Oral History with Valerie Scott, Mason Scott, and James E. Dow, March 16, 1991 (Ms1991-019)

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: Today is March 16, 1991. I’m conducting an interview with Valerie Scott of Elliston, [Virginia], James Dow of Elliston, [Virginia], and Marcus Scott of Elliston-
James Dow: Mason Scott.
Michael Cooke: I’m sorry. Mason Scott of Elliston. I’ll start with the oldest first, and I’ll ask each one of you to give your date of birth, your birthplace, your education, and occupation. Mrs. Scott, we’ll start with you first.
Valerie Scott: Okay.
Michael Cooke: Your birth date is?
Valerie Scott: Is April 12, 19—and I don’t know whether it's four or five.
Michael Cooke: It’s on the paper as 19-
Valerie Scott: 1904.
Michael Cooke: Yeah, right. 1904.
Valerie Scott: My mother said it was 1905, but my sister said, 1904.
Michael Cooke: Okay.
Valerie Scott: So that’s what—I get kind of mixed up on myself.
Michael Cooke: [Laughs] Okay.
Valerie Scott: I just don’t know.
Michael Cooke: What about education? Did you get an education in this area?
Valerie Scott: Yeah, I got a high school education down in Burkeville, Virginia. I think that was down in...it’s been so long I’ve forgot what county Burkeville was in. Do you know? What county was Burkeville in?
James Dow: I don’t know if Burkeville was in Nottoway or-
Valerie Scott: Nottoway! Nottoway County.
Michael Cooke: Oh, so did you go to school in this area?
Valerie Scott: I went to high school in Nottoway County.
Michael Cooke: But you didn’t go to school in the Christiansburg Institute?
Valerie Scott: Oh, no.
Michael Cooke: Never went?
Valerie Scott: No. Well, it was there. but I didn’t have an opportunity to go.
Michael Cooke: Oh, okay.
Valerie Scott: My parents sent me down to Nottoway.
Michael Cooke: Do you have relatives down there?
Valerie Scott: No.
Michael Cooke: Just went there as a boarding student?
Valerie Scott: Uh-huh.
Michael Cooke: They must have had pretty good resources, sending you as a boarding student.
Valerie Scott: Well, they didn’t pay that much. You worked your way a whole lot.
Michael Cooke: Oh, you worked too?
Valerie Scott: Uh-huh. You worked and then they had to pay ten dollars a month.
Michael Cooke: What kind of work did you do?
Valerie Scott: Well, I just done domestic work for the school. Helped them with the schoolwork.
Michael Cooke: So that helped pay-
Valerie Scott: That helped pay.
Michael Cooke: Pay off the-
Valerie Scott: They done that way in those other high schools that Blacks have an opportunity to go to Mennonite [2:28] College, Nova Scotia, and I take it was another one in [inaudible 2:34] school. One was in Alabama.
Michael Cooke: Oh.
Valerie Scott: And it was [inaudible 2:41] Presbyterian set this up for the Black people to have an opportunity to go to school.
Michael Cooke: Do you know where they were headquartered?
Valerie Scott: Where’s that?
Michael Cooke: Where they were—their operations—where did this Presbyterian center have-
Valerie Scott: Oh, I don’t know where the center of it was. The way I understood it, it was in Charlotte, North Carolina. I’m not sure.
Michael Cooke: Okay, well, I can always check on that. Well, that’s interesting. So not only did you have the Christiansburg Institute—which was started by the Quakers, in part, and later by Booker T. Washington—but you had other operations that were-
Valerie Scott: Yeah. My parents didn’t send me up there. They sent me down in Nottoway County.
Michael Cooke: It still provided the same educational opportunities.
Valerie Scott: Yes.
Michael Cooke: So, that’s the bottom line that at least you had an opportunity to get a high school education, which very few people during that period did. That’s interesting. Well, we’ll ask you about the work a little bit later, so let’s start with the others.

Keywords: birth date; birthday; boarding student; Burkeville, Virginia; education; education opportunities; Elliston, Virginia; high school; Nottoway County; tuition; Valerie Scott

Subjects: African American History; Burkeville, Virginia; Education Opportunities; Elliston, Virginia; Secondary Education

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: James Dow, who’s also of Elliston, [Virginia], could you tell us your birthdate, your birthplace, education, and occupation?
James Dow: I was born in New Castle, Pennsylvania, October 21,1928. I finished high school.
Michael Cooke: How come you were born in Pennsylvania? Where your parents originally from-
James Dow: My daddy was working in the steel mill, but I left there when I was—I’ve been in Elliston since I was two years old.
Michael Cooke: Oh, so he was working temporarily in a steel mill?
James Dow: Yeah. My grandparents raised me in Elliston since I was two years old.
Michael Cooke: Oh, I see. So, you weren’t raised by your parents, but primarily by your grandparents?
James Dow: Mostly my grandparents.
Michael Cooke: So, your father was up-
James Dow: In Pennsylvania, yeah. And my mother and father separated. When I was young, she brought me back here.
Michael Cooke: So, that’s what your father was doing, and that’s what you were doing there. That’s interesting.

Keywords: birth date; birth day; birth place; education opportunities; Elliston, Virginia; New Castle, Pennsylvania; steel mill

Subjects: Education Opportunites; Elliston, Virginia; Family background; Secondary Education

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: Okay, we’re going to deal with Mason Scott, who is the son of Valerie Scott. Could you give us your birthdate, your birthplace, education, and occupation?
Mason Scott: I was born in Elliston. Same year, it was March 26, 1928.
Michael Cooke: Oh, same year! I was trying to have this arranged by oldest but I might have gotten it out of order here.
Mason Scott: I made it three years at the Christiansburg Institute and finished high school in the Youth’s Army [5:28] program, in the army.

Keywords: birth date; birth place; birthday; Christiansburg Industrial Institute; Christiansburg Institute; education; Elliston, Virginia; Mason Scott

Subjects: Christiansburg Industrial Institute; Education Opportunities; Secondary Education

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: I didn’t ask you about your education. You didn’t tell.
James Dow: Yeah, I finished high school at the Christiansburg Institute.
Michael Cooke: So, James—and this is James Dow—what type of program did they offer in terms of Christiansburg, our Institute people from Christiansburg, who went to Christiansburg Institute, because they can talk more about that. What kind of educational opportunities did you have? What kind of programs did they have? Farming?
James Dow: Yeah, they had trade and agriculture. For boys they had at them type of schools.
Michael Cooke: This is James speaking.
James Dow: Yeah.
Michael Cooke: And what type of things did you take up while you were a student at—what can you recall learning from your experiences?
James Dow: Well, I mean, we had just regular high school courses, and I engaged some in the shop work.
Michael Cooke: What kind of shop work? Wood shop or-
James Dow: Yeah, there was wood and yeah mostly wood shops.
Michael Cooke: Did they have an electrical shop?
James Dow: No.
Michael Cooke: They didn’t have that? What about barbering?
James Dow: They had a barbering class there once. Maybe one or two, but I didn’t take neither one.
Michael Cooke: Neither one?
James Dow: Yeah. They had a home economics department.
Michael Cooke: Did you participate in that?
James Dow: No.
Michael Cooke: Did men participate in that or was that-
James Dow: Back in them days, men—[Laughter] Men didn’t do home economics. If you put the apron on, you’re in trouble.
Mason Scott: [Laughs]

Keywords: agriculture; barbering; Christiansburg Industrial Institute; Christiansburg Institue; economics; shop work; trade; wood shop

Subjects: Christiansburg Industrial Institute; Education Opportunities; Secondary Education

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: [Laughs] The person in the background laughing so hard is Mason. So, that explains who was laughing. [Laughter]. Okay, what about you, Mason?
Mason Scott: Just general high school. Math, sciences, and history.
Michael Cooke: You didn’t learn any Black history or Afro-American history?
Mason Scott: Very little.
Michael Cooke: Very little?
James Dow: Before I left, they had a Black history class. I went to it one year.
Michael Cooke: Oh, they did?
James Dow: Yeah. I wish I could find the book that we used. You might could help us find that book.
Michael Cooke: Oh.
James Dow: Negro history book [7:53]. It was by Carter G. Woodson.
Michael Cooke: Oh, yes!
James Dow: That was the book that we used, the textbook we used.
Michael Cooke: Oh, great! Now, that’s-
James Dow: Now I can’t find one of them now nowhere.
Michael Cooke: Well, I mean, the fact that you used a text by Carter G. Woodson is got to be of high quality because he was the first, I guess, significant Black historian.
James Dow: Yes, a lot of schools named after him in Virginia.
Michael Cooke: Well, that’s interesting. What were some of the teachers that stood out in your mind, or the principals? Who was the principal while you were there?
Mason Scott: When I first started out, Professor Walker was the principal.
Michael Cooke: Okay, I’ve heard that name before.
Mason Scott: Then Professor Giles came there, and he was there when I left. One of the outstanding teachers was Arthur Jackson. He was the math teacher, the football coach, and he wrote the alma mater.
Michael Cooke: Well, what else did he do in his spare time? [Laughter]
James Dow: Yeah, Professor Giles, H. Lester Giles, was the principal the whole time I was there, and an innocent teacher I run into was a guy named Rush Alliston [8:42]-
Michael Cooke: Rush Aliston.
James Dow: A science teacher.
Michael Cooke: Science teacher?
James Dow: Yeah. He later became principal at Cardwell [8:49] down in Salem, before he got killed.
Michael Cooke: So, all in all, there were some pretty good instructors there?
James Dow: Oh, yeah.
Michael Cooke: Did you come across people who were boarding at the school? I mean, people from out of state, or maybe in state but-
James Dow: Yeah. They had a girl dormitory and a boy dormitory.
Michael Cooke: Girls and boys?
James Dow: Girls and boys.
Mason Scott: We had students come from Washington, New York.
Michael Cooke: Did you know some of these students?
James Dow: Sure. A lot of West Virginia students were there.
Michael Cooke: From the Bluefield area or Princeton area?
James Dow: We had a lot of them from a place called Franklin, West Virginia.
Michael Cooke: Franklin?
James Dow: It’s way over near Elkins, [West Virginia]. We had a lot of students from in there.
Michael Cooke: That far away?
James Dow: Yeah.
Mason Scott: And the Shenandoah Valley. From what? Harrisonburg-
James Dow: Yeah, we had a lot from down in that area, down there in Harrisonburg.
Michael Cooke: If, for instance, you graduated from the college—I mean from the high school—were you guaranteed, almost, admission into a college if you had pursued it?
James Dow: Back in them days, you could. Because, you see, we couldn’t go anywhere but Virginia State and Hampton and them places and they would accept you from the Institute.
Michael Cooke: So, once-
James Dow: I don’t know whether some of these big colleges would’ve taken you because the Institute carried eleven years, eleventh grade-
Michael Cooke: I see.
James Dow: Was graduation from the Institute.
Michael Cooke: Not twelve like some?
James Dow: No, no. It was eleven.
Michael Cooke: But many people highly prized the degree from that Institute.
James Dow: But they wouldn’t accept you. My sister went straight to Virginia State College, and I know hundreds that have went from the Institute right to college.
Mason Scott: It was a very prestigious high school. Once they came from there, they could step into just about any college.
James Dow: A whole lot of high schools didn’t carry nothing but eleven grades then.
Valerie Scott: Yeah, they did.
James Dow: That’s what I said.
Michael Cooke: So, that was the norm? So, it wasn’t odd?
James Dow: See, seventh grade was in elementary school then. Then you went to high school, four years.
Michael Cooke: For four years.
James Dow: Now, eighth grade is the end of elementary school. They stepped it up.
Mason Scott: Yeah, we didn’t have no junior highs and intermediates and all that.
Valerie Scott: No.
Mason Scott: You went from elementary to high school.
James Dow: See, when we went to school, you stayed in elementary school long because you had a grade [inaudible 11:00]. You stayed in that a whole year before you went to first grade.
Valerie Scott: And you went to the-
James Dow: You don’t ever hear that no more.
Michael Cooke: No.
Valerie Scott: Never did finish up here. You just quit and went on wherever you could. Didn’t get no diploma, didn’t never graduate from high school, from public school.
Mason Scott: We got a diploma!
Valerie Scott: Well, I didn’t.
Mason Scott: Because I finished early. I skipped two grades. Skipped the second grade and the sixth grade. So, I was way out there.
James Dow: Yeah, you was there before I did.
Mason Scott: Got started there as a student in 1940.
Michael Cooke: And graduated in what year?
Mason Scott: Well, I left in [19]43.

