's where she is now.

McPhail: And what point in her life did she get married?

Bell: Oh, she married after--she married Dr. Dumas before she finished nursing. She had finished Dillard, but before she finished her nursing, she married. Then after she had finished her nursing and came home, she taught a while at Prince Street School. And they [started having problems]; then after that, they separated. She went back and taught at Dillard, I forgot, she taught at Dillard a while.

McPhail: Was she a bright student when she was young?

Bell: Very bright.

McPhail: Um-hm. Did you encourage her to go to the schools?

Bell: I encouraged her to be a nurse. Here's what I told you about. I encouraged her to be a nurse because, I guess because I wanted to be a nurse and I didn't get the chance, so really I encouraged her to [become] a nurse. Now here's all her accomplishments.

McPhail: Goodness gracious. She's definitely accomplished. And you said that she had just one child?

Bell: Hmmm?

McPhail: She has one child?

Bell: One child, a boy.

McPhail: OK. Why did she decide to go to New Orleans to study?

Bell: Because she went there to school. She went to Dillard to school and Dillard is in New Orleans.

McPhail: Is that the closest school for nursing that she wanted to go to?

Bell: Uh-huh.

McPhail: And then she went to New York.

Bell: To New York. That's where she had to finish. She went to New York for sort of a practice-like afterwards.

McPhail: Um-hm, um-hm. My goodness. She got her master's from Yale. She's [got] honorary degrees from--

Bell: That's right.

McPhail: Tell me about your son.

Bell: My son, the older son, he went to school here at Catholic Holy Family School, Holy Family Catholic School. And he was the first black disc jockey in Natchez.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: WNAT, WMIS, WNAT, I believe it was. And after finishing from, after leaving there he went to Jackson and worked for WOKJ and he--they called him--his name in Jackson was "Papa Rock." So that's where he stayed up until last year. He had a stroke and during the time, I don't know what, but right before having the--year before well not a year, but some months before the stroke, he and his wife separated. And they had been together for twenty, oh, for twenty-six or twenty-seven years and they separated. And then they heard him one night. He was living in the house that they had bought and this stroke hit him. I think he had gotten on too much of the alcohol and what have you, but I think that was the cause in a way of his stroke. He was in a house [that had bars] like I have these bars. A lady went out across the street went out to empty a trash can, and she heard somebody to holler, "Help." And she went across the street and he was hollering, "Help." He had taken an ice pick and picked the glass out of the door like that, and his mind had just gone because the keys were in his pocket that unlocked [the door] and having the stroke hit him. He just--and so she got help and they got him out and put him in the hospital. He stayed in the Veterans' Hospital six months. So now he's--whilst he was in the Veteran's Hospital he, you know, his mind and everything just clicked right back.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: And he is under the supervision of the Veteran's Hospital now, but he lives at this home they call Home for the Golden Agers. He has the privilege to go and come when he gets ready. And after he was up there awhile, the doctors all saw to him driving his car. So he would drive his car, goes everywhere he wants to go and everything, but he doesn't want to come home to live with me because--I don't know why, I guess he thinks he would have restrictions on when to come in or when to go out. But he's sixty-five years old, so he stays there and he gets social security. That pays his--

McPhail: His expenses.

Bell: --his keep and then what that doesn't pay [for], his sister pays the rest.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: So he's having himself a nice time although he isn't as alert as he was in the beginning. It's still a little something. It's his judgment.

McPhail: It's just where he can't be completely independent.

Bell: Um-hm. His judgment is not just like it was at first, but it's real good. He can really take care of himself, but the veterans they've got--I think they recommended this place and he has about five or six different medicines to take. And one medicine he has to take is Coumadine and that's a blood thinner.

McPhail: OK.

Bell: And this lady sees that he gets his medicine and everything, so most of his time he spends on the golf course.

McPhail: Got a hard life, doesn't he?

Bell: Um-hm, yeah, uh-huh. And that's his picture there, the two of them right there.

McPhail: Yeah, I was looking at them. Well, tell me about your--

Bell: And then the second boy--

McPhail: --your baby.

Bell: --the baby boy [Norman, Jr.], he finished from Sadie V. Thompson and he finished from Sadie V. Thompson in '63. And he stayed here two weeks after he finished school, and then he went to his sister, my daughter, who was living in New Haven.

McPhail: At the time?

