[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

JACQUELYN HALL:

The first thing I wanted to ask you is just a little bit more about your mother and father. Your mother, you said, was a schoolteacher?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes, she taught before I was born.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was her name, first of all?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Rachel Hull.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Hull?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

H-u-l-l, Hull: Rachel Evelyn Hull.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And where was she educated?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Here in Columbia.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What school?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Howard High School. See, at that time you could finish high school anywhere in the state and go in as a teacher.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And where had she been teaching before she married your father?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

She taught at a school called Free Hope, which is still standing; the little building is still standing. And then she taught in Jenkinsville. Free Hope is in Richland County, and the other school where she taught is in Jenkinsville, South Carolina. It's in a large Negro settlement where from freedom, from the Emancipation, the people owned their own property, and still do. One of the largest families anywhere in the nation is in that area, called the Martin family. They had their family reunion here last year, and I guess there must have been, oh I don't know, sixteen hundred of them. [interruption]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Where did she grow up?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

My mother was born and reared in Columbia.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Right in Columbia?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Her homestead was about, oh, five blocks from here.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did her parents do?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well, her mother was simply a housewife. She never worked out, as we say. Her father worked for (her father's name was George Hull) the old Railway Express Company, taking care of the horses. And my mother said that he had a remedy, or a cure rather, for lockjaw which was known to him. He must have learned it from some of his masters or something during slavery, but he never gave the secret to the children. But of course horses were very important in those days, because they pulled the ambulances and the carriages and the hacks for family transportation as well as public transportation. So they had all these horses to carry the express wagons. And he took care of them and of horses belonging in the town; if there were a case of lockjaw or if a horse stepped on a nail he knew the cure. They had one son, but somehow or other… I gathered this from their talking, that the son was … well, he was the youngest child, the only boy, I'll say. It seems like the mother had a number of children, but only four came to maturity. And this boy, being the only son they pampered him a lot. And he never cared much about being around his father, and I guess his father just thought that maybe after all he wouldn't guard the secret. And maybe he died before he gave him the secret. But they've never known what he did to cure lockjaw.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Hmm. What was your grandmother's name, your mother's mother's name?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

I don't know. I never knew her name—at least, if I did I don't remember it. I heard only back to my mother's mother. Now my mother's mother's name was Sarah; and she was a slave. She came from

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Sumter County in this state. And I think I related in there about her leaving Sumter; I believe I did, I don't know.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I think you did.

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well anyway, she belonged to a family of Seals, S-e-a-l-s, that owned property in Sumter County. And my mother's mother was in some way or some degree of Turkish ancestry. There was and still is a settlement of Turks in Sumter County, in one section of Sumter County; they're still there. Some years back they wouldn't permit them to go into the white schools, and they would not attend the Negro schools. They tried to force them into the Negro schools; they wouldn't. Well, somehow or other my mother's mother branched off from those Turks. Her mother, she was a house slave and her mother was a quarter slave (that is, lived in the quarters, with what they might call the servant slaves). My mother's mother was very fair and I would judge (although I never saw a picture of her mother, which would be my great-grand-mother) that she was dark skinned. And on one occasion, I understood from my mother that her mother was very devoted to her mother, and after dark she would slip to the quarters to see her mother. There were some rules on some plantations that the house slaves should not associate with the slaves in the quarters. And her mistress found that she had slipped out of the house at night and had gone to the quarters to see her mother, and she had her thrashed or whipped the next morning. Had her whipped, and I understand she was undressed in the presence of some of the people on the plantation, like overseers and like that. And she was so indignified that she decided that she was going to run away from that area of Sumter County and come to Columbia, where her grandmother was. Her grandmother was in slavery (that'd be my great-great-grandmother), my great-great-grandmother on my mother's side

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was in slavery in Columbia. And she had heard that she was here, and she was going to run away from the slave plantation to get to her grandmother. And on the way into Columbia, my mother said, she saw people on the highway and she ran into the woods to hide. And whoever saw her called her and asked her why was she running and where she was going. And they were union soldiers. And they told her that she wouldn't have to hide, and that she could walk the highway like anybody else did because she was now free. So I conclude that the slaves had been freed already, but the masters of this plantation hadn't told them. I heard my mother say many times that her mother said they told her, "Get right in this road and stay in the highway, and go on to Columbia, because you are free as we are." Then I heard my mother tell how as she was a child, a young girl, that the old slave mistress who had then become poverty-stricken, would come to their home (which was right up here across the street from our governor's mansion). And she said that she had seen her mother give her food many a day when she'd come to their home. And then she'd say to her, "Sarah, I never thought I'd come to this, that you would be able to give me food and be kind to me no matter what I've done." I've heard my mother tell that many a time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did Sarah feel that her mistress had been kinder to her than her master had been? Or why did she do this; why did she help her mistress? Why did she help her in that way?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Oh no, no; I never heard her say that she saw the master again. Evidently the old man died, and this old lady found her way to Columbia. And then she found where my grandmother was, and she'd come to see her. And evidently she was hungry and poverty-stricken.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I'm wondering if she saw any difference between her master and her

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mistress in the way they treated the slaves?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

I never heard that; I never heard that. But the master did the whipping, did the thrashing. I never got any impression that the master was any more sympathetic or kindly. But I did get the impression that old lady Seals was an old heifer, and that she just told him he had to whip her; and he did. And then she made up her mind she wasn't going to take another whipping, she was going to run away to Columbia.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you remember any other stories that your mother told about her mother?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

No, I don't remember any others. See, my mother's father's people came from Athens, Georgia. How they met up here together I don't know. You know, that's a funny thing about fate: people coming to the end of the world and meeting, and nobody knows why they did. But anyway, he was from Athens. And I've heard her tell how my father's mother was sold away from him in slavery. He was just a lad, and they sold her away. And she had—you know, the old ladies or the women in those days wore kerchiefs they tied their heads in, and sometimes they'd have one around their neck like a little cape. So we had for years (I don't know what became of it) in my mother's effects—that is, in our homestead—but I know that she kept for years this kerchief. When she was sold away from him and he was pleading and holding to her, she pulled off this kerchief and gave it to him as a memento. And then we had for the longest a pair of his little trousers that he was wearing around that time. Whatever slave caretaker, or whoever it was that took care of him, I mean, they had those: I do know that. Eventually he found his mother after freedom was declared, because she came to Columbia. And as I remember it she died here.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you know how he found her?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

No, I don't.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you know the name of the people who owned him?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

No, I don't. I do know that evidently when he got back to … I mean, when freedom was declared no matter where she was sold to she perhaps would come back to Athens. And when she came back to Athens perhaps he was still a lad just freed. I don't mean to say that she found him in Columbia. They evidently found each other after the Emancipation but before he came to Columbia; then she later came to Columbia.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did he remember anything about his father?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

No, never heard about him. They had a cousin by the name of Thena. I heard my mother speak often of Cousin Finia, and I've seen her picture: a very, very beautiful woman that was a very fine seamstress during slavery and even after freedom was declared. On the plantation where she lived she did all the beautiful sewing and embroidery work and all for them. But what her last name was I don't remember. I have known, but I don't remember.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did your father have brothers and sisters? 1 1 For father's family history, see Interview I

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

My father?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes.