Keywords: Aurther Jackson; boarding students; Carter G. Woodson; dormitory; elementary school; graduate; H. Lester Giles; Hampton University; high school; history; math; prinicipals; Professor Giles; Professor Walker; Rush Alliston; science; Virginia State College

Subjects: Christiansburg Industrial Institute; Education Opportunities; Secondary Education

Partial Transcript: Mason Scott: I started working on the railroad and all. I went in the army in [19]48.
Michael Cooke: Which railroad? And this is Mason, by the way, speaking.
Mason Scott: Huh?
Michael Cooke: Which railroad did you work for?
Mason Scott: North Western.
Michael Cooke: Okay. Was that a major employer in the area?
Mason Scott: Only one just about, other than the farm. [Laughs] You couldn’t work here, you had to go out on this camp car and things like the bean box is what they called them.
Michael Cooke: Why couldn’t you work here? I mean, wasn’t there something? Mines, quarries, or farm work for the people to do here?
Mason Scott: Farm work was ten cents an hour. Railroad’s paying fifty-forty cents an hour.
Michael Cooke: Ten cents an hour versus fifty?
James Dow: Yeah, farmers give what they want.
Mason Scott: You got down and picked tomatoes, beans, bush [inaudible 12:20].
Valerie Scott: [Laughs].
Michael Cooke: There was no mines in the area that people could go to?
James Dow: Not through here.
Michael Cooke: Not this part of the county?
Mason Scott: As people got older and out of school, especially where we are, they went to the mines, railroad down there on the gang.

Keywords: farm work; mines; mining; North Western Railroad; quarries; railroad

Subjects: Coal mines and mining; Railroad; Work Opportunities

Partial Transcript: Mason Scott: World War II started, then they started going into the army. A lot of them went to CC [Civilian Conservation] camps.
Michael Cooke: Were you ever in a CC camp?
Mason Scott: No.
Michael Cooke: The Conservation Corp workers who worked during the Great Depression.
Mason Scott: Correct.
Michael Cooke: What about you James?
James Dow: No, I went over into Bristol, Tennessee.
Mason Scott: Too young.
Michael Cooke: Oh, y’all are too young.
James Dow: CC’s were in the thirties. See, we weren’t out until World War II.
Michael Cooke: Oh, that’s right. This is just a little too-
James Dow: See, we were in Korean conflict.
Michael Cooke: Oh.
James Dow: We weren’t even old enough for World War II.
Michael Cooke: Oh, I see. So, y’all were just too young.
James Dow: Yeah, oh yeah.
Michael Cooke: So, y’all finished high school around the end of World War II? And then you became old enough for Korea?
James Dow: Yeah.
Michael Cooke: So, did you both go to Korea?
James Dow: I was in during the time. I didn’t go to Korea, but I was in during the time. I was drafted. He was-
Mason Scott: I went to Korea.
Michael Cooke: So, Mason went to Korea.
Mason Scott: Um-hm.
Michael Cooke: And what unit were you with?
Mason Scott: I was in the combat engineers.
Michael Cooke: Oh, that sounds terrible.
Mason Scott: [Laughs] It was.
Michael Cooke: [Laughs]. My father-in-law was a combat engineer during World War II, and he don’t have too good memory. He does not like to talk about it.
James Dow: That’s where they put most Blacks. Black people out there working and fighting.
Mason Scott: First thing in, last thing out. Clear mine fields, stuff like that. Build bridges for them to go across.
James Dow: I was in one of the divisions that hadn’t put no Blacks in until Korea, the Second Armored Division, out of Fort Worth, Texas. They was all white during World War II, then they started mixing it. They put two batteries in there during Korea, but we still wasn’t mixed. The army was still segregated.
Mason Scott: Segregated when I went. I went in 1948. It was very segregated.
James Dow: Well, I went in in 1950, and it was still segregated.
Mason Scott: And all Black outfits.
Michael Cooke: And this is even years after the 1948 decision-
James Dow: Oh, yeah.
Michael Cooke: After the executive order by [President] Truman.
James Dow: They didn’t mix the armies. I came over in [19]52, and they were starting to mix it some then.
Mason Scott: I was in an all-black outfit.
James Dow: I was in an all-black outfit.
Mason Scott: There were white officers. The army didn’t...until Korea.
James Dow: The army wasn’t mixed in the [19]40s. Don’t let anybody tell you that. It wasn’t mixed in the [19]40s.
Mason Scott: Then the fissures [15:04] started. We got white replacements and started mixing them.
Michael Cooke: White replacements?
Mason Scott: Yeah, they started rotating back to the states. And we got some white replacements.
Michael Cooke: That’s one way of getting more whites in your outfit. [Laughter]. I’m not too sure about that way to get...[Laughter].
James Dow: Well, that way they can’t do like they did in World War II, when the army struck the ninety-second and Germany annihilated them easily. Put them in that situation and they had to retreat.
Mason Scott: They put the Black outfit up front.
James Dow: Now they got them mixed up. They put them in there somewhere. They put Blacks in rough places. Old Mark Clark put the ninety-second in there
Mason Scott: In Kasserine Pass and got them wiped out.
James Dow: Got them wiped out, but they was holding for the whites to retreat.

Keywords: Army; Civilian Conservation Camps; combat engineers; Great Depression; Korea; Korean Conflict; President Truman; Second World War; segregated troops; World War II; WWII

Subjects: Army; Korean Conflict; Military Service

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: Well, let’s see. Let’s talk about work after the war. Did you get your job back after you got out of the army, or did you-
Mason Scott: Didn’t want it back!
Michael Cooke: Didn’t want it back?
Mason Scott: [Laughs] I was on the railroad.
James Dow: I was on the railroad when I went in the army, and I was on-
Michael Cooke: Why don’t you explain why you didn’t want it back?
Mason Scott: Work, back-breaking work. That’s why I went in the army, to keep from working. And I didn’t want to come back to the same thing, so-
Michael Cooke: So, this is Mason here. Did Black people work extremely hard and-
Mason Scott: Well, all railroad work was hard. Working on machinery.
Michael Cooke: Okay, describe what you did before you got out of that.
Mason Scott: Digging, driving spikes down, and lifting. Stupid over eight hours, ten hours, a day setting them spikes.
Michael Cooke: How did you get to your work?
Mason Scott: You rode the train from here on Sunday evening and you stayed out there til Friday.
Michael Cooke: Stay out where?
Mason Scott: Out there on the extra gang [16:46]. They had a camp car for you to stay in.
Michael Cooke: Okay, what area?
Mason Scott: Oh, I was in North West Virginia-
Michael Cooke: Oh, so you were-
Mason Scott: Bluefield, West Virginia, Grayson-
Michael Cooke: All over the place.
Mason Scott: The Shenandoah Valley.
Michael Cooke: So, you came back—only got back—on the weekends, I guess.
Mason Scott: Came home Friday night. Then left Sunday evening.
Michael Cooke: How much was you making, with all that work?
Mason Scott: We were making around...I guess it went down to around sixty some cents an hour, sixty-three cents an hour.
Michael Cooke: So, you made, let’s see, about five dollars a day?
Mason Scott: And you had to pay for—you know—for your food out there on the camp. They had a place called Conneser [17:18]...was it Virginia? [inaudible 17:29] They fed you nothing but beans and cornbread and biscuits. That’s why they used to call it the bean box, you got nothing but beans.
Michael Cooke: The bean box? [Laughs]
Mason Scott: Got nothing but beans out there. [Laughter] That’s five days a week, twice a day.
James Dow: Don’t let nobody tell you the railroad was mixed in them days. Wasn’t nothing white there but the [inaudible 17:43].
Mason Scott: And the machine operators.
James Dow: That’s all. Everything else was Black.
Mason Scott: They had a machine with a white operator, and they got different food than the Blacks got.
Michael Cooke: They got different food?
Mason Scott: Oh yeah, they get pork chops, steaks.
Michael Cooke: You mean they didn’t give them beans?
Mason Scott: No, no. [Laughter]. If they’d bring a pot of beans out there, good God.
James Dow: You see a railroad gang come through now, you see a lot of white on them, because they got machinery. But I know a time when we worked that track, there wasn’t a white in that gang.
Michael Cooke: They wouldn’t do that work?
James Dow: No, there wasn’t nothing but Black in there.
Michael Cooke: What kind of work did they think they were good enough to do?
Mason Scott: They had bolt [18:19] machines, they operated them, or sanding machines-
James Dow: Couldn’t none of them stay there with them Blacks in that rough gang. If you saw a white in there, they were punishing him wanting to fire him.
Mason Scott: Would they really? They were quick too.
Michael Cooke: There was a message of, we don’t want you. Get lost.
James Dow: Throw you in there with them other boys.
Mason Scott: Throw them with [inaudible 18:41] [Laughs] Couple weeks and they’d be gone—couple of days they’d be gone. Lunch time, they’d bring in a bunch of, I think about three or four pots of beans, as tall as that desk and that big around. And a great big box of cornbread. Regulate us about two or three boxes of cornbread and a bunch of tin pans.
Michael Cooke: And you had to pay for that?
Mason Scott: Yeah.
Michael Cooke: [Laughs].
Mason Scott: You’d go up and get your tin pan and go to the bean pot and they had dippers in it. They’d dip the meat out and the beans, and chop it up, in small meals, these one-inch cubes. And when everybody had come through the line, they’d hand you one of them little cubes of meat. Didn’t one dude get the whole chunk of meat. You’re going to need to shoot the bull right good, you might get two pieces of meat. [Laughs] And that was all the meat you saw.
Michael Cooke: [Laughs] And this is for five days you ate this stuff?
Mason Scott: Yeah. And then you left from there and went to the bread box and got you a couple pieces of cornbread. And grabbed your own spoon, which you kept your spoon in your pocket all the time.
Michael Cooke: They didn’t provide a spoon?
Mason Scott: No, you brought it from home.
Michael Cooke: Bring your own spoon?
Mason Scott: Yeah [Laughs].
Michael Cooke: Oh [Laughs]. This is-
Mason Scott: Rain, snow, sometimes it would be raining in your beans.
James Dow: You’ll find some rough stuff on up. I mean we knew this stuff even in our time.
Mason Scott: You got out there, worked in the rain, eating them beans in the rain, rain falling in your bean plate.
Michael Cooke: What did they care? It added to the volume. [Laughs] Oh, that’s awful. Were Blacks ever managers?
Mason Scott: No.
Michael Cooke: No managers?
James Dow: Basically, you couldn’t get a brakeman [20:22] job in them days.
Mason Scott: Nothing but just laborers.
Michael Cooke: Just common, hard work labor? That's what they wanted.
James Dow: If you went down and applied for an engineer or brakeman job or something, they’d have called the cops and tell them to send your ass to Petersburg or something. [Laughter]
James Dow: Say, you’re crazy. You going down and applying for that job.
Michael Cooke: Wow.
James Dow: Whole lot of young timers don’t believe that.
Michael Cooke: Oh, I can believe it.
Mason Scott: We was young which was a little better. But after coming back I sure wasn’t going back to the same thing.

Keywords: beans; Bluefield, West Virginia; bread box; cornbread; food; labor work; pay; pork chops; railroad; railroad camps; Shenandoah Valley; steak; transportation; white operators

Subjects: Food; Railraod; Railroad Camps; Work Opportunities

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: So, what did you do after you came back?
Mason Scott: I packed my clothes and went to New York. [Laughs]
Michael Cooke: Went to New York.
Mason Scott: Got a job.
Michael Cooke: And what kind of work did you do in New York?
Mason Scott: I started out at the VA hospital.
Michael Cooke: Okay.
Mason Scott: I left from there and went to the post office.
Michael Cooke: Did you work in a post office in New York?
Mason Scott: Uh-huh.
Michael Cooke: And what happened from there?
Mason Scott: Well, I came back to Virginia in [19]65 and worked at GE a while. Then I got back in the post office here.
Michael Cooke: Where did you work at GE? I don’t know-
Mason Scott: In Salem.
Michael Cooke: We talked earlier, but they don’t know. Okay, you worked there for how many years? Maybe one year, two years?
Mason Scott: Where?
Michael Cooke: At Salem.
Mason Scott: Up there ten years.
Michael Cooke: Oh, ten years? What did you get, a pension or-
Mason Scott: Uh-huh. Got a vested rights.
Michael Cooke: A vested rights?
Mason Scott: Uh-huh. And then, meanwhile, another time I got back in the post office. And, I worked at both jobs until I got about ten years at GE, then I went back to the post office and stayed there until I got my retirement time. Then I retired.
Michael Cooke: What did you do at the post office?
Mason Scott: Clerk.
Michael Cooke: You were a clerk? And what locations did you-
Mason Scott: In Elliston, Roanoke, Blacksburg. I was the postmaster’s replacement there in a year. Then I went on to the O.I.C. program, which is a postmaster training school. You was obviously in charge at the post office. If you did that three or four times, you’d eventually make postmaster. But at the time, at the age I was at the time, I didn’t want to be nothing, just free, you know, but to retire really. [Laughs]
Michael Cooke: You’d rather be free and retire.
Mason Scott: So, I just didn’t want no commitments, and I transferred to Blacksburg. And after, I retired from Blacksburg.

