Stevenson, Ella (1882-1981) & niece Elsie Ewell (1913-2000) |
Worcester County Library: Local History and Genealogy Collection, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, MD
|
Interviewee: |
Ella Stevenson (1882-1981) & niece Elsie Ewell (1913-2000) |
| Interviewer: |
Katherine P. Fisher |
| Date of interview: |
1979 March 13 |
| Length of interview: |
30 minutes |
| Transcribed by: |
Michelle Ernat |
| Preferred Citation: |
“Name, Oral History Collection, Date of Interview, Worcester County Library, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, Maryland.” |
Topical Terms:
African Americans—History
Church
Ocean City (Md.)—African Americans—History
School
School Bus—African Americans
Transportation
Worcester County (Md.)—African Americans
Worcester County (Md.)—Education
Worcester County (Md.)—History
Worcester County (Md.)—Social life and customs
Worcester County (Md.)—Women’s History
Location Terms:
Berlin (Md.)
Ocean City (Md.)
Snow Hill (Md.)
Interview Begin
INTERVIEWER: We’re in good shape, everything’s working. Now, uh, what are we doing, we are interviewing some of the older members of the community and trying to get on tape a record of what Worcester County was like back when you were either a child or a young lady. Preferably back sometime between 1900 and 1930, and we are gonna make, write-up what is said on this and just have it for people to look through...Not so much now, but in the next hundred years when they’ll be wondering what life was like here. We thought it would be nice to be able to have this kind of thing. Now, if I remember right, and correct me if I’m wrong, your husband was a minister.
ELLA: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, and he served or he was stationed away from here, but also in Berlin.
ELLA: Certainly, yes.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, and what I like you to do is just sort of talk about, now were you born in Worcester County?
ELLA: I was.
INTERVIEWER: You were. Tell me where you were born and ah, you know what you did for entertainment and you know and just sort of what your life was like when you were little, where you went to school. Things like that, if you like to. Oh, you can talk. And the microphone’s here. You don’t have to do anything special with it. It just sits and picks up things. And if you think of anything you know, you can add or remember, do. Okay, so where were you born?
ELLA: I went to school, did you go to school?
INTERVIEWER: Uh huh.
ELLA: My first school days were down here at Mt. Wesley.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. That’s over near where Basket Switch is, not Basket Switch.
ELLA: Right here, right here. This is Mt. Wesley.
INTERVIEWER: This is Mt. Wesley?
ELLA: Yes, this is Mt. Wesley.
INTERVIEWER: Oh good.
ELSIE: We were born, we were born right over there.
INTERVIEWER: In that, in the white house?
ELLA: Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: Oh for goodness sake. You’ve come back right near the home, then.
ELLA: Yes, right home. I’ve been almost home. That’s true. I’ve been, umm, I went to umm, I moved to Philadelphia, and I went to night school in Philadelphia.
INTERVIEWER: Did you really?
ELLA: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. How old were you when you moved to Philadelphia?
ELLA: I was about 18 or 19.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Did you go by yourself or did your family move?
ELLA: Family. I married and moved to Philadelphia.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, you were married before you moved?
ELLA: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, and ah, was he a minister at that time?
ELLA: No he wasn’t. No, he was a local minister in this town.
INTERVIEWER: Uh huh. And ah, when did you come back to this area?
ELLA: I didn’t come back until, when did I come back? I didn’t come back until I went to Berlin.
ELSIE: When you came back to the Berlin area, he was still in the ministry.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, your husband was still a minister.
ELLA: Yes I came back to this area of Berlin. But uh…
INTERVIEWER: Well this will count because we’re doing for all of Worcester County.
ELLA: Oh.
INTERVIEWER: So Berlin, we’ll count Berlin.
ELLA: 33 or 34, I don’t just remember. 33 or 34.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. What church was he minister of?
ELLA: St. Paul Methodist Church
INTERVIEWER: Right, now that’s still here.
ELLA: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, it’s still there, now. Umm, do you remember anything, umm, when you were a child here in this area before you moved to Philadelphia, ah, anything that you did for entertainment, any special picnics or church gatherings or things like that? That you all did.
ELLA: Well I always worked in the church. I can’t remember a day I didn’t work in a church.
ELISHA: I always worked in churches. Did something in a church. We would have entertainments and then they use to call them, umm, exhibitions.
ELLA: They use to call them that. And we, ummm, I use to work with that. But, see I left to go to the hospital around when I was 18.