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

My father had a brother by the name of Frank, and a sister by the name of Bessie. [omission]

I do know that working along with him (I can't remember now just the position, but this man had something to do with building) was a Scotchman. He came from Paisley, Scotland, and he and my father were very good friends. And they worked together. He was in some kind of supervisory capacity, I

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guess maybe kind of like a general contractor on those buildings. But I heard him speak of him often. And for years when I was a kid coming up, after he had gone back to Paisley he would write; he would send us cards and letters. He was very devoted to my father. His name was Gabriel (the name comes to me now) McClay. So we always welcomed those cards from Gabriel with, you know, the stamps that weren't like our stamps and the buildings way over, way over across the world, because it's hard for a child now to imagine how wonderful it was to hear that somebody lived across the waters or around the world, or that somebody went around the world. Like my mother used to tell us about Madame Patty, who was a great singer. And then there was a very great singer, a black singer that called herself Black Patty. And I remember when my mother told me that Black Patty had gone all the way around the world; I just thought … my mind went wild. I just couldn't imagine how anybody could go that far, you know. It's hard for a child to imagine what wonder it was to hear that … you know, about the trips people made and, you know, these long sea-going voyages and things like that. Of course a number of them were before my childhood, but we heard about them. My mother read to us a lot, and we had to read a lot too.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What kind of things did your mother read to you?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well, she read current events and portions of the Bible, and children's literature. Of course we were provided by my… See, when my mother married she didn't teach anymore until her children were up a size; then she went back to teaching. But during that time I had an aunt who was teaching, another that taught a while (maybe until about the time she married.) She married just before my mother; she was the oldest child. And she was married to a physician, one of the first black physicians

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that came into South Carolina. She sent us books. He was practicing down in Georgetown (that's down on the coast). She sent us books. And this other aunt, my mother's younger sister, would send us books for Christmas—like, you know, children's stories of the Bible or fairy tales. They don't have fairy tales now like they used to, and I know some of the great wonder has gone out of children's lives, you know. I just reveled. And I read, you know, Hans Christen Anderson fairy tales, "The Little Match Girl" and things like that. The children nowadays don't get to read these things. Ordinarily, I think, they don't; they have another kind of literature. But still, they were sources of great wonder, especially for children who had at that time so little communication with the outside world—not with TV and radio as we have now, when you see around the world in just the twinkling of an eye. So she read to us. She made particular effort to acquaint us with things as they were, no matter how cruel or atrocious they might be. She read just about all the lynchings, and how these people were mutilated or treated during lynchings. In fact, we were in Huntsville, Alabama when they had a lynching there, and my father told us how one of the lynchers came in and showed him the finger of this Negro. My father was a fearless man. He came in and showed it to my father, as though to intimidate him, I guess.

My father was noted for the backing of chimneys. You remember seeing that, perhaps, but there's a certain way if you have a fireplace that you lay the bricks in the chimney that makes sure that you're going to have a draft instead of smoke blowing out. And he was noted for that. Even in his late years here in Columbia it was well known that he just had a kind of special skill in backing chimneys. And so when they built these factories they'd have rows and rows of factory houses all looking just alike. You've

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seen some of them; they've passed out of existence right now. But then he would have to go and back the chimneys in every one of those factory houses. And he was backing a chimney one Saturday afternoon when this fellow came in and showed him this finger that was cut off this Negro. I guess they wanted to intimidate him as a Negro, you know, knowing that he was well thought of, I guess, by the construction company. But my father was a fearless man. He offered to fight them with his trowel and hammer. They didn't bother him anymore. I guess most of the Negroes in that area were kind of groveling creatures, you know. And the lynchers just "met a pharoah that knew not Joseph," as the Bible says. I didn't have any problem; they didn't try to intimidate him anymore. Now that was in Huntsville, Alabama. My oldest brother was born in Huntsville while we were there, while my father was there working.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Are there any differences between your mother and your father? How did they get along with each other?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Fine. They had maybe little tiffs like the average family will have. My father never wanted her to whip us, so most of the things would come up about that. And then my father was a very soft-hearted man. I am like that myself; I just can hardly turn away a person that appears to be in trouble or in need. So my father was like that. And then my father was a very soft-hearted man. I am like that myself; I just can hardly turn away a person that appears to be in trouble or in need. So my father was like that. And although he had an income above average for that time he would sometimes help a fellow, and my mother would say, "Oh that no-good, you're helping him and you need it for your children." And she used to tell me sometimes, "You're going to be just like your daddy; you 're going to die in the poorhouse. You give this and you give that, and you can't turn anybody down." And I'm still the same way—I think about it all the time—I'm very soft when it comes to need or

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apparent need. So most of the differences that I remember were concerning that: his soft-heartedness, the ease with which he could be … some-times taken in, I would say. Well, she was the strong hand when it came to maintaining financial stability. Now he didn't throw away any money like some men might on drink or gambling or something like that. His only weakness was that he was soft-hearted toward any person in apparent need. And of course she always felt that she had to hold that tight hand on what she had. And when he came home, I've seen him many a time come and throw that pay envelope right in her lap. She didn't demand it, but that's what he'd do. He'd come home: "Well, here it is, Rachel." He'd buy the groceries and come home with a sack of groceries on his back. And you could take two dollars then and buy enough groceries almost to have enough for a mule to pull. He'd have this bag across his back when he'd walk from the carline down to our house, about a mile and a quarter. And what he had left from the groceries, then the bag of candy he bought every Saturday for the children. "Here it is, Rachel;" he'd give her the whole envelope. Well, she was the financier of the family.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was she also the disciplinarian of the children?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes, for the most part she took care of that. I guess that came about in large measure because when we first were coming up… You see, before time for me to start school they did mostly this traveling. Then when it was time for me to be put in school, then they settled down in our homestead that we'd had all the time. So then my father would go different places and work, maybe two or three months at a time, or three or four weeks or whatever it was. Sometimes he would go in a group and work a while and maybe come back weekends or like that. So at that time she had us to herself.

