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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
K-0652, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
This interview is a chronicle of a lifetime of hard work. Samuel and Leonia Farrar both grew up in poverty in rural Chatham County, NC, although Samuel's family was poorer than Leonia's. Samuel tried to follow his father into the sharecropping business, but became so frustrated with his treatment by his white landlord he left his farm and tried to make his way in Durham, marrying Leonia in 1949 and taking her with him. By 1951, homesick and overworked, Samuel and Leonia returned to farm life. But racism drove the couple from their rented farmland, and in 1957 Farrar built the Cary home where the interview took place in 2003. The Farrars reflect upon their lives in this interview, recalling decades of manual labor, saving money, raising a family, and enduring racial discrimination from landlords, coworkers, and others. Their hard work, always a source of pride, eventually offered other rewards as well: Samuel became a minister, eventually supervising twenty-three churches, and after years of work as a beautician, Leonia found her calling in charitable work.
Samuel and Leonia Farrar remember a lifetime of hard work in rural and urban North Carolina.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is Peggy Van Scoyoc. Today is Wednesday, May 28, 2003. I am in the home of Reverend and Mrs. Farrar in Cary, S.J. Farrar, and we're here today to talk about their lives in Cary and what they've experienced. So maybe this afternoon we can start out talking about your family, your parents and grandparents and who was the first to arrive in Cary, if you know that. Or how far back you go in Cary.
We was the first of the Farrar family, this Farrar. There is another Ferrell family here that people sometimes try to put us together but we are a different sector. Our names are spelled differently and we came from the Chatham County area, Chatham and Wake County line area right off a tobacco farm. Tobacco, sweet potatoes, corn - all of that hard stuff - right out of the ground. Our parents never had anything, no education. My father was an old local preacher, was not allowed to do anything but sing and hold prayer services. Couldn't even spell his name, couldn't write his name. So that's our background, very, very poor, very poor.
So your father was a preacher as well? And did he have his own church or…?
No, he was just a local preacher. We are members of the African Methodist
Episcopal Zion Church and we have different status of preachers. When we
start off with local preachers, and that means they are very limited in
knowledge and limited in what they are allowed to do publically.
That's why he was never permitted to do anything because of
his… Our church requires that the minister would have at
least two years of college before he would be appointed to a church.
Back there then it did not ever happen. Now it does. Just a few of them
broke through because they were so talented otherwise. Their talents are
all recognized. That's our background. I've seen
my mother walk five miles, I've seen her beat the dogs to the
hen nests to get the eggs. Then she would put them together until she
got a dozen and walk five miles to sell
I make this statement. Very few people have been as poor as we to
survive, and we didn't ever perish. We were hungry but we
didn't perish.
Was your father paid to be a minister?
No.
No, not at all. So did he also farm?
Yes, he was a farmer, a sharecropper. That's what 99% of us blacks in that area farmed, but we were share farmers. You kept half of what was left, not half of what was made. You get half of what was left. Sometimes we had nothing to sell to figure out what was left. You just had to take the landowner's word for what was left and be thankful to get it, to have that.
So you were also a sharecropper in the beginning? How did that work? Were you given your own plot of land to raise everything that you could on that land and then you split…
You wasn't given the land, you was allowed to work the land.
And we moved from farm to farm. That's my family. My wife
came from a big family and large families, she's a
We didn't have quite as hard a time as you all did.
Because her father, my father died when I was nine years old. My mother was left out there with that. Her father, he just died what, fifteen, twenty years ago. He was a hard worker. She doesn't know what it is to eat the last biscuit because he was there to provide for her. That was different. What made the difference in the family lives was the number of children that they had. The larger family of children you'd have a larger farm to work with. A small family of children had a small farm. Just say for instance, I don't remember us ever having more than five acres of tobacco, and then corn and sweet potatoes. We couldn't sell the sweet potatoes, we'd eat them and of course, we had to have them to eat, you know. Corn, we didn't sell any corn until we was getting ready to leave the farm and then I had to be tough-mouthed. I guess, and they say it now, I'm one of those that broke out. And I did, I broke out. I just would not allow any more.
One year, we had a right nice crop. When I say crop, our tobacco turned out to be nice. The man tried to take it away from me. I would have been dead because they would have electrocuted me or hung me or something of that sort back there in those days if she would have let me do what I wanted to do. So after that I broke out of it. I couldn't take it. I said, I'm not going to work my wife, and we had three children at that time, work them to death and then give somebody else everything we made. I said I'm just not going to do it. That was my turning point. And I have a sermon that is entitled, "Christmas, the turning point." I will never forget that.