Keywords: Blacksburg, Virginia; Elliston, Virginia; GE; General Electric; mail service; New York; O.I.C; post office; postal service; postmaster; retirement; Roanoke, Virginia; VA hospital

Subjects: Occupations; Postal Service; Work Opportunities

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: What about James Dow on the other side here? How was your work experience?
James Dow: I worked railroads, North Western railroads. I went in the army, then I came back and worked another year. Then, I worked in the Civil Service at a veteran hospital.
Michael Cooke: Oh, you decided this work was for the birds?
James Dow: Yeah, I left there, too.
Michael Cooke: [Laughs]. Was it pretty much the same story that Mason talked about, a bunch of beans and cornbread?
James Dow: Yeah, yeah. I worked a lot right here in Elliston on a section. I worked up there some on extra gang, and I know what the condition of the track was.
Michael Cooke: And they weren’t very good.
James Dow: No.
Michael Cooke: So, you were more than happy to get to the VA?
James Dow: Yeah.
Michael Cooke: Where did you work in the VA?
James Dow: I worked here in Salem. I worked [in] psychiatry, mostly.
Michael Cooke: And did you retire there?
James Dow: Um-hm.
Michael Cooke: How many years did you put in?
James Dow: I stayed out there for thirty-one years.
Michael Cooke: Oh, that’s good. So, you didn’t do any more back-breaking labor anymore.
James Dow: No, except wrestling with them nuts [Laughs] in them psych wards.
Michael Cooke: Oh, wow. Still not going out and being in the cold, eating cold beans.

Keywords: beans; Civil Service; cornbread; Elliston, Virginia; North Western railroad; psych wards; psychiatry; railroad; Roanoke VA hospital; VA hospital

Subjects: Occupations; Railroad; VA hospital; Work Opportunities

Partial Transcript: Mason Scott: That’s where, you know, these Negroes singing these spirituals and any kind of music, you know, to get them to work together. You heard them chatting. There’d be a lot of that on the railroads.
Michael Cooke: You remember that? Just singing to break the monotony of-
Mason Scott: Uh-huh. Getting everybody to working like they was pulling-like they had something to move. [inaudible 23:56] at the same time. They’d do chantings.
Michael Cooke: So, timings. Everybody kind of worked with rhythm, so to speak?
Mason Scott: Um-hm, right.
Michael Cooke: They weren’t dancing in rhythm, they were working with rhythm.
Mason Scott: They were working in rhythm.
James Dow: Talking railing, they had a guy doing [inaudible 24:10] a dude with a big bass voice like a [inaudible 24:16].
Mason Scott: You’d hear him from a mile away.
James Dow: Everybody would be listening at him, which was the safest thing.
Mason Scott: Then, everybody would lift together.
James Dow: He’d call the way he wanted. He’d sound off, you’d see the rail moving.
Michael Cooke: And nobody got hurt.
Mason Scott: Unh-uh. They’d have got in the way. If you didn’t know what you was doing, you didn’t get there.
Michael Cooke: Well, let’s see.
Mason Scott: They were getting everybody to pull or work at the same time, to lift at the same time. You’d take ten people on the rail—twenty people on the rail, and if one lift at one time and another lift at another, you never would get nowhere. But you get all twenty people lifting at one time, you [inaudible 25:08].
James Dow: I’ve seen a rail go—built a rail so high you wouldn’t want to walk on it. [inaudible 25:09].
Mason Scott: You see, you got everybody lifting at one time. Just had people out there [inaudible 25:23] with this one doing this and that one doing nothing and this one be lifting and the other one wouldn’t be. So, you get everyone lifting at the same time-
Michael Cooke: The work went better?
Mason Scott: Yes, um-hm.
Michael Cooke: Less effort on the part of individual effort.

Keywords: chanting; railroad; rhythm; sining; spiritual

Subjects: Railroad; Work Opportunities

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: Let me get back to Mrs. Scott. Where did you work? Were you a housewife or did you work in the area, or even outside the area?
Valerie Scott: Oh, I taught school one year because I took the state examination and got a first grade certificate. We couldn’t get no kind of certificate—didn’t have no schooling or nothing—if you didn’t have some kind of certificate. I just went on my own and took the state examination.
Michael Cooke: Where did you teach?
Valerie Scott: I taught one term up in Washington.
Michael Cooke: Washington County?
Valerie Scott: Um-hm.
Michael Cooke: Were you married at that time?
Valerie Scott: Unh-uh.
Michael Cooke: Oh, you were single?
Valerie Scott: Um-hm.
Michael Cooke: And, then what happened after that?
Valerie Scott: Well, I got married.
Michael Cooke: Oh, you got married?
Valerie Scott: Um-hm.
Michael Cooke: And so, you came back to this area?
Valerie Scott: Yeah, and I’ve been here.
Michael Cooke: What did you do after you got married? Did you continue to work or did you-
Valerie Scott: I just kept house.
Michael Cooke: Oh, you were a house-
Valerie Scott: [inaudible 26:40]

Keywords: housewife; housework; marriage; school teacher; state examination; Washington County

Subjects: Housework; Teaching; Work Opportunities

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: Let me ask another question to the whole group here. Were there any mines or quarries that people worked in or just people basically farmed and worked on the railroads? Unless they got a job in the government like you two did?
Mason Scott: I don’t know of no rock quarries or nothing around here. No mines or nothing around here.
Michael Cooke: It’s not like Wake Forest where, you know, you walk a mile and there’s a mine for you to work in?
Mason Scott: If you didn’t leave Elliston for a job you worked the railroad down here on the section and farm, that was it. You had to go to Roanoke or Christiansburg or Radford. Before World War II started-
James Dow: General Electric, none of them wasn’t even here in them times.
Mason Scott: Then when World War II started, and they opened up the powder plant. That really boosted-
Michael Cooke: People in this area work in the powder plant?
Mason Scott: Sure.
Michael Cooke: Any of the Dows work at the powder plant?
James Dow: Oh, yeah. Uncle Albert worked there.
Mason Scott: Yeah, momma worked there.
Valerie Scott: I worked at the bagging plant, for six months. They needed help so bad during the second World War, to bag the powder. So, I worked up there for six months until the end of the World War, the last part or portion of it.
Michael Cooke: Did you have any children at home or were they all grown at that point?
Valerie Scott: My youngest girl was there at home. I couldn’t leave her here by herself. I paid another to [inaudible 28:15] her.
Michael Cooke: Oh, I see. So, that’s how you were able to manage that.
Valerie Scott: Yeah.
Michael Cooke: I was wondering.
Valerie Scott: Yeah, but the two boys were grown. And the daughter, I couldn’t leave her here by herself. So, I hired another [inaudible 28:29] to keep her while I worked.
Michael Cooke: Were there other people like you? Who had children and said, well, I can’t just flat out leave, but I’ll let some lady take care of them and I’ll go to the job?
Valerie Scott: Yeah, some of them did and some of them just let the children go, I reckon. I don’t know how they did it.
Michael Cooke: Simply, let them go wild like weeds.
Valerie Scott: [Laughs] I don’t know how they did that.
Michael Cooke: Let me ask another question. Were there any mines or quarries in Shawsville, or near Shawsville?
Valerie Scott: No.
Michael Cooke: So, there was nothing? So, the people at Shawsville and Elliston were pretty much in the same boat?
Mason Scott: Same boat. Run down to the bean box, [inaudible 29:23].
Michael Cooke: [Laughs].
Mason Scott: You could sleep about twenty people in a bunk, maybe, in the camp car where we’d sleep at. Nothing in the whole car but Elliston and Shawsville.
James Dow: Closest mine to here was right in that Wake Forest area around Merrimac. That was about the closest coal mine to this area. There were no coal mines come back this way.
Michael Cooke: None?
James Dow: Most coal mines were closer right in that area where you-
Michael Cooke: Wake Forest and Merrimac.
James Dow: And Merrimac.
Michael Cooke: And then Parrott, [Virginia]-
Mason Scott: East of here, west of here.

Keywords: Albert Dow; childcare; Christiansburg, Virginia; Elliston, Virginia; General Electric; Merrimac, Virginia; mines; Parrott, Virginia; powder plant; quarries; Radford Army Ammunition Plant; Radford Arsenal; railroad camps; Roanoke, Virginia; Second World War; Wake Forest, Virginia; World War II; WWII

Subjects: Coal mines and mining; Montgomery County, Virginia; Radford Army Ammunition Plant; Railroad

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: Okay, just wanted to make sure that was the case. Okay, were there-
James Dow: You ain’t interviewed nobody in Parrott?
Michael Cooke: No. [Laughter]. Why are you making that cynical comment? [Laughter]
Mason Scott: You had [inaudible 30:09] too! [Laughs]
James Dow: Had to cross the road to Whitethorn over there, but nothing ever happened to them people over there. You don’t want to be caught in Parrott unless you had a legal reason.
Michael Cooke: [Laughs]. It’s a deathwish out there. Is that what you’re trying to imply?
Mason Scott: It’s an interesting thing. We were working on an extra gang-
Michael Cooke: Uh-huh.
Mason Scott: They would take us out on some areas like Grundy [30:35], Virginia. Wasn’t no Blacks in there. And they had to have railroad police—railroad detectives they call them—watched the cars where the Blacks were sleeping because if they didn’t, they’d come down and run you out of there. And you couldn’t disagree with them. And going up and down the hall, they had signs, Black read and run. Can’t read, run in the damn house. [Laughter]. You’d see a black chicken hanging up by its neck.
James Dow: It was almost as bad as it was in Parrott, too.
Mason Scott: But down through Grundy was a mess.
Michael Cooke: If you can’t run, still-
Mason Scott: If you can’t read, still run. [Laughter]. And, I mean, you couldn’t go in the camp cars at night.
Michael Cooke: That’s terrible. So, did you have that same experience, James?
James Dow: Oh, pretty much the same, yeah.
Michael Cooke: Where were places where Blacks didn’t dare to let the sun go down?
Mason Scott: Narrows, [Virginia] was one. I think Narrows.
James Dow: Yeah. I’d say Parrott, [Virginia] and Belspring, [Virginia] was definitely two of them. And right over here in Ironto right in this Elliston area, and ain’t no Blacks would go in there that much.
Michael Cooke: Why?
James Dow: Don’t know why anyone would come through there. Weren’t nobody over there.
Michael Cooke: Where the whites made it clear they didn’t want Blacks?
James Dow: Yeah.
Michael Cooke: How?
James Dow: Word got around if they didn’t want you in there. Didn’t none of us live there.
Michael Cooke: I heard a story from one of my graduate students who used to live over there. He said, there used to be signs saying that Blacks-
Mason Scott: Ironto?
Michael Cooke: Yeah, in Ironto.
James Dow: Always been like that there. Ironto was part of Elliston, but no part for us.
Mason Scott: You’re talking about Elliston rail, right?
James Dow: Yeah.
Mason Scott: Ironto and Lafayette-
Michael Cooke: It was on the mail [32:19] route.
Mason Scott: Um-hm.
Michael Cooke: It’s not on a real route, just for people to travel if you’re people of color.
Mason Scott: I was the first Black fellow to work down here at the post office. No Black fellow worked down there before me.
Michael Cooke: What was the situation for you, Mason?
Mason Scott: When I first went there?
Michael Cooke: Yeah. Did you have any problems with some of your white coworkers?
Mason Scott: Some of them. Some of them wouldn’t want me to wait on them.
Michael Cooke: You mean the people would come in and didn’t want a Black clerk to wait on them?
Mason Scott: Right, to sell them a stamp or something. That’s when a white woman talked like that.
Michael Cooke: That’s fine. That’s less work for you.
Mason Scott: I’m standing right there looking at them, you know. They wanted nothing.
Michael Cooke: Did you feel insulted by that? What was your reaction?
Mason Scott: Well, I felt bad about it, yes. But then over a period of time—once they knew your complexion could do the job, then they changed.
Michael Cooke: Did they think you couldn’t do the job or were they just being mean?
Mason Scott: Just contrary, I guess. They didn’t want to see no Black there, period.
Michael Cooke: So, they knew you could do the job, but they thought that was not a job for a Black.
Mason Scott: The first morning I started, I was kind of nervous. I mean, I wasn’t familiar with the job. And, looking at them, the white folks were staring at you too.
Michael Cooke: Like you came from another planet or something.
Mason Scott: Like, what are you doing back there?
James Dow: I bet you one of the times [33:45]—they won’t admit it—but I’ve known a time when the help wanted section had colored on one side and white on another. But a help wanted section at all times. I bet they wouldn’t admit to it now. If you interviewed them on the times [33:56].
Michael Cooke: Well, they couldn’t deny it because it’s in Black and white.
Mason Scott: It’s in the papers, the colored and the white-
James Dow: Jobs up there to apply for? Colored on one place and white on another.

