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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview G-0056-2, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
This is the second interview in a series of two with Modjeska Simkins, an African American activist from South Carolina. In the first interview (G-0056-1), Simkins briefly described her family background, her childhood, and spoke about her work with the South Carolina Commission on Interracial Cooperation, primarily during the 1920s and 1930s. Here, she elaborates on her family background and upbringing before describing in great detail her work with the NAACP and the Richland County Citizens Committee. Simkins begins by describing her childhood, spent primarily in Columbia, South Carolina, although there were times when her father's reputation as an accomplished bricklayer led them to other areas in the South, including Huntsville, Alabama. Simkins explains that her family was prosperous, and she emphasizes that her parents imbued her with a sense of responsibility to help those less advantaged. Simkins attended Benedict College for her primary through post-secondary education. Following her graduation with a bachelor's degree in 1921, Simkins taught at Benedict for a year before accepting a position teaching at Booker Washington High School in Columbia. She taught at Booker until 1929. Over the course of the 1920s, Simkins became more involved in social causes, primarily via her membership in the South Carolina Commission on Interracial Cooperation and the NAACP. She continued this work into the 1930s, during which time she was employed by the South Carolina Tuberculosis Association. Until 1942, Simkins worked for the TB Association, helping to educate people about health-related issues. Increasingly, however, Simkins lamented not being able to focus more explicitly on what she saw as more pressing issues for African Americans. In 1942, she took a position with the NAACP and served as the state secretary until 1956. Simkins describes in detail her role in the NAACP's shift towards direct legal action in taking on school segregation. In addition, she describes how she helped to organize a boycott in Orangeburg County around 1956 following the Brown decision and a white backlash against it in that community. Despite her support for the NAACP's legal work, however, Simkins was becoming alienated from the NAACP by the mid-1950s. She left the NAACP to become the public relations director for the Richland County Citizens Committee. At the time of the interview, Simkins was still serving in this capacity. She spends the final portion of the interview describing her work with the Richland County Citizens Committee, focusing on their involvement in state politics, their role in efforts to desegregate the Palmetto State Hospital in 1965, and with the integration of Columbia public schools. Throughout the interview, Simkins offers telling anecdotes about the nature of racial tensions and its consequences, the inner workings of civil rights organizations like the NAACP and the Richland County Citizens Committee, and relationships between leaders of the movement and their related organizations.
African American civil rights activist Modjeska Simkins describes her upbringing in a prosperous family during the early twentieth century. She charts her work with the Tuberculosis Association, the NAACP, and the Richland County Citizens' Committee. Throughout the interview, Simkins offers telling anecdotes about racial tensions in South Carolina, the inner workings of civil rights organizations, and relationships between leaders of the movement.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
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?
Yes, she taught before I was born.
What was her name, first of all?
Rachel Hull.
Hull?
H-u-l-l, Hull: Rachel Evelyn Hull.
And where was she educated?
Here in Columbia.
What school?
Howard High School. See, at that time you could finish high school anywhere in the state and go in as a teacher.
And where had she been teaching before she married your father?
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.
Where did she grow up?
My mother was born and reared in Columbia.
Right in Columbia?
Her homestead was about, oh, five blocks from here.
What did her parents do?
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.
Hmm. What was your grandmother's name, your mother's mother's name?
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
I think you did.
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
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?
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.
I'm wondering if she saw any difference between her master and her
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.
Do you remember any other stories that your mother told about her mother?
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.
Do you know how he found her?
No, I don't.
Do you know the name of the people who owned him?
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.
Did he remember anything about his father?
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.
Did your father have brothers and sisters?1
My father?
Yes.
My father had a brother by the name of Frank, and a sister by the name of
Bessie.
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
What kind of things did your mother read to you?
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
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
Are there any differences between your mother and your father? How did they get along with each other?
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
Was she also the disciplinarian of the children?
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.
Were your parents very strict with you?
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.
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?
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
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.
Did you just raise food for your own use, or did you raise cotton or anything else?
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
You had cows?
Oh yes, we had cows and pigs and chickens and turkeys.