I bet not, oh my, but what courage that took for you.
It took a lot of courage and a lot of harassment. I had to leave the farm because I was considered a troublemaker. I wouldn't put up with everything.
Good for you.
Well, I don't know. I made it. With her help I made it.
So how did you do it? How did you break out?
Well, the way he broke out that when we sold the last crop of tobacco and they carried it to the market to sell and the farm that we stayed on, the landlord, he wanted all of the money. And he determined he wasn't going to let him take all of the money. So they went and got a lawyer and they went to court. And the lawyer found…
The judge, justice of the peace…
They found that he was right, he deserved his share of money. And they made this man pay the cost of the court and gave him his money, what he supposed to have had. And the judge told him that, if I was you, he said I would move from this farm. And that's how we made it down here. He told me, he said, "Honey, I'm going to find you a place to build you a house." At that time I said, "You can't build no house. How can you build a house?" He said, "I'm going to put you in a house, Honey." I said, "Okay, but I ain't going to stay in it because the bricks might fall down on me," like that. He said, "I'm going to put you in a house. I'm leaving this farm."
We were living in a pack house where they packed tobacco over here and we lived on this first floor. That's when Carolyn was born. Carolyn was born two years before we was in the pack house. No, she was born the year that we moved into that house, wasn't she?
Yes, but I was determined that I was going to… when I was on the farm I determined that I was going to… with my father, because my Daddy had nineteen children. And I'm the seventh child, so I determined that I was going to better myself after I married this man here. I asked Daddy, can you send me to school? And Daddy said no, I cannot send you children to school because there are too many of you. I said, okay I'm going to get married.
That was the thing for farming children, for girls to do back then was to get married. Because the father needed to thin the crowd out, thin it down so.
I said Daddy I'm goint to get married but to a good man. Daddy said, alright. So I got married to Farrar and I said, I want to be a good wife and I want to have some children.
So I married him and we went to South Carolina to get married. We came back and I told him, I want to make you a good wife and I want children. I want to stay home and be a good mother for these children, a good mother and a good wife. After I get these children in school I am going to better myself. I love to fix to hair, 'cause that's all we did on the farm, fix hair, press hair in the home and all of that. So after I got my last child in school I wanted to be really a beautician so I said, I'm going to put Gwen, she's my baby, in daycare and I'm going to stick with her until I know she's well put. And I'm going to school, to beauty school.
That was way after, Honey. That was many, many trials and tribulations from the time that we got started up until the time you were thinking of going to school.
How many children do you have total?
I'm the mother of eight.
Eight. So Gwen is the eighth child.
Gwen is forty-one.
You talk about a struggle to get them through school. Carolyn was in college, she was in beauty college and I'm the only one working, on one salary. Then at that time we had one or two in high school. James was in high school and Ernest was in high school at that time.
We was all working, Farrar.
You were doing day work in someone else's farm in the summertime. We've had some difficult times.
Now when you left the farm, you had no job, you had no home, you had nothing. What did you do?
Yes, the first attempt to leave the farm was, we moved out of the tobacco pack house. We went to Durham and stayed two years. I went to work at Duke Hospital. I worked there for two and a half years just to get off the farm.
What did you do there?
I worked in the dietetic department. I started off there busing tables
for the nurses and doctors in the dining room and I worked myself up
from that into the storage room. From the storage room, when I left
there two and a half years later I was Supervisor of the storage room.
There had never been a black man held that position before. My wife was
home and I was making $22.50 every two weeks. And she had to
make do with that. She's torn up furniture, we bought second
hand furniture out of Apex and she'd turn out the drawers and
try to keep the kids going. It's been a journey. One thing I
appreciate her so, she didn't ever give up. She stayed and
looked after the children and raised them. After we got a little on foot
she still stayed with the children and I'm on the road trying
to make a living. I used to work two and three jobs. Come home, get a
cup of coffee, shut my eyes for… lay down, then go right back
to another job. Carolyn was in school. What I do know, the Lord did it
for us. I look back now, I had nothing to worry about.