Bell: In New Haven, Connecticut.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: And he went there to New Haven. Now my boy, he wasn't a very brilliant student. He could get it, [but] it took him a long time to get it. So he went to New Haven, and she put him in what they called a post-graduate [high] school. And he took classes in New Haven and then he went to the school of mortuary science in New York every day.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: It was a Presbyterian minister who lived in New Haven who had a church in New York on the same street not far not too many blocks from where this school of mortuary science was, Worsham School of Mortuary Science. So my son rode--every morning he had to be on the road up at six o'clock to go. And he went to New York every day and finished this--when he finished that school of mortuary science, Worsham, W-O-R-S-H-A-M in New York and he finished being a mortician. So now he lives and he married--after he got to New Haven, it wasn't long before he met a girl. He wasn't so interested in the girls before he left, but he met a girl in New Haven. Her name was Lorraine and he got a baby by Lorraine and they married. So he worked at the morgue out of Yale's hospital morgue after he finished the school of mortuary science. And then after that he, now he owns two funeral homes. He owns a funeral home in Hartford and a funeral home in New Haven. He has three children. He has two girls and one boy. The oldest girl, her picture's in there on the wall. Her name is Ilene, she's a lawyer in New Haven.

McPhail: My goodness.

Bell: And the other girl works at the telephone, at the post office, but she has three children, three little--one little boy named Fabin, a little girl Kirsteen, and a little girl Asia. And the boy is Norman Bell, III. He's a mortician. He helps [his father] with the funeral home.

McPhail: So all of his children are already grown huh?

Bell: Huh?

McPhail: All of your son's children are already grown.

Bell: Oh, they're grown, yeah.

McPhail: Do you think your children, your daughter and your baby boy, were given more opportunities because they went towards the north for their education?

Bell: Do I think they--

McPhail: Do you think they had more opportunities offered to them because they went out of state, out of the south?

Bell: I think so, I think so. I think so because my daughter has--I think that even had she been working here, I don't think the opportunities would have been given like they have. And my other boy, either. However, the boy in Jackson was well thought of and everything because he was the first black disc jockey in Natchez.

McPhail: Right.

Bell: But because he stopped--I think it was because of his actions, his doing, his habit.

McPhail: Well, it sounds like all your--

Bell: But now he's off of, you know, the alcohol.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: Ever since he's had the stroke and everything. He's been rehabilitated.

McPhail: Um-hm. It's a problem for lots of people. It sounds like your children are very well accomplished. As I understand you're still very active in community service and things like that even today.

Bell: Oh yeah, yeah. I have to get the paper sometimes to see how many things I am active in because I'm forgetting all of it. Yeah, I'm a member of the Adams County Democratic Women, a member of the board of the Adams County Democratic Executive Committee, and I'm a member of the State Democratic Party.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: And I'm a member of the board of directors for the Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Claiborne Community Agency, which covers Head Start. I'm on the Council for Retired Senior Volunteer programs. She calls me to work for the Salvation Army since we've been here.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: I belong to the Homemakers of America, the National Council of Negro Women.

McPhail: Which is--

Bell: Uh-huh, that's right.

McPhail: --this pamphlet that you showed to me earlier about your daughter.

Bell: Um-hm. The United League of Organizations were made. They don't function anymore, so I'm not a member of that.

McPhail: What was that organization?

Bell: That was an organization that united leagues, you know. They did the same thing, something like the NAACP, but they served their mission. They got different things organized and so they're not functioning, but I am a member of the NAACP. And I'll tell you what I do, I'm a--I belong to the Federation of Retired Teachers.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: And I also belong to the Adams County Retired Teachers. And we have a year--I belong--I'm a member, in fact, I helped to run the Marion Taylor Fund. The Marion Taylor Fund is a fund that originated from Britton & Koontz [First National] Bank here in Natchez. A man by the name of Marion Taylor, who used to be a big whiskey magnet, his name, that Taylor whiskey that they have. He left a fund at Britton & Koontz Bank for every year at Christmastime to give cheer to somebody who really not necessarily--from the beginning it was not necessarily, somebody who was really in dire need, but just a Christmas cheer to say, for instance, an old citizen, an old person, or somebody, something to make somebody happy. But now it has grown to the point where it is given only to those who really need it.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: So I worked with that. At Christmastime I give out a hundred and fifty--it's just fifteen dollars a piece, but I have to call and find get the names of people and I give out tickets for a hundred and fifty, to a hundred and fifty persons. Now they are eligible to get fifteen dollars. It was a fruit basket, but now they would rather take the fifteen dollars to get food. So they can get fifteen dollars in food or they can go to Fred's store and get fifteen dollars in anything there that they can like a gown, a warm gown or a pair of house shoes or little coffee coat or something that they wanted for fifteen dollars. So I give out that for a hundred and fifty.

McPhail: Goodness, and that's around Christmastime?

Bell: Merry Christmas at Christmastime. And Thanksgiving they usually call and I have to get the list ready around that time. So I work with the Salvation Army.

McPhail: What's your involvement with your church? We haven't talked about that.

Bell: Oh yeah. I belong to Zion Chapel AME Church. I'm Methodist. And I belong to the missionaries at the church, [the] Martha Braydon Missionary Society in the church, and then the church club is the Daughters of Zion.