How did you run the farm when your mother started back teaching?
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.
Were you closer to your mother or your father?
I don't see any difference.
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?
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
Were you probably much better off than most of your neighbors and the people you went to church with?
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.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
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.
Where is Benedict?
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.
How did you get into school from the country?
What school?
Benedict.
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.
What was Benedict like as a school? What were the teachers or the quality of education like?
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.
Were the teachers mostly unmarried white women at Benedict? Were the teachers mostly white?
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 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
Were there any black teachers in the school?
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 Up From Slavery.
That Booker Washington just went. Man, they just came, but they were
never turned down. Never!
And you got no feeling of paternalism or racism at all from your teachers?
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.
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?
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
Did any of your teachers have any special influence on you?
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.
You graduated, then, in 1921?
Yes.
And started teaching.
Yes.
Right away?
Yes. I taught at Benedict one year; then I went into the city schools.
To Booker T. Washington?
Yes.
I see. What was that experience like in teaching? What were quality of education and the teaching conditions like?
At Booker?
Yes.
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.
Who was the principal when you were there?
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.
How did you happen to become a math teacher? That was your father's influence perhaps?
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
Did you know Wil Lou Gray?
Oh yes, I've known her for years.
What did you think of her adult literacy program and of her as a person?
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.
When did the Opportunity School open?
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.
Did you try to do anything about that at the time, or have any clashes with her at the time?
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
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.
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
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… ?
Well, all of them were old folks.
They were all old?
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.
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?
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
That must have made you grow up very fast.
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
I've never forgotten that.
Did your mother have her babies at home?
Yes.
With a midwife or with a doctor?
Yes, midwife.
With a midwife?
Yes.
Somebody that lived around there?
Yes.
Do you remember that? What did you kids do when your mother… ?
I remember it. They always sent us to a friend's home.
Did you know what was going on?
No, didn't know anything about it.
How did you learn about the birthing of babies?
I don't know, but I was grown enough to be a mother myself before I knew.
Really?
No, they kept us close to cloistered on that type of thing.
Were your brothers treated any differently than the girls?
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.
Tell me the names of your brothers and sisters and when they were born, if you remember.
Oh, I don't know when all of them were born.
You don't know when they were born?
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
What was his name?
His name was Henry Dobbins; he was named Dobbins after my grandfather and great-grandfather.
Now is he the brother that integrated the university?
No.
Didn't one of your brothers?
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.
I thought that I read that one of the first three black students in the university was a Henri Montieth.
Well, that's my sister's child.
I see, I see.
She's named Henri. They called it Henri, the French for Henry. She's really named for my brother.
I see. So she brought the suit.
My sister Rebecca brought it in the name of her daughter Henri.
Oh, Henri is a girl.
Yes.
I see, I see.
Yes.
How did you meet your husband? [Andrew Simkins]
Oh, he was here in Columbia in business, and I just ran into him, that's all
What did he do?
He was a businessman: a filling station and state liquor store, and in real estate. He did a lot of business in real estate.
He had been a wheelwright before this in Columbia?
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.
He built this house?
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.
How long did you know each other before you were married?
Hmm. Oh, I guess about six or nine months, something like
And he had six children?
Five.
He had five children?
Yes.
What was it like, suddenly finding yourself the mother of five children?
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
Was your husband a good bit older than you?
Sixteen years.
How did you happen to marry an older man?
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.
Was he involved in the kinds of civic activity?
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
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.
Did he mind your being on the road all the time and so involved in everything?
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
You had to quit teaching when you got married.
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.
What did you think about that?
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
That was in 1929, is that right?
Yes.
And then you went to work for the TB Association?
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
What was that job like?
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.
Did they get any money from the state, or was it all from…
It was private. The money came from Christmas seals.
Who ran the Tuberculosis Association?
It was run by the South Carolina Tuberculosis Association, which was a private …
Was there a board?
Yes, it had a board.
Was it mostly women or men?
Well, about equal, I guess.
And they had what, a colored division?
Yes, they had what they called a Negro program.
Were there any blacks on the board?
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.
Who was your boss?