She'd help me clean up a building, that's after we got here and started doing some things. Things were looking better and getting better for us. If you persevere things will get better. It will. I'm a personal witness to that. You can't give up. Doesn't matter how dim it looks or how hard it gets.
A mother when you have seven or eight children, mother is around that child mostly all the time, a mother. That mother can see something in that child as they grow. I told him, I said now we have had a hard time. I mean a hard time coming along on the farm. Our children's not going to come up the way we came up. I could see something in every one of these children, what they were cut out to be. I kept telling Farrar, and he said well, Honey, it takes money. I said, you working, so we got to get these children in school. That's how Carolyn… cause I could see Carolyn. She never liked to work on the farm, she worked a little bit. But I could see something in that child that I guess he couldn't see that. I said that girl's going to be a teacher one day. We kept sending those children on to school and sure enough, that girl, she accomplished her goals.
And she did it without a lot of fanfare. She never had any scholarship, never had any money given to us, never had any welfare. We never accepted any kind of social benefits, never. I wouldn't accept it. I wouldn't even apply for it.
It takes a family to stick together. If you pull together, if you love one another you can make it. It's hard but you can make it. Because I worked in homes, these white homes, cleaning the house and did all of that. What little bit of money I made I give it to him, not much but whatever they gave me I accepted with some clothes. They gave us clothes, that's how they paid us, with clothes. So I gave that money I brought home to him and he put it together. We tried to make things wise. You can do it, you can make it. It's hard but you can make it. We did the most of our children like that. And most of them are educated.
I had so much pride until I came home. While we were living in Durham
I'd never been away from my mother. She was getting old. I
had never been away from her when we were on the farm, from one farm to
the other farm and it was always in the same community. I got homesick
and I was working at the hospital. One day I got so homesick I told my
wife, I had a
Not even a ride?
Not even a ride. I'd walk. I'd walk from East Durham to Duke Hospital in the dead part of the winter. Cold. Get on that railroad track and walk four and a half miles from my house to Duke Hospital I'd walk. Didn't have a dime to get a bus token. Bus tokens at that time were ten cents. I'd walk there and back. If I would get there I had some friends that would work there and they would get me back. But I look back now and I say, thank God we made it. With all of the handicaps, and really we were handicapped, I had no schooling. My wife had no schooling. All of our schooling has come later. I worked day and night and I took my seminary work on Saturday mornings when I should have been home resting. Instead sitting in a classroom, sitting about half asleep. Professor would have to wake me up every once in awhile, but dead tired.
We'd been to school but we had to walk ten miles to catch the bus.
That was elementary school.
Well, we still went to school.
Yes, but not the kind of schooling that we talk about now.
We had to get that elementary training first before we could get to high school for training.
So you did go to elementary school?
Oh yes, we went to school, Apex, we walked ten miles. In fact he went to Clark's School, Bell's School.
I went to a one-room school, that was on the Wake County and Chatham County line in a little place called Farrington. My first year in school, that's where I was in school at, one-room school, everybody in one room. And the teacher had to teach all of us. We was farm children, hard head boys. We'd get out there in the woods and pick up sticks and whatever kind of wood we could get. That was the fuel that she kept us warm with in that classroom, on a big potbellied heater sitting out in the middle of the floor. We boys would keep that heater going.
Did you have books?
When the books got to us they were probably the third or fourth trip around. They'd come from the white schools. The backs would be of them, pages out, all torn up. The teacher had to be brighter to know what we were missing. Bell's school, that was the name of it. It was a one-room school, one classroom.
Where did you go to elementary school?
I went to Apex school. We walked ten miles, five miles one way, five miles back.
Did you not go to Clark School? You didn't ever get there?
I'm sure it is, it's just hard to believe. It was probably much worse than what you're painting it.
We'd be walking, the bus would drive past us and white children on the bus would spit out the window at us, on us and throwing trash on us, paper and all that stuff.
They did him like that. They didn't do me like that. I don't know anything about all of that. He went to one school and I went to another.
And I'm a year older than she. That makes a difference, and the community that she was living in made a difference. And she was on a big farm. Her father always had a big farm and that made them… You talk about classes, that made them a class above us.
Depending on the size of the farm that you were working?
That's right. My mother and father was considered poor and ignorant. Her father was not that poor because he could man more acres of land in order to attend.
Now when your father died, that just left your mother with all of you, and she continued to work on the farm. All of you continued to work on the farm?
Yes, under all kind of situations.