Keywords: Grundy, Virginia; Ironto, Virginia; Lafayette, Virginia; Narrows, Virginia; Parrot, Virginia; post office; Railroad camps; railroad detectives; Sundown town; Whitethorn, Virginia

Subjects: Montgomery County, Virginia; Postal Service; Race Relations; Railroad; Sundown Towns

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: Was there a disparity in incomes if you were seeking white employment or Black employment?
James Dow: Oh, yeah.
Michael Cooke: How much could a white person really expect to work for a day or a week?
James Dow: Oh, we really didn’t know. None of them told us anything about the salaries.
Michael Cooke: But you can guess-
James Dow: But we just knew about white jobs and Black jobs in the paper. They’d tell you—you’d come in there and they’d say, you see this here? You need not apply here. We got it designated here. Just like they had signs in railroad stations and bus terminals. Colored waiting room, white waiting room. And they had a sign on the Greyhound bus, colored to rear, white to front. Railroad [inaudible 34:52].
Michael Cooke: Was there a bus station or a train station in this area?
James Dow: There was a train station here.
Michael Cooke: Did they have that kind of arrangements in those?
James Dow: Yeah, they had a colored waiting room and a white waiting room.
Michael Cooke: So, in Elliston they had the train station. There was a waiting room for Blacks and-
James Dow: All over Virginia they had that.
Valerie Scott: Yeah!
James Dow: All over Virginia. Richmond, Petersburg, and everywhere else in Virginia they had a colored side in the waiting room and white on the other.

Keywords: Black employment; bus terminals; disparity; Elliston, Virginia; Greyhound bus; income; railroad stations; waiting rooms; white employment

Subjects: Segregation; Work Opportunities

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: What if, say, you went to a store. I mean, after you got off of work. After eating those beans and cornbread that y’all had been drowned in-
James Dow: [Laughs].
Michael Cooke: Where did you shop?
Mason Scott: You would go to the white stores and shop.
Michael Cooke: What stores did people around here generally go to?
Mason Scott: Well, they had a Rose [36:00] in Roanoke and Christiansburg, you know for clothes and stuff like that. They had a John Burkenside [36:10] store down here.
Michael Cooke: Okay. Could you get credit?
Mason Scott: Sure.
Michael Cooke: Were the white creditors pleasant or hostile?
Mason Scott: Yeah. There wasn’t too bad of race relations the way that was concerned.
Michael Cooke: Money is money? They want your money.
Mason Scott: Right. But they wanted money when payday come. And, you know, Blacks would go in there and get anything they had. And they’d put on the bill one, and when payday come, they’d get in an economic bind. You would eat up everything you made, nearly. So, about time you paid things off, you didn’t have no money to get nowhere else.

Keywords: Christiansburg, Virginia; Roanoke, Virginia; store

Subjects: Grocery Stores; Montgomery County, Virginia

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: That was the situation you felt like-
Mason Scott: That was the situation. It was an economic bind.
Michael Cooke: When you were working with the railroad?
Mason Scott: No, not with the railroad. We were around here on the farms and everything.
Michael Cooke: Oh, when people were doing farm work?
Mason Scott: Um-hm.
Michael Cooke: Their wages were so low, like ten cents an hour?
Mason Scott: You couldn’t save nothing.
Michael Cooke: By the time you worked on the farm for so little-
Mason Scott: Um-hm-
James Dow: Almost the same as sharecropping.
Mason Scott: Yeah.
James Dow: Sharecropping would employ a former slave or two. You’d always owe the man at the end of the year and all that junk.
Michael Cooke: So, people around here were often as-
James Dow: That’s what white man done. When he brought you out of slavery, he’d put you in sharecropping, which was the same thing just a different name.
Michael Cooke: Different name.
James Dow: Yeah, same thing.
Mason Scott: Then, a lot of times, they wouldn’t give you change and give you a due bill and you’d have to go down to the store and buy something with it. And he’d get wholesale, sell you retail-
James Dow: Making money again-
Mason Scott: Making money that way.
James Dow: We worked on the farm for this guy who owned the store down here, and he didn’t pay us in cash. He gave us what they called a due bill. You’d have to spend it in his store.
Valerie Scott: Yeah.
James Dow: You couldn’t go roaming nowhere with it.
Michael Cooke: So, in other words, you worked, but you didn’t get real money?
Mason Scott: No.
James Dow: No.
Michael Cooke: A due bill?
James Dow: They’d call it a due bill.
Michael Cooke: Okay, who did you work for that way? This is James speaking.
James Dow: A guy named Henson, who ran the store down here.
Michael Cooke: What was his first name?
James Dow: Sidney Henson.
Michael Cooke: Sidney Henson. So, you’d work on his farm-
James Dow: Yeah, and he had a tomato canning factory. He canned tomatoes here. We worked that. But you didn’t get money, you got what was called a due bill.
Michael Cooke: So, even when you worked in a factory, you got a due bill.
James Dow: Yes.
Michael Cooke: Well, that’s just-
Mason Scott: He owned the factory, the store, and everything else.
Michael Cooke: What happened if you needed to buy some clothes or-
James Dow: He’d have to get them for you. He had a little bit of everything down here.
Michael Cooke: Oh, he’d have to get them for you?
James Dow: Yeah.
Michael Cooke: You couldn’t? Suppose you wanted to go to Roanoke?
Mason Scott: He had suits down here. Couldn’t go to Roanoke if you didn’t have any money to get nothing with.
Michael Cooke: Because of the due bill?
Mason Scott: That’s right.
James Dow: The due bill was only good in his store.
Mason Scott: That’s why there was so many people on the railroads and things. When they left the farm, they went on the railroad where they could get cash money.
James Dow: They got money out there.
Michael Cooke: Okay, so-
Mason Scott: Then if they wanted to buy-
Michael Cooke: So, work on the railroad might have been hard, but at least you had real money.
Mason Scott: You had some cash. Your pockets would jingle.
Michael Cooke: [Laughs]
Mason Scott: Due bills don’t jingle too much. Didn’t have no paper to jingle.
Michael Cooke: And it seems to me it’s inconvertible. You can’t convert it. It doesn’t mean anything.
James Dow: We’d been used to people peeling tomatoes, and they had a token.
Valerie Scott: That’s all they could get!
James Dow: When they’d peel a pan of tomatoes—a big old pan—they had a token. It couldn’t be cashed nowhere but in his store. You couldn’t spend it nowhere but in his store.
Valerie Scott: No, you couldn’t.
James Dow: You had a little token, a little made up coin. They had that when you went.
Valerie Scott: That’s right. Everywhere you went, you couldn’t do nothing.
Mason Scott: Before then, they used to have an old card with numbers on them. When you done a pan of tomatoes, they’d clip the card. One of these Blacks got slick and went and bought him a clipper. And shoot, they was peeling fifty-five pans of tomatoes a day. [Laughter]. Everyone else peeling ten or twenty, and they were peeling thirty or forty. He had to cut down after that. When he got his clipped—when the guy totaled it. [inaudible 39:45] about that guy. He bought him a clipper.
James Dow: It was the same system in the mines when they loaded coal. They had a token that went in the bottom of that car. When your car come out and dumped it, you had a number, he’d bring your token out, put it out there. At the end of the day, you’d know how many tokens you had and how many cars you’d done since the day.
Michael Cooke: That’s right? But those people got real money?
James Dow: But they got money [inaudible 40:10]
Michael Cooke: They got real money. I was-
James Dow: They could cash it in. But that’s the way they counted them mines.
Michael Cooke: But in terms of farmers, or people working at these canary factories, they got nothing. That’s just debt pending. That’s debt pending, plain and simple.
Mason Scott: A lot of people went to the railroad and anything like that. They went to hotels, bell-hoping, and waiting tables and stuff like that. That you got a little money for. Anything to get away from the farm. They’d go to like Hotel Roanoke, [inaudible 40:41] bellhops, waiters, bus boys.
Michael Cooke: So, a lot of people left Elliston for Roanoke?
Mason Scott: Um-hm.
Michael Cooke: Did they commute or did they just-
Mason Scott: Some of them would commute and some would just actually move, you know. Move to another community.

Keywords: coal mining; debt; due bill; due bills; economic bind; Elliston, Virginia; farm work; Hotel Roanoke; migration; railroad; Roanoke, Virginia; sharecropping; Sidney Henson; wages

Subjects: Due Bills; Farm tenancy--Virginia; Sharecropping; Work Opportunities

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: That’s interesting. Oaky, what about relationships with whites? Did whites live near the Black community or did people live in an integrated fashion or a segregated fashion in Elliston?
Mason Scott: Oh, I’ve lived here all my life on this property, and we’ve been surrounded by whites. And we really had no trouble out of them. I’d play with white kids. I didn’t hardly play with Black kids until I started school.
Michael Cooke: Until then? Were there any other areas that Blacks lived in Elliston? This is one area on Brake Road—or is it Brake street? I can’t remember.
Mason Scott: Brake Road.
Michael Cooke: Brake Road. Are there any other locations where Blacks lived in Elliston?
James Dow: The only Blacks live on Brake Road on through here. It was almost all Black in them days. The whites are the ones that have moved in later.
Michael Cooke: And Church Street-
Mason Scott: Next street over.
Michael Cooke: Oh, that’s just the next street over. Okay, so everybody lived within a very small distance from one another.
Mason Scott: But usually Brake Road wasn’t nothing but Blacks just about, especially around here.
James Dow: The white had a school right over there, and we had a school, one of them old Rosenwald schools over at the other end.
Mason Scott: You think I could go to school over there? Maybe kids go over there.
Michael Cooke: The neighborhood school, which was closest, was white, but you couldn’t go there.
James Dow: No.
Mason Scott: I could get out of bed at a quarter till nine and be over there at nine o’clock.
Michael Cooke: How far was the Black school from here?
Mason Scott: About a mile.
Michael Cooke: A mile? And the white school was probably about a few hundred yards?
Mason Scott: Right, maybe a hundred yards.
James Dow: The old building is still there, exactly like one in Wake Forest, what they call a Rosenwald School.
Michael Cooke: A Rosenwald? Got a certain pattern?
James Dow: Some guy named Rosenwald built the school for Blacks. He was some old rich man. He built one in Shawsville, Elliston, Wake Forest-
Michael Cooke: All of them had the same plan?
James Dow: They were white and nearly the same. They were framed. One’s still up here in Elliston when we went to put room and board [inaudible 43:00].
Michael Cooke: In fact, I understand the one in Wake Forest is used for apartments.
James Dow: I think so. I think some guy bought it. But, they were the same type of school. The one in Shawsville was sold [inaudible 43:20]. You may know, Valerie, who that guy Rosenwald was. Some rich man, wasn’t it?
Valerie Scott: Yeah, he was a rich man.
James Dow: That’s why they call them Rosenwald schools. Just like old Scally [43:19]-
Valerie Scott: He furnished the county.
Michael Cooke: Oh yeah, Scattergood [43:20].
James Dow: Well, this Rosenwald built a lot of schools for Blacks.
Valerie Scott: All they had to do was-
Michael Cooke: Oh, yeah. The Rosenwald fund.
Valerie Scott: Uh-huh.
Michael Cooke: Oh, yeah. Okay, now it makes sense.
James Dow: He left a lot of money for-
Michael Cooke: For Blacks.
Valerie Scott: For the Blacks.
James Dow: I later found out that he was mixed up.
Mason Scott: And he told his two sons [43:57]-
James Dow: Oh, I think he was mixed, but wasn’t nothing said about it in them days.
Valerie Scott: All the Blacks had to do is purchase the land and deed it to the county. And then the county would run it for Blacks.
Michael Cooke: Did that happen for the Elliston school?
Valerie Scott: Yes.
Mason Scott: But what about before then?
Michael Cooke: Hold up. I’m sorry?
Mason Scott: What about before they built the school up here, when they had that old school up in the hollow all the way up in Melvinsborough [44:07]?
Valerie Scott: Well-
Mason Scott: Did the community build it or what?
Valerie Scott: The community builded it. Black people built that theyself. And then the white people would run it or the county would run it.

Keywords: Black community; Black school; Brake Road; Church Street; Elliston, Virginia; Rosenwald Fund; Rosenwald School; Wake Forest, Virginia; white school

Subjects: Primary Education; Race Relations; Rosenwald School

Partial Transcript: James Dow: For a long time, the county didn’t run the Institute.
Valerie Scott: No!
Michael Cooke: No, not till [19]47.
James Dow: Yeah, somewhere along in there. I can remember old man Scattergood. He used to come around and make a speech once a year.
Michael Cooke: He was one of the administrators for the Quakers. The Friends—I forgot the official name.
Valerie Scott: Yeah, the Friends—
Michael Cooke: Friends Foundation, I forgot. I’ll have to go back and look that up.
Valerie Scott: They purchased from the Black people.
James Dow: I can remember old man Scattergood. He used to come make a speech once a year.
Mason Scott: In that Scattergood building.
James Dow: Yeah, we’d have to all assemble in the chapel for him.
Michael Cooke: That’s amazing. Scattergood Drive is where Burrell Morgan lived on. It’s right next to the school.
James Dow: Okay, that’s on Old Campus ground. They had a hundred acres of land in there. But after he gave it to the county, the county sold it later on. VPI or some extension from there, I think, bought it later on. But in there where Morgan lived and where Odel Pommedan [45:19] lived, they were private houses. That Professor Walker bought the house that Ms. Ray’s living in now [45:48]. And old Ms. Long and them bought the house where Odel lives. That didn’t go with the school. That’s the reason Ms. Ray living over there now [45:34] because that didn’t go with the school. But when the county sold everything in it, it was a farm now with the school, agriculture and everything like that.
Valerie Scott: On their own.
James Dow: It went all the way up the hill, back where the radio station is. Where the elementary school is, all that is the same land.
Michael Cooke: It’s an extensive track. Some of it’s being used for development purposes though.
[recording device moved around]
James Dow: Might be.
Michael Cooke: Or-
Mason Scott: [inaudible 46:30] railroad all the way back to...up in that area.
Michael Cooke: And the high school, the Christiansburg High School is built on the property too.
James Dow: I think it’s the same property.
Michael Cooke: Yeah, same place.
Mason Scott: It was just about as big of a campus as VPI back in them days.
James Dow: Well, bigger than VPI. VPI, well [Virginia] Tech, wasn’t no size. [Virginia] Tech was a military school then.