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And she believed in using a switch. And sometimes he would say, "Oh Rachel, let the children alone; they're not as bad as you say they are." And I've seen on two or three occasions that he'd try to stop the whipping. She would just turn the child loose and give him three or four whacks. [Laughter] And she said, "I don't know how long I'm going to live with these children, but I know if I don't straighten them out somebody will." Now we weren't that bad, but she didn't let us get an inch. She said, "If I give you an inch you'll take an L." Whatever that is, that's what she always said.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were your parents very strict with you?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well, I would say they were positive. Now, not strict in the sense that sometimes people think, that they've had a hard, fast rules that you were used to doing this. I've heard my mother say sometimes if you dared… Of course back then children didn't hardly ask their mothers why, you know. Your mother or father'd say thus and so, that was it; that was the law of the Medes and the Persians. But sometimes there was an occasion when she'd say, "Now listen, you do this because I said to." Sometimes you'd get to that point. Now strictly from the standpoint of being almost what you might say cruel in trying to see that something would be done, it was more being just positive. And you understood that evidently when they said that they'd thought it through.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were there any conflicts as you were all growing up around discipline, or your wanting to do things that your parents wouldn't let you do?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

I don't remember any. There might have been. You see, there weren't the tugs on children in those days that there are now, because parents didn't mind other people correcting their children—maybe you've heard oldsters in your family say that. And I knew that—well, I

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just didn't misbehave at school, because I knew if I misbehaved at school (although we didn't have corporal punishment at our school), I knew when I got home if they heard that I misbehaved I was going to get corporal punishment at home, you see. And then I knew that if someone told my mother (I wanted to say call my mother, but we had no telephone) that I misbehaved, that was just like she'd seen it herself.

I know my Daddy was working in Spartanburg, and I was doing something some old woman thought I shouldn't have done. I've never forgotten that. I was up the street some houses from where I lived (I was just a little kid, must have been about four or four and a half, maybe, something like that—not more than five years old). And she grabbed me by my little—children were wearing aprons then, little tie-around things. And she grabbed me back there and tore me up with a brush, a hairbrush, then turned me loose. And I flew home. And when I got home and my mother found out I had misbehaved she gave me another spanking with a hairbrush. So I knew that anywhere I happened to be, if I misbehaved somebody had their eyes on me, you know. [omission]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you just raise food for your own use, or did you raise cotton or anything else?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

We raised cotton eventually, not maybe more than five or six bales because we had the farm largely where we could be occupied. And we raised all our foodstuffs except perhaps rice and sugar—or coffee, but we didn't bother with coffee much. And we made our own molasses, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, vegetables for canning. My mother would corn beef and kill pork. You know, we had smokehouse arrangements; we had our own well. So we were self-sustaining. And in addition to that my father made enough

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money to supply other needs. We had our cows and butter.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You had cows?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Oh yes, we had cows and pigs and chickens and turkeys.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you run the farm when your mother started back teaching?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well, we had the people that came in and help, the hired hands. We had hired hands for plowing until my brothers got old enough. There were families near us that had large boys that did the plowing. Now the whole cultivation for the most part was done by the girls, and the boys when they weren't plowing, like chopping the cotton or hoeing the cotton or working in the gardens.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were you closer to your mother or your father?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

I don't see any difference.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you see one of them as having more influence on you, or that you would be more like one of them in some way?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well, I think I'm more like my father, only in the way that I expressed a while ago, that I've very tender-hearted, so to speak. My mother was very kind too, but she wasn't … as loose with money in that kindness, you know. Now she would work all day in the fields with us for long hours, and if there was someone sick in the community she would say, "Now we've got to go and see Mrs. so-and-so tonight. She is sick, and we'll have to go see what we can do for her." And she would prepare things for them and show them how… When we moved into that area, of course, at that time the people were primitive. There was a lot of pellagra and infant mortality—I mean, maternal and infant mortality rates were high. They didn't know much about, didn't know anything about nutrition; they ate cornbread and fatback and black molasses. And cotton was king: the men that owned the cotton farms planted the

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cotton right up the back doors. They had no ground to raise a garden if they wanted one. So most of them didn't like vegetables, and a lot of them don't care about them today. But it was a long time before a lot of country people started eating vegetables. They ate meat, and many of them were existing on salt and water cornbread and fatback and molasses. And on Sunday they'd have a little something extra. They'd have a little something extra to take to church in a basket or something like that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were you probably much better off than most of your neighbors and the people you went to church with?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes, always we were. And I think that our moving into that—in fact, I know our moving into that community, we were the leavening influence. We had to go to Sunday school, and we could read and most of the little children and their parents couldn't. They were going to school three months, and we were going to paid schools over at Benedict College. And we were able to make our little talks and read and do a lot of things that inspired the children of the area. [omission]

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

So they were at the mercy of the power structure where we were not. My father was able to send us to… See, living in the country we couldn't go to the city schools like the city children because we were living in the rural area. So we went to where we had started, where I had started school before moving to the country which was Benedict College, which at that time had the classes from the primer on up through college. So that's where I went to school from the first day I went to school until I finished college, there at Benedict.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Where is Benedict?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Right here in town, just a half a block away from where I work every day. The older children started at Benedict. Later a brother and two sisters who started in the neighborhood rural school entered city schools when they were improved.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you get into school from the country?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

What school?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Benedict.