INTERVIEWER: Right, okay. Now did you have all your schooling here at Mt. Wesley?
ELLA: Have all?
INTERVIEWER: Did you go to school just at Mt. Wesley until you went to night school?
ELLA: Well I went to night school in Philadelphia.
INTERVIEWER: In Philadelphia? Okay. Who was your teacher, here?
ELLA: Here?
INTERVIEWER: Umhum.
ELLA: Mrs. Ummm. Just a minute.
INTERVIEWER: That’s hard to remember, back that far.
ELLA: That’s a long way back. Umm, who was my first teacher from here? Ms. Emma ummm… I was trying to think of her last name.
INTERVIEWER: That’s okay.
ELLA: Well, I’ll say Ms. Mary Purnell. She taught me. Then Charlie. Charlie Bailey. He taught.
INTERVIEWER: He didn’t, not this one.
ELSIE: No, no, no, not this one.
INTERVIEWER: Shu, good.
ELLA: You don’t know him.
INTERVIEWER: ‘Cause I was thinking……..
ELLA: No, not this Charlie Bailey.
INTERVIEWER: But, he may be an older man, but he’s not old.
ELLA: No, no. Not this Charlie Bailey, another Charlie Bailey.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Alright. Umm, what did you use for transportation before you went to Philadelphia, back in this area?
ELLA: Horse and buggy.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. You used horse and buggy. Horse and cart. Okay, how often did you go, like to Snow Hill?
ELLA: How often?
INTERVIEWER: Yeah, would it be something like you do once a week or once a month?
ELLA: Oh probably once a week.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, did you really?
ELLA: Cause in those days when we were around sixteen, in our teens, we didn’t go out very much. Your parents kept you in.
INTERVIEWER: Right. They don’t do that now, do they?
ELLA: No indeed.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
ELLA: That was probably once a week. On a Saturday. They go to school and be back by, before the sun went down, they used to say.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, but they would let you go in by yourself? On Saturday you could go in by yourself?
ELLA: With my sisters and all. Some of my sisters use to go in and others were friends. Some were acquaintances, neighbors and like that.
INTERVIEWER: Can you remember anything about any of the stores in Snow Hill, that you went to, and some of the different kinds of stores that there were?
ELLA: That I went to?
INTERVIEWER: Uh hum. The stores in Snow Hill.
ELLA: Oh yes.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember anything about those?
ELLA: Goodmans, I think.
INTERVIEWER: Do you ever remember, uh, were the steamboats still coming up the river?
ELLA: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: In that time. Okay.
ELLA: At that time they were working on them. Uncle Al worked on the steamboat. Captain Eddie Brown that was here, that was my uncle.
INTERVIEWER: Oh really?
ELLA: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: And he was, do you know what steamboat he was captain on, or did he serve on different ones?
ELLA: No, he was on his own boat.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. He had his own boat.
ELLA: Yes. He had his own boat. In the river. Something like that. I think they went to Baltimore.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Oh he went to Baltimore then he came back to Snow Hill.
ELLA: He had his own boat. Then he went to Baltimore to carry cargo. And then he’d bring a little back and like that.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Did he carry any passengers?
ELLA: No, not special passengers. No, no.
INTERVIEWER: For cargo.
ELLA: Uhum.
INTERVIEWER: That’s good. And your aunt worked with him on the boat?
ELSIE: My aunt? Aunt Ella? You said Uncle Harvey. No, they lived on the boat.
ELLA: No, neither one of those.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, but he did have a boat? Umm, the umm, now if you went to Snow Hill did you follow the same road that I came in today? Come out, you know, the Public Landing road and then in. That was there?
ELSIE: They made a little change, haven’t they? When they paved it they paved a few shortcuts.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, Basically the same. Okay, do you remember anything about Public Landing in those early years? Did you go down there?
ELLA: Yes we used to have picnics at Public Landing.
INTERVIEWER: You did?
ELLA: Uhum.
INTERVIEWER: Did you go swimming?
ELLA: No, that dirty water. I sit on the bank and put my feet in.
INTERVIEWER: Right, but that was enough for you.
ELLA: That was enough. I never went in the water though.
INTERVIEWER: That was what I was wondering. Okay, umm, let me see, was the area, the land around here then farm land?
ELLA: Farm land?
INTERVIEWER: Like it is here?