Keywords: 1947; Burrell Morgan; Christiansburg High School; Christiansburg Institute; Friends Foundation; Quakers; Scattergood; Scattergood Drive; VPI

Subjects: Christiansburg Industrial Institute; VPI

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: Little small-
James Dow: Everything there wore a uniform. It was like VMI. I know when everything in [Virginia] Tech wore a uniform.
Mason Scott: Had the big tall aircraft there—I mean, the pilot training down at VPI. They had a field down there.
James Dow: It was an all male school, and they wore uniforms.
Michael Cooke: Um-hm. Do you remember going to the games over at the VPI?
Mason Scott: [Laughs]. He’s still living [inaudible 47:10].
James Dow: You’d have to have an AK-47 to get to [Virginia] Tech’s campus in them days.
[Break in recording]
Michael Cooke: We’re back on the tape. [Laughter]. I decided we should be back on the tape. Okay, we talked about the school's situation, and you were talking about the campus that Black people didn’t go to the—at least not in this area—didn’t go to the games or go on campus because of fear of something might happen to them. Was that a real fear?
James Dow: They wouldn’t sell you a ticket.
Michael Cooke: Wouldn’t sell you a ticket?
James Dow: They wouldn’t sell you a ticket to a [Virginia] Tech game.
Michael Cooke: Did you try to go to the games?
James Dow: I know people that have tried. [Virginia] Tech and VMI—VPI—used to play in Roanoke at Victory Stadium on Thanksgiving. You could go to that game, but you couldn’t go to one on campus.
Mason Scott: Then they probably had a segregated area to sit in.
James Dow: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Michael Cooke: Yeah, there was a segregated area-
James Dow: All the ball games had a segregated area.
Michael Cooke: I understand that people generally didn’t pay. They just went through a hole in the fence-
James Dow: [Laughs]
Michael Cooke: And they went to the designated area.
James Dow: They still had an area to go to. You’d either end up in the wrong place or you went through the fence. [Laughter].
Michael Cooke: Oh, that’s awful [Laughs].
Mason Scott: They didn’t ask you for no ticket or nothing.
Michael Cooke: Awful. Awful, awful.

Keywords: Black attendance; military school; segregated seating; sports games; uniforms; Victory Stadium; VMI; VPI

Subjects: Social Life; Virginia Polytechnic Institute; VPI Sports

Partial Transcript: Mason Scott: Then they had movie showings up in Christiansburg. They’d put Blacks way up in the balcony.
James Dow: Yeah, upstairs.
Michael Cooke: So that’s where—if you wanted to go to a movie—you would go to Christiansburg?
Mason Scott: Or Roanoke. They had a Black theater in Roanoke.
James Dow: They had an all-Black theater in Roanoke about [inaudible 48:25] street. And then they had the old Roanoke theater, but you had to climb about five flights of stairs. The Blacks went upstairs there. They had a ticket window around the backside that you bought a ticket. You didn’t even buy tickets in the same place as whites.
Mason Scott: Used to go to the theater, sit on the balcony, and drink a soda. After that, just pitched the bottle on over the side. [Laughs]. Hit somebody upside of the head with it, and they’d be down there huffing and cussing and raising cane down there.
James Dow: They finally put a big screen on there—in Roanoke they did that.
Michael Cooke: Put a screen to keep-
Mason Scott: Keep you from throwing trash off-
Michael Cooke: On the white-
Mason Scott: Throw popcorn over there.
Michael Cooke: [Laughs] Was that just being mean?
Mason Scott: Yeah, devil based.
Michael Cooke: Well, they shouldn’t have put you up there.
James Dow: [Laughs]
Mason Scott: If they’d have known that they’d have put us downstairs and them up there.
James Dow: Some of them you had to pay to go upstairs.
Mason Scott: [inaudible 49:16] Wasn’t the same entrance. The side entrance and then just circle and circle and circle.
James Dow: You didn’t mess with them when you went to the theater. [inaudible 49:25]-
Michael Cooke: Even-
James Dow: They had dances down there that were segregated.
Mason Scott: Whites couldn’t get on the floor where the Blacks were dancing.
Michael Cooke: What about entertainment? Now we're on that topic of entertainment. What did people do? Did you have to go all the way to Roanoke or Christiansburg?
Mason Scott: Burrell had dances up there.
Michael Cooke: Did people in this area go to Burrell's place?
Mason Scott: Sure.
Michael Cooke: What kind of things did Burrell have up his way?
Mason Scott: Burrell had beer and a dance hall downstairs.
Michael Cooke: Could you get that around here? I mean, beer or dance halls.
Mason Scott: In Elliston?
Michael Cooke: Yeah.
Mason Scott: Wasn’t no beer—One or two, then you just get it to go.
Michael Cooke: Only to go? But no service-
Mason Scott: No place to sit down. If you wanted to sit down and drink beer, you’d have to go either to Christiansburg or Roanoke.
Michael Cooke: So, you either had to bring your beer home-
Mason Scott: Or sit in the woods somewhere and drink it.
Michael Cooke: [Laughs]. And so, that was the only place. That was the only bar or Black club-
Mason Scott: Restaurant, anything.
Michael Cooke: Anything?
Mason Scott: Yeah, except maybe Big Eel’s, Black Magic they called it, over in Cline Hollow in Roanoke County. [50:29] I forgot about that place.
Michael Cooke: Cline Hollow? How far away is that?
Mason Scott: Four miles.
Michael Cooke: That’s not that far.
Mason Scott: We’d go over there and drink beer. Sit down. A lot of whites was in there. Whites would come in there all the time.
Michael Cooke: They had no problem with Blacks being there?
Mason Scott: No, they’d get on and fight-
James Dow: Black owner run the place.
Mason Scott: Uh-huh.
Michael Cooke: What was the name of the person who ran the place?
James Dow: Ms. Twine.
Mason Scott: Twine.
Michael Cooke: Ms. Twine. Is that person related to one of the Twines in—I got a Twine—somewhere here. [papers shuffling] I know I have a Twine in my notes somewhere. I’m looking now, but I can’t find it. Is that a person related to Roy Twine?
Mason Scott: Yeah.
James Dow: She was married to Roy’s uncle.
Michael Cooke: Oh.
Mason Scott: So, not by marriage-
Michael Cooke: Anyway, I figured that if anybody had a name like that, the likelihood that—then they would be. So, I was right.

Keywords: Big Eel's; Black Magic; Burrell's Place; Cline Hollow; dances; movies; Ms. Twine; Roy Twine; segregated seating; theater

Subjects: Entertainment; Movie Theater; Social Life

Partial Transcript: James Dow: See, that was in Roanoke County. Back then, Montgomery County had a blue law.
Michael Cooke: Oh, they had one?
James Dow: Couldn’t sell no beer in Montgomery County on Sunday nowhere. Pulaski County didn’t have no beer on Sundays. I only remember one whiskey store in this area. That was in Christiansburg.
Michael Cooke: So, you didn’t even have a whiskey store in this area?
James Dow: One in Christiansburg. You didn’t find no more until you got to Wytheville. Pulaski County was dry completely.
Michael Cooke: Did people buy moonshine in this area?
James Dow: Oh, yeah.
Mason Scott: Yeah.
Michael Cooke: Because of the distance?
James Dow: Travel to get legal whiskey.
Mason Scott: Probably cheaper, too, I’d imagine.
James Dow: Blacksburg didn’t have no whiskey store in them days. Christiansburg had the only whiskey store through here for years.
Michael Cooke: Until when?
James Dow: I reckon Blacksburg got a store in the [19]60s.
Mason Scott: When they started these shopping centers, basically.
James Dow: Late [19]60s because early [19]60s I stayed around—we had to go to Christiansburg to get whiskey.
Mason Scott: After they put in the Gables Shopping Center.
Michael Cooke: That’s where they put it in. Yeah, that’s where it’s located.
James Dow: That was the first whiskey store-
Michael Cooke: That’s the only place it’s located.
Mason Scott: Someone found a loophole in the law.
James Dow: Wasn’t none before that.
Michael Cooke: So, around the time they built Gables Shopping Center?
James Dow: Um-hm.
Michael Cooke: That’s probably about the age of the buildings now. I can visualize the buildings—[19]60s.
Mason Scott: People in the community would always vote it down, but then after they started these shopping centers—these malls—yeah, some kind of loophole they could jump through, without going in front of the people. A vote.
Michael Cooke: Oh, I see.
Mason Scott: I don’t know just what it was, but I’m saying when a shopping center came in, there was a whiskey store.
Michael Cooke: But until then, nobody could-
James Dow: Salem didn’t have no whiskey store for years.
Mason Scott: The community would have to vote it in.
Michael Cooke: Oh, the community would have a say so.
Mason Scott: Right.
Michael Cooke: If you take another route, then, they don’t necessarily have to have a say so.
Mason Scott: Right, in these malls and things. But, at that time, if they wanted to put a store in Radford, then they put it before the voters in Radford. But half the people in Radford were bootleggers. So, they don’t want them states to cut them out.
Michael Cooke: [Laughs].
Mason Scott: So, hurting the bootleggers. They were making wine, home-brew, sell it and all that. Then, you got the goodies from the church that didn’t want it anyway. The only ones who wanted it was the drinkers, but the bootleggers didn’t want it. The church people didn’t want it. [inaudible 53:58] up the creek.
Michael Cooke: [Laughs].
Mason Scott: Made the Christians happy, and it made the bootleggers happy.
Michael Cooke: Everybody was one happy family, right? [Laughter]. Other than the people who wanted to consume. [Laughter]
Mason Scott: Right, the consumers.
James Dow: I don’t think Floyd, [Virginia] got a store yet.
Mason Scott: I don’t either.
James Dow: Unless they got it here lately. Unless they got it in the last two or three years.
Michael Cooke: I’m not familiar. So, I’m going to have to pass on that one.
Mason Scott: No capital there. Floyd’s just mountains.

Keywords: Blue Law; bootleggers; Gables Shopping Center; Montgomery County; moonshine; Pulaski County; Sunday; Wytheville, Virginia

Subjects: Alcohol Sale; Bootleggers; Moonshine

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: Any social clubs that Black people belonged to? Odd Fellows or Independent Order of St. Luke or Household of Ruth?
Mason Scott: We used to have the Odds Fellows here, but that was before my time. Since my time, ain’t had nothing.
Michael Cooke: The Odds Fellows had been-
Mason Scott: Before my time.
Michael Cooke: Before you were—what would you consider your time?
Mason Scott: Late [19]30s, early [19]40s.
Michael Cooke: So, they’d already folded by then?
James Dow: Yeah.
Michael Cooke: Do you remember the people who were members of the Odd Fellows?
Valerie Scott: Yes. There’s none of them living.
Michael Cooke: Do you remember some of their names?
Valerie Scott: I remember Andrew Dale [55:03] was a member of the Odd Fellows. Dustin Hockett [55:16].
Michael Cooke: That’s a name I’ve heard before, Hockett.
Valerie Scott: And…[inaudible 55:21-55:29]
Mason Scott: Young men for them days.
Michael Cooke: For that generation?
James Dow: You had a couple brothers that belonged to them.
Valerie Scott: Yeah [inaudible 55:37-55:40] Ronald belonged to the Odd Fellows.
Mason Scott: About everyone was in it.
Michael Cooke: Why do you think so many people back then were interested and so few after them interested in it?
Mason Scott: Well, people started working away from home, and they got transferred making them go to Roanoke and other places. Bus schedules were better, and they had money in their pocket. They could get out and do things. Then, they didn’t have nothing locally. That was it.
Michael Cooke: It was so segregated you just were confined to this. You didn’t have any money, unless you got—well, you got due bills [Laughs].