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

We had a horse and carriage, and then in later years usually we walked. It was just about five miles, and we walked it. And then we had streetcars available; we used streetcars too, and we were about a mile from the streetcar line. So we used those three modes of travel.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was Benedict like as a school? What were the teachers or the quality of education like?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well, the school offered a very, very fine type of education. You see, Benedict was founded by northerners, what were called Yankees, for the benefit of the freedmen, the children of the slaves. And many of the people that came in were great scholars; in fact most of them were. And we had the very finest of training and example. [omission]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were the teachers mostly unmarried white women at Benedict? Were the teachers mostly white?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Some of them were couples, married couples, and some of them were widows and some were unmarried. People came down with missionary zeal, and all of them were highly religious. We had to study the Bible every day just like we studied everything else, and we got credits in Bible just like we did in arithmetic or geometry or whatever. And we had to attend chapel

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every day. It was obligatory that we go to chapel where they had devotional services and often some of the very finest speakers of the period. Today students attend chapel if they want to, and some of them never do. But the college saw that we were exposed to the finest minds that came through and that they could get their hands on. And we had a very good library, and we were supposed to use the library. We each had to own a Bible and take it with us to school, so that each had his Bible when they were ready to hold devotionals—I'm talking about chapel devotionals. There was a prayer meeting every Wednesday evening. And in the dormitories (I don't know about the boys' dormitory; I think it was true in the boys' dormitory), but in the girls' dormitory there were study hours about from seven to nine. There was an area in the dormitories that had… Well, in the one that I lived in a while, just knew about and in the case of bad weather sometimes we had to stay over, they had just like a long classroom with regular schoolroom desks. And you went to a study period from about seven to nine. Of course you could study other times in your room or go to the library, but it was obligatory that you go to that study hall; they called that going to study hour. And you didn't have any more wasted time or pussyfooting in there than you had in the classroom. Then they demanded that you … get your lessons, so to speak. There wasn't "you didn't do that well today; you'll do it tomorrow. You bring it back tomorrow." There wasn't anything like that. You did it today. And they told us that anything that was worth doing was worth doing well. And of course as far as my mother's children were concerned, we didn't have study hall. When we got through with our chores, our supper and our chores we had to get our books and sit around in the room where she was around the fire, where my

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father was if my father was at home. And we had to get our lessons, so we had study hall too. [Laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were there any black teachers in the school?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes. Most of them were white, but as some of them were trained and came to graduation… I remember one Miss Cecilia Gary who's still living in Chicago: quite elderly, taught Latin for years. She eventually married a man by the name of Mr. McWhorter and she moved to Chicago. There was a Miss Lula Johnson; there was a Miss Alberta Boykin who is still living (she's living in Chicago too). She was one. In a few more years there were two or three others. But in the beginning … well, there was one that taught mathmatics, a Professor Pegues who taught mathmatics. But for the most part they were white, because they had to be; there weren't enough Negroes trained up to that far for college work at that early time. See, that was just thirty-five to fifty years after slavery. And when they started off they started off mostly training for teachers and preachers. That's what Benedict's, I think its charter or it's plan called for, preparation of ministers and teachers. And of course when they started it took a good while for them, for the slaves to become financially able and keenly conscious of the need of education—that is as a whole—to get them into the spirit of sending their children to college. Then many of them even sent their children empty-handed since they had little or nothing, but they wanted them to learn. And they'd just come in wagons and bring them, maybe with one or two pieces of clothing and some potatoes or something like that. But at that time the school took them in. They didn't turn back any children because they didn't have money. They took them in, and the buildings and grounds were kept up by these people

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helping to pay their schooling. Few families were financially able to pay fully for their children. Even so, all students were given tasks to help up-keep buildings and grounds. Well, now they get maintenance crews to keep the school, and these school cats walk all around and do nothing but hang around and smoke marijuana or do whatever they want to do. They didn't turn back anybody. Some of them were grown when they came to school, and they'd go into a third grade level. But they'd keep working with them and giving them remedial lessons until they'd catch up or something with their age and their classes. So I've gone to grade school with many a grown person old enough almost to be my parent, because they just came out to school from the country in the rough, you know. But they wanted to learn, just like when you read Up From Slavery. That Booker Washington just went. Man, they just came, but they were never turned down. Never!

JACQUELYN HALL:

And you got no feeling of paternalism or racism at all from your teachers?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

No, I didn't see any. I don't remember any earmarks of racism, none. You might call it paternalism if there was extreme interest in their well-being, which I don't think would have been paternalism as we know it today. You see, I've known some whites that have found themselves working with us in the interracial field that showed stronger earmarks of paternalism, that talk about "what we want to do for the Negroes," you know, and that type of thing. But these people served as a Christian duty. They were dedicated to this, almost as a Christian missionary going to the foreign field. Now I know a lot of them have become mercinaries in the power structure, as you perhaps know; many of them that we thought in the beginning were missionaries of burning zeal were tools of the power structure of imperialism, we know that. But there was nothing like that in these people here, because most of them worked for nothing. They came down and they had housing and they had food.

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And many of them perhaps were people, especially the widows were women whose husbands had left them with some substance. But I know many of them worked for nothing, because they had other means of income. They didn't have Social Security or stuff like that, but very likely they had husbands who had retired with pretty good income and left them income. Some of them were paid eventually, and maybe in the beginning some of them got some type of payment. But, I mean, it was more… My impression through the years was that they really wanted to serve a purpose in the lives of people who had been so … thoroughly disregarded.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were any of the teachers at Benedict… ? How did they respond after World War I and even more after World War II when blacks started trying to take action in behalf of their own lives and so on? Were Benedict teachers supportive of this?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

I finished Benedict in 1921. I think by the time that was coming in that a good many of the whites that I am talking about had died out, had either died or were old enough to have retired. There were very few of them there. The only ones that I know very much about were working here at Benedict and at Allen University in the fifties. And they entered into the civil rights movement, and they were thoroughly persecuted by the State. And some of the black teachers kind of bypassed them through fear of being red-smeared, because the only tool with which the political power structure fought them, the political education in the power structure, was to red-smear them. And the average person, whether he's black or white, particularly black, doesn't want to be called a red, you see. That's the way they tried to destroy me, just calling me a Communist fellow traveler and all that stuff. But I didn't pay any attention because I beheld earlier

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that if some of the things that they claimed the Communists were advocating were some of the things that I believed in, and if that meant being a Communist I'd just have to be one. I never was a card-carrying Communist; in fact, I never have been anything but what I am today. But of course that was their way of trying to quiet people, you know. That was an awful fight here around the late fifties, when Allen and Benedict were censured by the AAVP unknown. And that's another fight that's too long to talk about now.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did any of your teachers have any special influence on you?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

I don't think so. I think I loved them all. I don't think of any. I guess I liked them because they were thorough, because my mother had taught us to be thorough. I don't think that there was any … I can't think of any that I was more greatly impressed with than another.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You graduated, then, in 1921?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And started teaching.

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Right away?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes. I taught at Benedict one year; then I went into the city schools.

JACQUELYN HALL:

To Booker T. Washington?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I see. What was that experience like in teaching? What were quality of education and the teaching conditions like?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

At Booker?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes.