Did you all get your own plot of, were you allowed to work your own plot of land or did you, you were field hands wherever you were needed?
We were just field hands.
Didn't you rent from year to year?
Yes. And my mother, she was fair complexioned and nice looking, beautiful
lady. The man owners would always want special favors from her.
That's the best way to put it. That's the way you
can tell it to everybody. I guess the more education, you'd
put it using that kind of grammar. She wouldn't go for it.
She made them keep their hands to themselves and she had to
But you all wasn't allowed to learn anything back there in those days.
No, nothing but what you could pick up. And the more talented that you was was the more you was allowed to do, if you could do it effectively. But never paid for it.
So if you knew something about machinery, they'd have you work on machinery but didn't pay you more for that?
No Ma'am. Didn't make any difference as far as
payment was concerned. You would just… we put it in this
manner. Working on the machinery, you were in the shade. You would put
the tractor or whatever under a barn, under a shelf or under a big tree
somewhere and then work
I'm glad I didn't come along back there. I didn't have that hard a time.
She was never subjected to that kind of life. Her father really sheltered them from that. But her older brothers, they understand all that because they was hired out too.
So after you both got through elementary school, were you able to go on to high school, and where did you go?
Apex High School then. That was Apex Consolidated School. No, the first name was Apex Colored School, and then the second name was Apex Consolidated School, which means they consolidated Friendship School, Clark School and New Hill School. That's when they put all of the children in Apex and called it Apex Consolidated School and closed all of those smaller schools. Put us walking along, just riding the bus. She would get on the bus, I guess, 6:00 in the morning, 6:30?
No, we got home at 4 o'clock.
And you'd ride the bus two or three hours to get to school.
Oh, five, six, we had to be there about 7 o'clock and we had to be on the school campus by 9 o'clock back there then.
Ride the bus all that time, then get home and then work from that until, from then until, by lantern light.
You'd work by lantern light, out in the fields by lantern light?
Yes Ma'am. That's how we attended tobacco barns, no
such thing as electricity. She's got one of those lanterns
here now. I don't see why the snakes didn't get us
and kill us, but they didn't. I guess snakes thought we were
part of them. None of us ever got snake-bitten and
Really when we moved off the farm and moved here, that's when really we started climbing, really, when we got to Cary.
Things started getting better.
So when you left, so you worked in Durham for two and a half years at the hospital, then…, back to the farm?
Yes, back to the country, back to the farm and stayed there until…
We left the farm in 1949 and went to Durham, after they had that big mess taking the money and all that. We left there in 1949 and he went to work '49, '50, '51. Last of '51 we moved back here, back to Apex and we stayed there two years. In 1957, that's when the ice broke. He came here and started digging the foundation.
But I started work at Southern Building Supplies in 1955, driving the truck.
And in '57 we moved here, because he kept saying,
"I'm going to build you a house." And that
house that he built burnt down in '85. Then we built back on
the same foundation. He
I said it was enough, I don't know the Lord said
In 1985 the house caught on fire and burned down. We have a cabinet shop back here.
I started work in Raleigh off the farm working at Southern Building
Supply as a truck driver. I went from that as a truck driver as a
cabinet installer/helper. The owner, I don't know why, but
the owner and the manager just took a liking to me and they would let me
do things that whites weren't supposed to do at that time.
The boss-man, we was on a job one day and the boy that I was helping, he
was the front man because he built the cabinets and all I was was a
helper for him. I had gotten to the point where I knew as much about
installation as he did and would work harder at it. We was in there
putting in a big home of cabinets and I was in there at work. He was in
there sitting in the den there with the land owner drinking coffee and
the boss man drove up outside, walked in the kitchen. I was in there
working and this boy was sitting in there with the homeowner drinking
coffee and not doing any work. He came in, and that's the way
he was, he just walked in and made a circle around in the kitchen. He
asked me, he said, "Where's Tommy?" I said,
"He's next door." He pushed the door open,
peeked in and didn't say anything, came on back. When we got
back to the office he called both of us in his office. He said,
"Tommy, did SJ tell you that I was on the job over there
today?" That boy looked right straight at me. I said,
"No, I didn't tell him. "He said,
"Well, I was over there and you was in there drinking coffee,
not at work." The boss man was strict about work. He
didn't care whether you were black or white, he wanted you to
work. So that day he said, "From this day
on"… and the boy was prejudiced too. He said,
"From this day on I'm putting SJ on the table beside
of you. I want you to teach him everything you know about
this." The next day or two, I didn't have any tools
or
This was a customer?