Keywords: Dustin Hockett; Odd Fellows

Subjects: Fraternal Organizations; Social Life

Partial Transcript: Mason Scott: Whites had it just as bad. They couldn’t go nowhere either.
James Dow: Yeah, they got it bad, too.
Michael Cooke: What do you mean? Did they get due bills too?
Mason Scott: Yeah, they got due bills too. If they worked on that farm, they got them. [Laughs]
James Dow: Rich man don’t care who he messes with.
Mason Scott: [Laughs]
James Dow: See, ain’t no history of it but plenty of whites were in slavery. The Blacks were doing all the work free, and there wasn’t nothing for them to do but join up with them to get something to eat. There were plenty of white slaves. No record of it, but there were plenty of white slaves. History’s just as messed up...
Mason Scott: There were a lot of white slaves around here. They was up here on them farms like we were, getting due bills like we were.
Michael Cooke: So, they were like tenants?
Mason Scott: Yeah.
Michael Cooke: Tenant farmers?
Mason Scott: Yeah. Didn’t own nothing much more than the Blacks did, or even as much.
James Dow: Yeah.
Mason Scott: Wealth was caught in two or three families.
Michael Cooke: But they did have opportunities when they broke out of this syndrome of being on the farm-
Mason Scott: Right.
Michael Cooke: They got factory jobs and they came first, right?
Mason Scott: Oh yeah. Like up at the overall factory, [inaudible 57:15] up there in Christiansburg, Blacks couldn’t get in there.
Valerie Scott: No.
Michael Cooke: Whites from this area were working up there?
James Dow: Sure.
Valerie Scott: Yeah.
Michael Cooke: So, that was a real step up. And a step out, actually.
Mason Scott: Yeah, it helped them, but it didn’t help the Blacks none.
Valerie Scott: No.
Michael Cooke: And Black people were still working on the railroads and farms.
Valerie Scott: Right.
Mason Scott: Hard to get them, a lot of them had went to West Virginia in the mines and everything. But up until World War II, Blacks was just in an economic bind.
Valerie Scott: Yes.
Mason Scott: Lot of them went in the military, lot of them went in the CC camps, the NYA, and—what is it— WPA, and all that.

Keywords: CC Camps; due bills; economic bind; factory jobs; farm work; mines; railroads; Second World War; tenants; white farmers; World War II; WPA; WWII

Subjects: coal mines and mining; Farm tenancy--Virginia

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: Was there WPA work around here?
Mason Scott: Sure.
James Dow: Yeah, it was late. See, Roosevelt brought that plan out in the [19]30s, and they had to hire some Blacks on then, too.
Michael Cooke: What kind of work did the WPA, Works Project Administration, do?
James Dow: Oh, hard work. Building roads, digging-
Mason Scott: Ditches.
Michael Cooke: What roads did they build?
James Dow: Most of these secondary roads. The WPA built a lot of them.
Michael Cooke: Oh, so the secondary highway system?
Valerie Scott: Waterlines, too.
Mason Scott: The waterline all down this road.
Valerie Scott: All the way down this bank, the WPA did.
James Dow: And they’re never taken care of.
Michael Cooke: Did you have electricity the whole time you were growing up here?
Valerie Scott: No. That came in [19]38, I think.
Michael Cooke: 1938? Where did they first start putting in the electrical system? Along the road here or into the hollows or how did they do it?
Valerie Scott: Well, they let it go as far as where Clarence Morgan lived. That’s where-
Michael Cooke: Which is where-
Mason Scott: First time I remember.
Michael Cooke: Clarence Morgan lived where?
Valerie Scott: Right there, Clarence Morgan’s.
Michael Cooke: Which is where?
James Dow: I know one time they stopped right there at Uncle Albert’s, somewhere along in there.
Valerie Scott: Yeah, well, they extended it up on Clarence’s.
James Dow: Was just supposed to follow the highway up through there.
Mason Scott: But they had it down here on the main road, where the whites were a whole lot quicker than they put it up through here.
Michael Cooke: Oh, you mean it was the last-
James Dow: When we first started school, they didn’t have electricity in the school.
Michael Cooke: No electricity in the school?
Mason Scott: No furniture.
James Dow: No running water either.
Michael Cooke: No running-
Mason Scott: They’d go get water from the spring.
Michael Cooke: Where is the spring from the school?
Mason Scott: About a quarter of a mile. [inaudible 59:39]
Michael Cooke: Who had the assignment to get the water? Was that kind of scripted?
James Dow: Bigger boys.
Mason Scott: Big boys.
Michael Cooke: The biggest person had the responsibility?
James Dow: They’d send the boys after it.
Michael Cooke: Did y’all have responsibilities for the school like-
Mason Scott: Making fires, and wooding, and coaling.
Michael Cooke: Did they have a chart saying you do this on this day?
Mason Scott: They’d assign it to the bigger boys. They didn’t want to go to school noways, so they’d rather be out there playing and goofing off. That was the goof off job.
James Dow: They had old big pool as high as this think here to put that water in. Gallon sized.
Michael Cooke: It took two people?
James Dow: Yeah, you had to take two to carry it.
Michael Cooke: I was about to say, that’s not a job for no one person.
James Dow: Oh no, one person couldn’t carry that pool.
Mason Scott: Then they’d have one come in and help me build the fires and everything in the morning.
James Dow: Then, later on, the NYA or somewhere hired a janitor to build fire. And then they had [inaudible 1:00:34] that one time.
Valerie Scott: Steel [1:00:38], too.
James Dow: Yeah, Steel worked there one time, too.
Valerie Scott: Yeah.
Mason Scott: That was before our time, wasn’t it? Past our time. After we left. I knew there wasn’t nobody there when we left.

Keywords: Albert Dow; Clarence Morgan; ditches; electricity; highways; National Youth Administration; New Deal; NYA; roads; school; school chores; waterline; Works Progress Administration; WPA

Subjects: Great Depression; New Deal; Primary Education; Public Goods and Services

Partial Transcript: James Dow: They didn’t get much, but they hired them too. That’s one thing about Roosevelt, he put out a plan and really brought the economy back after the Depression. The NYA, WPA, and all them. And they had to put everything on in jobs. Same way CC camps here. They were segregated outfits. They were just like army outfits, they had barracks and things for CC boys. But they had Black outfits and white outfits. They weren’t together. They wouldn’t even be in the same town. [inaudible 1:01:31]
Michael Cooke: But you think that was a good thing, despite the segregation aspect?
James Dow: Yeah, it was a good thing despite the segregation because it was some type of employment for them.
Mason Scott: Got some cash in the pocket.
Michael Cooke: The Great Depression occurred, where Blacks in this area region already kind of underemployed?
James Dow: Yeah.
Mason Scott: Most were just railroaders and that was it.
Michael Cooke: And when the bottom fell out, it really fell out on-
Mason Scott: Yeah. Mostly Blacks. I was [inaudible 1:01:53] during the Depression.
James Dow: I was going to say, it hurt whites more in a way because Blacks were used to hard times-
Mason Scott: Mostly had land and farms.
James Dow: He was the one up on the ladder and they dropped him. You already down there, you can’t go nowhere.
Michael Cooke: Can’t go any further. But the programs were helpful?
James Dow: Yeah.
Michael Cooke: Because both of you were members of the Conservation Corps?
James Dow: I can remember, but we weren’t big enough to work on the job, but we can remember them.
Michael Cooke: Oh, you never worked on them?
James Dow: No, no.
Michael Cooke: But you remember people who did?
James Dow: I do remember my uncle didn’t want to work on the WPA. But when the economy got up, and they built the [Radford] Arsenal up here and everything, then they cut them programs out. I know where they sent the whole WPA, to the arsenal and Mason and I built that thing. They contracted there. They sent every one of them up there. They even got a seventy-year-old man. Wasn’t no pension, they just worked until they got disabled. [inaudible 1:03:05]. Doctor looked at old man John and sent him on back out there when he come in.
Mason Scott: And Bill Page [1:03:20].
James Dow: All them guys were old. But there wasn’t no pension. Same thing in the mines! Wasn’t no pension in the mines until John L. Lewis come in in the early [19]40s. Mines didn’t have no pension. White mines nor Black mines didn’t have no pensions until John L. Lewis come in.
Michael Cooke: Yeah, he changed things. Let’s see-
Mason Scott: White people hadn’t inherited just land and stuff. They’d inherited it from their fathers, and it just followed down from father to son. And they just kept them in that family, and they was the ones that created the wealth.
James Dow: And they kept poor whites down just like they did us.
Mason Scott: Yeah.

Keywords: CC Camps; Civilian Conservation Corps; Great Depression; John L. Lewis; National Youth Administration; NYA; Radford Aresenal; Radford Army Ammunition Plant; railroad; Roosevelt; Works Progress Administration; WPA

Subjects: Great Depression; New Deal; Radford Army Ammunition Plant; Railroad

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: What about Black businesses? Were there any Black businesses in Elliston? No Black cleaners or shoe shop or taxi drivers?
Mason Scott: Not in our time, not in our time.
James Dow: Christiansburg, Roanoke, and Salem had a few restaurants and things, but none in Elliston.
Michael Cooke: None at all? So, if you wanted to go to a restaurant—were there restaurants, first of all?
James Dow: You had to go to Salem or Christiansburg if you wanted.
Michael Cooke: What about white restaurants?
Mason Scott: Wasn’t exactly any whites either, were there?
James Dow: No, you had to go places for them too.
Michael Cooke: It was just a smaller town.
James Dow: Yeah. Small, yeah.
Michael Cooke: Now, you go up and down the highway, there’s a number of places you can stop at.
James Dow: Oh, yeah. Them are late things.
Michael Cooke: You had a smaller population.
Mason Scott: If you go all the way up to Christiansburg, nothing but two restaurants that you’d pass: Black’s Tavern and Green Acres. Between here and Christiansburg, that was the only restaurants.
Michael Cooke: And that Green Acres, was that a Black restaurant?
Mason Scott: Unh-uh.
James Dow: It was white. Only Black—S. B. Morgan had one right there on Depot Street—Burrell’s. Them was the only Black places.
Mason Scott: Probably in Montgomery County.
James Dow: I guess it was.
Valerie Scott: Probably is.
Mason Scott: Legal wise—legal anyway.
Michael Cooke: There were nip-joints?
Mason Scott: Nip-joints and bootleggers and all that stuff around.
Michael Cooke: But, I mean, a full-fledged licensed [Laughs] business.
James Dow: I don’t know whether Radford had a licensed restaurant back in them days.
Mason Scott: I doubt it.
James Dow: Old club down there in-
Mason Scott: No regular license.
James Dow: Old Rock Road, nothing but old joints out there.
Mason Scott: Um-hm. Pulaski had a few, probably. You really didn’t have nothing. Blacksburg didn’t have nothing. Wasn’t no Black restaurants in Blacksburg.

Keywords: Black Businesses; Burrell's; Christiansburg, Virginia; Depot Street; Elliston, Virginia; Green Acres; Old Rock Road; Roanoke, Virginia; S. B. Morgan; Salem, Virginia