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well, Booker, the city schools in Columbia have always been described as being perhaps the most outstanding in South Carolina. The system has always been well recognized and highly touted. So I couldn't have taught in a better-regulated system——I don't mean that there weren't better ones, but I mean so far as South Carolina was concerned. And they had good schools and outstanding principals.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who was the principal when you were there?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Cornell Johnson, Cornell A. Johnson. We had a superintendent that was a very fine man, one Dr. Hand, that was very much, in a way, like some of the teachers that I had at Benedict. He was straight-shooting and thorough and respected people for what they were and what they could produce. And so I would say that sofar as being a schoolman, he was a big inspiration, because I never saw any earmark of racism in him, although I don't know where Hand came from. But I do know he was superintendent of schools here, and I do know that during his tenure he tried to do the best he could for all the schools so far as he could with what he had and with what the structure would let him do. And his death was a great loss. I remember him very kindly.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you happen to become a math teacher? That was your father's influence perhaps?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

I don't know. I always liked mathematics anyway. And when I went into the schools they didn't have an opening for that. I think one year I taught in the elementary school, around the sixth grade I guess it was. But as soon as they could they put me in a mathematics position. I always liked that; I liked mathematics and I liked medieval history. One of the subjects I taught at Benedict was medieval history. And they tried

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to get me to teach South Carolina history while I was in the grade thing down there, but I didn't want to—in fact, I refused to use the textbook. 2 2 The text was Some History of South Carolina. I didn't want to teach it because I didn't have any respect for it then, and don't have now. But anyway, I taught ancient and medieval history at Benedict. But I was looking for a position in mathematics, and I soon was moved into that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you know Wil Lou Gray?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Oh yes, I've known her for years.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you think of her adult literacy program and of her as a person?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

I think Miss Wil Lou Gray was a product of her time. I've never forgiven her for calling her school the Opportunity School and opening it only to whites. I came near clashing with her on one occasion. And I have nothing against her. I think she has done a good work as she saw it. As I said, a person can be the product of his time and his environment, you know. And so she was moving along those guidelines. And Miss Wil Lou opened night schools … was instrumental in opening a night school at my mother's school, and they had night sessions there for several years. And she saw that they had materials; but so far as the Opportunity School was concerned … it seemed to me that she should have felt that black youth needed opportunity as well as white youth. And I've never forgiven her for not being able to see that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When did the Opportunity School open?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

I don't know. You'll have to look in the Manual to find out. I don't know. All of those things, those dates are listed in the Legislative Manual.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you try to do anything about that at the time, or have any clashes with her at the time?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

No, no I didn't. Once when she was kind of… We were in some meeting where a friend of mine was, and Miss Will Lou was doing a whole lot of talking or heaping accolades upon herself and what she had done. And I leaned over to a friend of mine and said, "I ought to get this old sister right now, because she doesn't need all that praise, because she couldn't see that opportunity was needed by all the youth in South Carolina." And she said, "Let her alone. Don't bother her." She said, "Poor soul, she might have been doing the best she could with the vision she had. Just don't bother her"—because she knew that I'd run roughshod, you know. And so she asked me please [Laughter] not to bother Miss Wil Lou. That was. Alice Spearman, Alice Wright, Alice Norwood Spearman Wright. She said, "Please don't get involved with Miss Wil Lou tonight, because you know what you're going to do. You're going to turn the meeting out." [Laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

When did you first get involved in, when did you first join the NAACP? I know your mother enrolled you in the Niagara movement when you were a child.

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well, you see, my mother at night when she used to read me all those old magazines about how they treated the gold diggers in the African Congo and all like that, the gold miners in Africa and different atrocities particularly on the African continent, I learned about those before I ever started to school. She'd show me the pictures, you know, as I told you before.

The NAACP's first chapter was organized here, I think, about 1916. But now I guess it was maybe in the early twenties that I became really

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active, because prior to that I was busy in school and out in the country, not coming into town very much except to come to school and go back. But now I imagine it was in the early twenties; but the branch was founded somewheres around '16 or '17.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When you got involved in the NAACP, did you sense any kind of generation conflict or generation gap between the people of your age, the younger members of the organization, and the older… ?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well, all of them were old folks.

JACQUELYN HALL:

They were all old?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes. They didn't have any youth chapters as they have now. They were all older folks. And, of course, I guess I was perhaps the youngest of the group, because I would go with my mother. My sister who passed in 1926 and I were about the youngest that were going. Of course, you see, being the oldest child in the family and being around grown people most of the time I was just kind of … more adult in my thinking, I guess. So I think a lot of the oldsters that were in the group didn't think of me as the youngster so much as somebody, a young person with exceptional back-ground that could—you know, reading and knowing all these things. And they would listen about it; it was more of a deference than there was a difference. That's the way I see it. But I never sensed anything like that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

As the oldest child, did you have any special role in the family? What kind of relationship did you have with your brothers and sisters?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

They were supposed to listen to me just as they would to my mother. My mother had the idea that somehow or other her health wasn't so good. I didn't know as much about babies and having babies as children

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know now as an everyday thing. But it was during her childbearing period that she wasn't very well—I guess just conditions incidental to childbearing. And she had the idea that she might not live until her children grew up, and she'd always have them obey me in various situations. She'd say, "Now I don't know whether I'll be with you all the time. You've got to listen to somebody." And they listen to me even until this day.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That must have made you grow up very fast.

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes, in a way. By my father being out of town and my mother bearing children, sometimes I'd have to get in the road and get to the carline, and come downtown and look after whatever little business there was to look after. I learned early how to take care of some little family business, and go down and carry messages to my aunt that lived far on the other end of town. While we lived beyond the other end of town and out in the country, I knew how to get the streetcar and go down to their place, or purchase certain things, or maybe pay… I don't remember any bills we had to pay, except sometimes we had a furniture bill. If there were farm implements my father took care of such payments as that. But there may have been furniture bills. The only thing I can remember bills maybe where we bought some furniture, especially after our home was destroyed by fire. And I can remember having to do that, because my father never allowed us to run charge accounts. I don't run them today. We never, we never ran charge accounts, so it wasn't that type of thing—although we could have. You know, like people used to get groceries and pay for them at a certain time and all like that, but we never had that. I can remember my mother saying on one occasion (as she said on other occasions), "Now this is all we owe the man now. This is the last I have to pay, so you

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tell him to mark on that ‘Paid In Full’. And you see that he puts ‘Paid In Full’ on that when he gives you that receipt. And," she said, "always when you have a bill, when you pay the last of it you have him mark on it ‘Paid In Full.’ And then if you've lost some of the other receipts you'll have that one." See, they didn't have checking accounts, so they just paid. And now I've known children over there that have said to me, "I paid all this"—happened at Allen's several years. "I know I paid all my bill. They told me I paid up. When I got ready to graduate they told me I owed some more money." I said, "Well, if they told you it's paid off, why didn't you get it ‘Paid In Full’? That's what my Ma always taught me, you know."