That was a customer. Two years later that same customer wouldn't let anybody do his work but me. If I called a name, one of his sons lives in Cary now. No, I think he died a few years ago, Honey. You might know him so I won't call his name. Oh, we've had some ups and downs, let me tell you.
So when you built the first house here, how did you get the land?
We bought this land, I said to my wife, I just kept telling her I was going to build her a house. She just couldn't conceive the idea. Her fear was, she had seen tobacco barns and things growing up out on the farm, she'd seen them fall down. She had seen me build hog pens and hogs would get out because I couldn't build them right. When I was fourteen years old I built an icebox. I've always had that knack.
That instinct in him. Because when you was out on the farm to Miss Maggie, she said that you built…
Rabbit boxes when you were young?
I think when I was fourteen years old I built an ice chest. I took scrap lumber and built an ice chest and put sawdust around the edges and built a box in there. The iceman would run out in the country, what, once a week? Run on Friday, we'd buy blocks of ice and if you had a good icebox you could keep it two or three days and that's how you would have ice. Otherwise, if you had any, we had no refrigerators here. Otherwise our refrigerator, if we had milk we put it in a bottle and put a string or a rope on it, let it down in the well, stay cool.
Just tell her how you got this place, how you got the land down here in 1957.
There was an acre of land adjoining the land that we was farming on. I
went to the landowner and asked him to sell me that acre of land. He
said, no way I'm going to sell you that land. I determined.
It started that, he came to my house one day and I was fishing. He asked
my wife where I was. She told him I was fishing. I had the crop,
everything up to date and this time to take a break and go fishing.
That's what farmers did at that time. Our form of recreation,
just go fishing, set on the creek. He told her that I should be there on
that farm doing something, that he'd come over there. So she
told me when I got in. He ran a country store. Made me mad, I went over
to the store and I walked in. I called the name, seen him there was
another white man. I
It wasn't his porch because we had rented, we rented the house from year to year. That was the law then. That was ours. He had no right to come over there and make demands.
But he said we didn't. He had that attitude. And from that
moment, I said to myself, a man will never again stand in my front yard,
on my front door and tell me to be home. That really motivated and
inspired me to get something of my own. And that same man, I asked him
to sell me that acre of land and he said no.
The first lot that you looked at you wanted to buy that and I told you
no. That was over there on High House Road. It was real muddy and it was
ugly then, really muddy. I said no, let's keep on looking. So
we came here, turned down in here and we kept on driving real slow. This
house then, it was beautiful, it just caught my eye, this spot here. It
had great big oak trees, beautiful trees. I said let's get
that lot right there. I said let my sister get that lot over there.
Farrar
We was offered, my brother Leroy lives right next door there. My brother Paul lived three doors down from him in the other corner lot there. We was offered, Dynasty Road wasn't there. We was offered to buy this three and a half acres of land that was here for $100 an acre. And we didn't have the money to do that.
That was a lot of money in 1957.
So we had to settle for getting an acre and a half, that's what we got.
I think it was $120 an acre.
Well, we paid, for this acre and a half we have here, acre and three-quarters we have here we paid $225 for it. And I had to borrow $10 to pay down on it from my boss. When I was working in Raleigh at Southern Builders. Mr. Pat Garner was the owner. Rock Cummings was the manager, Pat Garner was the owner. They had always like me somehow. I went in and asked Mr. Garner, I said, "Mr. Garner, I want to buy an acre of land." "Why you want to do it, SJ?" I said, "I want to build me a house on it." "What do you need?" I said, "I need $10 to pay down on the lot." He reached his hand in his pocket, pulled me out $10. From then on, I dug the foundation of that first house on Christmas eve with a pick and shovel and all of these rocks.
It was a four room, it wasn't anything like this but it was a four room house then. He dug that four-room foundation then. He kept building on it.
It was 28 X 36.
Were you able to get discounts on supplies and materials from your job to build the house with? I bet that helped a lot.