ELLA: Yes, more farm land than originally, but it was sold off. They sold the farm and built houses on the land around here. All this was all farms.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, it was?
ELLA: And this was my father’s. I’m living right here on my father’s farm.
INTERVIEWER: What sorts of things did you grow? What crops? Did you have corn? I don’t know what you grew there.
ELLA: Corn and tomatoes.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, and you had a regular garden.
ELLA: Garden and a regular field. Fields of corn, fields of beans, stringbeans and things like that.
INTERVIEWER: Umm, now in Berlin when you were there, how long was your husband minister there?
ELLA: It was either seven or eight years.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. So that would bring up into about the 1940’s. 1930’s, no 1940’s.
ELLA: Around in the’30’s.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
ELLA: We were in Berlin in ‘33 and ‘34.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Do you remember anything special about the Berlin area while you were there? Any special events that happened or….anything? Probably don’t, there’s nothing really exciting happened in Berlin either.
ELLA: No, nothing really.
ELSIE: Maybe you could tell her about Uncle Harvey and Mr. Charles Henry were the ones who started the buses for the Negroes in Worcester County-went up to the…
INTERVIEWER: Oh, oh tell me about that.
ELLA: Well, Mr., no, it was Reverend Al Martin. And Rev. J. Stevenson, my husband. They were the first to come out. Mr. Charlie Henry and Mr. Crippen. His name was Isaac Crippen. They first, umm, finished seeing about the buses. Transported the children from Berlin to Snow Hill. Snow Hill High School.
INTERVIEWER: Was the only, it was the only high school.
ELLA: Right.
INTERVIEWER: Right in the area. Somebody I talked to in Snow Hill told me that. I didn’t realize that.
ELLA: Yes, Snow Hill was the only school.
INTERVIEWER: And when it first started there were not buses?
ELLA: No buses. The buses were for the whites.
INTERVIEWER: Right, for the whites but not for the blacks.
ELSIE: I walked from this house to Snow Hill to school every morning.
INTERVIEWER: Did you really?
ELLA: Really.
INTERVIEWER: Isn’t that horrible?
ELSIE: The roads were all muddy.
INTERVIEWER: Right. That really took a lot of determination to go.
ELLA: Well yes. It’s at the point that where blacks should realize how hard we had to work for it.
INTERVIEWER: Right.
ELLA: Stop panicking.
INTERVIEWER: Right, and many people, doesn’t matter whether they’re black or white, still think everything should be handed to them.
ELLA: Yes, that’s true.
INTERVIEWER: Right now.
ELLA: A majority had to walk to high school from Berlin.
INTERVIEWER: And walk that far.
ELLA: Uhum, until Mr. Charlie Henry, he, um, he transported them after a while, though. He didn’t have a bus, but sometimes he would carry them to high school.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, alright, then you go back home. Well were there children that did that, that board in Snow Hill during the week and went home on the weekends? And the local families took them in?
ELLA: Uhum, and they, when they went up to the board……
ELSIE: They didn’t have buses. The um, I think it was Humphrey at that time.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, it could have been. He was superintendent.
ELLA: Uhhum.
INTERVIEWER: This was back in the ‘30’s?
ELLA: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
ELSIE: They had to know it, and so, from the beginning of that they were the ones that first started with a little bus from Stockton, and that was just a truck with ends ‘cross the top. And they use to pay the man the money to take them to school that day.
INTERVIEWER: Do, because you remember things too, and the two of you together can come up with a lot. You know I was told by Carolyn Dorman, I think was the one who was telling me about you, that I should talk to you and I had really forgotten, but I would like to know.
ELLA: I’m 100.
INTERVIEWER: You are 100? My word.
ELLA: So I can’t remember so many things.
INTERVIEWER: I hope I’m as agile as you are and still going at 100.
ELLA: What was that?
INTERVIEWER: I said, I hope I’m still doing as well as you are. Boy, that’s good. Oh dear.
ELLA: So I’m ready to go now. I’ve seen the world and everything else. So I’m just ready to go now.
INTERVIEWER: You’re ready to go. Oh my, you’ve seen a lot, too.
ELLA: This is my niece. She’s been with me ever since, uh, well she started with me ever since she was about, well she must of been about 6 or 7.
ELSIE: Three
INTERVIEWER: Three, okay. She raised you.
ELLA: My father raised her. She started school. We were in Newport, Delaware at that time. She started school.