I've never forgotten that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did your mother have her babies at home?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

With a midwife or with a doctor?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes, midwife.

JACQUELYN HALL:

With a midwife?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Somebody that lived around there?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you remember that? What did you kids do when your mother… ?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

I remember it. They always sent us to a friend's home.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you know what was going on?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

No, didn't know anything about it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you learn about the birthing of babies?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

I don't know, but I was grown enough to be a mother myself before I knew. [Laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Really? [Laughter]

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

No, they kept us close to cloistered on that type of thing.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were your brothers treated any differently than the girls?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

I don't know that they were. All of us had to work, and had to go to bed when we got through working. As I told somebody the other day, I told them about vacation. I said, "My mother and father didn't know how to spell vacation." I said, "God made the world so you tear your body down working in the day; you recreate it resting at night." I said, "But your trouble is you work in the day and then you raise the devil half the night and sleep about four hours. Then the next day you can't half work." See, a lot of people don't realize that. If we treat our bodies like the Lord intended us to treat them we wouldn't need vacations. I'm tired today when I get through work; I take my bath and go to bed, and my body recreates itself overnight. Then next morning I'm fresh to go, unless I cut it one way or the other.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Tell me the names of your brothers and sisters and when they were born, if you remember.

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Oh, I don't know when all of them were born.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You don't know when they were born?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

I don't know when all of them were born. I had a sister that died in infancy. Her name was Sarah Clyde. She died when she was about fourteen months old. And then I had a sister that came to maturity and died in 1926. She was teaching in the Columbia city schools when she died. She had a ruptured appendix and peritonitis.

That sister's name was Rovena Lucile. Then my brother who is a practicing physician and a surgeon here was the fourth

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child. Then I have a brother named Frank and a younger sister named Emma Watson Wheeler.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was his name?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

His name was Henry Dobbins; he was named Dobbins after my grandfather and great-grandfather.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Now is he the brother that integrated the university?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

No.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Didn't one of your brothers?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

No, that was a sister. Then my brother's name is Henry Dobbins. Then I have another brother whose name is Frank Hull; he carries my mother's maiden name, Frank Hull. Then my next brother's name was Charles Walton; he has passed. And then I had a sister Rebecca, Rachel Rebecca, who integrated the University of South Carolina. Now she was married to a Mr. Roberts, and by that union there were two children. She divorced him and legally applied to take back her maiden name and to change the children's names into the family name. So they go by Montieth. [omission]

JACQUELYN HALL:

I thought that I read that one of the first three black students in the university was a Henri Montieth.

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well, that's my sister's child.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I see, I see.

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

She's named Henri. They called it Henri, the French for Henry. She's really named for my brother.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I see. So she brought the suit.

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

My sister Rebecca brought it in the name of her daughter Henri.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh, Henri is a girl.

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I see, I see.

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you meet your husband? [Andrew Simkins]

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Oh, he was here in Columbia in business, and I just ran into him, that's all

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did he do?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

He was a businessman: a filling station and state liquor store, and in real estate. He did a lot of business in real estate.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He had been a wheelwright before this in Columbia?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

No. He taught wheelwrighting at South Carolina State College in the time, you know, when they were having buggies and carriages and wagons and all like that, farm implements. But he taught that there. He was also a very good carpenter. He laid all these floors in this house.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He built this house?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

No, no. Lord, this house was built before he was born. No, he laid the floors after we came here. These floors were worn and he laid these. This house has a double floor. And then when he left South Carolina State College he worked in insurance awhile with the North Carolina Mutual. And then he went into business here in Columbia. And that's where I met him, after he came to Columbia.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How long did you know each other before you were married?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Hmm. Oh, I guess about six or nine months, something like

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that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And he had six children?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Five.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He had five children?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was it like, suddenly finding yourself the mother of five children?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well, it wasn't… Well, three of the children were living with a relative down in Dorchester County, one of them was with one of his sisters and one with a sister of his mother. So it didn't seem… We didn't have the three younger children with us for quite a while. And then when they did come the lady that had kept them for several years came with them; so she was … a second cousin in this way, that she was the child of the oldest sister of a family of ten or eleven children. And these children's mother was the child of the baby of those children. So these little children were very much … she was almost like a grandmother to them, you see. So she had virtual oversight of them, because I was out working with the TB Association at that time. She had virtual over-sight of them. And then I had a housekeeper too, because I was on the road all the time. I had a very good housekeeper that was with me about sixteen years. So that really after all there wasn't a whole lot that I had to do from the standpoint of actual care, because with the younger ones this elderly cousin was just about like a mother or a grandmother to them—and she was almost like a mother to me, in a way. And then by that time the two older boys were getting on into college age, so that so far as being bumfuzzled by having a bunch of children to be responsible for all at one

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time, it wasn't that. And then I didn't have to do (before I got this housekeeper) the laundry or anything like that because when I first married my husband said, "Now, whoever is taking care of your laundry now, if you can keep them you keep them on and let them do that." I never ironed a dress shirt for my husband in my life; all that just channeled after we got this housekeeper into there. And she took care of everything: took care of the home and my clothing and everything, the family, you know, laundry and all like that. And my clothing when I came off the road was ready for me to go back on another trip and like that. So I never did really have the burden of housekeeping, and still don't know how to do much of it, because when I was in the country I would stay in the field rather than work in the house. So it wasn't the problem that it might seem to be.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was your husband a good bit older than you?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Sixteen years.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you happen to marry an older man?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well, how do people happen to marry? They just happen to marry! I don't know why it happened, I just happened to marry, that's all. [Laughter] That's the only way I can explain it. It didn't seem to present any problem. It was just that I married somebody.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was he involved in the kinds of civic activity?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

He wasn't that much interested. He would give, but so far as being involved in the way that I was and to the extent that I was… He wanted to see changes, and every now and then he'd write a letter. He said, "I want you to write a letter about something I read in the paper this morning," or something like that. "Write a letter to the paper about that." And he would say some things he'd like said in the letter, and he

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would give to efforts. But now so far as getting out and going on the grind like I did, he didn't do it. Of course, not many people do, as far as that goes. And there are many people in this town that ought to be on a grind for this thing all the time, but you don't hear a thing out of them 'til something happens to them or some of their children. Then here they come wondering if you can't do something. They say, "You know all these people; you're always working with them," and all that type of thing. That's when you hear from them, when they get their tails caught in a crack.