Yes Ma'am. Mr. Pat said to me, "You can get anything you want and pay me when you can." That was the Lord working. He was a nice man. Supposed to have been just as Rebbish as they come but he was always good to us, always. And Mr. Rock Cummings was a hard driver, that's why they called him the Rock, he was a Rock, but he was always nice to us. Just as nice as he could be. He came here before his wife died. His wife died here, what, three years ago and they called us when she passed. He had been here a couple of times before that, before she passed when she was so sick and all. He sat out there in our den.
He was a nice man, Mr. Cummings, because he came here. My son Ernest, when they got out of high school, Berry O'Kelley, they started working there. He got a job down there with him. Somehow or another he got his finger cut, both his fingers, he got two fingers cut off on those machines. Because he was just learning how to work them, Ernest, just coming out of high school. He got two fingers cut off. Mr. Cummings, the boss man, he came here to this house every day and sit on the bed beside Ernest and talked to that child for, he was constantly coming. He was very concerned and he did, he made visits just like doctors. He did. He was a good man.
And when his wife died he called us. He had the undertaker at the funeral home call us and let us know that his wife passed and we all went to his wife's funeral. We were the only blacks there and it didn't matter, we were treated just like family.
I want you to know we owned all that, where those homes is down there, what is the name of that place now? We owned all of that land.
Clear down the hill here, behind your house? So you had 1¾ acres total here. This is a big lot now.
Yes, but we sold that off, well we didn't really sell it, we exchanged it with…
Blackhawk, the name of the company was Blackhawk and they wanted to exchange with us for that back there. And they gave us so much footage per acre.
We exchanged land for land so that's how we got that other lot over there where the daughter lives.
So one of your daughters lives on that land? Oh, that's nice.
Yes, and we built that house for her.
And then your brother moved in on the other side of you?
He moved in, I guess we had been here five years when he moved in. Now we bought the lands together, the three brothers.
You're the third house from the corner from Dynasty, right? So Farrar family members own all three of these houses, or four houses in a row?
Yes, and the one in the corner, that's my brother Paul.
Okay, so it's Paul and Leroy and you, and then your daughter?
Yes, and then Leroy has one son.
There's five of us, it's my cousin and son-in-law
too. It was four brothers, the one across Dynasty on the corner, that
little house, that's my cousin and my sister-in-law.
That's his brother. All of them is brothers in that little
house right there. All of this was one,
So you've always been neighbors to the Evans' because they owned the land first and they lived across the street pretty much?
We purchased this property from the Evans, from Tilton Evans. It was two of the Evans brothers, Clyde and Tilton. Clyde owned so much of the land and Tilton owned the other part from here down and we purchased ours from the brother Tilton Evans. Quite a story.
So once you got some training in cabinetmaking at Southern Builders, did you stay there your whole career?
No, I went into business for myself. We was up town there right at, we bought that property there where the garage is, Grocery Boy Jr. is in the intersection. We built and developed that property there right across from the Grocery Boy Jr. there. I built that building there.
At Harrison and Chapel Hill?
No, Old Apex Road goes off to the left and High Hill starts there and goes down to the right. That gold building sitting there on the right.
I think the Helping Hand [Mission] is right there. Biscuit Time, yes.
The third place down from Biscuitville,
That used to be Farrar's cabinet shop, but it got so expensive and the taxes, they had to sell it because of the type of business.
The tax base in Cary is high and it was beyond our profit line. So I sold that building and we moved out to a less populous place. Then I retired and turned it over to the boys.
So your sons are still in it?
Well, they're in and out, this is a hard economy. Of course now I suffered through. In 1972, if you remember, and somewhat… I don't think we ever made it to be what we call a full-fledged degradation of business, but that's what it added up to be. But I suffered through it, we suffered through it, we made it by being careful and really, just like when I came up in the church, the Lord had given me special talents and I built it from those.
Now when did you get involved in the ministry?
I started in the ministry in 1957, same year we moved to Cary.
And you started taking seminary classes on Saturday mornings trying to stay awake?
Yes Ma'am, working day and night, sitting in class on a Saturday when I should have been somewhere asleep. But I couldn't be. But we made it. At least God made it for us. All these kids in school. Since we sent Gwen to college.
So Gwen also, is she in college now or she's been through college?
She's graduated from Livingstone College and that's our school, that's the AME Zion church school, fully accredited.
So you got them all raised and grown and educated and out on their own.
Supposedly out on their own. Out most of the time.
So you did make it to beauty school, about the time you moved out here as well?