Subjects: Black Businesses

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: Okay, I guess one of the last questions. Well, I guess I can’t think of anything else. I think we’ve covered most of the ground. I’d like to thank you for your cooperation. You’ve added a lot of data and some insights, hopefully, to what I’ve been trying to gather here.
James Dow: We tried to talk to a lot of these young guys here in town. I told them there’s a lot of stuff we can tell them. They was unbelieving. I tell them, my niece says, you mean, you couldn’t ride anywhere on the bus? I said, no. That’s unbelieving. I said, talk to anybody else. Ask your Mama where you had to go on that bus. Had one old long street on the back-
Valerie Scott: Yes, that was all they had.
James Dow: If it fills up, you stand up.
Michael Cooke: That was it.
Valerie Scott: Yeah.
James Dow: We witnessed that stuff.
Michael Cooke: And I think that’s a sad thing, that people don’t want to find out or don’t want to take the time.
James Dow: Like I say, history’s all messed up. History don’t want to hear nothing on that. There’s so many things. I still say a lot of inventions were made by our people.
Michael Cooke: Oh, of course.
James Dow: They’re not doing that work. Eli Whitney never beat no seed out of no cotton. Some of them Blacks was making that job lighter on themselves when he invented that cotton gin. He would have to made something to lighten his load—his workload. A lot of them inventions was made by Blacks.
Valerie Scott: Oh, sure.
James Dow: The lever pull for the railroads was made by a Black man.
Valerie Scott: Sure.
James Dow: They say he was in Elliston. I didn’t know him. Did you know of anybody, the railman-
Valerie Scott: I heard my daddy say in his time [inaudible 1:07:20-1:07:23]
James Dow: They going to name somebody else to say who invented it.
Valerie Scott: Well, my daddy said he knowed the name that took the invention away from him. And he didn’t get a penny for the invention.
James Dow: A lot of inventions was made by Blacks.
Valerie Scott: And they helped him.
Michael Cooke: What was the man’s name again?
Valerie Scott: His name was Bob Brown—Robert Brown.
Michael Cooke: Robert Brown? And he had an invention connected to the railroad here?
Valerie Scott: Oh, yes.
James Dow: He showed them where one rail was high and one was low to hold the trail on that better. He prevented a lot of wrecks. That’s the elevation of the track all the way down to—on to now. He had both rails level.
Valerie Scott: Even to the highways now. The highway’s level from that path.
James Dow: See, you look at a railroad track around here, you’d think the rail is bent. It’s not bent, it’s the elevation that’s laid on them.
Valerie Scott: Yeah, sure.
James Dow: None of them rails are bent. It’s the elevation is laid.
Valerie Scott: My daddy said that he knowed the name that invented it. Showed it to the foreman, and the foreman took that from him.
James Dow: I know Blacks that really ran the job. I know a foreman out there that couldn’t read and write. Somebody had to make a timesheet for him. And yet the foreman was white. A Black man couldn’t be foreman.
Michael Cooke: In this Elliston area?
James Dow: Um-hm.
Valerie Scott: Sure.
Mason Scott: Black man had to run the job but didn’t get no credit for it.
James Dow: Didn’t get no credit for it.
Mason Scott: Pull his track, line it up, do everything for him.
Valerie Scott: Streetlight and everything else.
Michael Cooke: That’s true. I hadn’t thought about that while you were talking about it. Also, the gas mask.
James Dow: Chairman Black laid out [inaudible 1:09:12].
Michael Cooke: Yes, that’s true. [inaudible 1:09:15]
James Dow: When the first city made alphabets and numerals together. [inaudible 1:09:22] You probably don’t remember. For a long time, Washington was the most segregated city in the United States. I know when Washington was just like Georgia. Washington wasn’t integrated for years and years. Right there at the capital, right there in Washington.
Michael Cooke: By the time I grew up-
James Dow: They had started then.
Michael Cooke: Yeah. Now, outside the city limits, that was a different story.
James Dow: You went in Washington in the early middle [19]40s. [19]45, [19]46 you went in Washington, it was just like-
Michael Cooke: That was before my time [Laughs].
James Dow: Just like Georgia there. Train stations was cut up in sections, bus terminals, everything. Just like it was here.
Michael Cooke: Just like here.
James Dow: Yeah, in the capital. So, then they got on them about the capital being segregated.
Mason Scott: Yeah, Blacks lived there then in sight of the capital. They’d just congregate in certain areas like north. Used to be a negro couldn’t hardly get out of northwest. And they couldn’t be but in so much of it.
James Dow: They had a line drawn for them.
Mason Scott: You couldn’t cross Orange Avenue, you couldn’t cross Melrose [Avenue] , or Monroe [Avenue].
James Dow: And Eleventh street coming this way was the end of it.
Mason Scott: Eleventh street on up. I don’t know how far down it went. Not too far down, did it?
James Dow: No.
Mason Scott: Far down and up this way.
James Dow: They had a section close to there. You couldn’t buy, obviously, no other sections.
Mason Scott: We didn’t cross Salem Avenue.
Michael Cooke: You couldn’t be in Southwest?
James Dow: One minute, there were a few Blacks on Salem Avenue on the Southwest end. Roy and Paliston [1:10:41]. Couldn’t walk over there.
Michael Cooke: What happened to you if you did? I mean, just out of curiosity.
James Dow: Well, a cop would kick you out if they see you for one thing. Cop one time seen us. We didn’t know where we were. The bus line got us all outside of town. He come by and said, what are y’all doing over here? We told him we were catching the bus. He said, I’m going to watch and when that bus runs, you’d better be on it. All I seen was the outskirts. It was an all-white area then in Southwest. [inaudible 1:11:19-1:11:25]
Mason Scott: One time we had to hitchhike to Roanoke to go to a movie or something. Then you had to catch the bus downtown to where the movies were and go to the Black section. And he wasn’t going through the Black section, he’s looking over in the white section somewhere.
James Dow: If you got lost and got in the wrong section, the cop was dead on you. You’d have to be a rogue or a thug if you were in that section. You hadn’t thought about nothing else.
Michael Cooke: [Laughs] By definition you were?
James Dow: Yeah, that’s what you were if he saw you in there.
Mason Scott: Blacks started buying big cars, like Cadillacs and Lincolns and stuff. You had to go up in Washington to get them. Wouldn’t sell them to you here.
James Dow: A guy told me in Atlanta, Georgia—a guy I get along with—he said that his daddy wanted to get a big car. He had to go somewhere else. He couldn’t buy it in Atlanta. Them dealers losing money just-
Mason Scott: They’d get a Ford or Chevrolet or something like that, but if you wanted a Cadillac.
Michael Cooke: Did many people in this area own cars and trucks?
Mason Scott: Back in them days?
Michael Cooke: Yeah.
Mason Scott: I guess quite a few of them. Not too awful many. We had T-models and A-models and stuff like that.
James Dow: White man just made his own laws.
Mason Scott: Kept old cars.
James Dow: They just made their own law. Anything they thought wasn’t right, they’d make a law.
Michael Cooke: Anything goes according to my rules.
James Dow: Yeah.
Michael Cooke: Well, I think-
Mason Scott: The state, the county, and everything else.
Valerie Scott: This is right here in the United States' history now. It’s in the books.

Keywords: Bob Brown; Cadillacs; cars; Chevrolet; dealers; Eleventh Street; Eli Whitney; Elliston, Virginia; Ford; Georgia; hitchhike; inventions; Lincolns; Melrose Avenue; Monroe Avenue; Orange Avenue; railroad; Roanoke, Virginia; segregation; sharing history; trucks; Washington; youth

Subjects: Inequality; Railroad; Segregation

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: Is there still racial problems, you think, in this area?
James Dow: Oh, yeah.
Michael Cooke: What are the things you think are kind of still indicative of racism in this county?
Mason Scott: [inaudible 1:13:10] We got the grand jurymen in here. And, really, race relations are worse now than when we was coming up.
James Dow: I believe so.
Michael Cooke: Why do you feel that?
Mason Scott: Because, you get into more of outside of people that you don’t know. You’ve got nine trailer courts right in Elliston. And you don’t know what’s in them. The number of Klansmen and skinheads and everything else coming from these other areas. And there’s more Klan activity now, I’m sure, than there was then, back in them days.
Michael Cooke: Have there been any acts of violence? You said Ironto is not an area where Blacks don’t tend to—I mean, Ironto is how far from here?
Mason Scott: About five or six miles.
Michael Cooke: Five or six miles.
Mason Scott: But you can go out of this brick and see Confederate flags flying now.
James Dow: That’s a good giveaway on them.
Mason Scott: And the ironic part is Black people own the land and rent it to whites.
Michael Cooke: [Laughs]. Well, they definitely lost the war. [Laughter]
James Dow: A lot of them won’t leave it, you know?
Mason Scott: They say the South will rise again, but it’s gone.
James Dow: The South is coming back.
Michael Cooke: I mean, when they’re living on Black properties.
Mason Scott: Confederate flag.
James Dow: You and your sister [inaudible 1:14:35].
Mason Scott: They made them take it down. But now they got a lot of these old tongs [1:14:28] around here that as long as you pay them rent, they don’t care what you do.
James Dow: If I was renting land, I wouldn’t let them put no flags on it.
Mason Scott: [Laughs] Hell no.
James Dow: Tell them, you take that flag down or you get out of here one.
Mason Scott: You and the flag both can get going.
Michael Cooke: [Laughs]
James Dow: That old [inaudible 1:14:52] in Shawsville got them flags up there and all on welfare. That got Confederate flags flying everywhere. There’s a Black girl renting to them, but you can’t tell her nothing.
Mason Scott: But all the statistics they show that all the people on welfare and getting Food Stamps is Black. That’s a bunch of bull.
James Dow: There was a man who worked in the post office. He’d tell you what percentage of Blacks here on welfare and everywhere else.
Mason Scott: [inaudible 1:15:16]
James Dow: Okay, this will show you what the media is doing. Right now, you watch them heroes coming back from the Gulf. This army in the Gulf is seventy percent Black. Every hero they bring on TV is a white guy. What happened to them Blacks? They didn’t do nothing, I don’t guess. Have you noticed that? [Laughter]. All the heroes they bring in there are white that they put on TV. The Blacks had to do something. Eighty-second Airborne North [Division] is seventy percent Black. But there ain’t a one of them been on TV. But you let some thugs come on on dopamine, first guy they got on is Black.
Michael Cooke: Oh, yeah.
James Dow: Welfare line. Got a Black guy right out front. He may be the only one on welfare.
Mason Scott: But they’ll pinpoint him every time.
James Dow: But the white guy behind him on welfare, you don’t see them.
Mason Scott: [Laughs]
Michael Cooke: They won’t be panned.
James Dow: Yeah, they put the camera on him.
Michael Cooke: I have to admit you’re right there. I do notice those things.
James Dow: He worked the post office. He can tell you what two or three hundred welfare recipients in the post office; three of them were Black. What percentage is that, now?
Michael Cooke: That’s one percent.
James Dow: That’s all it was. But they come and tell us, we take pity on y’all. Ain’t nothing but Blacks on welfare. I’ll tell you what. You let welfare run out [Laughter]. [inaudible 1:16:34] You’ll find out who’s on it then, if they cut them out.
Mason Scott: The Klan’s have become more active lately. They must have a hell of a recruitment program.
James Dow: But the old problem of living here. He’s bringing everyone in here-
Mason Scott: But not only in Virginia. But just about all over everywhere, recruiting left and right. They’re trying to get people back into it.
James Dow: For them old marches and everything.
Michael Cooke: They have been a lot active lately in this area.
Mason Scott: They are trying to get people into it. They are stomping the devil out of them.
James Dow: [inaudible 1:17:14-1:17:22] They chomped down Black Panthers right quick. And that old group [inaudible 1:17:29], they done away with them all together. But they can’t do away with the Klan. What’s wrong with doing away with the Klan? They got rid of all them other outfits. But they don’t want to get rid of the Klan.
Valerie Scott: No, they want them here.
James Dow: Yeah.
Mason Scott: And, I mean, they’re so secretive. But you know their presence is everywhere around you. And there’s a lot of them moving in this area.
Michael Cooke: Anybody burn any crosses in this area?
James Dow: No, see, they’re not open with crosses no more. They’re sneaky now. You don’t see them burning crosses like that no more. Somebody could find out who they are, and then— [inaudible 1:18:10] but there’s still a lot of them around.

Keywords: Black Panthers; Confederate flags; Eighty-Second Airborne North Division; Elliston, Virginia; Gulf; KKK; Klan activity; Klansmen; race relations; racial problems; skinheads

Subjects: Armed Forces; Black Panthers; Ku Klux Klan (1915- ); Race Relations

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: Let me ask one last question then we’ll have to end it. Have a lot of the younger generation of people in this area, Blacks, left Elliston?
James Dow: Yeah.
Mason Scott: Yeah.
Michael Cooke: Do you know where they generally go or why they left?
Mason Scott: Washington and New York. Georgia, Washington, and New York. And Columbus, I guess a lot of them go to Columbus. Not too many. Most of them go to Washington and New York areas.
Michael Cooke: Why do you think?
Mason Scott: More opportunity for education, I guess. More opportunity for employment. That’s some of the basics.
Michael Cooke: Did any of you have any children who left this area?
James Dow: No, but I knew a lot of them that did leave the area, though. We wished that some of the youngins would take their parents’ stuff over. You take that little wooden house. That house will be gone before long. That daughter went to Maryland or New York and her husband, they own land in Shawsville. They sold that. He’s in-
Mason Scott: They’ll never come back here.
James Dow: Yeah, they’ll never come back. You just look at things like that.
Michael Cooke: So, there’s a lot of Black properties that are in danger of being lost to the county? Or the state?
James Dow: There’s some left but the whites bought them.
Mason Scott: You can take right now in Shawsville. That’s a good example. A Black person couldn’t get a loan up there. White people can go up there and get it. And the reason they can get things like that is because they can get more credit. They can get more economical opportunities than Blacks can.
James Dow: [inaudible 1:19:46]
Mason Scott: This article came out in the New York Times about three or four months ago, maybe longer than that, where they were charging Blacks more for cars than they were whites.
Michael Cooke: Yes, I read that.
James Dow: Oh, yeah.
Valerie Scott: And here’s another example. You know when Deb [1:19:57] was working, Deb went to the county and she went all around, tried to get the highway fixed up through Shawsville area. They told her, right to her face, that they would not do it unless one white person moved in there. So, finally, some Black person sold to the white. And the next week or two, they comes building the highway up through there for them.
Michael Cooke: So, she was at 690…Kirk’s Hollow.
Valerie Scott: Kirk hollow.
Michael Cooke: That’s real near, I think, 690 up there.
Mason Scott: Up Meadowbrook [Cafe], going up that way, make a right turn, and go back in there.
Michael Cooke: Yeah, I think it’s 690.
Valerie Scott: They would not help the Blacks.
Michael Cooke: So, no rural development of that area until-

Keywords: Columbus; Georgia; Kirk's Hollow; land; Meadowbrook Cafe; migration; New York; opportunity for education; opportunity for employment; Washington

Subjects: Education Opportunities; Migration; Work Opportunities

Partial Transcript: James Dow: Not even a mail route that runs up through there. But you watch it, if enough whites go in there then they’ll start putting it in.
Valerie Scott: They got it. Deb was talking about it.
James Dow: You can see stuff like that. And Whites are buying everything.
Mason Scott: They didn’t even have no mail road through here until the later years.
Michael Cooke: When was mail first put here? I’m sorry.
Mason Scott: Up through here?
Michael Cooke: Yeah.
Mason Scott: Oh, about what-ten years ago?
Michael Cooke: Ten years ago?
Mason Scott: Little more than that. Since I went in the post office.
Michael Cooke: What happened to bring...I mean, 1980?
Mason Scott: Yeah, in the [19]80s—in the [19]70s, the [19]70s.
Michael Cooke: What did you have to do to get it here?
Mason Scott: Go to the post office.
Michael Cooke: You had to go to the post office and protest?
Mason Scott: No, you’d go down there and pick up your mail.
Michael Cooke: Oh, I meant how did you get the post office boxes at your house?
James Dow: I don’t know how they finally got that right through here.
Mason Scott: I don’t know how they just finally got it.
James Dow: A lot of white folk in there, is one thing. Down in the trailer parks and stuff is all white. That’s another thing you’ll watch that’s segregated too, but they do it in a sneaky way, a trailer park. You don’t see no Blacks in a trailer park. This whole park up here, they sent them over here from the hood and she was Black. So glad when they sent her over here. He got forty-eight trailers up there. He got a Black couple in them, but he’s doing that. See, she’s the only one. That woman that came in here, she’s the only one. He said in twelve or fifteen years, he ain’t never had no Blacks [inaudible 1:22:30]. But that’s a joke. But he’s [inaudible 1:22:34]. They’d kill him when she come in here and she was Black. The woman they sent was Black.
Mason Scott: People segregate keeps on [1:22:46].
Valerie Scott: In the same way as the schools up here. They integrated the schools. They even put the colored people—the Black people that went there—and asked for...of the same equality that the white had. They wouldn’t give it. They went for years and years. But as soon as the integration came, they went up there and put a phone in the school, water in the school-
James Dow: Trying to keep them Blacks satisfied.
Mason Scott: Bathrooms.
Valerie Scott: And everything they could put in there, and then say equality.
Michael Cooke: Well, now it’s equal.
Valerie Scott: It’s equality, and that we didn’t need to send our children there.
James Dow: [inaudible 1:23:45-1:23:52] go ahead and stay here.
Michael Cooke: Stay segregated.
James Dow: Segregation cost the county more.
Mason Scott: Right.
James Dow: All them separate buses and everything.
Mason Scott: Well, that’s out there in them marches. The NAACP brought the case that separate can’t be equal. That was out in Columbus.