But he liked social life; I never did, but he did. So he went to all the parties. He liked to play whist and poker; he came from a large family that were very skillful in cards——their father taught them that. He was a great card player. So he liked those things. He would go to card parties and receptions and things. All those things were boring to me. So it was just understood by our friends that "You see him here, but she just doesn't care for it much." You know, like you might see a husband somewhere and not a wife, you say, "There must be something wrong with them. They must be mad." But my friends understand even today there's no need to invite me to certain things because I wouldn't be there. I just don't care for them, and I don't feel like being bored to give somebody the pleasure of my company.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did he mind your being on the road all the time and so involved in everything?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

No, no, he didn't mind at all. And he was a man that loved company. Very often I'd come home and find people put up here because there wasn't anyplace for Negroes to stay here (you know, like they have now motels and all). And they'd come in. All he had to do it to know that

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they knew me. I've come home many a time and this guest room and maybe the back one there (that extra room back there) would have people. And he'd say, "Some people came up to the house. They said they knew you and had heard about you, and they worked with you in the Christmas Seal campaign." I said, "Well, that's all right, that's all right." And we'd have a nice time with the company. But he loved company. And that was one of the things that I liked about him more than anything else, that he loved company. And anybody that he knew had been kind to me on the road, he felt like he was indebted to them, because even in those days a lot of people would be kind to you, house you, give you food. And they wouldn't charge you, because they knew that there was nothing else, there was nowhere else to stay. And they felt that you were performing a function that was needed by the people. The pay at some places most times didn't pay at all. And then they'd give you something when you were leaving, like some smoked bacon or some eggs, or some collards, or something or another … "So glad you stopped at my house. Come back again." See, a lot of them … then, tv's hadn't come into style, and I was on the road. Well, they were just glad to see somebody from ‘way’ cross over yonder somewhere.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You had to quit teaching when you got married.

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes, the Columbia city schools didn't hire any married teachers. So, when you married, if it was in the middle of the school year, you got out.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you think about that?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well, I didn't think anything of it. I just accepted that that was their rule, and that was what I had to go by, just like anybody

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else did. I never bother about something supposed to be laid down. My students were very much upset when I left. But that didn't make any difference. I don't think the superintendent would have cared if I had been kept on. I think the principal might have been glad because I was one he just couldn't handle. He couldn't make me buckle down. I don't mean to do anything bad, but I was one that would stand up and express myself at faculty meetings and things like that. I think if he had wanted to, really, he could have asked the superintendent to make a special case of it, you know. But I think, by George, I've been a lot of places where they wished I would hurry and get out. So that was just one. [Laughter] I've been many a place where it felt like, when I was going out, maybe in a little while I'd feel a knife sticking in my back, you know.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That was in 1929, is that right?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And then you went to work for the TB Association?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes. I didn't go to work for them, oh, for about two years. Oh, I don't know, about two years: '31, I guess it was. '31 or

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'32; I've forgotten which.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was that job like?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well, they were looking for somebody to do health education instruction in the schools, teaching health instruction to teachers. The TB Association was entering into a public health instruction—school health instruction, I should say—and we were to put on a state-wide program of that. They were looking for somebody that had the type of educational background like I had. Somebody recommended me; I don't know who. I finally took the job. They sent me away to school. I went up to Ypsilanti and took some courses at the University of Michigan at Ypsilanti. A few years later, they sent me up to the University of Michigan … that school is noted for its work in public health, as you know perhaps. Then, a part of my work was to promote the sale of Christmas seals to help pay for the tuberculosis program.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did they get any money from the state, or was it all from…

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

It was private. The money came from Christmas seals.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who ran the Tuberculosis Association?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

It was run by the South Carolina Tuberculosis Association, which was a private …

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was there a board?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes, it had a board.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was it mostly women or men?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well, about equal, I guess.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And they had what, a colored division?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes, they had what they called a Negro program.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were there any blacks on the board?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

No, not on the board. This Negro group was kind of an advisory group. For instance, when they had the annual meetings, they'd hardly have a Negro there. If they did, they'd put him a way over in the corner somewhere. I never would bother with going to them because I didn't let anybody sit me in a corner. I'd just sit in my own corner in my house. But after I worked my program up quite a while, I had so many volunteers, scores and scores of them, that on several occasions I called my workers together and I'd always have a reception for them here during the State Teachers Association. Many of them were teachers. That irritated me, I mean just angered me because they were always telling me that tuberculosis is the greatest threat to blacks, and yet when they'd have these state meetings and they'd bring these authorities in on tuberculosis, case-finding and all that type of thing, the Negroes weren't there. They had them, and then they would kind of do like a pigeon: eat something and regurgitate it to the little pigeons. Well, that's the kind of thing that was.

I really had to tell my boss off one day when she was trying to make some kind of excuse about these separate things. You know, I knew why they were separate 'cause I knew what these segregation things were in these hotels and things. I said, "Well, one thing is boiled down to this. You all are concerned more about eating an old cold piece of chicken and a few little ol' green peas sitting up in the top of a pile of potatoes than you are about actually fighting tuberculosis." Oh, all that stuff just got on my nerves. Every now and then I'd have to boil it over.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who was your boss?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

A woman named Chauncey MacDonald—C-H-A-U-N-C-E-Y Blackburn. She came from a family of Blackburns, Chauncey Blackburn MacDonald. A highly religious family. I didn't say Christian; I said religious.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did she respond to your …

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Oh, she thought it was awful that I would think like that. She thought quite often that I was an awful creature.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What other conflicts did you have?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Well, I had several … one that I think of. Well, there were two other outstanding. One was that she did not want me to work with NAACP, didn't want to hear about me being connected with NAACP in any way. And she called me in one day … which, I wasn't taking any time from my job working with NAACP. But she didn't want to hear of me bothering … at that time, the ferment had started in the state. The NAACP conference was organized in 1940, state conference. She heard about that, and the man who was president was a firebrand in a way. And she—I think some of the Negroes on that board had something to do with it—but she said that she thought that I ought to let somebody else take on the fight like that, and I tend to what I was doing. I said, "Well, I'm not doing it on the time." I said, "I can belong to NAACP, and it doesn't affect my work. You ask me, you say, you want production. Am I bringing production?" She said, "Yes." I said, "Well, what's the gripe?" Well, she just thought that I ought not be in it. This man Hinton was an awful man and I shouldn't be connected, and she would prefer that I shouldn't. I said, "Well, if