Yes, after I got Gwen in the daycare. Well, she was in the first year of school. After I got her there I decided, because I wanted to stay home, like I said, to be a good mother. To train them, give them all the basics. Then when I talked with him and asked him, he sent me to school, paid for my schooling. He scared me to death. He said, I'll send you to school, me and the boys because they were building cabinets at that time. We'll send you to school but you better not flunk. If you flunk, I'll kill you, and that scared me to death.
She didn't believe that.
Yes I did believe it too because it just scared me to death. And I carried them books up and down the roads going to church, trying to study, back and forth. And came out to be the valedictorian of the class when I graduated.
At that time I had been promoted to the height of superintendent and I was appointed superintendent of 23 churches down the district and we commuted all the time. That's why she's talking about, she'd sit up there and read studying while I would drive. It was 126 miles to my further point and I went there three and four and five times a week, and worked ten and twelve hours a day.
But if you keep God in front of you, he'll open doors for you.
Because I didn't have no idea I would be as far as I am today
wasn't for him. We had the Board of Education they called me,
they said they didn't want me in the school system. I wanted
to be a
You didn't need to be in the classroom.
Do you remember when that was?
It was 1962, yes Ma'am. I went to Garner, they said we want to
put you in the field. That was in 1962. I went to Garner and they sent
me to the elementary school. They said, we are going to fix you an
office and we want to give you a thick book. I was still scared to
death, I didn't know what they was talking about. They said,
we're going to give you a thick book, we're going
to send you to school for about two or three months and we are going to
give you this book. You've got to take this book and go down
that list like you got there, go down that list and
It's East Cary now.
Yes. I took sick. I said, Lord I can't do that. And the Lord was saying, yes you can. So the teachers all went there and they called me there, the teachers said, you come in here. You got something in you that we got to get out of you. I was scared to death, because I was scared I would split verbs and all of that, all those teachers. And they said, Ms. Farrar, we are going to help you. Forget about the verbs and all of that, we are here to help you. And that was the Lord, tell you the truth, training me for the work that I'm doing now. I'm doing missionary work now and I've been doing this type of work now, behind him, for… We stayed on the list for twenty-three and a half years, and they made me the District President then. I stayed there for twenty-three years working with him. And I continue to keep working. Then they called me and I was the Chaplain for the school up here, West Cary School. It was West Cary Elementary School then. I think its Cary something or other now. I was a PTA Chaplain for two years up there. And I've been going ever since.
West Cary Middle School.
I guess the Lord knew what he wanted me to do to support him. Because he is the preacher, I'm just the missionary.
She preaches to me.
I have a job to do. I ain't no preacher but I know my work. I am a missionary.
So what do you do in your missionary work?
Everything you can call.
She's the Conference President of Missionary Outreach. We have 327 churches and she's Chairman.
I'm the Conference Director over the Missionary department. I go out into the field to find the homeless, the…
families who need food. She has a food bank, one of those buildings out there.
Yes, that's my food bank right there. I carried this before the church members and I told them that God wanted me to do world work in the field, homeless folks out there.
She finds food for people who can't, don't have the resources to buy their own food.
Clothing, if I can get clothing. That's my work. I love it.
She collects money. She's got some checks today. Then she distributes it.
I collects money from the churches every year. Christmas, Thanksgiving, any time I am giving out food. They call me whenever I can get the clothing. But I take money and send it to famine, flood, fire, that's my work. Anybody that's flooded out, I send them a contribution. I have even helped the Red Cross, yes. I do all of that type of work. I just love to work.
Did you ever get to a beauty shop? Did you ever…
Yes, and graduated and got my degree. Yes, I got my B.A. degree and formed my beauty shop. I got that.
Did you work in a beauty shop?
My beauty shop was right there, in my home. My husband built that beauty
shop for me and I worked there for thirty-two years. Then I retired from
that because I got sick of hair.
I know when we came to Cary here I thought you had to be dressed nice and
all of that. My neighbor down here sent me up here and I knew I looked
good, I knew I did, because I had my beautiful black dress. I walked in
there, my very first time walking.
Was this right after you moved to Cary?
Yes, right after we moved here. I came right back and got my friend, neighbor.
They're all fair skinned, you could hardly tell her from you.