Keywords: equality; integration; mail service; NAACP; postal service; schools; segregation; separated buses

Subjects: Inequality; Segregation

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: Was the NAACP active in this area?
Mason Scott: Huh?
Michael Cooke: Was the NAACP active in this area?
Mason Scott: In Christiansburg and Roanoke—Salem.
Michael Cooke: But did it have any effects down in Elliston and Shawsville?
Mason Scott: Very little. Although we knew people who were members of it.
Michael Cooke: Why do you think that’s the case?
Mason Scott: Well, I mean, there wasn’t enough strength in this area, Black-wise. Montgomery County’s always been a—they never account for Black people where laws are concerned, where the sheriff and all that’s concerned. Black people had to go out and go shoot this. Throw it in the trash can. We didn’t get petitions or nothing else. They just didn’t pay no attention to Blacks, period.
Michael Cooke: So, did Blacks in this area petition the courthouse and say, we need better services, or, through the years, where there Black leaders, civic leaders in this area who tried to go to the courthouse and say, look we need these things? Civic leaders?
Mason Scott: No. I think Reverend Wright did more in that county in the later years than anybody. But during the other years, didn’t nobody take that much interest in it.
Michael Cooke: [19]40s, [19]50s?
Mason Scott: And the ones that did, they were all [inaudible 1:24:53].
Valerie Scott: The NAACP done more for them than anybody else.
Michael Cooke: What did the NAACP-
Mason Scott: But you can go down and get a Black lawyer. You think a Black lawyer is going to go up there in Christiansburg and work up in the county court system?
James Dow: He don’t stand a chance.
Mason Scott: I don’t care what you done. You couldn’t even do nothing right and go up there. [Laughs]
James Dow: Most courts now, a Black lawyer go in there, that judge looking right at him seeing why’d he come in there.
Mason Scott: Um-hm.

Keywords: Christiansburg, Virginia; Elliston, Virginia; Montgomery County; NAACP; petition; Reverend Wright; Roanoke, Virginia; Shawsville, Virginia

Subjects: NAACP

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: I’m going to keep quiet about this. I don’t want to talk about but one subject, that’s another subject [Laughter]. I don’t want to talk about Nellies Cave. [Laughter]. What did you think about Nellies Cave though?
Mason Scott: I think people was just railroading-
James Dow: They picked that section. They had to have somewhere to cut that road through and they said-
Mason Scott: That development that was put in down there, where was it? [inaudible 1:25:55]
Michael Cooke: No, it was-
Mason Scott: [inaudible 1:26:00-1:26:04]
Michael Cooke: Which one?
Mason Scott: That was putting his project down there on the lower end of Nellies Cave Road down in Ellett Valley so that they could-
Michael Cooke: That’s Draper.
Mason Scott: Draper Aden [Associates]?
Michael Cooke: You’re right, Ellett Valley Associating—Draper Aden. He’s got several of them, so it’s hard to figure out which one. But all of them involved-
Mason Scott: She was pushing more than anybody else. And she just didn’t listen to what the Blacks had to say, period. And she was getting ticked one way or another [1:26:30] or somebody said she associated with was in the development stages down there in that area. But there were so many more alternate roads they could have taken.
Michael Cooke: Oh yeah. I don’t want to—that’s something-
Mason Scott: See, they’d come up the mail routes down through here. They come one end of it was one route, the other end was on the other. I’ve never been down Nellies Cave Road. And a lot of streets in Blacksburg I didn’t know, I’ve never been on, but I knew they were there because I’d sort mail to them. Before they wiped the streets down, a lot of people would get down in a rabbit. But I’d know it was there because I’d sort mail to them. And, really, I didn’t know there was that much confusion about Nellies Cave Road until I started in the post office there, just didn’t know exactly where it was. Down in the pines, down in the hole, we called it. Or you turn at the shopping center and go down in there.
James Dow: I don’t think that was the name of that back then. Didn’t have no name then. It was named that later on. Wasn’t no name to it.
Mason Scott: I don’t know what they called it, own in the hole, down in the bottom, or down in the pines. Supposed to call it down in the pines because of all the pine trees out there.
Michael Cooke: [Laughs].
Mason Scott: Then when they started talking about Nellies Cave Road and all that, I’d never heard nothing like that until [inaudible 1:27:32] where the area was and how he got on and stuff.
Michael Cooke: It’s Phillip Trussell.
Mason Scott: Yeah, right.
James Dow: That was the same later on, when they started to remodel North. They tore up Northeast which was a Black section. They started with them. Every time they remodeled a city, oh we got to rebuild, they’d tear up a Black section. Every time, they’d tear up the Black section. Why not tear up Southeast with the poor white section. They could tear that up just as easily. End up putting big warehouses and things down in there. Grand Piano got a big warehouse down in there. Delton and all them.
Mason Scott: Burning the Black side and putting Coca-Cola in there.
James Dow: Yeah, Coca-Cola took a lot of Black land.
Valerie Scott: Right over here in Gainesville where they put that paint factory.
James Dow: They’re moving that project out of Northeast all the way up to Gainesville.
Valerie Scott: Uh-huh. Yeah, all the way up there.
James Dow: Whole Black section up there.
Valerie Scott: Yes. And next thing you know, white people had [inaudible 1:28:33]. [Laughs].
Mason Scott: Montgomery County is just a system that’s corrupt from A to Z. These people over here raising cane over here in Ironto, [Virginia] about this trash truck.
Michael Cooke: Yeah, right.
Mason Scott: They go on about they’ve had enough.
James Dow: They go on through there-
Mason Scott: Go on through there, like Nellies Cave Road. Just like—I don’t know. It’s just a political mess up there. And just to think, as big a school as [Virginia] Tech is—the hugeness of it—you wouldn’t find a community college. You got Radford College. And up until the last, say, five years, have you ever heard of any dope being handled in Montgomery County? Any dope breeds? Anybody been picked up for dope, a crackpot, or nothing? Because it was handled by the politicians. Judges’ sons. Highway attorneys’ sons.
James Dow: Old [inaudible 1:29:23], both of his sons been picked up twice for it, and they’re still out of jail.
Valerie Scott: [Laughs].
Mason Scott: Delegates' sons.
James Dow: Go on probation, then catch them again.
Mason Scott: Oh, it’s a good old hustle.
James Dow: He’s going to disqualify himself and bring his buddy in as the judge and turn them loose.
Mason Scott: All though the [19]60s and [19]70s, the early [19]80s, up to the mid [19]80s, and a school the size of [Virginia] Tech, there’s got to be dope in it. There’s got to be. There’s no way in the world there can’t be. This is the only school in the nation-
James Dow: You let some Black dealers go in there, they’ll be putting them on TV.
Mason Scott: They was doing it and getting away until they started sending these FBI and the undercover men in there-
Michael Cooke: Into the Radford area.
Mason Scott: Correct. But all that stuff is about politicians. When they caught these people, they had been catching them dealers and all that. They locked them doors and didn’t know what was going on. [1:30:28]
James Dow: [inaudible 1:30:32-1:30:36]
Mason Scott: So, I mean, the whole political system in Montgomery County is corrupt. From the supervisors on down. They are.
Valerie Scott: Sure. When you can look at-
Mason Scott: The people ain’t got one bit of say so.
Valerie Scott: Mary had been paying taxes on her husband’s place since 1941. And now, when she get ready to sell her property, they won’t even let her [inaudible 1:31:05-1:31:11].
James Dow: They got the road cut off, the access to the property. That’s so it makes it so the people that own that have to buy it.
Valerie Scott: Yeah, and if-
James Dow: If anybody else buys it, they can’t get in there.
Valerie Scott: They told me up at the courthouse, yes Mary had been paying taxes on this place since [19]41. But we don’t know where he is. [Laughs].
Mason Scott: The Montgomery County system is just politically corrupt. They’re getting ready to put some junk on old Devo [1:31:28] and Graybill [1:31:29] and all that junk. They’re ready to put some stuff on them.
James Dow: They should.
Mason Scott: That’s the reason Graybill got his hands blew off. Messed up with somebody down the road.

Keywords: corrupt; development; Draper Aden Associates; Ellett Valley; mail route; Montgomery County; Nellies Cave; Nellies Cave Road; Philip Trussell; political system

Subjects: Land Acquisition; Montgomery County (Va.); Zoning

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: Well, on that note, I guess we’d better conclude.
Mason Scott: [Laughs].
James Dow: [Laughs].
Michael Cooke: We covered the waterfront, we covered everything. Okay, I thank you, once again—I believe this is the final time—for your cooperation.
Mason Scott: [Laughs].
James Dow: [Laughs].
Michael Cooke: Okay.
[Break in recording]

Partial Transcript: Michael Cooke: We’re back.
Mason Scott: Harris’ daughter.
Michael Cooke: I don’t know. We’re back on tape because there was a point that, after we got off the tape and keep doing this, mentioned that several of your relatives worked in Buxton, Iowa in the mines there.
James Dow: Steel mills and mines.
Michael Cooke: Steel mills and mines?
James Dow: Yeah. Mostly steel mills. It was a steel town.
Michael Cooke: Could you talk about the relatives for James Dow, which one-
James Dow: It was my great aunt and her family that went there.
Michael Cooke: And what were their names?
James Dow: Her name was Amy [1:32:50] Smith.
Michael Cooke: Amy Smith. And she was living-
James Dow: Well, they left from Elliston years ago, and her husband was named Daniel Smith.
Michael Cooke: Daniel Smith.
James Dow: They went to Buxton, Iowa. And Harold said he was born in 1917, so he was born there. They were there around World War I.
Mason Scott: Harold went to-
James Dow: Harold’s daddy’s age. He was born in Buxton, but he left there when he was a little boy.
Mason Scott: But the Harold that came here?
James Dow: Yeah, that was his daddy that went there-
Mason Scott: But he was born there?
James Dow: [inaudible 1:33:30]
Mason Scott: But he was [inaudible 1:33:29] in Milwaukee.
James Dow: This old man just came back to Milwaukee.
Mason Scott: Oh, okay.
James Dow: That was around World War I.
Michael Cooke: Right. That’s the same period that Burrell Morgan was-
James Dow: It was a boom town, boom steel town, in them days.
Valerie Scott: It must have been because I heard my momma say that her brother went there. I don’t remember.
Michael Cooke: Which brother was this, his name?
Valerie Scott: His name was William Taylor.
Michael Cooke: William Taylor?
Valerie Scott: My momma’s brother.
Michael Cooke: I see.
Valerie Scott: I don’t remember, but I remember what they said.
Michael Cooke: I see. Well, I think this is the last time we’ll interrupt, but I think we got everything we could get out of this.
Mason Scott: I wish you could talk to William Taylor.
Michael Cooke: I’m going to try to get a hold of him, right now in fact.
James Dow: He lives about two doors up. I’m going up-
[End of interview]

Segment Synopsis: This segment contains additional conversation regarding information about Buxton Iowa after Michael Cooke had already ended the interview.

Keywords: Amy Smith; Burrell Morgan; Buxton, Iowa; First World War; Harris; Milwaukee; mines; steel mills; William Taylor; World War I; WWI

Subjects: Coal mines and mining; Steel Mills