INTERVIEWER: Umm, can you think of anything, let’s see, we’ve talked about transportation, I was thinking transportation, we talked about horses and carts. Ummm, when did you get your first car? I always ask people because they remember their first car.
ELSIE: We were at Coleman’s, it wasn’t that many years and I was 8 years old.
ELLA: She was eight years old.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
ELSIE: So that was ‘65. I am 65 now.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
ELLA: (garbled)
INTERVIEWER: Well my mathematical ability is never good.
ELSIE: I was born in 1913, so eight.
INTERVIEWER: So 1921, right.
ELSIE: Tell her about the incident when you got the car. What happened.
ELLA: Our first car was a Ford, from the old Fox, and Ford with the curtain along side. There came up an awful storm. My husband went over to Chestertown. I think it was Chestertown, to purchase this car, and the storm was bad, and we had a hail storm we had to go over for shelter under someone’s barn. I don’t know who, to keep out frozed ice.
INTERVIEWER: The hail. Umhum.
ELLA: From tearing up the car. The top of the car was just material.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, my goodness, it was just material.
ELLA: On the top.
INTERVIEWER: My goodness.
ELLA: Nothing like the old. Nothing like the good old, now………You don’t see the old Model T’s now. You might see them sometime in a picture. Something like that. Model T’s, all I owned was a Model T. That was our first car. It was a Model T. It had curtains on all the sides. We’d be out in the wind sometimes, they be floppin’ towards the glasses unless you had those buttons on the sides.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. But that was the treat, to have a car, wasn’t it?
ELLA: Oh my, we were just tickled to death to have a car.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, I bet so.
ELLA: That was something you won’t forget. They were just tickled to death to have a car. When I saw this car drive in, oh I was so tickled. Oh, this is a Model T.
INTERVIEWER: Oh I would have been too.
ELLA: Uhum. You’re proud too. We had a horse. We had a horse and carriage.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Umm, I know you said while you went, before you went to Philadelphia you helped in church work a lot here. Did you do any work, you know as far as working in the fields or anything that you were paid for, before you went away to Philadelphia?
ELLA: Let’s see. I must of worked, we children, I worked on my father’s farm. My father owned all this.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, good. Alright, so he didn’t pay you, but you worked.
ELLA: Sure did.
INTERVIEWER: Right, okay. How many children were there in your family?
ELLA: Well, six. In fact she raised six. She raised six.
INTERVIEWER: And he used them all, I’m sure. Needed them all to run the farm.
ELLA: Need them all, because my father was a mechanic, he didn’t do no farming.
INTERVIEWER: Oh?
ELLA: But little farming, he was a mechanic.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, how talented, that’s good.
ELLA: Of course, um, we were children, and mama, my mother to umm, run the farm.
INTERVIEWER: Now did he work in Snow Hill as a mechanic or did he do mechanic work around?
ELLA: Well he worked around, but he did a lot in Snow Hill. Lot of those houses up on Collins Street.
INTERVIEWER: Collins Street. Ya.
ELLA: He and a friend of his, they’d built a lot of those houses.
ELSIE: I think she means a carpenter.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, that’s really, that’s good. Now your father, do you ever remember any stories that your father or your mother might have told you about the area when they were growing up? I’ve never, I always ask this, and I don’t remember a thing my grandmother told me. So I’m the bad one to ask.
ELLA: Well, I don’t remember anything special. My father was very joking. He was always talking with we children around him and we use to love to hear him tell old jokes and things like that, you know. But umm, I don’t know of any special……
INTERVIEWER: Okay, now I’ll ask one more thing, umm, have you ever heard any stories or tales about the Old Furnace, the Iron Furnace? You know out there by Nassawango Creek. Are you familiar with it at all? Okay. I always ask that because it was in operation in the 1840’s and a lot of time parents of the older people remember that. It had a tremendous work force back there. There were about, maybe, 500 people working out there, and we can’t find anybody that lived there, that their families did, so I still keep trying to find something.
ELLA: Uhum.
INTERVIEWER: Um, let me see, you went to school in Delaware?
ELSIE: I went in Delaware.
INTERVIEWER: And then high school here?
ELSIE: Well, I came here to finish my high school. I went to school in Philadelphia, New Jersey, wherever they moved, you know.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, right.
ELSIE: But I didn’t have, I hadn’t or I come home, my mother was sick. I came home to take care of her and lost out on art. You know in the city schools you had to have art from the first grade on through. For you could pass.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, different.