That's right, right down here, Arlene. She gave me the money,
bring her some hot dogs back. I said, "Arlene, they said they
didn't serve black people." Arlene says,
"Say what?" She is real light skinned like you, got
that pretty hair. I said, "They said they didn't
serve black people." She said, "I'm black
myself. Come on here, girl." She caught me by my hand and she
carried me back up there and she said, "I am disgusted by you
all." They knew Arlene. They said, "What is it, Mrs.
Moore?" Arlene said, "This is my friend and my
neighbor. We went to school together in Apex. They moved here to Cary. I
am disappointed, I've been coming in this store ever since
I've been here in Cary. I am a black woman. My skin
doesn't matter. I'm light like you, but I am a
black woman." I reckon that shocked them because they thought
she was a white
So they never refused you again?
No, they apologized. They said that we are sorry that this happened. They sure did. From that it has been going up, up. And I'm glad I lived to see this to come, better and better. It's not there yet, no, it's not there yet. But it's better. Because some of them, I wouldn't want to see them around myself. It's on both sides, but it's nothing like it used to be. No, no, nothing. So it's a lot better. It used to be that a black man could not look at a white woman. To make dead, everything been knocked off. But we're getting away from that so it's better.
Does sharecropping even still exist?
No, hardly any cropping done in this part of North Carolina now.
Pretty well completely gone now?
Yes, in the area that we were raised in, I was through there one day last week, not any tobacco in that area now. The land is too expensive. Instead of growing tobacco or stuff on it, they sell the land.
So it's a completely different world for your grandchildren than it was for you?
Yes, Lord. And I wanted it that way. I wished it could have been back in our day, but that's okay, we survived and all. We learned a lot. We learned the hard way and we really appreciate it. But today, sometime I wish that the children had something about like we had to… They couldn't make it now. But I wished they had more hard work or something. Today they got everything. This is a different world, computers and everything now. I wished we had that but we got the teaching and the training and the love. We got love. Today there's no love. It's no love. It's so rare. I wish that would come back and it's gonna come.
I don't wish that hard work would come back. She always talking about the good old days. You know what I tell her? Honey, you're having the best days right now that you've ever had in your life. And she is.
Well no, I wouldn't say that. Because I think when you get that training and that love. We had love back there in those days. We had family together back there in those days. Our aunts, our grandparents, it was just a village of love. We don't have that anymore. So that's why I say those good old days, it was good. That hard work, that was good but we was treated so bad. We needed to work but we was treated as nothing. See, I hate that, because we were somebody.
Those days was not good to me.
Well, because you came up harder than we did. That's the reason, your father died and I reckon that's what makes the difference. Your father died so early and my Daddy didn't die, not before 1979. And my Daddy, he… If we was poor, I didn't know it, tell you the truth, because we never woke up hungry. We had food. Daddy kept food on the table for we nineteen young'ns. He did, he'd go sell tobacco, he goes and buys 100 pound sack of pinto beans, cabbage and we never went hungry. It was a big family. We played and fought hard together, but we loved each other.
I've known that I didn't know when she was going to get her next meal. We didn't know where we were going to get the next meal from.
This has been such a wonderful interview. This has been probably one of the best interviews I've ever done. I cannot thank both of you enough for all that you've told us about today and all that you've shared with the Town of Cary and with posterity. I so appreciate your taking the time to meet with me and get all that down on tape for us. It was just great.
Well, we're happy to share our experiences.
I so appreciate it.
We would hope that it would inspire others. There was a Durham radio station, WDNC, sent one of their newscasters down to interview us and it was on TV and radio for several times. I did that so that it would inspire other young blacks, not just say "I can't make it." I've had many of them to come and say to me, if you made it, I can too. I have young preachers I'm training, two young preachers right now, and my theory is you can have a refrigerator full of food sitting in your kitchen. You can sit in a rocking chair and starve to death unless you get up, go to that refrigerator and get that food out and prepare it or sit there and die. God not going to cut that food for you. He's got it there for you, you gotta get up and do something yourself. That's my theory. My wife don't like to hear me say this, but I don't have nothing for a lazy person to do. I make that statement and I'm supervising 23 pastors now, 26 churches and I just out of the Virgin Islands just two or three weeks ago, and that's my story. If you are lazy, you aren't doing anything. If you get up, study hard and work hard and plan you'll make it. But if you sit and wait for somebody else to do it for you, you're going to be sitting there a long time.
Well, you took your time today for us and I just really appreciate that very, very much. It was super.
It was my pleasure, I was glad to.
END OF INTERVIEW