McPhail: OK. And what's the Daughters of Zion?

Bell: The Daughters of Zion is just a church club. We have meetings, we have to pay every month, every three months we have to pay a fee for the presiding elder. And then every month you pay so much to the trustees [of] the church to help run the church. And then at Christmastime you get a child, you adopt a child and you buy a gift. Now the members can do it individually, but we decided that we'd take so much from the club like forty or fifty dollars and buy one gift that would be like a little coat or a pair of shoes and a dress or something like that rather than for me to give a little something and you to give a little something.

McPhail: Um-hm. Is that to a child in the church or a needy child outside?

Bell: Well, it's a needy child, anywhere not necessarily in the church. It can be somebody--sometimes, we'll ask a teacher, some of the teachers from the elementary school or secondary school--

(The interview continues on tape three, side two.)

McPhail: --about Mt. Zion?

Bell: Huh?

McPhail: Mt. Zion, is that the name of your church?

Bell: Zion Chapel.

McPhail: Zion Chapel. And she was telling us about the Christmas program.

Bell: Yeah, uh-huh. The Zion Chapel Church. That church is right in the heart of Natchez. It's on the corner of Martin Luther King Street and Jefferson Street. You know where it is?

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: Yeah. Well, the pastor there is Reverend Charles Barkley and I am a member and I was christened in that church when I was one month old in 1900 and 9. And I've been there ever since. My mother carried me when I was a baby. Then when they had Sunday school, I went to Sunday school when I was small. Then they had what they called League in the afternoon. We used to have a service for young people, and the girls used to like to go there because the boys would come, you know. And that was a nice thing to go to League. You would go to League and you'd have your service at League and then you'd be sitting by your boyfriends and things. So I used to love to go to League. And then we have the eleven o'clock [service]. Now at one time we used to have church. We had Sunday school, the eleven o'clock service, and church every night but that has stopped. We don't have but church once a--we have Sunday school in the morning and we have the eleven o'clock service, but we don't have church at night unless you're having a special program.

McPhail: Right.

Bell: And I love my church and I support it the very best that I can. Now we built an educational building, the big building at the back of the church. So we paid--we had a rally about three months ago, and each member in the church was asked to pay two thousand dollars. So we paid the money and we have the money. We paid our church out of debt, and we're going to have the ceremony sometime when the presiding, when the bishop--we have a new bishop--when he gets around to visiting all of his churches and gets a date, we're going to have our burning mortgage ceremony. We have a bishop, a new bishop and he's Bishop Chapelle. He has experience; he spent four years in Africa.

McPhail: Oh, goodness.

Bell: So this is his first time being bishop in the United States.

McPhail: Um-hm.

Bell: And he has the Eighth Episcopal District to go and so he has the whole district to get around and visit. They just finished having conferences, and then he's going to set a day and we will have the burning of our mortgage at Zion Chapel Church.

McPhail: Um-hm. Well I think that pretty much covers everything I wanted to talk [about] with you today. I want to thank you for spending the good part of the day with me and all. Thank you.

Bell: Well, I hope you'll use it.

McPhail: I'm sure I can.

(end of the interview)

Information about this File

Title: oral history with Josephine Clemons Bell
Creator: Bell, Josephine Clemons, 1909-
Subjects: Mississippi; civil rights; Bell, Josephine Clemons, 1909-; Evers, Charles, 1922-; Classroom discipline after desegregation; Desegregation; Metcalf, George; Integration of the Natchez Hotel; Ku Klux Klan (1915); Mazique, Mamie Lee; NAACP; Natchez, (Miss.); Racial violence; Racial violence in Natchez; Retaliation for belonging to the NAACP; Sadie V. Thompson High School; School integration; Violence at the Armstrong tire plant, Natchez; Jackson, Wallace
Description: Interview conducted on 10-22-1996 with Mrs. Josephine Clemons Bell (born 1909). Her teaching career in elementary education in the public school of Natchez-Adams County spans twenty-nine and a half years. After retiring in 1974, she became even more involved in politics and community affairs.
Publisher: University of Southern Mississippi. Oral History Program.
Contributor: McPhail, Amy (interviewer)
Date of interview: 1996-10-22
Source: F341.5.M57 vol. 675
Relation: IsPartOf series: the Mississippi oral history program of the University of Southern MS, vol. 675
Coverage (Time period): 1909-1996 (primarily 1950's to mid-1970's).
Coverage (Geographic area): Mississippi (primarily Natchez).
Rights: No unauthorized reproduction of publication.
Note: This interview is part of the Civil Rights Documentation Project, funded by the Mississippi Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and the University of Southern Mississippi.

Please send comments or questions to: spcol@lib.usm.edu

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URL: http://www.lib.usm.edu/~spcol/crda/oh/bell.htm
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