ELSIE: Now we have that, so I had to move back. We didn’t have high school here.
INTERVIEWER: Alright.
ELSIE: Through the 12th or through the 11th, but after I graduated from the 9th grade, I had to go back with them to get my diploma. And 11th grade. So I had to go back to school.
INTERVIEWER: And get that much.
ELSIE: But it was like I was, I was not doing anything that whole year, because those students there, some advance students here, because they didn’t have books, cause they were high and they give books with pages torn out and the teachers act like they were afraid if we did get a new one, that they couldn’t let the kids handle them, you know.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
ELSIE: You know the type of…………..
INTERVIEWER: Right, they figured that a new one was going to have to last them forever, I imagine.
ELSIE: Yes, uhum, you’re right.
INTERVIEWER: And it did. Umm, who were some of the teachers that, even though you were just here for that short time, that you had…..
ELSIE: Well they come off and on, sometimes. Miss, uh, Henry was the principal. (garbled)
INTERVIEWER: Yes, I’ve done that before. That’s fun, but you can be exhausted. Oh.
ELSIE: And uh, we use to have in the schools then, they had what they called declamation contests. Here. And that was something to look forward to, you know, at the end. Closing of school. (garbled)
INTERVIEWER: Oh that was really good.
ELSIE: Uh huh, and we went in the old house, but we didn’t have a Salisbury road. To go to Salisbury you had around by Berlin.
INTERVIEWER: Around by Berlin, yes you did. Uh huh.
ELSIE: But I, I was, I don’t know how old I was then. (garbled)
INTERVIEWER: Well you really did well, because once you get up there you’re in a whole different ball field.
ELSIE: That’s true.
INTERVIEWER: That’s something to be proud of.
ELSIE: Well, I was proud of it. My parents always say, well, if you do well then that’s a God given gift. So you’re not supposed to boast about it.
INTERVIEWER: They were right. It’s fun to be proud sometimes.
ELSIE: Ya, ya.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, yes, okay. Um, now, um, you know the school you went to in Snow Hill, it wasn’t Ross Street?
ELSIE: No, it burned down. It was over by Moore’s.
INTERVIEWER: It’s burned down. Alright that’s where it was. Um, I’m trying to think of the ladies name I talked to.
ELSIE: Flossie Douglas
INTERVIEWER: Thank you. Could not think of the name. Pictured her house, all about her. When the water came up at the Pocomoke River, she and I had been talking about that. You know, how we hope it never came up as high as her house, and it didn’t miss by much, sometimes.
ELSIE: (garbled)
INTERVIEWER: Right, the basements are still flooded but she was telling about teaching days, and the conditions, and the lack of supplies, and those kinds of things. Okay, can you think of anything else, that you remember? Either your mother talking about that would, you know, just sort of give an insight either just into the history of living conditions in Worcester County or in the black community, either one in their early years. Well you mentioned Public Landing had just one day a year that blacks were permitted.
ELSIE: Yes, one day blacks were permitted.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, that was anywhere? Using the piers or any of the facilities? You could not go except that one day, okay? Was this an unwritten rule or was it something that was published and written down?
ELSIE: Well, I’m not sure, but when we went we were treated so that you didn’t want to go.
INTERVIEWER: You didn’t want to go?
ELSIE: In Ocean City it was the same thing.
INTERVIEWER: Right.
ELSIE: We could go down and work as maids, and live under the hotels, with no facilities to keep clean or anything. But yet you were expected to come to the dining room strictly clean, and you know what I mean to say. One wash bowl down there, with a whole crew down there.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, for goodness sake.
ELSIE: They didn’t have a shower, until we complained so much about it.
INTERVIEWER: Isn’t that………
ELSIE: Your own basins and things.
INTERVIEWER: To wash?
ELSIE: Just one faucet, and that was cold. I don’t remember any hot until one year we complained that we weren’t going to come back unless they give us hot water. You worked so hard. We had to wash our own sheets on the beds every week.
INTERVIEWER: Isn’t that……..
ELSIE: And um, we just said we working harder to maintain our personal cleanliness……. Trying to get up there so we could serve them. It just wasn’t worth the hassle. You know what I mean to say. And everybody were all down there to get one of the rooms. I wish you could have seen the rooms. When we would go down, the rugs were filled with old mattresses, and paper hanging from the walls and centipedes running all around. And you had to down and clean up your own room, and make it…………
INTERVIEWER: Liveable.