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that's the way you feel about it, I'll tell you how I feel about it. I'd rather all Negroes die and go to hell with tuberculosis than go through some of the things they're suffering right now, and that the NAACP is trying to stop them." She said, "Ooh, ooh, ooh." Why, she just come near having ten kittens, you know! [Laughter]

That was one. And then around in that time, they made a picture down in Tuskegee about … some picture to help fight tuberculosis called "Let My People Live." And they premiered that picture in Camden. I mean, so far as South Carolina was concerned, they premiered it in Camden. I don't know where I saw it. I guess I saw it … I don't know where I saw it, but I saw it before she saw it. And some old woman in Camden saw it before she saw it. So she told me that Miss So-and-So in Camden said that they said that they were making "Let My People Live" as a picture by Negroes to help fight tuberculosis among Negroes. But it looks like they had more fair Negroes in it than they had actual showing of black Negroes. I said, "I saw ‘Let My People Live’." I said, "That old woman doesn't know what she's talking about." I said, "She either didn't see the picture or she didn't try to see it through because she got too shook up before she saw all of it." I said, "The preacher they got in there's as black as any ink I ever saw." I said, "And they've got the choir of Tuskegee in it, and I know there's no white people on that. And if there's any yellow ones on that, they didn't make themselves yellow."

[TAPE 2, SIDE A]

JACQUELYN HALL:

I was just going to ask you why you quit working for the Association in 1942, for the Tuberculosis Association. Isn't that right?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

Yes. I quit working for them because the conditions became untenable, because of certain of these, you know, restrictions that were there because of the NAACP. My boss told me that he thought I would have to resign. I told her that I was not going to resign, that she would have to fire me because I hadn't done anything to resign for, and my work (according to what she said to me) had been productive and satisfactory and that I had no reason to resign, and she could just fire me, which she did not want to do. She told me I built up my program on personality,

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and what she meant by that was that I had made myself so close to the people that maybe it could create a problem. I said, "I think anybody that builds a public relations program builds it on personality." I said, "Jesus Christ built his on personality, so I don't see why you should fault me for that." So as I said yesterday, there were people in that black committee, in that Negro program that she had, that were easily influenced and handled by her. And when push came to shove, why, my opinion is that they decided in the meeting that since … Well, see, some of them didn't like the thrust that NAACP was making at that time, right at the beginning of the forties, into the political action field trying to get the ballot. So some of them (one or two of them) on that board were as reactionary as she was, even though they were black and she was white (reactionary, I mean, to the program that was evolving at that time towards the civil rights movement). Nobody could foresee at that time that the civil rights movement would gather the momentum that it did in the next ten to fifteen years. But the strength of it at that time was so far removed from what it had been that the Negroes were going to make it very definite that they were out for the federal courts and the ballot. And of course, with what I told you yesterday, I didn't see any need of keeping people from having tuberculosis and then letting them suffer other things that might be worse even than slavery. So then they just decided. And I don't know how that was done, except that I do know that my services were no longer acceptable. I had gone into the program in 1932 with the state being divided into two what they called organized and unorganized sections. I had at that time, as I remember, about thirteen counties that were in the very poorly developed sections of the state, and they were called

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unorganized. And I had charge of the beginning of the Christmas Seal program in that area, which when I went into it they gave me a report that was around eighteen hundred dollars for the sale in that area (meaning seal sales among Negroes in 1932, as I remember. Those records are at my house.) Then in 1942 when I left I had worked until I had carried the income from the Negro Seal sale to $42,000, see. And then I had organized, helped to organize, clinics. I'd worked with the Health Department. Another difference we had was, as I told you she had her qualms about venereal diseases: the old-time idea that the way you get venereal disease is a sin. She always connected it with illicit sexual activity. And she did not want me to talk about venereal diseases at all in my program; and I aimed my program toward maternal and infant mortality, and venereal diseases—and tuberculosis—three of the four things. But anyway, she did not want me to enter into any work in connection with venereal diseases—that is, in my public health education program. So I refused to conform there, because I knew that the venereal diseases were a problem. And since at that time we didn't have anything but 606 (and it was a long-time treatment) we had to work even harder in preventive programs than you have to today when you have a kind of quick cure, you know. So that was another one of the kind of endemic frictions, her feeling about anybody who had venereal disease not worth bothering with—they'd been sinning, you know.

So anyway, at the time that I left there was a woman by the name of Mrs. Parler. She has a PhD. Well, I guess she's retired from State College now, but her husband was principal of one of the schools in Orangeburg and she was teaching, as I remember, at State College or in one of the city schools. But it was suggested that she be my successor. And the people,

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although they had nothing against her, they didn't want to accept her. They didn't know her; I'd been working with them for ten years. I knew when some of their children were born and been to their weddings and been involved with them, and handed little cookies or cake or something or other once a year. And a number of them I'd been in Benedict College with; a number of them knew that I was working in efforts that would help their children in generations to come. And the fact is I was tied very closely in with them. But it was something I didn't try to do; it just happened. And then I'm a person that works easily with people. I love people and I sympathize. And so I couldn't help because she said that I based my program on, that it was a popularity program. I didn't make any effort to be popular. I just went on and did my work. However, when Mrs. Parler came on the job she found some letters in the file. They handed her the files to go through. And she ran across some letters concerning the actions taken leading up to my departure. And I don't remember whether Mrs. Parler told me or her husband told me, but one of them told me—he is now dead. But I was told that when he saw these letters he said, "You cannot work there anymore if that's the way they did her, as good a job as she was doing. You take your things and come home." And that was the end of that. They never had another director of Negro program after that. They tried, but they could never get the Negro populace to accept a person in that position. So that's the milk in the coconut.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were the funds that you raised used in the black community? And was that the limit of the funds that were used there, or did they divide equitably over all?

MODJESKA SIMKINS:

They were put into the general fund. We had really a

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better health education program than there was in the white schools, because nobody had the training that I had. They had sent me away for training, as I told you yesterday, and I had had so many years of teaching experience. And then