That afternoon—. Deacon Williams was deacon of my church. Bless his heart, he's dead and gone, too. Him and I was living out there on the farm, and we was farming together. I told him about it, so we went to pick up the young lady, Sister Jean Banks. She said, "I'll carry you to my doctor." I said, "I'll be glad to. We'll try to get together and do what thus said the Lord." Listen, now. This is a miracle, another miracle, another miracle that happened. We got together and were going down the street, sitting there, laughing and talking, and all at once the Lord just began to speak to me. I began to listen to the Spirit. The Spirit let me know, "This is not for you."I didn't know what to say, what to do. She was sitting there and I was sitting there and Deacon Williams and his wife was sitting there. He said, "What's happened, Bishop?" I sat there just listening to the Spirit of God. God's just speaking with [unclear] . She said, "I don't know what's wrong with Johnny. He ain't sayed nothing to me, ain't trying to talk to me or tell me nothing. I'm just waiting here until somebody can tell me something." I said, "I'm just waiting to nobody nothing. [claps] I'm going to listen to God." Going down the road at a normal speed, [claps] almost sixty miles an hour. I said, "Deacon, look! Look at that tire going down. Somebody done lost their tire of the passenger side on the front." He said, "What in the world is that?" I said, "I don't know." We were all just looking, and all at once the car went and (started) doing like that, [makes bucking motion with his hands] and kept doing it. Then all at once it just dropped. I said, "What in the world?" The Lord said, "I done told you." Then Deacons said, "It was my tire coming by me." I knew it was something the Lord kept speaking to me, and I wasn't sure. I kept sitting there praying. Got to her doctor, and he had a whole lot of people for the same day. So when he got to us he said, "Look, you not going to match her." He came straight out and told me, "You not going to match her." I said, "What you mean, doctor?" "You not going to match her." So she went back and talked to the doctor, and soon in ten minutes he (said), "All right, y'all come in." He took my blood, took her blood, then went on back and done the tests. He said, "I'm sorry to tell you, but yours not matching hers. Your blood are supposed to match. She said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "His blood not matching yours. Y'all not a good couple. Just not. Can't do it." He kept on fumbling around and said, "Well, I'm going to go ahead and let it pass, since you so anxious." I still wasn't saying nothing; I was still hearing what the Lord says, and got to thinking, trying to figure out how I was going to get out of it. [Laughter] I went on, I went on, till we finally, finally got married. While I was at her daddy's home, waiting for her to come down the stairs and getting ready to go to Bishop McKinley, he daddy was talking to me. He said, "This ain't going to work." I kept hearing the Lord speak then. I had decided in my mind to get up and go back to the bus station and catch the bus back to Durham and forget all about it. By the time I got ready to get up and go out of the house, dressed and everything, I said, "O Lord." Spirit started, "I tell you to go to move." So we went on, and Bishop McKinley talking to his wife, talking, "This ain't gonna work. This ain't gonna work. You don't know. You haven't talked with Ms. Banks. You don't know what we know." So Mother McKinley said, "Let me talk to you, Bishop Moore. I need to talk to you and tell you something." I did not know that Ms. Banks, three or four weeks before, just had came from having a nervous breakdown. She really didn't know what she was doing or what she was getting into. She already had a child nine years old. Before she had that child, she tried to commit suicide and kill herself. She tried to jump off the top of the house. But for some reason the Lord didn't let nothing happen to her. When the child was born, one of her legs was kind of afflicted. I didn't know that. I met the child and I love the child. I love children. So we went on and went on and finally we got married.

I don't understand what he meant by that.

Well, she just got so much religion and everything, she don't believe in nothing nobody tell her. (She's) tied up with these women's and things, and just caters to these women's and everything they do, she do that? That woman told her I wasn't supposed to be her husband, I wasn't what I ought to be. She believed what that woman said. That woman separated us. She would cater to that woman, go to that woman and stay, get in the bed with her and everything, just do and carry on and do. I just couldn't understand all that. So I was staying by myself, still pastor of my church, still praying and talking to the Lord. I was asking the Lord to stay in my body, because it was flesh. He came in and blessed me. The Bible says, "Every man has his own woman, a wife, you know. So I knew I couldn't go and get married to anyone else, and I didn't try to do it. He just kept me, staying in my body. I preached and teached and talked to people, counsel folks in marriage. Yet and still, mine was broken all to pieces. [claps] He had said I had to do what God said do. He brought me out. I ain't married [unclear] nobody else since. Ain't thinking about it. Too far gone now to think about getting married. He's just blessed me.