ELSIE: Well……..
INTERVIEWER: Well it wasn’t.
ELSIE: It wasn’t liveable. Uhum. You just make it so you could stay in it.
INTERVIEWER: Could be any place? And I think that anybody listening would know the hotels that were there at that time. Umm, how did you, well you went in the beginning of summer and you stayed the whole summer?
ELSIE: We stayed the whole summer and we worked all, every day.
INTERVIEWER: Every day.
ELSIE: Every day, and then we were all even on call, when I was maid and uh, we had to be on call at night., and if you went up on the boardwalk, you would get pushed off. Heard that before?
INTERVIEWER: Yes, I have, and you……..
ELSIE: We didn’t have any entertainment at all. Only outlet we had was like Sunday night, they had a little church down where the blacks could go to……..
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Now this would be down near where the new Coast Guard station is now. Isn’t it?
ELSIE: I don’t know. But it’s like coming over the old bridge.
INTERVIEWER: Old bridge?
ELSIE: Uhum.
INTERVIEWER: Alright.
ELSIE: Running back to your………..
INTERVIEWER: Down in that section, where Jack’s taxi stand is?
ELSIE: Round in that area. Uhum. And I know we use to, when we got off of work, we’d go there when services were always late, you know, because everybody had to work Sunday.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Had to work Sunday.
ELSIE: You didn’t get there, but that sort of a …………
INTERVIEWER: Something to do.
ELSIE: Little outlet that you got to do.
INTERVIEWER: Right, now you couldn’t use the beach at all?
ELSIE: No.
INTERVIEWER: Alright.
ELSIE: Unless you had a white child to take care of.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, and that was different.
ELSIE: That was different.
INTERVIEWER: Oh shoot, isn’t that something. I didn’t think of that.
ELSIE: And even now I say it’s bad for me to go there. I don’t enjoy Ocean City.
INTERVIEWER: No.
ELSIE: ‘Cause all I can think about is the bad things.
INTERVIEWER: Right, and the restrictions.
ELSIE: Uhum.
INTERVIEWER: That there were. Umm, this would have been in the ‘30’s and the ‘40’s, that you’re talking about, or in the ‘30’s?
ELSIE: Let me see, this was in the ‘30’s.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, I was wondering if World War II made any difference in the treatment?
ELSIE: Well I was born in 1913.
INTERVIEWER: Ya, I was wondering about that, ‘cause the, I know up into the late ‘40’s and ‘50’s there was an area where blacks could use, I believe, down……………
ELSIE: Well I remember……………
INTERVIEWER: Down by the inlet.
ELSIE: Yes, you had to walk across the inlet.
INTERVIEWER: Ya, down the south end.
ELSIE: Up the beach. ‘Round by the convent.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, yes, alright that’s true.
ELSIE: You had to go the way to the end of the boardwalk.
INTERVIEWER: Right, end of the boardwalk was there.
ELSIE: But then when you got off of work, if you wanted to go to the beach in the afternoon……..
INTERVIEWER: You had to go down Baltimore Avenue.
ELSIE: All the way down there and then you had to be back in time to serve them. So we really didn’t have time.
INTERVIEWER: So you didn’t have time.
ELSIE: We occasionally went just, just said well if we get back late, we’re just late. You get to that point sometimes.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Okay. Other than that, um, did you, oh did you ever ride the trains? I know trains were big, you know back in that time. When you went to Philadelphia, you went by train.
ELLA: I went by train.
INTERVIEWER: Where did you leave from? From Snow Hill?
ELLA: Snow Hill, right down to the station.
INTERVIEWER: Right ‘cross from Moore’s?
ELLA: That’s right.
INTERVIEWER: Which is right behind my house.
ELLA: Is that right?
INTERVIEWER: I live right near that. Um, was it a direct route or did you have to change trains on your way up? I really don’t know how the trains went from here.
ELLA: I think the, did we change trains or, we went right on into Philadelphia. I don’t ride the trains. I hardly ride the trains.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember anything about your ride on the train?
ELLA: Yes, we had um, we had to sit in the back of the train.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Were there any eating facilities, or anything like that on the train?
ELLA: No.
INTERVIEWER: No, not at all.
ELLA: When they come through it was little candy or little cookies, something like that. But very seldom.