And she called me one night—thunder and lightning, we were having a terrible storm in Durham. I was living right over there in the church. The church was over here on this side, and I lived in this side [gesturing to left and right]. I said, "What in the world is all this thunder and lightening and terrible raining?" I answer the telephone, "Hello? Who is this? Oh, how you doing, Jean?" "Don't ask me how I'm doing. Just letting you know I'm sending you some letters. I done been to court and filed a divorce against you." I said, "Whatever you send I'll sign; I'm not coming to court. I ain't signed no divorce and I ain't looking for no divorce." "Well, I done divorced you anyway. I ain't staying with you no more. Ain't having nothing else to do with you." [I said,] "If that's what you want, then that's it. I'll sign them and send them back to (Graham). And they sent me back the divorce, when she went to court. No children, no nothing. I called and I said, "You mean to tell me you didn't tell the court that you destroyed five kids from me? How you think that make me feel?" "I ain't thinking about all that. I ain't think about all that. I got to live, is what I'm going to do." She's in Burlington now. She was a preacher then. She was pastor and preacher of the Church of God. Whole lotta people. [claps] When she come to my home church to preach, I go over [to the pews]. She be there preaching. I sit there and listen and look, and my mind is just—you know.

Even now she does this?

Yeah. She said, "You go your way and I'll go my way. You see me, just call me Jean Banks. They still call her Sister Pastor Jean Moore. I said, "She not no Moore. She's a Banks. I don't know why y'all keep saying Moore." She goes, "I don't care about my name. I got divorce papers at home." But in the sight of God we're still married, but man part with divorce. I said, "O.K., I'll leave her up there. When she comes around to preach I sit there [unclear] . She say, "I see my husband, the other part of me." I look at her and say, "How in the world can she say that?" Everybody just looking at her. A whole lot of them didn't know she was my wife. So I said, "Yes, we was married. She's the one that filed for the divorce, and I signed it." When she came, she was back in her maiden name, Jean Carol Banks, and she no longer carries my name, according to law. Everybody look at me, "Well, she still your—" I said, "I know. But I still don't claim her." And I don't. [Laughter] So we'll skip that part. Thank the Lord I'm still living and going on. God going to fix that at his own due time. Bible say that the wheat and chaff grow together, and in my day I going to separate them. So I don't try to separate nothing. [claps] He'll do it. If she can live with that on her conscience, I sure can live and go on with the Lord. He ain't going to hold me fault with what I didn't do. I was a husband like I ought to, work and took care and kept the house going and everything. She didn't like that. A whole lot more things happened but we won't get into that. But that's the history of me—serving the Lord, going on and God just blessing.

You saw it happen.

I saw it happen, but I don't know who it was. We just got so excited we didn't get no car license or nothing. All we know is that it was a bunch of white folks.

When did that happen?

That was probably about the last part of the sixties, and it went until '70. The community was in full bloom, doing fine. From there, it started going down. We had to tear that down and all that stuff. We moved around the corner there where the Habitat for Humanity got them houses [corner of E. Main Street and Angier Ave.], right up above the Bull City there was another man who owned a whole lot of two story houses, antique houses. We got one of them and turned it into the health center again. That done fine, because people all in the community all around would go, like if you would go to a job and you had to get an examination and didn't have the money to pay for it. They would go there and give it to you. They done it free. Then all at once that came to a close. They didn't want that. Right across from there used to be a school sitting there. The school got blown up and burnt, too. So the Devil just worked in our community. Every time we tried to bring the community to the top, then we met the government. At that time—I hate to say it—but the Ku Klux Klan was terrible then. They loved to burn down things, and we always had—what you call those guys on the motorcycle?

The Hell's Angels?

Yeah! They had a place right over the hill over there. They'd meet on those motorcycles and just cuss out black folk, pick at black folk, beat black folks all up and everything, break all in the houses. Anything the black folks had, they would demolish. The community was a good community. Right on the corner there we had a [unclear] drug store. They had to close that. Right on the corner there it used to be a fish mart. The other folks would run the fish mart. They stayed there, though, till they got sick and couldn't come in, these big fat ladies. Then they health got bad and they couldn't come in. They close it, and later on they tore it down. The church was still over there on Walker Street, black people moving all around. But Ms. [unclear] still worked with us, and we tried and tried and tried. All the houses was around and everything. We would go to the City Hall, like we went the other night. Hayti [Development Corporation] and Edgemont always have worked together. You know that building all the way over there? [gesturing toward Golden Belt and the intersection of S. Elm and E. Main] Hayti is trying to get the city to rezone that so they can build a store in there. It passed the other night 11 to 2 [referring to a vote at the city council]. They really don't want that. So we had talked to the Goodwill—that used to be a Colonial store. They've got a part of that store with nothing in it, and we wanted them to sell us that part. They've got a big parking lot, and we was going to put to store in there. That was fine, and all at once they decided, "Naw, we don't want to do that! We'll keep it for ourselves." Why not let somebody use it instead of letting it sit and go to waste? They go along with that probably, but they ain't going to sell that. First they said they would, then they decided they wouldn't. See, that's the trick of the Devil. So why not let somebody use it, because you can close off the part you're not using and let the store be in there and have glorious times. The senior citizens from this building and up there and around about could walk to the store and still be convenient instead of going across the highway there to Winn Dixie. What Hayti Development is trying to do is bring back up like it ought to be, and put a new store in there and maybe some other kind of business—barber shop, stuff like that. Maybe a small drug store. Yes, we [need a store]. Got some people don't want nothing that's good. We got a lot of people that are against anything that's right. [claps] So we working on that right now; it passed the other night.